RESEARCH
GIVEAWAY: I am very excited to again give away a free book to a random commenter. The winner can choose either CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM or the 2013 GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS. Commenters must live in the US/Canada; comment within one week to win. Good luck!
UPDATE: Kim won. Thanks for all who participated.
Working for Writer’s Digest Books, I come across a lot of literary terms — both the common and uncommon. Because it’s healthy for writers of all levels to be familiar with terms they may come across in articles, conversations and contracts, here are some literary terms defined for your enjoyment.
Boiler plate contract (also know as a “standard contract”) – (n.) This term usually refers to an agreed starting contract between a literary agent and publisher. If Agent X sells a book to Putnam, for example, their next deal with Putnam will likely have the same royalty rates and subright splits as the first deal.
Denouement – (n.) French for an untying. The denouement of a novel or story follows the climax; it represents the unraveling pf the complexities of a plot, and the clarifying of the story’s details and misunderstandings.
Galley – (n.) A bound version of just the text of the book (or article, if writing for magazines). There is little to no illustration and the cover is a solid color with release data printed on the cover. Used for the same purposes as ARCs (advanced reader copies).
Kill fee – (n.) A fee paid to a writer who has worked on an assignment that, for some reason, is not published. For example, you’re contracted to write an article for a magazine and you turn it in. The article itself is satisfactory. But then the editor calls you and says they are changing the focus of the upcoming issue and they can’t use your article as part of the package anymore. They have no more need for it, so they pay you a kill fee (a percentage of the original promised price — usually 25–50%) and all rights to the article revert back to you. Your best bet is to try and sell it elsewhere.
Logline – (n.) A one-line summary of your story. For example: “A treasure hunter searches for a fabled artifact in the Himalayas.”
Narrative nonfiction – Nonfiction that uses the devices of fiction. You’re telling a true story, but using things such as character development, dialogue and cliffhangers. Think about it like the movie Apollo 13. The whole story is true, but it’s told in a dramatic fashion, like a fictional story would be. Oft-cited examples of narrative nonfiction include The Perfect Storm, Seabiscuit, In Cold Blood and The Right Stuff.
Read MoreIt (finally) appears the stigmas once associated with self and indie-publishing are disappearing, or at least waning – though in some cases there are new ones arising and there will always be naysayers. Let me clarify that while I think there are pros and cons to traditional publishing, self publishing and Indie publishing alike, I have always been a supporter of each and never agreed with those stigmas. As a PR and marketing professional having helped launch several successful self and Indie published books, I knew there were high quality stories out there by talented authors that needed to be told that didn’t have a publisher for various reasons. It’s been great to see some of the national media open up and begin writing about these books and authors more. For me, it’s been great to see these authors and books find readers and success – sometimes as much so, or even more so, than books I’ve worked on that have a big publisher.
More authors, agents, and readers are embracing Indie of self-publishing. It’s even becoming a viable option for several of my very successful traditionally published authors who are seeing that success and now considering making the leap.
But thus far the media has covered the breakout stories of self-publishing that are not the norm – often leading to unrealistic expectations. The purpose of this post is to share well thought-out tips from several self-published authors who have been successful on many different levels and in their own right – not just those that have sold millions of copies. (Note: most of these authors are clients of mine. Through years of innovation and creativity working on Indie and self-published books on a case by case basis – along with our traditionally published clients – we’ve helped these authors become award-winning, bestselling – or both – and many have gone on to sign with agents, publishers and even sell film rights. Or they have continued to successfully self-publish). But hiring professional PR and marketing is only one piece of it – they have each done their own things to make their success unique. I tapped them to share the tips direct from their experiences and mouths.
Read MoreIf you answered yes and were a post-menopausal female in my practice roughly a decade ago, odds are I’d have talked you into taking combination hormone therapy.
Besides the fact you’d probably feel better, having ditched those inconvenient hot flushes without hugely altering your lifestyle, I was after bigger fish. I’d embraced the preventive mindset, and the Nurses’ Health Study said I’d be protecting your heart and nervous system, not to mention your bones.
