Three Writing Tools I Use Every Day

I am in awe of the people able to sit down with a typewriter and create a book. I could probably do it if I had to, but there is no way on earth I could do it as quickly or as well as using a computer. Some of that comes down to being able to type faster and fix errors without whiteout. But it is more than just the things I could get from a good electronic typewriter. There are a few writing tools that I use every day. None of them are secrets, but they are valuable enough to be spotlighted as many places as possible.

Scrivener

Last week I spent several hours trying to figure out how to get some short stories into the correct format for submission. The exact details aren’t that exciting. It had to do with getting headers to not show on the first page. I still don’t know how to do it in the word processors I was trying to use because it turns out the simple solution was to use the compile feature in scrivener which not only added the headers the correct way, but set the font, indents and margins to the standard format.

That’s just one of the many examples I have discovered to use scrivener to make my life easier. Another obvious one is the ability to have your notes and research all kept together in a scrivener file. I use this constantly, but one of the most common is simply to keep records of how I describe every character that shows up in one of my books so I don’t accidentally give the same character two different color eyes.

I have no doubt that I’m using scrivener at ten percent or less of its full functionality because almost every time that I run into something that it would be nice if it did it’s not only already been done but is easy to do with Scrivener like having it easily compile your writing into the correct format.

ProWritingAid

One of the few things that Scrivener doesn’t do well is fix my grammar, typos and word choice. That’s where ProWritingAid comes in. There are a few different programs or sites that do similar things, but I’ve had the best luck with ProWritingAid because while calling it a grammar checker may be technically correct, it barely touches on the value of this. Beyond pointing out spelling and the many places I missed a comma that I should have added one, it also highlights other potential issues in your writing such as the use of passive voice or using weak words when there are a far better ones.

It also has some other tools that I use fairly often such as showing you what the most common words in your text are, what things you might overuse (which aren’t always the same), helping you find filter words, showing a readability score and more.

This isn’t a replacement for a professional editor by any stretch of the imagination, but it does a good job of helping me to improve my writing and fixes a massive amount of errors that would have slipped through before.

Balabolka

Of the three I’m confident this is the more obscure. It’s just a free text to speech program, but it has all the features I need, like the ability to adjust the speed of the text and several voices. I have long known that reading my work out loud is a good way to make sure it sounds good and to find a lot of errors you’d otherwise miss, but I hate doing that. I hate recording myself and then listening to it even more. But every time I use Balabolka, I discover several errors that both Scrivener and ProWritingAid missed. Most of the time it the wrong word or having a word twice and it’s almost always something that would be embarrassing if someone else found.

More than that it often helps me to make things shorter, more clear and sound smoother because while most people will not be reading my stories out loud I like the idea that they can and knowing that it’s always better for things to be easy to read than for them to be difficult and because it uses punctuation, like giving a short pause at a comma it makes it easier to spot the minor changes.

Bonus: Dropbox

This isn’t a writing tool, but it, or something similar, is vital to anyone who is a writer. Dropbox is a folder on your computer except that anything you put into it is uploaded to the cloud so that if something happens to your computer, you can still get to it. Don’t let the novel you’ve been writing get lost in a fire or a computer crash. And if you’re just using it for your writing it’s going to be free since you can store up to a gigabyte of data for free and if you’ve written enough to fill that, even with some more data intensive formats, I am impressed.

How to Find the Time to Write

Prioritizing Your Writing

Do you show up to work everyday they expect you? Do you feed your children dinner every day, even when you don’t feel like it? Do you walk your dog every day? Do you sit down and write regularly? Do you have a writing scheduled? Do you show up to it every day, even when you don’t feel like it?

I strongly suspect that for the first three questions and other similar questions, the answer is yes. Of course you feed your kids and show up to work. But when I got to the writing tasks, things became more difficult. You suddenly become busy or don’t have any ideas. You really need to check your email and twitter several more times. Which leads to the simple question, how to find more time to write.

I suspect you probably have already figured out where I am going with this. You need to consider your priorities. But while saying that is easy, and something we already know, doing it is something different entirely. And that is where I’m going to help.

Create A Writing Plan

The first step is to come up with a reasonable scheduled. This isn’t the NanoRimo schedule, this is the easy one. If you wrote 300 words a day, you could write over 100,000 words in the next year. Take weekends off and you could write about 75,000 thousand. That is the novel you’ve been talking about writing, and I promise you can find time to write 300 words. And it’s not good enough to say you’re going to do it. Write up a contract and sign it, then get someone else to sign it as a witness. Make it feel official.

Once you have a scheduled, you need a plan. These are similar, but not the same thing. I’m going to write 300 words a day is a schedule. I’m going to eat at my lunch while writing or I’m going to get up a half hour early every day is a plan. The more specific the plan, the better. If possible, try to connect it to a habit you’re already doing every day. Once you’ve connected the two then you’re going to remember to write every time you do the other one.

Creating a Writing Habit

Now comes the part that if you do right can make this work. You want to create a carrot and a stick. Find something you enjoy that you can reward yourself with. Ideally, it will be something small that you do every time to help reinforce the habit and make the work seem pleasurable. Eat a candy-bar every day when you’re done. But it could be a longer term goal. Perhaps go out to eat if you’ve written every day for a week. Just as important is the stick. Ideally, you need some level of accountability for this and you need to commit. Find someone who you know will hold it to you and write them a check for a thousand dollars that they can cash if you don’t meet your goals. Make sure you commit to at least 30 days and preferably 90. If you can do it every day, you’ll be likely to keep doing it. Buy a calendar and mark off the days as you do it. It may seem stupid, but it helps.

Right now I suspect many people are digging deep into their bag of excuses. I work too much and have kids. My roommates are constantly interrupting me and I have writer’s block. They’re all absurd lies. If you had a flat tire on the way home from work, would you have time to fix it? Would your entire world collapse? And writing isn’t nearly as disruptive. I heard a story of one woman who wrote her novel on her phone while at red lights. If all you need is to get 300 words down, you can do it on the toilet, or email it to yourself when you check your emails at work.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

The writer’s block argument is even easier to dismantle. Have you forgotten how to type? No, then you can write three hundred words. If you don’t know what to write start typing, I don’t know what to write. Write “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog,” a few dozen times, or “All work and no Play makes Jack a Dull Boy”. It doesn’t matter because once you convince yourself that you’re going to write whether you have anything to say, you’ll find that most writer’s block is fear of writing something bad. If you don’t care if it’s bad, the writer’s block goes away and you get enough writing done to get better, or at least you have something to edit.

The last step to finding more time to write is to stop when you hit your goal. If you’re writing 300 words a day, don’t write 301 stop at three hundred. If it’s in the middle of a sentence that’s fine. It will make starting tomorrow a lot easier because all you have to do is finish the sentence. This along with keeping your goal small will make you look forward to writing. Once you’ve met your reasonable goal and written every day for at least thirty days, you can renegotiate your contract. You should try to keep your schedule as consistent as possible and don’t over promise. If you’re easily writing 300 words a day, then make it 400, but you’re not allowed to make it more than half again as much as you’ve been doing. You want it to be easy.

Conclusion

I honestly do not believe that writing advice is universal. Every rule needs to be broken to create art, and everyone is different. But this isn’t writing advice, and so is far more universal. It’s about creating the habit of writing and making it a priority. It’s about deciding that you want to write and don’t just want to have written.

How to Write like a Knight Radiant

The Stormlight Archive is one of the most popular modern fantasy stories and will probably make the all time list of fantasy classics once Brandon Sanderson finishes it. One of the most interesting aspects of the story is that of the Knight’s Radiant and the rules of the different orders of Knight Radiant. I could say much about those orders, but for today I am going to focus on writing like a Knight Radiant. And just to be clear, if you haven’t read the books I will spoil the oaths but not the context of them, so it’s mostly safe. So lets start at the beginning.

Life before Death: The Radiant seeks to defend life, always. He never kills unnecessarily, and never risks his own life for frivolous reasons. Living is harder than dying. The Radiant’s duty is to live.

There are a lot of ways I could find to apply this to writing. Whether it is the death of main characters or the frivolous death of the empty hoards often seen in fiction. But I think there is an even more important point that is worth starting with when considering how to write. To succeed at anything requires sacrifice. To be a successful writer takes a great deal of sacrifice. Yet your life is also important. Don’t sacrifice yourself on the alter of fiction. Live your life. Have a life. Take care of your health both physically and mentally. It is a writer’s duty to live.

Strength before Weakness: All men are weak at some time in their lives. The Radiant protects those who are weak, and uses his strength for others. Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.

I could think of a dozen ways to apply this to your writing. It is vital that you show your characters as weak from time to time and just as vital that you don’t create protagonists who use their overwhelming strength to force other people to their will without consequence. But as these are the foundational rules, I think it is worth keeping the advice at a broader level.

Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. You’re better at some things that others. If you work to improve your writing, you will see those weaknesses. Often it becomes far too easy to focus on our weaknesses and think it defines us and our writing. But an excellent writer puts his strengths forward. If you’re fantastic as developing well-rounded and deep characters, put that at the front of your story and they’ll protect the weaker parts while you continue to improve. Your strengths should not dominate your stories anymore than a Knight Radiant should dominate others, but it can serve your story.

Journey before Destination There are always several ways to achieve a goal. Failure is preferable to winning through unjust means. Protecting ten innocents is not worth killing one. In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.

Continuing the fundamentals of writing. A novel is a marathon, not a sprint. Far too often as writers, we focus on the destination. We want to have written a novel. We forget that it is the journey that is important. It is a joke among many writers that they hate writing, but like having written. This may create a few magnificent pieces of fiction, but learning to enjoy the journey creates a writer. If you want to be an author who finishes books, you need to learn to enjoy the journey of writing. We all know what the most important step of writing a novel is.

But this also applies in your story. Everyone has a unique style of writing. Personally, when I write I usually have a basic premise, a few characters and a destination, and then I toss the map in the fire and start walking in the direction I think will get there. But even if you’re the person who knows what gas station they’re going to stop at on their vacation, the destination will often become overly important. The need to adhere to the goal will let us forget that the vast majority of our story takes place on the journey and often in the rush to the destination we sacrifice the moments that make us truly care about the story. Let your characters sit down and have a bowl of stew. It may not always seem like its driving the story towards the destination, but it makes the journey more pleasurable.

Windrunners

I will protect those who cannot protect themselves

Writing is powerful. Books carry weight and force, and far too many of them use that to hurt those who can’t protect themselves. Perhaps it is a write using a harmful stereotype or cliche. Perhaps it is ignoring them. Perhaps it’s going on twitter and using the platform you built as a successful writer to spread ideas you don’t fully understand.

When you’re writing it is important to keep in mind that the people you’re writing about can’t protect themselves. If you say something in your story, there is no one there to point out you’re incorrect. If you make the villain of your story Trans that may seem like a minor point to you, but to someone who can’t protect themselves from the cliche that they are always the villain in those stories, it is the opposite. Don’t spread incorrect ideas to your readers. Don’t make people feel as if they are less than they are because they read your story. The people who read your work should feel safe in your hands.

I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.

When writing a story it is easy to make the antagonist someone we hate. Why shouldn’t the enemy be someone who believes the same thing as the people in the political party I hate? Why not make them a bigot who kicks puppies? There is nothing inherently wrong with making the antagonists of your book despicable, but as a writer you still have an obligation to protect those you hate, so long as it is right.

This means you need to treat the people you disagree with the same kindness, or more than you would those you agree with. You can still make your antagonist a bad person who has bad beliefs. But you also have to protect the reader, even if it is someone you hate. This isn’t a “it’s the right thing to do” piece of advice. It’s strategic. If your goal is to change someone’s mind you’ll never do that by attacking. But when you show kindness to someone and take the time to understand what they believe, they might consider a different point of view. Beyond that they are a person worthy of dignity and respect, so show it took them.

I will protect even those I hate, even if the one I hate most is myself.

While not all writers suffer from crippling doubt and insecurity, it’s not uncommon. It’s important for a writer to protect themselves both from others and from themselves. The first step is to stop being cruel to yourself. This isn’t always easy, but it’s easier if you focus on improving rather than being perfect. You need to treat yourself as someone you have an obligiation to protect because you can’t protect anyone if you don’t protect yourself.

Beyond your own internal critic, you should be careful about criticism and reviews, both in what you listen to and what you accept as true. Every writer gets bad reviews. I hated the Great Gatsby. If Mr. Fitzgerald were around, I wouldn’t recommend he read any review I wrote about it because they won’t be kind. But more importantly, they won’t be useful. It wasn’t a book written for me. So, consider whether reading a review is useful and if it’s not, then protect yourself and ignore it.

The Edgedancers

I will remember those who have been forgotten.

I will listen to those who have been ignored.

These two oaths are the key to interesting characters and creating stories that feel original. Some of the best science fiction and fantasy of the modern era have made great use of these two oaths. So next time you’re thinking about a character instead of focusing on the characters you’ve seen before, try to consider who has been forgotten and ignored and use them instead. You’ll be surprised how much they have to say when you listen to them. This is even more true if you are part of one of those forgotten groups but if you’re not then it’s all the more important to listen. Far too few people listen and even fewer listen to those who have been ignored.

Bondsmith

I will unite instead of divide. I will bring men together.

It’s important to know who your audience is, but that doesn’t mean excluding people. There is a saying that I’ve heard a few times that if you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not writing anything worthwhile. That is probably true, but perhaps the thing that most separates writing from every other form of media is the ability to enter the mind of someone else. Use that ability wisely, because the ability to see things from the point of view of someone else has both the ability to unite and to divide. You get to choose which you do.

I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.

The hardest thing for me as a writer in the last few years is looking back at what I wrote in the past. I shared some of it with people, and much of it I didn’t share. Some of it has ideas I don’t know if I fully agree with anymore, and much is embarrassing. As a writer, the only thing you can do is focus on becoming better. You will fail. You will write things that are bad. You will probably write something that is hurtful or painful to other people. You will get rejections and you will fall down. The goal of a writer can’t be to avoid every mistake. It can’t be to never fall down. It is to make yourself a better writer because it’s both how you learn to be a better writer and a better man.

Skybreakers

I will put the law before all else.

The Skybreakers oaths are about following rules. Every writer knows plenty of rules. There are rules of grammar, rules of writing, rules about how long a story should be, and how to make people like your characters. You can find hundreds of rules of writing, write every day, show don’t tell, know your Audience, and write for yourself. They are all worthwhile and they will make your writing much better if you put them before all else. But just as with the Skybreakers, the rules are the beginning not the end.

I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me, until I find a more perfect Ideal.

A talented writer has to know the rules. They should have a good grasp on grammar, character, plot, setting and all the other rules that make something readable. A great writer is the one who has moved on to the second part of this ideal. A great writer finds a more perfect ideal than the rules of writing. He understands that sometimes the grammar gets in the way and knows when he can split an infinitive to make the scene better. He knows that sometimes you just tell people stuff and move on because it would be boring to be shown it. A great writer is the one who has followed the rules and learned them so well that he can see that more perfect ideal. But you must be a master of the rules, you must put them before all else before you can put them aside because someone who doesn’t understand the law and breaks it isn’t a Knights Radiant they are a criminal.

Lightweavers

The Lightweavers are last because they are the artists of the Knights Radiant. But it’s more than that. You can become a more proficient writer by following your craft. You might even get a shardblade while holding things back. But just like a lightweaver, you advance to mastery by telling your truths. Not the simple truths that everyone already tells and already knows. Not the truths about the world or about other people. The hard to accept and hard won truths about yourself and your life. The ones that form who you both because they are beautiful and because they are ugly.

Tell the truth in your writing. Sit at the computer and pour your heart onto the page. Say things that hurt and then keep saying them until you get them right because that’s what will strengthen you. Perhaps if you tell enough of them, you might even get that mystical armor that keeps it from hurting so much when people don’t like what you’ve written.

Bonus

Someone has to go first

Writing isn’t easy. Writing something new is harder, but it’s not difficult because you have nothing new to say. It’s difficult because it requires going first. No one else can write the story you want to tell. Don’t hold back your stories because it’s hard or because other people might not understand. Don’t restrict yourself to what other people do. Try new things. Take risks to make your stories and the world a better place. Make your writing your writing. Don’t want for someone else to say it’s OK. Someone has to go first, why shouldn’t it be you?

Removing Filter Words from Your Writing

I am a strong believer the most important thing you can do as a writer of fiction is to disappear. The best books are the ones you forget you’re reading. It’s one reason I think that poetic language is often a mistake, and when someone stops to point out how good the writing is, I wonder I can make it less distracting.

One of the most common ways to remind a writer they’re reading a book is filter words. This is as it might imply a word that is used to filter what is happening through the thoughts or senses of a character. Perhaps the most common for me is having a character realize something. But you can also have them see something, hear something, decide something or feel something.

For those of you not antiquated with filter words, you’re likely thinking the same thing I did. That you have to have your characters see and hear things and realizing things is an action. But if you put these words into the search function of your current work in progress and look at it carefully, I think you’ll find, as I did that most of the time you can change things easily to make them far more immediate with little difficult. For example, “Joe saw that Mary was making a sandwich” can be changed to “Mary was making a sandwich.” Assuming that Joe is the point of view character, your reader will know he saw that without you saying it. But it’s not just shorter. You avoided reminding your reader they’re not Joe by removing the filter.