Expert opinion backed me, too, and by that I mean brilliant people who’d read the same studies and reached the same conclusions. Good local clinicians. The type of person you could call in the middle of the night to say, “I have a feeling I’m in trouble with this delivery,” and there’d be no second-guessing. They’d show up in ten minutes flat with bed-head and a willing heart. The sort who wouldn’t let an incompetent resident through the system, even if the cost of being a whistle-blower was time and vilification by colleagues. No shortcuts for these folks.
As for me, I was passionate and persuaded. Since there’s little more compelling than a doctor without an agenda, other than the betterment of their patients’ health, I was extraordinarily effective at winning compliance.
Then the Women’s Health Initiative came out.
The promise: hormones would protect a woman’s vascular system.
The reality: an increase in heart attacks and strokes significantly above baseline levels. To add insult to injury, in the two years following, as millions of North American women shucked their medication, the incidence of breast cancer declined by 2-3% per year. If hormones weren’t causing the outright development of breast cancer, even in properly screened patients, they certainly seemed to ignite its growth.
Lots of data, lots of expert opinion, lots of misery and fatalities in the name of preventing suffering.
Therapeutic whiplash.
Was this an unusual experience in medicine? I wish. I recall a long list of new sleeping agents that weren’t going to be addictive, except when they were. I remember the weight loss drugs that got you skinnier while damaging your heart valves; the lipid-lowering drugs that improved cholesterol numbers while increased rates of death.
You’ll notice I’m not even discussing issues like falsified results, suppressed data, or bought experts—in other words, fraudulent science. I’m only addressing the fact that even under the best of terms, even with thousands of data points and a team for analysis, evaluation has its limitations.
“Prescriptions” in the literary world
By now you’re saying, “Fine, Jan. We’re done with hearing stories about your ancient youth. What does this have to do with writing?”
And I’d ask, what are discussions like these, except attempts to diagnose, treat, or prevent literary malaise?
Read MoreToday’s guest is bestselling Kindle author Kathleen Shoop. Her second historical fiction novel, After the Fog, is set in 1948 Donora, Pennsylvania. The mill town’s “killing smog” was one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, triggering clean air advocacy and eventually, the Clean Air Act. Kathleen’s debut novel, The Last Letter, sold more than 50,000 copies and garnered multiple awards in 2011, including the Independent Publisher Awards Gold Medal. A Language Arts Coach with a Ph.D. in Reading Education, Kathleen lives in Oakmont, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.
For every woman who thinks she left her past behind… Rose Pavlesic is a straight-talking, gifted nurse who is also controlling and demanding. She has to be to ensure her life is mistake-free and to create a life for her children that reflects everything she missed as an orphaned child. Rose has managed to keep her painful secrets buried, away from her loving husband–who she discovers has secrets of his own–their children and their extended, complicated family.
But, as a stagnant weather cycle works to trap poisonous gasses from the three mills in town, Rose’s nursing career thrusts her into a conflict of interest she never could have fathomed–putting the lives of her loved ones at risk and forcing her to come face to face with her past.
Kathleen’s exhaustive research for After the Fog included reading volumes of nursing reports and handwritten/typed accounts of what community/public health nurses did for a living. Her research also included the Nursing Manual: Public Health Nursing Association of Pittsburgh (1941), Community Health Association: Nursing Technique (1930) and the Donora Historical Society. Here, she provides insights into crafting characters from clay to when they take their first breath. Enjoy!
Characters Welcome
Crafting characters is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing a novel. Authors want their characters to leap off the page, sit beside readers, and yank them through the story by the hand.
When I break out the literary clay, I can’t help but think of USA Network’s tagline, “Characters Welcome.” To sculpt the people of my books I explore their pasts, career paths, and the historical context of the setting. For example, considering issues such as traditional gender roles of the time and studying the bold outliers who defy expectations for their era. Simple enough.
Read MoreTherese here. Today’s guest is WU community member, Julia Munroe Martin. Julia is a writer and editor who blogs from one of the best places in the world–the coast of Maine. She has experience as a business and technical writer as well as a journalist, and she is currently, in her own words, “a novelist-in-progress.” (Love that.) She’s been working on a story for ~7 years, and during that time she’s learned how to gather information about people in an interesting way. We’re so glad she’s here today to tell us more about that. Enjoy!
I’m Not Above Spying
I almost used a pseudonym for this post. I’m not even kidding. I wonder: if anyone in the very-small-town I live in happens to read this post, will they ever stand behind me in the grocery store let alone speak to me again?
Because here’s the thing. I’m not above spying. I’m a snoop. I like to say it’s because my training is in journalism. I know how to ask questions, observe people, gather information.
But which came first, the chicken or the egg? I have a vivid imagination, I’m naturally curious, I like to ask questions, and I’m a people watcher, too. As I considered careers, I always found myself drawn to being a spy or maybe a private investigator—but I’m way too much of a wimp. Instead I became a writer. Turns out these very same skills are a boon to my fiction–and they can be to yours, too.
First the basics. To successfully spy gather information—wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I always have a way to record what I see and what I hear. A notebook, a shred of paper, more recently my iPhone—tools I always have with me. Fortunately I also have a willing accomplice (my husband) who is equally snoopy.
Here are some techniques that work for me.
Read MoreTherese here. Today’s guest is someone who’s been a WU lurker for over a year and half: L.B. Gale. L.B. works as an educator–a literacy specialist–in New York City, and is an aspiring fantasy author who received her Master’s degree at the University of Chicago, focused on comparative mythology and fantasy literature. Her favorite novels are A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.
L.B. brings something unique to WU today in the form of in-depth tips for online research. We know you’re going to love them. Enjoy!
Tips for Turning Online Procrastination Time into Writing Research Time
As someone who has worked with educators for some time, I’ve learned how decent enough students react when assigned various types of writing. The teacher says write a narrative and they hear “freedom.” The teacher says write an essay and they hear “annoying but doable.” The teacher says write a research paper and they hear “pain.”
And so it is for professional writers and aspiring writers alike. Research means pain, but we must all be researchers if we are to write well. In particular, a writer needs to be two varieties of researcher:
In education, the current trend is to find ways to teach students how to do boring things like research using exciting things like technology and the Internet. I thought that it might be helpful to look at how some of the strategies I’ve seen used with students could be useful for creative writers.
Like students, we are all easily distracted when working. Like students, we will procrastinate as much as possible. Like students, we need bright shiny strategies to help us turn procrastination time into something useful. Here are a few bright shiny strategies:
Read More“Every character should want something–even if it is only a glass of water.” –Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut was right, of course. But we need to know more than what our characters want. To truly empathize with our characters, we need to know why they want the things they desire.
What makes our characters tick? What limits our characters, and what pushes them forward? How have they been hurt in the past, who has hurt them, and how will these injuries affect them going forward in their lives? How will our characters’ pasts color their abilities to make the choices they face as they approach the climaxes of their stories?
People are endlessly fascinating puzzles; that’s why we can’t stop reading or writing about them. As writers, we have multiple tools at our disposal to figure out these puzzles. We’ve all lived through a certain amount of life experiences, and, presumably, we’ve all got some imagination (or we wouldn’t be writing fiction). We’ve got friends, family, insatiable appetites for reading and–admit it–penchants for silent observation and eavesdropping. We consult books and interview people who do what our characters do for a living so that we can better enter our characters’ heads and understand how they think and feel.
But there’s something else that can help us as we build our characters and pit them against the obstacles they encounter. Psychology is an entire science devoted to understanding human behavior, and psychologists and psychotherapists can guide writers through unfamiliar pathways of the human mind.
The characters in my WIP, for example, suffer a deeply personal loss in a public tragedy. Each character brings his or her own backstory to this event, and, as a result, it affects each of them differently.
At the outset of this project, I could imagine my characters’ reactions to this loss. But never having gone through anything like this myself, I wanted to gain a deeper comprehension of what happens to people, both internally and externally, when they’re forced to cope with a trauma both public and personal. So I turned to the experts. I took my characters to therapy.
Read MoreDo you research your novels to the point of obsession or do you not research at all?
Historical novelists are research junkies. Coming-of-age novelists mostly rely on memory. The majority of fiction writers fall somewhere in between: They study just enough so that their settings are accurate and their characters’ occupations feel real. The rest is write what you know.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that heavily researched novels can be lacking observation of the ordinary. Conversely, realistic novels are frequently are too ordinary to be fascinating.