If you would have asked me before I searched out these words I would have said I don’t use them that often and changing it won’t matter that much. But having searched them out, I’ve discovered that any filter word is a clue that I need to look more carefully at that sentence. Sometimes it’s fine, but most of the time I can make something happen instead of having someone see it happen. In my most recent work I could cut the time I used the word realized from twenty-five to five times when there was an actual revelation. That may not seem a lot, but it’s only one of the filter words and putting a gap between the action in your book and the reader twenty times is twenty times too many.

But as I alluded to in the last sentence, you don’t want to cut out all the filter words. The exception to cutting them is when the realizing, seeing, hearing or thinking is the action. For example, how many times did a young wizard under an invisibility cloak hear something he wasn’t supposed to? But even then is it better to say, Harry heard Dumbledore say or have Dumbledore say it? It depends on which part is most important.

As with many points of style, I would strongly suggest you ignore this while writing your first draft. In the first draft, the most important thing isn’t making the reader forget that they’re reading a story but getting the writer to forget that he’s telling one. If you can get into the flow of writing where you feel as if the things are happening then you’ll get far more words down and experience one of the best moments in writing. But once you’ve done a few drafts this, along with removing hedge words can dramatically improve the immediacy of your writing.

How to Overcome The Odds in your Writing Career

I am a writer. I write novels. I write short stories. I write blog posts and reviews. I write twitter posts and comment on far more YouTube videos than is reasonable. I have a newsletter than I put time into every month and even try to give some advice on writing from time to time. And yet I only have a vague idea of what will succeed or fail. I will write something that I think is excellent, and no one pays any attention, meanwhile something else will get far more interest. The same is true of submitting stories.

There is a lot of luck in getting someone to read something and just as much in selling a story. You have to not only get the right person to see it, but catch them at the right time. And even if you get someone to read it, are they the type of person who is going to share it with someone else? There are just a ton of factors you have no control over, and even the ones you do have some control over, like the keywords you use, are still a bit random. Even if you pick great keywords even the people who know the algorithm well enough to gain from that still have to deal with the times the algorithm changes, competition and many other factors. Luck exists and you either you deal with that or you pretend it doesn’t and still deal with it so this article isn’t about how to write a great story or find the perfect subject to write about. It’s about the near misses and frustrations of random chance.

Step 1: Tweak the odds

Just because luck is involved in something doesn’t mean that skill isn’t involved. It also doesn’t mean you can’t focus on things that improve those odds because while the winner of any one hand of poker is random most of the time the best player is the one who wins the night. As a writer, I strongly believe that someone who writes well is more likely to succeed than someone who writes poorly. But there are other things. You can improve the titles, covers, summaries etc to make people more likely to pick up your stuff. For example, we all know that top ten lists are popular but many of us don’t I find myself not wanting to use it because it’s so often used for clickbait. But the thing about clickbait is that it works, that’s what makes it bait.

Step 2: Play the odds

Ask anyone who reviews books, literary agents and people accepting submissions and you’ll hear stories of people sending them things absurdly out of context. People send self-help books to people who publish romance novels or send novels to magazine publishers.

But just sending it to the right type of publisher doesn’t mean it’s the most appropriate choice. Just because you send it to someone who publishes mysteries doesn’t mean that they don’t have preferred types of mystery. Do your research and put your effort into the best choices.

This is just as true with things you get paid for. Guest blogging is a worthwhile way to get attention, but if you’re going to put in the effort to find people who will give you access to their audience, try to find one with fans who are likely to be receptive.

Step 3: Buy more Lottery Tickets

The odds of winning the lottery are terrible, everyone knows that, but if you buy a thousand lottery tickets your odds of winning are a thousand times better than if you buy one. With writing the lottery tickets are the stories and blog posts you write and the times you submit them. So if you want to improve your odds then when you finish one story, novel, blog post or anything else start working on the next one while continuing to promote the first one in whatever way that means. It will get frustrating and at some point you’ll want to stop. That’s when you can improve your odds even more by not stopping, because that is when most people stop.

There is and will always be some luck to writing. What makes someone scrawling notes onto a napkin into a famous author or propel a schoolteacher to the top of the horror genre is more than just than just skill. It is skill, timing, persistence and luck. The difference between the people who get lucky and the people who don’t is whether they stopped trying before they got lucky or not because whether or not you believe it your moment will come if you try long enough.

Learning to See and Fix the Flaws in your Writing Without Hating Yourself

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master,” is one of the most true things ever said about writing. But while true, far too many of us think too little of our writing. We believe that because we’re not a master, we can’t be excellent writers. Or that we are being disingenuous when we promote our work.

In my experience, there is no group of people more susceptible to imposer syndrome than writers. Whether amateur or professional many of us are far too harsh on ourselves and while I can only speak of myself it difficult for me to share my work or encourage people to read it because even something is good I have spent almost the entire time I was working on it focused on its flaw.

And, as a writer, it’s vital for me to see those flaws. Starting from the minor such as grammar and typos to more major things like characters, plots, pacing, descriptions, etc., the only way to improve as a writer is to see the flaws and weakness in your writing and try to improve them.

But if anything is to be published, you have to stop fixing those flaws. Aside from grammar and typos (possibly) it is impossible to create anything without flaws. And not just because we need to improve as writers, but because of the nature of stories. Every story is a balancing act. Add more description and you slow down the pacing, focus on character and you have less time for plot. Fix a grammar error and you create typos. (That last one may just be me.)

So what is the answer? How do you move past the self-flagellation and accept both that you can create work that isn’t perfect and still believe it is damn good? Is it even possible?

The first and most important step is change your focus. Instead of making yourself feel bad because there are flaws, take a moment to remember how much you’ve improved. Those things you see as major flaws in your writing have been there the whole time, but you’ve finally gotten good enough to see and work to fix them. And it is likely this story is better than anything you wrote a year ago, and that was better than something you wrote two years ago, and because you’re actively trying to improve the next thing you write will be better than this.

Which leads into the next most important step. Moving on. One reason that many writers find it difficult both to see the improvement in their writing and grow increasingly incontinent with the story they are working on is that they spend too long with the same story. I’m not saying to abandon work or rush through it. A novel requires drafts and even rewrites. The problem is when people fall in love with a story and become monogamous. Going through endless drafts in search of perfection. Rewriting large sections to fix one insignificant flaw. The focus on filling in even tiny gap and inconsistency until you’re remaking Beauty and the Beast so you can explain that the beast wasn’t 11 when he was cursed. (That’s really why they remade it. It had nothing to do with money.) Move on and write something better.

Third, is to learn to understand the different types of criticism both from yourself and others. This is easier to see in others, but you can fall into them too. There is the reasonable, useful and timely criticism. This is what should come from your beta readers, critiquing partners and yourself when you’re looking at a story that hasn’t been finished. Things like, I’m not sure I understand this, or did you mean this along with you might want to tell people where this is happening and your characters all sound the same.

The second is a reasonable criticism that’s not useful or timely. This is often difficult to recognize from the others. But the easiest way to tell is if you’re holding a published copy of the book in your hand when you see it then it’s probably not timely and if you can’t change it without completely changing the story you want to tell then it’s probably not useful.

One example of this in a recent story was someone asking why the police let the protagonist go when they suspected that he murdered someone. It was a reasonable question, and one that I made very minor adjustments to the dialog to help fix. But the reason he let him go was because the plot had to happen. Sometimes that’s just the way books work. There are also many examples of reasonable criticism that aren’t timely. For example, one review of the first book I wrote says that the story doesn’t have enough detail, and it sometimes feels like reading the cliff notes. It’s entirely right, but as I wrote the book ten years ago, going back and rewriting it entirely to add in detail, while satisfying, would not be a good use of my time.

There is another type of criticism that is the most problematic, especially when it comes from ourselves. That is the non constructive criticism. Things like, well this writing sucks, or the person who wrote this must have been a ____________ (Fill in the blank with something no one should want to be) are not useful. (At least not for your writing. If everyone who reads your writing suggests you’re ________ you may want to consider whether they might be right.) For example, suggesting that an early 20th century weird fiction writer may have been just a tad racist for having his main character more scared by finding out that someone in his ancestry may have been African than from being chased around a creepy old mansion by the severed head of a gorgon head isn’t really that useful for fixing the story. On the other hand, fixing that may have been useful for said writer. (There is no saving Medusa’s Coil except perhaps reading it the same way you might watch The Room.)

So what is the solution for dealing with nonconstructive criticism? When other people do it it’s actually fairly simple but not easy. You remind yourself that not everything is written for everyone. Assume the person is a terrible human being, avoid ever seeing them again and move on like the reasonable person you are. The problem is that if the person telling you that the writing sucks and the person who wrote it should throw delete everything and cut off his hand so he can’t inflict his writing on anyone in the future is yourself; it becomes more difficult. The first step is to take a step back and remind yourself that you aren’t your writing. And that not everything you write has to be good. Then take a break from that and write something else while considering something fairly simple. If someone talked to a friend of yours the way you’re talking to yourself would you be OK with it? If the answer is no (and it’s probably no) then perhaps you should consider not doing that to yourself.

Finally, go find something terrible to read. I suggest Medusa’s Coil. If it doesn’t make you feel better about your own writing, then you can at least be glad you’re not that racist. If you’re not interested in reading Lovecraft, there is plenty of other terrible writing.

There is no simple solution for shutting down your internal critic. I wish there was. The problem is that we need him. We’ve all seen people who have shut down that voice too well. The self-satisfied dick who is convinced that what he writes is the greatest thing ever and that anyone who doesn’t love it just isn’t smart enough to understand it. But he doesn’t have to be running the show. Give him a pleasant room he can wait in while you’re working on other things and then let him out when it’s time to edit. Hopefully, a bit of quiet time will make him nicer and at least you only have to listen to him when it is useful. Then write a few dozen more stories and show them to a few hundred more people because if nothing else it will help you build up some scar tissue.

Writing a Novel: Rationality is for Losers

Writing a novel is hard. And I don’t mean going to the gym twice a week hard, I mean building a house in your spare time for fun hard because that will take about the same amount of time if you know what you’re doing. Except that when you’re done, you can live in your homemade house and there is a good market for it. Someone will buy it from you or you can rent it out. None of that is true of the novel. Yet I would urge you, if it’s your desire, to throw away logic and your weekends and write that novel because rationality is for losers.

Now I’m not bashing the person who spends his weekends building a home for his family or rebuilding a car with his son. If those are your passions, then you should do that. What I’m saying is that for someone drawn to creativity, the only reasonable thing to do is to be irrational and throw your life’s effort into something that by all rational expectations won’t work.

Search the market and find out what is hot. Write the book that readers want if you hope to have any success. A perfectly rational statement. The irrational choice is to write the book you’re desperate to write because it isn’t out there. To throw your vision onto the page, no matter whether anyone else cares to see it or not. And once again rationality is for losers. Would you rather read a book that was carefully and meticulously crafted to be just like the most popular books that came out last year, or would you like to read something that the author created because she had a drive to make something fresh?

Most authors won’t be rich, in fact most published authors have a job. It’s a true and rational statement. But rationality is for losers. Belief is vital. You’ll never succeed as a writer if you don’t believe that your novel will rise above all the others. The rational belief may be that you will write a book that won’t stand out from the crowd. But that rational belief is a terrible choice. No one will pour all their spare time into a book they believe to be mediocre, and no one will enjoy a book that wasn’t written with the passionate enthusiasm of someone who believes they are creating a work of art.

The path of the artist is an irrational path. Every statistic in the world shows that you’d make more money getting an engineering or business degree. Computer programming is kind of creative, right? It’s all true. That teaching degree you got will almost certainly guarantee that you have a job, and a fulfilling and important job working to improve the lives of young people. But if you’re doing it because it’s safe instead of because it’s what you want to do, then rationality is for losers. Throw yourself head first off that cliff and figure out the next part on the way down. You have permission to be irrational. To ignore all the well-meaning people who want you to be safe instead of happy. Because if the only way you can be satisfied is to be irrational, then rationality is for losers.

When Strengths Become Weaknesses How to Improve Your Writing and Character Creation

Today I read Fear Your Strengths by Robert B. Kaiser, Robert D. Kaplan, and Derek Shetterly. It was a short and perfectly fine book focused on leadership and I considered writing a review, but that was just about all I had to say about the book. If you’re in a leaderships position, it’s probably worth reading. That said, I strongly believe that an expert reader can get value out of a book beyond the intended purpose of the writer(s). In this case, it got me thinking about how I might use this advice as a writer.

The basic thesis of the book is that we often rely too much on those things we are good at and because of that can go overboard and turn that advantage into a disadvantage. I think that’s something that any writer can recognize as an important point if they stop to think about it. Both in our writing lives and in our writing style.

Starting with our writing lives, it’s easy for me as a writer to push myself too hard. It is not uncommon for me to be at a computer for twelve or more hours a day, and while not all of that time is actually spent writing it is largely connected to that, whether it is reading and listening to audio-books, marketing, involving myself on social media or checking my email they can all easily be connected to my focus on writing. And I think that is an advantage, but I can recognize it as a disadvantage too. Obviously it’s not great for my health, but even beyond that some of the best ideas I’ve got and my most interesting characters are discovered when I’m doing things that don’t involve working at a computer and being a more well-rounded person can lead to interesting things that can go into your work. That said, giving advice on this is difficult beyond suggesting that you consider how focusing too much on your strengths may create weaknesses.

It’s a little easier to understand in writing. Writing is a balance. Even in a book that can technically be any length you want, you have a limited amount of space. You have to keep the reader’s attention; you have to move the story forward. In that limited amount of space you have to fit, character, plot, setting, tone, style, world-building and more. And every writer is different. I love world-building and plot. And in some of my early books especially, I let that draw too much time away from the characters. There are other writers who love to create a setting, and they are great at it, but they also sometimes write six pages of descriptions about the food at a wedding or allow themselves to get bogged down and take years to finish a book.

It is important to know what you’re good at, and it’s important to use that. If you’re good at world-building, use it, and create a world so deep and interesting that people might not notice that your dialog isn’t great. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore dialog. It’s a necessary part of the story and by learning to give your characters a better voice you will probably improve your writing more than you will by creating yet another kingdom with another set off add cultural beliefs.

My final thought is in character creation. Going back to Fear your Strengths, they have several interesting examples of a person which could make an interesting character in a book. And I think by using a fear your strength method you could create interesting and complex characters. One of their examples was a CEO who was smart, and everyone who worked for him put his intelligence off the chart. A clear strength. But because of that he often intimidated people, and beyond that he was often short with people who didn’t figure out things as fast as he did. The book gave some suggestions on how he fixed that, but I’ll suggest that this could make a great character. Imagine the brilliant star-ship captain who is often angry at his crew for not solving things as fast as him, or a mad scientist who wants to destroy the world because it’s full of dullards. In both cases, this person has turned their strength into a major flaw.

That is only one example. Another in the book was of a CEO who was exceptionally articulate. She could often convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t and everyone liked her. But by now hopefully you’re able to consider the flip side of that. Perhaps you have a king or queen who is fantastic at inspiring their people, but that gift of gab means that they rarely listen to their advisers and they would even talk over them. This means that while they can often convince people to do what they want, they can also fail to know what the right thing to do is.

The uses of fear your strengths is endless. A courageous hero may also be reckless. A kindhearted teacher may be unwilling to be strict enough, a person who things come easy to may not learn to continue to fight when things are difficult and a humble person may cannot recognize their own strengths.

In the book Fear your Strengths, the authors point out the importance of balance. In many ways it’s more important for a leader to be balance than to be brilliant in any one area. As a writer, I feel the need to point out the importance of balance in your own life and imbalance in the lives of your characters. A balanced character is often boring and doesn’t have anywhere to go. So the next time you sit down to write, consider for a moment the greatest strength of your character and try to figure out how you can turn that into their greatest weakness.

Putting Humor Into Your Story When You Aren't Funny

Humor is one of the most important writing tools there is and even if you have no interest in writing a comedy having a few chuckles or at least making your reader smile from time to time is useful for breaking tension and creating connections between readers and characters. But while I am aware of this, I know also that my natural style of humor doesn’t translate all that well into written humor. So how do those of us who aren’t naturally funny on the written page still use that vital writing tool?

The first step is to understand why humor is important. Laughter is one of the oldest ways in which humans bond. It likely predates human speech and is one of the few things we know is entirely natural. Babies laugh, blind and deaf people laugh. And more than that when someone who laughs with you is part of your tribe. Making your readers part of your character’s tribe, or part of your tribe as a writer, is a worthwhile bond.

Just like anything else in writing, the first step is to understand the basic elements. Humor is too broad a subject to fit into a single theory, but there a few theories that are useful because even if they aren’t technically correct they typically can help us understand types of jokes.

The first is relief theory. That is to say that laughter exists to help release tension. This is why you might laugh in an awkward social situation and why my reaction to life and death situations is to laugh. It’s also why humor defuses tense situations. A lot of jokes use this, creating a dangerous situation with the setup of the joke and then releasing the tension with the punch line. A broad example of this might be a joke that appears to be dangerously inappropriate with a punchline that reveals it is not. In a book, this might be the sudden revelation that the seemingly dangerous situation that the protagonist is in is actually not dangerous at all.

Another theory is the superiority theory. This is schadenfreude, or laughter at the misfortunes of others. It’s simple. You laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel because of the superiority theory. In writing this is most often the comic relief. A seemingly or helpless character who bumbles and fumbles his way through the story making the reader laugh, just make sure they have some personality and reason to be in the story. It can also be useful to make the seemingly powerful protagonist more human by making them look silly.