To create high-impact it’s necessary to both observe people as they are and also discover through research that which readers could not possibly know about them and their world. Don’t you love learning new stuff as you read? Don’t you also love it when you totally recognize the characters with whom you’re spending time?
Research means not just getting the setting details right. It means getting the people right. Have you met a character who got bullet shot but wasn’t psychologically changed? Ever run across a protagonist who adapts to their handicap, special gift or paranormal ability with no trouble whatsoever? Those are failures of research.
Failure to observe people as they are results in overly familiar characters, actions and emotions; that is, stereotypes, predictable events and hackneyed prose. It’s a paradox. When you write what you think you should, it doesn’t feel wholly real. When you write from life, characters become quirky and unique. Their actions have a better shot at surprising.
Here are some things you can try, depending on your proclivity:
Read MoreToday’s guest is psychologist Vince McLeod, who runs a website called The Story Generator. Vince is here today to talk with us about the psychology of our characters–and more than that, how we might use psychological testing to help inform our fiction. Enjoy!
How to Use Psychometric Testing to Create Believable Characters
In order to create a believable, well-rounded character you need to know them as if they were a real person. Many real-life people use psychometric testing to get to know themselves, so why not apply these same principles to getting to know your characters? This article looks at what psychometric testing is and how it can be used to develop more engaging and compelling characters.
What is psychometric testing?
‘Psychometrics’ means psychological measurement. It refers to a field of study where tests and techniques are used to quantify personal qualities of individuals. Some of these qualities include abilities, beliefs, knowledge and personality traits. The commonly accepted way of trying to quantify such characteristics is by using questionnaires or tests.
An example of these questionnaires might be a fifty-question multi choice test that asks the participant to rate, on a scale of one to seven, how strongly they agree with certain political statements, with one representing ‘strongly disagree’ and seven representing ‘strongly agree’. The resulting answers are then crunched to come up with numbers that indicate where that person’s attitudes lie on a relevant scale.
How can I use psychometric testing to develop my characters?
Read MoreWhat inspires you as a writer?
If you write, and especially if you’re an author who visits book groups, you’ve likely been asked that question more than once. I think the question has more than one level, as does the answer. Like me, you may not even recognize all of your inspirations until after you’ve finished a draft, but taking the time to consider them may help you produce a deeper and more clarified work.
What am I talking about? Bear with me.
Skimming the Surface
Writers can be inspired by any number of things as they begin and continue to work on a manuscript: music heard or imagined, art found in a museum or seen on a billboard, a snippet of dialogue overheard in an elevator, a piece of perfect fruit (sure, why not?). Take a vacation and spend a good deal of time watching people? Read a good book and find yourself enchanted with an author’s turn or phrase or their voice? That sort of inspiration fits here, too.
Inspirations like these are simple and abundant, and while they don’t exactly find their way into your work they can help to keep you engaged with life and excited to write about life in general.
Under the Skin
Sometimes a writer latches to a simple Skimming-the-Surface type of inspiration and promotes it to something more, allowing it to take on a recurring role in fueling the act of writing. For example, while I was working on the rewrite of The Last Will of Moira Leahy, I stumbled on a song that I felt perfectly complemented the tale I was trying to tell; it was Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Atlantico. Whenever I felt blocked or otherwise needed a dose of inspiration, I listened to that song and it reminded me why I had to write my protagonist’s story.
Down to the Bone
Read MoreTherese here, elbowing in for a quick sec to say woohoo, our first week of donations in the Writers for The Red Cross auction has earned $450! Don’t miss this week’s packages, including “The Kitchen Daughter” Book Club in a Box donated by Jael McHenry; a signed copy of Donald Maass’s not-yet-released book The Breakout Novelist; a 100-page critique of your work-in-progress by author Ann Aguirre; and signed copies of Anna Elliott’s Avalon series. Bidding begins today. Back to your regularly scheduled blog post…
Balancing my writing career with all my other responsibilities is a constant challenge, and I always joked that what I really needed was an intern. Now, my “office” is a corner of the living room of a typical Manhattan one-bedroom apartment, meaning that even my desk isn’t a full-size desk, so onsite help was out of the question. (The writing life has its elements of romance, but it is also jam-packed with unromantic logistics.)