Third is the incongruous juxtaposition theory. Basically, it’s laughing at something so bizarre that there is nothing else to do but laugh. Typically, the laughter comes when you understand what is happening. You assumed that something made no sense, but then suddenly you understood why it happened or have some shift in perspective that clarifies that you had misinterpreted what was being said. In the case of the written joke, this is often intentional.

But while understanding that is fairly useful, that doesn’t help you craft a joke or make a character funny. Hitting your character in the face with a pie might technically be a joke, but it’s probably not going to seem like one to a reader unless the context is right.

That is where we move onto a few basic tricks that humor writers often used to make these things easier. Perhaps the most famous of these is the rule of three. The idea being that three events are more satisfying or in this case funnier than other numbers. The reason for this at its most basic because three of something is the smallest amount you can use to create a pattern. So by creating an obvious pattern in the first two, you can disrupt that pattern in the third. The reason that three is better than four, five or ninety-six leads into the next point.

Brevity is the soul of wit. If you’ve ever heard someone tell a joke, you know why this is vital to humor. So while it may not be vital to itself, getting to the point is vital.

Also worthwhile is to remember that unless you're specifically writing a comedy that it’s probably worth keeping your humor both subtle and not to put in too much. Your goal need not be to make someone fall out of their chair laughing. A smile is enough, and it is far less likely to disrupt the story.

As a fiction writer, I think it’s important to consider the type of humor that your character uses. Different people are funny in different ways. You can do the same with your characters. Having everyone in your book throw out terrible puns will not make them interesting, even if your readers laugh. But if you have one character who does that while the others roll their eyes, then you’ve hopefully made your readers laugh in two different ways. You can build up characters through humors in a lot of ways. Being clumsy can be funny and create valuable character information that can become useful later in the plot. A character who makes fun of another character differs greatly from one who makes fun of himself.

There is far more to this subject than can be found in a single blog post. But I’ll leave you with a few minor points that might be useful. Specificity is generally funnier than generalities. Also, according to more than one source, the k sound is funny. I don’t know why k is funny, but I am assured it is, and if you’re aiming for humor, you might as well grease the wheels.

Finally, put the punchline at the end. This is important in most writing, but even more so in writing humor. Consider the difference between these two lines. “Please, take my wife,” and “Take my wife, please.” by putting please at the end you create tension and have a surprise reversal. People also remember the last thing best.

I will never create a book that sits in a comedy section of a bookshelf. It’s just not how I’m wired. My first thought in a situation isn’t how is this is funny, but how is this dramatic, or how does it move forward the plot. But if you keep an eye out, you’ll sometimes stumble into a situation that is funny or remember some tidbit from your research that made you laugh and you can share that with your reader.

You're Not as Good a Reader as you Think

There are a few assumptions about being a good reader of fiction. The first is grade level reading. The assumption being that the more difficult a book you can read, the better you are. This is useful if you’re testing children for comprehension, but I am interested in making someone a great reader not adequate to pass forth grade.

The next assumption is that of speed. That by reading more quickly you are better at reading. This is, in some minor way true, but again it is unnecessary to be a fast reader to be a great reader just as a master artist need not make his work quickly for it to be great. Though it is impressive.

Next is the question of what you have read. This comes in two connected ideas. The first is that of breadth of reading. That having read many books makes you a better reader. This person will talk about having read fifty books this year, or having read every book on the top lists of all time. Connected to that is the depth of reading. This is the assumption that having read Crime and Punishment and Moby-Dick makes you a better reader that someone else. Reading important books and widely can, I believe, make you a better person, but I am not convinced it makes you a better reader.

Finally, is the most toxic of the ideas. That being able to find the flaws, plot holes and weaknesses in a book makes you a great reader. It works from the assumption that a book is a story told to you by an author, and it is the sole job of the author to create a world that the reader can step into without effort. This is not true, and any attempt to make that world in fiction would create an entirely unreadable book.

I suspect some of you now are thinking of books that have done just that. But what they did was a magic trick. They made you think the author had created an entire world that you stepped into, when in fact, you made most of the world yourself. Because if there is a secret to being a great reader, then that is it. That reading a book is not a passive act. A reader must collaborate with the writer to create the world.

Consider for now a moment a simple brief description from The Hound of the Baskervilles “A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” If you are like me you have a good idea what that hound looks like. But think back to all the assumptions made in the description. It assumes first that you know what a hound is and looks like. It also assumes you understand what coal-black is. So far these are simple, but then it moves on to say it was not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. This bit is where the magic trick really happens. It doesn’t tell you much, but yet you fill it in. Perhaps you add glowing eyes or an aura of danger. Perhaps it becomes something from a half-remembered nightmare or a movie you watched as a child that scared you. Arthur created a hound, you created the rest.

Now that you understand that you can practice becoming a better reader. I suggest you start with something to train yourself that is generally considered good. H. P. Lovecraft is a master at this particular type of magic, and learning to appreciate the horror of not knowing is excellent practice. But it is also good practice because while Howard is a talented writer (we will for the sake of brevity leave his personality out of this), he wasn’t always that and some of his, well say less impressive work leads to the next step in being a good reader.

A great reader is one who can elevate that which he reads. Most people can read a masterpiece and find something of value in it. It is what makes it a masterpiece. And anyone who tries hard enough can find the flaw in those masterpieces this may be a skill, but it is not one that is worth learning. They are there and sometimes even fun to find. But a great reader can pick up something mediocre or even bad and still find a way to enjoy it.

It is perhaps easier to explain with movies. Anyone who has spent time on the internet has seen the questions, usually as jokes, of why they didn’t ride the eagles to Mt. Doom. Finding this funny isn’t a problem, but if you allow it to make watching the movie less enjoyable, then you are bad at watching movies. Not just because there are simple explanations, but because you’re being a bad collaborator. In improve terms you’re saying no instead of yes, and.

The counter of this is people who watch terrible movies and love them. Enjoying something like Battlefield Earth or The Room requires something of the person watching it. They need to understand what makes a wonderful movie to find the humor in that being done wrong. They are good collaborators because they fill in the flaws of the movie and elevate it above what it was meant to be. A great reader can do the same.

The question of how you do this is more tricky. But at its heart is the desire to enjoy a book rather than find flaws in it and practice at doing this. It doesn’t mean that a book can’t bore you or put you can’t put a book down that is bad. It means that if you choose to read a book; you focus on the good. You question your assumptions of its flaw and try to find answers rather than criticizing it. It means that you spend a few seconds thinking about what the author probably meant by that awkwardly written sentence before you assume it isn’t important. It means that you work with the author not against the author to enjoy yourself because at its heart reading fiction is meant to be enjoyable.

Note: None of this is true if you are a beta reader, editor, or even entirely when writing a review. This is advice for reading a book, not for any of those things. Though it is worth considering when listening to a review. Because taking advice from a bad reader on what to read will get you poor results.

10 Writing Lessons from Batman

You could be written on the lessons on writing that could be drawn out of the Batman character. Whether the movies, the comics, the cartoons or the TV shows each of them has plenty that can be learned from any of them. I plan to focus not on any of those stories, but the character himself. One of the most famous characters in the world.

Character Voice

Say what you want about some decisions made by writers it regards to Batman’s voice Batman talks whether is is calling a teenage boy he just kidnapped names or talking like he’s been gargling gravel it is never a question who has spoken. This isn’t always easy, but it doesn’t have to be all that hard. A few commonly used words can not only make it easy for you to create dialog but to get a feel for the voice of the character. A character who says “Because, I’m Batman” will speak differently than someone who says dude and it’s probably not going to take a lot of effort for you as a writer to find the difference.

Character Interactions

Almost as important as character voice is the interplay between different characters. I first noticed this with Batman in a video game, but it exists in many places. Just think about the way Batman talks to Alfred and compare it to how he talks to Commissioner Gordon or The Joker. You can hear the respect for a father figure, a friend, and the exasperation of dealing with an insane person. But it goes further than that. Victor Freeze falls somewhere else. A person who Batman might save and can understand but still has to stop. And then there is Catwoman, Robin, Batgirl, The Riddler, Batwoman, Azrael and of course Superman. If you know the character well, you can almost hear the difference in his tone and wording.

Finding this is largely a result of time with Batman. He has had hundreds or thousands of interactions with every one of the listed characters, but it doesn’t have to take that long. If you know that characters will interact then spending a few minutes thinking about their relationship will help considerably. Are they friends, mentor and student or enemies? Do they have a friendly competition or do they cooperate completely? Whatever the answer mixing this into the character's voice will give the reader information on both characters and even if only one of them is vital to your story, it’s worth the effort. Which leads to the next writing lesson.

No Batman is an Island

Batman is known to be a loner. Watch any Justice League cartoon or even the movie (if you have to) and you’ll find a Batman who doesn’t like other people. And it makes perfect sense to make him a loner since it’s just him against the world. And Alfred. And you can’t forget Dick Grayson, or Tim Drake, or even Jason Todd. And of then there is the Gothem PD with Commissioner Gordon and several other honest cops he regularly works with. And on the other side he has fairly strong bonds with both Catwoman and Talia, the latter of which led to Damian Wayne. Oh, and he’s been working with Clayface recently. And Barbara Gordon, Batwoman, the other Batwoman and his best friend, even if he won’t admit it, Superman along with fairly regularly working with the Justice League and its individual members, and that isn’t mentioning any of the characters who show up in the future in the comics and cartoons. 

The obvious point is that characters need other characters to interact with. And if your character is a loner, the key isn’t to make him interact with fewer people but to make the people he interacts with so important to him it seems obvious he or she would have to deal with them. Whether that is a father figure, a child, a coworker or the friend who doesn’t care If you push him away they show up. So the writing lesson is think about the people your character has no choice but to deal with and if there aren’t any, then this writing lesson is that you probably need to create a few.

Know a Batman by Knowing his Enemies

There is another group of people with whom Batman regularly interacts. That is the antagonist and as Batman easily shows they often have more influence and can be more interesting than the protagonist. Everyone knows that a Riddler story will differ from a Catwoman story, which is entirely different from a Mr. Freeze story or a Poison Ivy story. And most all of them are better understood characters than many characters from major movie or book franchises. Mostly because they’ve been around for decades, but also because the writers of Batman understand how important a good side character is.

And that isn’t even mentioning the most famous of Batman’s antagonists a character who has almost as many fans as Batman and entire movies made about him. The writing lesson here is to put more effort into your protagonist. Every character is the hero of his or her own story is one point, but even if they are just an insane clown people can be drawn in if you put some effort into the character.

A Batman for all Seasons

Batman is a dark brooding character who might be insane. He is a broken man who fights a never ending war on crime. Unless he is wearing blue and yellow and dancing in nightclubs and making silly puns.

I am of course referring to the 1960s Batman. And not just Adam West. Batman was a much more fun character in the comics at times as well. That is because different times and different audiences want and need different character and different tones and it’s worth thinking about.

What makes a Batman

A good character needs to have a core. Often people assume that the core of a character covers far more than it does. The writing lesson you can learn from Batman is how little it takes to define a character. Batman is rich, his parents were killed, he’s a detective, and he fights crime dressed like a bat. That is the core, and the rich part isn’t vital. Even the detective part of the story is often ignored. Yet no one would question that a character who does these things is Batman, even if almost nothing else is the same.

You can have a Russian Batman, a batman who uses guns, one who is funny and one who wears a giant robot suit and surround him by friends and family. You can make him poor, break his back or send him through time and he remains Batman. That is because he has a solid core. So the writing lesson is boil your character down to his most important points and then build up from there.

We all are Batmen, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are Superman.

Batman is an absurdly skilled character. He’s the greatest detective in the world, a master martial artist, a ninja, he runs a multi-billion-dollar corporation and far more. Yet it isn’t any of those things that makes him interesting. One thing that makes an interesting character is his or her flaws and how they fail or succeed because of those flaws.

One of the classic Batman stories is that of his paranoia which creates massive problems when someone discovers that he has planned to defeat every member of the Justice League and uses it. And even though this costs him the trust of many friends others understand that it is important.

But the biggest flaw Batman has is that he can’t move on from loss. This makes him Batman. He is obsessed with a war on crime because of childhood trauma and while that has allowed him to do a lot of good it has kept him from really being happy or at peace.

I Am Not What Happened To Me.

I Am What I Choose To Become.

I am Batman

Batman is one of the most popular characters in history in part because of his pain. We empathize with him from the beginning and because of that we’re willing to overlook far more than we should. This is true of any character. If there is one shortcut to making people care about a character it is hurting them, then kick them while they are down. Then when they get up shove them down again. Then when they finally turn the tables, the reader will be entirely on their side.

This writing lesson can even work with a villain. People may not like the Joker or pull for him, but, when he is given a history, it’s typically of someone who lost everything and was broken by it. A mirror of Batman to be certain, but understanding makes him a much more interesting and bittersweet character. You may still enjoy seeing him get punched in the face by Batman, but you might even pull for some type of redemption, though that is unlikely.

If you really want to understand a Batman, don’t just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.

Batman is obsessed with justice, he hates crime and has dedicated his life to fighting it, but that doesn’t mean he will do anything. We all know the most basic part of his code which is that he doesn’t kill. But there is more to Batman than that. When written well he has put a great deal of limitation on himself and requires a great deal from himself.

Good characters have a code even if it’s not as codified as Batman’s. You know where their lines are. A useful piece of information for any character if for no other reason that if people know what their limits are, they know just how important when they cross that line. So when you’re making a character it’s worth considering what is their code.

Everyone Loves an Underdog

People call Batman a superhero because he wears a costume and fights crime, but by the strictest definition of the word he isn’t one. Yet he regularly fights side by side with virtual gods. More than that people regularly ask a question of whether he could beat one of the most powerful superheros in existence in a fight. And many people argue he would. Why, because it’s a lot more fun to think about how Batman could win. He would have to be creative and smart, where Superman would just have to be Superman.

The writing lesson is simple. Always make the path hard for your protagonist. Give your antagonist the high ground, the position of power and the superpowers. Then tie your protagonist’s shoelaces together and make them think their way out. It will be a lot more satisfying than if they were in a fair fight.

Conclusion

Batman is an enduring character for many reasons. His adaptability, his relatability, his power and his weakness. He is a loner and the heart of a huge family of characters, the weakest member of the Justice League and the one who usually saves the day. He is a simple character and yet there are a hundred more lesson you could take from this character and adapt to your own writing. But then that draws me to writing. You can improve forever and still learn something new from almost anything.

Morbidity is not a Plot

I don’t dislike horror, but I don’t like it as much as science fiction and fantasy. That means I have a much lower tolerance for horror that doesn’t appeal to me. And one thing I have come across enough in my small amount of horror reading are stories that are treated as if they are horror when they are just morbid. Morbid is not enough. It is not an emotion, it’s not a story. It’s tone, but often it isn’t even really that.

What I mean by morbid are stories in which the entire plot is that someone died and people are sad about it, or worse, someone has a job that is kind of creepy to other people. Making your main character a mortician and explaining what their job is doesn’t make something horror and if just want to know their job I’m sure there are documentaries, I can trust more than a story that is implicitly fiction.

Perhaps the biggest problem in many of these stories is because they have a creepy setting and likely a creepy character they can fool you into thinking something will happen. That sad father will snap at some point or the odd mortician will be something more than he seems. But people seem to be under the impression that because death makes many people vaguely uncomfortable that is all that they need to do.

As someone who isn’t a writer of horror and not an expert in the genre, I can’t prescribe a simple fix beyond my basic complaint. I don’t need to spend an hour of my life feeling sad for no reason. I may start out feeling bad for a mother who lost her child, but after a few thousand words of nothing happening except her being sad and not even really explaining how the child died I just stop caring and if keeps going, I can actively get annoyed until the “story” just stops even though nothing had happened.

It’s not just morbidity there are other similar stories, but in my experience this seems the most common. Perhaps it is just a way for the author to deal with the death of someone they care for and while I can see the therapeutic value of someone writing the emotions of their child or parent dying in a story, I see no value in making other people read it. Other people may find value in this, but if you want my opinion, please, add a story and plot.

Review: How to Become a Famous Author Before You're Dead by Ariel Gore

Over the last few years I have finally convinced myself that I can write something that is worth reading. That is why it has become increasingly frustrating that it isn’t being read. Perhaps even more frustrating is the lack of real advice on how to at least try to get attention because it doesn’t matter how good your writing is if no one reads it.

“How to Become A Famous Writer Before You’re Dead” by Ariel Gore is one of the few books I have found for writers that focus on the second part of the success formula for writers. The first part is writing something that is worth reading, the second being how to get people to read it.

This book switches between practical advice from the author and interviews she did with other famous authors, who have a different outlook on the point of that the chapter is making. It’s a good formula, and the author has a personable and enjoyable voice which make it enjoyable to read even beyond any value its advice has.

Moving onto the advice. I didn’t disagree with any of her points, which is far more than I can say for most books on how to write. Which may speak to my lack of knowledge on the subject, but those parts I know about contain excellent advice so I trust the rest. That said,  like with most advice books not all of it applies to me. I have no intention of using a pen name, so the small section on that didn’t give much value. But, as much as I hate the idea of doing it, the section on press releases is something I should follow, as are the points on book readings, which fills me with terror, but I also know I should do it, which is one of the best sign something is good advice

The end of each chapter has practical homework, like listing your favorite books and why you like them or writing the book jacket synopsis for your work. if you haven’t tried these, you should at least once. Trust me, writing a two hundred word synopsis of a 300-page book can teach you a lot and it never hurts a writer to consider why they enjoy things. (If you’re not a writer, I suggest saying blissfully ignorant since learning to understand story structure is like being given a spoiler to nearly every movie and book ever written.)