But we all have more than we can do ourselves, or at least it feels that way, right? If you are writing with the goal of publication, no matter where you are in the process, you’re looking at two important and sometimes conflicting types of work: the craft and the business. In struggling to find time for both, you may find you’re not satisfied with the progress you’re making on either.
I was lucky; I actually got the intern I’d been joking about needing. An opportunity came up (via the magic of Twitter) to post a listing for Winter Term interns at Oberlin College, and after interviewing several applicants, I selected one to work for me this past January. He was incredibly helpful. At the time I was several months away from the launch of The Kitchen Daughter and needed help tracking down information on everything from festival deadlines to book bloggers’ timeline requirements to the Facebook and Twitter accounts of my favorite indie bookstores. He even helped out on the historical research for my next book, currently underway.
But what if you can’t get an intern? Simple. Be your own.
Here are three easy ways:
Read MoreDo you love fiction with fantasy elements, but despair of writing a novel which will capture an editor or agent’s attention? Have you grown weary of the traditional fare – what Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell refers to as “vamptired”? If you’ve thought of turning to other cultures for literary inspiration, but been nervous about navigating cross-cultural lines, today’s post might hold special appeal.
Joining me are Shveta Thakrar (left) and Cindy Pon. The former is currently deep in revisions on her YA manuscript which features apsaras, South Asian celestial dancers who live in the Hindu realm of Svargalok, and nagas, half-snake/half-human shape-shifters.
The latter is the author of Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia — a young adult fantasy inspired by ancient China which made Booklist’s Top Ten SF/Fantasy Books for Youth 2009. Recently, Silver Phoenix was a subject of controversy when its paperback and sequel covers were revealed; some felt they exemplified a publishing trend toward whitewashing. Cindy’s sequel, Fury of the Phoenix, will be released March 29, 2011.
In other words, my two guests know of what they speak. They helped me remove my unwittingly-colonial foot from my unwittingly-imperialist mouth during this interview’s composition. Perhaps they can do the same for you.
First, a quick disclaimer: Below, the terms “mythology” and “folklore” are used in the technical sense of “sacred stories” and “knowledge of the people,” not in the colloquial sense of “untruths.” Use of the terms is not intended to cast any aspersions on the credence or truth of the ideas and beliefs.
Jan: Ladies, you’re fresh from Sirens 2010 and a panel designed to empower cultural diversity in fantasy and paranormal fiction. Who were your co-panelists, and how did you find your reception?
Read MoreTherese here–and Happy Halloween to everyone. Today’s guests are Janice Gable Bashman and Jonathan Maberry, authors of WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE: Vampire Hunters and Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil, which seemed apropos today. From their bios:
Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestseller, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winner and a writer for Marvel Comics. He has written a number of award-winning nonfiction books and novels on the paranormal and supernatural, including THE CRYPTOPEDIA, VAMPIRE UNIVERSE, THEY BITE, ZOMBIE CSU and PATIENT ZERO. His latest novel is ROT & RUIN.
Janice Gable Bashman has written for THE BIG THRILL, NOVEL & SHORT STORY WRITER’S MARKET, THE WRITER, WILD RIVER REVIEW, and many others.
Together, they wrote a book about the history of good and evil in storytelling, including details about monsters and other villains. Illustrated by top horror, comic & fantasy artists, it includes interviews with folks like Stan Lee, Mike Mignola, Jason Aaron, Fred Van Lente, Peter Straub, Charlaine Harris and many more.
Sound like a good place to start your research into what makes a bad guy truly bad, what makes a hero worthy of a cape, mask and batcave? We thought so, too. Enjoy!
CREATING INTRIGUING HEROES AND VILLAINS
It’s not easy for writers to craft three-dimensional heroes and villains, characters so unique, so real, that readers remember them long after they’ve finished the book. So before you put the pen to the page or the fingers to the keyboard, it’s important to know the characteristics of intriguing heroes and villains.
For our book, WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE, we interviewed tons of experts about what makes good heroes and villains in film, comics, pop culture, world myth, literature, and the real world. Here’s what some best-selling authors had to say.
What makes a good hero?
Read More