Ariel Gore is an excellent writer, and this book fills a niche. The only minor negative is that having been written over a decade ago it doesn’t speak to more modern tools that may, or more likely may not, have any value to the aspiring lit star. So, if you’re a writer willing to do what it takes to get your name in front of people then this book is a great place to start. Now excuse me while I look for anthologies to submit my work to.  

You can find out more about Ariel at her webpage or find the book here.

The Dangers of Hedge Words in your Writing.

A bit of humility is a good thing in real life. When writing it is far less valuable. It is vital for the writer to sound confident. This means doing something I don't generally like to do and speak in absolutes. But it's OK. If you're writing fiction you are the absolute authority so what you say is true. One of the things this requires is to remove hedge words because nothing drains the away the power of your story like hedge words.

I'll start with a list of hedge words that I find myself using often in first drafts. They include: probably, mostly, hopefully, perhaps, maybe, might, sometimes and almost. There are of course more, but you get the idea. These are words that hedge what you are saying. I'll give a couple of quick examples, "he was probably the best in the world" is far weaker than "he was the best in the world." Or how about "Perhaps she was" rather than "she was."

But while both of those examples are made far stronger by removing the hedge word that doesn't mean that hedge words are bad. First, if you are describing what a character sees or thinks they may be less confident than the writer. This isn't typically a good trait in a character but it can be an important one.

More importantly, hedge words can be useful when describing something. "He was nearly beautiful" is different than " he was beautiful" and gives a far better idea of what he looks like, leading to a great leaping off point to describe what limited his beauty. But this is the exception. Most of the time when I use those words it's because I'm unsure of my writing and need to both remove them and if possible discover why they were there.

For me this most often happens when I'm not confident about the direction of my story. Perhaps there is a plot twist I'm not sure will work or a potential solution I'm ignoring. Whatever it is that hedge words are also a signal to the reader and they'll begin to feel less confident in the story as well. That will lead them to look for plot holes and mistakes and if you're looking you'll find them. Imagine this situation, you're about to do something dangerous and your cohort says, "the plan should work." You're not going to say great let's go, you're going to ask what he means by saying should. On the other hand, say "the plan was foolproof," and the reader might take you at your word.

Hedge words are difficult, if not impossible to remove entirely from your writing. The seep into first drafts like weeds. But the good news is that they are also one of the easiest things to remove from your writing. In most cases they can be plucked out without much thought because they weren't doing anything but signaling a lack of confidence in the first place. That isn't your job as a writer. You're job is to be powerful and confident. You are the creator. Your word is law, don't make it a wishy-washy law that no one cares about.

Creating a Lovecraftian Creature

Whether you are writing horror, science fiction or even fantasy one of the most frequently under-used tools is the use of Lovecraftian creatures. They are sometimes ignored because they are believed to be horror monsters or because writing about them breaks many of the basic rules writers have been taught or because they are unusual. But with some effort creating a Lovecraftian creature can add a lot to your story.

To start lets, look at what a Lovecraftian monster is, and isn’t. A Lovecraftian monster is at its core something that is so alien to the human experience that both the reader and the protagonist is incapable of true comprehension.  It may be from a different world, a different dimension, created by different gods or have no understandable origin. What it doesn’t have to be is huge, singular, powerful or even entirely central to your story. Though they can and typically have been all of those things. Imagine a race of primitive creatures on an alien planet. They are so unlike anything on Earth that humans are on the planet for months before they even realize they are alive and even once they know they can’t find any common ground to interact. While not what one would typically think of as a Lovecraftian monster they fit most of the definition.

The primary problem with trying to write a Lovecraftian monster is that by definition they can not be understood. This does limit how they can be used in a story.  First, while you my not be technically breaking the rule that every villain is the hero of their own story, since you have no idea what that creature wants is it doesn’t matter. You also can’t ask what the motivation of the creature is, or even have it act directly against the protagonist. But that doesn’t mean that a Lovecraftian monster can’t be a compelling and interesting antagonist. 

One of the first things you want to do is keep the Lovecraftian creature at a distance from the reader. This is the classic Jaws scenario. The more you see the monster the less scary it is.  Once you realize that it’s a badly working plastic shark head the magic is gone. This is even more important for the Lovecraftian monster. You can understand Dracula and still find him scary. Many human monsters are scary because of that innate understanding.  But the moment you understand a Lovecraftian monster they are no longer Lovecratian. There are a few tricks used for this. One Lovecraft himself used was to tell the story through a character narrator. This could be a retelling of what happened by someone in Arkham for insanity, a journal found in the severed hand of a long dead explorer or any other way that makes it clear that you’re hearing someone's interpretation of what happened.

Once you come into contact with the monster you will need some description of the creature, but a straightforward description simply isn’t going to work. In the case of a Lovecraftian monster the magic happens in the reader’s mind more than one the page. Lovecraft often used words like unspeakable, unimaginable and cyclopean to force the reader to fill in the gaps with the worst things in his or her imagination.  Another way to do this is vague specificity. You describe something specific about the creature which gives the reader’s imagination a place to start while not giving them much more than the unimaginable description. One of my favorite examples is “its eyes had teeth.” I’m honestly not sure what that means or how it would be of any use to anything, but it paints a picture of far more than the eye and it’s creepy.

Another way to explore how difficult it is to convey information about the creature is to use contradictions. If you describe the creature using two terms together that contradict each other it can create something that doesn’t work in the mind putting the reader into the same dazed and confused state as the protagonist. Something that is both dry and slimy, or large and small. You can also put something to human into an alien form. Creating a creature with slimy blue skin, twisted knots of pulsing flesh and a single, sad looking, human eye will stick with the reader. The most important thing is to subvert the expectations. 

Intelligence is also vital to the Lovecraftian Monster. You can have a Lovecraftian animal but usually you want the creature be both intelligent and inhuman in its thoughts. A Lovecraftian monster isn’t a human in a monster suit. It doesn’t want to rule people or even kill them. Those are far too mundane. They fail to portray the hopelessness of creating a connection to this creature. But because its actions are often random to human interpretation making a Lovecraftian monster seem intelligent can be a trick.  Having them speak won’t work as it makes them to human. So think about your creature. How did it get to your story? An alien must have come in a ship.  A creature from hell must have escaped and if it has always been here it had to avoid being discovered.

The final and perhaps the most important key to writing a Lovecraftian monster is the reaction of those who see it. In a Lovecraft story a common reaction is often fainting, but it can be fear, revulsion or babbling incoherence and random actions. What matters is the strength of the reaction. It will also help if you’ve built up your character first. A hardened soldier who has fought battles across half the world who runs away in panic at the first glimpse of your monster will have more impact than some random person doing the same. It is also important to remember that seeing the unspeakable horror of something truly Lovecraftian will leave a permanent impact. The character doesn’t have to become a gibbering idiot, but they shouldn’t want to go back in that room. 

Another way to show the effect it has on humans is to give human followers. In Lovecraft the monsters are often connected to cults. These may be doomsday cults trying to awaken an ancient monster that will destroy the world or perhaps they have a powerful leader who thinks he can control it. This serves two purposes. First it shows the range of reactions to the creature. Some people break and run away while others break and worship it. It also gives your protagonist something he or she can fight. Stopping a cult from waking the monster or even just sacrificing themselves to it will let him interact indirectly with the abomination.

What makes a Lovecraftian creature so interesting is that it doesn’t fit into normal conventions of human understanding or storytelling. This can be used to great effect, but it takes time and practice to do right. Because more than in any other writing the creation of a Lovecraftian monster has to be a collaboration between writer and reader.  

THe meaning of life

be devoured by an alien squid monster

Creating Unique and Interesting Fantasy Races

Elves, dwarfs, orks and even faeries are all perfectly acceptable choices for a fantasy story, but they create an immediate impression. That impression is a world that is similar to either Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons. I happen to enjoy both of those as do a lot of other people, but most of the time I would rather avoid my story feeling like it was trying to be one of those. Because of that I tend to make up my own fantasy races using a top down method. The good news is that it isn't all that hard.

Before I even begin to think about the race I am creating I decide what they will be doing in the story I want to tell. Will they be antagonists, rivals, friends, slaves or something else. Do I expect to see a lot of members of this race or just the one that interacts with the main characters. At this point it is also worth considering how they will effect the perception of your story. The more fantasy creatures, and the farther they are from human the more strange it will make your story feel.

This leads to the second step of the top down process. Picking the races style. At this point you're still not going into much detail. Instead you are choosing between humanoid, animal like or Lovecraftian. Humanoid races are any race that looks and acts generally human. Elves, Orks and Dwarfs are all classic humanoid races. It could also include a race of men with bird wings, humanoid cats and almost anything else that has stands upright and can speak English.

With animals I include the Chimaera. These car range from intelligent animals, like those often found in fairy tails to anything that is sufficiently different from a human that special accommodations would need to be made in the world. Keep in mind that the animals they are like need not be real animals. The primary point here is something that isn't humanoid, but is still understandable to humans.

Which leads to the third group. A Lovecraftian race is one that either in appearance, thought or both is so different from humans that they can't be understood by people and don't interact directly with them. This includes, the writer, the reader and the people in their world. If they can fit easily into a category in your mind they're not truly Lovecraftian. Writing for these is an article in and of itself, but when writing anything Lovecraftian the key is to leave out most of the details. For the sake of this though keep in mind that if Lovecraftian monsters are common, or known in your world it's going to be very different from our world.

With this decided it's time to begin to consider your races nature. This is of course going to be partially decided by the type of race, but not entirely. Even Lovecraftian races have different personalities humans just are able to make any sense of those. This should cover their physical abilities and structure as well as their personality tenancies. But keep in mind while doing this that these are the common tenancies of your race not the only thing they are. Just because your race tends to be xenophobic doesn't mean that every member of their race can't like other people. Having the natural tenancies of a race clash with the learned characters of the race adds complexities to individual members of the race. That clash leads to the fourth point.

Once you know where your race started it's important to tell your races history and learned personalities. This includes things like the religion, enemies and major points of the race. Did they once rule the world and lose control or have they fought their way up from nothing? Again, this is a great place to add conflict inside your race just as you might add conflict in a character. For example you might have a race that is naturally inclined to be great warriors, but has been enslaved. Some of the race may fight for those who are enslaving them in wars, or as gladiators while others see that as a failure. Or perhaps you have the opposite, a naturally peaceful race forced to become experts at war because of their enemies and now some struggle to return to what they once were. This is also where I consider how they interact with other races in the world. Do they intermingle easily, are they part of a bigger society or have their own lands.

The final step is creating a single member of your race. The character who is going to be in your story. What is important to remember here is that, unless you spend a lot of time setting up who the race is most of what the reader knows about the race will be dependent on this one character. So if you make a race of fearless warriors, but the only one they see is a coward they're going to assume they're all cowards. So, in most cases what you're going to have the iconic member of your race be the one you see the most. Either he is everything that race sees themselves as or he is an outcast because he is what the race should be. Of course just like all characters you need internal conflict if you want to make them interesting, but in this case the internal and external struggles are likely to be the same as those of their race as the character is pulling double duty as both an individual and the example of what their race is to the reader.

This method is not perfect, and it is most useful if you already have at least some idea what your story will be. But if you actually create a race with internal and external conflicts, which fits well into your world it can also create interesting ideas for stories that you might never have thought of before.

Image from Welcomecollection.org

Convincing People to Read

I like to read and I'm always a bit surprised when people say that they don't like to read. On the other hand I totally understand, especially when I think about my experience in high school English class. I already liked reading by the time that I reached High School, but if I hadn't I honestly think that it might have convinced me that I didn't like to read.

High School for me was quite a while ago and perhaps it has changed, but there are a few ideas that I still see from time to time. The first of these is that we all need to stop looking down on books. I don't care whether it's Twilight, Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey or the most recent Stephen King novel they are popular for a reason. Some of those are clearly not written for me and if I read them I'd either be annoyed or bored. On the other hand I know plenty of people who would find the Martian Chronicles, The Foundation Trilogy, 1984 and Ender's Game boring. I can even imagine a person who wouldn't enjoy the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Though I'm not sure I can explain that.)

All of these have something in common with every other book that has ever been written. They are finite in length and they were influenced by other books. Did you like the Twilight books because of the romance, perhaps you should try a Jane Austin novel. Were you intrigued by the vampires, Bram Stoker's Dracula is considerably more interesting than you might think (And Mina Harker is a way more interesting female character than any in Twilight though that's just my opinion.) Know a kid who has read Harry Potter 4 times, ask some questions and find out which of the many great books fit what they liked. Whether it is The Hobbit, The Once and Future King, The Dresden files, The Hunger games or any of a dozen other ideas you have one huge advantage. They are already interested in reading. You just have to find books that meet them where they are at.

And that's the problem I had in my High School English class. I had an excellent teacher, a good school and I was interested in the subject but I had no connection to Shakespeare, Beowulf or most of the other required reading. And while I completely understand the desire to get people to read important books, those books are important because they connected to the people at the time. Shakespeare is still remembered because he made plays that people wanted to watch, Beowulf was a popular story and the Canterbury Tales has significant amounts of toilet humor.

Here is the secret, if you want kids, or adults, to read you have to understand why people read. People read because they enjoy it. People read because they form connections to books, because a book, better than any other type of media can grab you and say that someone else understands how you feel, that there are people that feel the same way. Remember that confusion and anger in high school, so does Holden Caulfield. Do you feel the weight of the world on you, like everyone is counting on you. Harry Potter certainly understands that. Are you exhausted and just want to give up. Sam and Frodo certainly could relate. I don't know perhaps if you're a teenage girl trying to deal with romance Bella might actually make you feel better. The point is if you are going through anything there is a book character that can step up beside you and say, "I understand and other people go through this too." And while that may not solve the problem it certainly helps. But it requires the right book at the right time, not just the important book.

I believe that if you can get the right book into the hands of anyone and get them to read enough to understand that it is speaking to them that they will enjoy it and even if they don't make the time to read more books they are going to at least understand the value and perhaps the next time they need a book they will seek it out but at least they might have some positive memories of that book.

Tracking Story Submissions

I was looking for some ideas on the best way to track story submissions and was surprised on how little I found. I'm sure there are plenty of good article on keeping records of your stories but since I was thinking about it I thought other people might be wondering or have some ideas on how to do it better.

The first thing is what you need to keep track of with a story. At the bare minimum you need to know where you submitted your story and when. This is the bare minimum because you need to know when to check on the progress of a submission and when to give up on hearing back without risk of offending. That length of time is subjective and it isn't the point of this article but it's best to simply go by the length of time they say. If they say they will get back to you in sixty days, don't write asking for updates until it has been sixty days even if that seems a long time.

Of course there are other things you'll want to keep track of as well. One of the vital ones is everyplace that the story has been submitted to before. There is simply no value in wasting your time and the time of a publisher by sending them something they have already rejected. This will also help you keep track of how many times the story has been submitted.

Beyond that you have things that are nice to know. If you get any type of personal response with a rejection not only is it worth noting what it said, but who said it. This isn't just useful but it can also be surprisingly encouraging. I remember way back when I was starting I got a rejection letter for a story I sent to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. The note on it was short and something to the effect of not what we're looking for at the moment. I felt the same pang everyone does when they get a rejection letter. Then I looked at it a bit more carefully, and specifically the signature. It was signed by Gardner Dozois.

There aren't a lot of editors I know by name but Gardner Dozios is one of them. I don't really understand what an editor does well enough to comment on his skill, but I know that I've loved a lot of things with his name on it and the idea that he had actually read something I wrote was excited. I also know enough to be fairly confident that he hadn't been the only one to read it. I would bet money that there was at least one person who read it first and believed it was good enough to show to him, and it's likely, from what I know of how many submissions they get, that there was another person involved before he saw it as well.

Another note I got back was a bit more frustrating but also enlightening. It pointed out a typo on the seventh page of the story and the need to edit better. I agree with anyone who says that I need to edit better because everyone everywhere can stand more editing, but there's a lot more information imbedded in than that you might think. First, she made it to the seventh page of a nine page story. Secondly, if I had been successful with telling the story she either wouldn't have noticed or wouldn't have cared about the typo and third, I knew considerably more about that editor and how to make her happy.

It can also be useful to keep copies of anything you send with a story. This is going to be primarily cover letters and summaries. Sometimes you will keep those the same for multiple submissions and sometimes they will changed each time, but either way knowing what you sent to someone can help you figure out the response you get.

I'm not a terribly organized person so how to keep track of all of that is probably presented best by someone else but I'll tell you how I used to do it and how I do it now. I used to have a physical file folder. I would print a copy of the story and put it in the folder, along with a paper that had a list of submissions. When I got a rejection I would add that to the folder as well as writing down the information. This kept everything in one place and made it very easy to make certain I didn't accidentally submit a story that I had already sent to someone else.

The weakness, besides the destruction of trees, was that I didn't have a good way to see stories that had been gone a long time without a response. This didn't come up often as most people are fairly good at responding but it did happen. I tried to fix this by moving the folder to the front of the cabinet every time I sent it out and that helped some but I still had to look at the back to double check and that tended to take a while.

In the last decade things have been more centered around the computer since everyone accepts electronic submissions. (Or at least I haven't found anyone who doesn't.) But the problem is largely the same. Keeping a folder for every story isn't a terrible idea and I may start doing that. But there are some software solutions.

For this I'll largely have to trust other people as I haven't used any enough to really suggest them. Writer's Write's article http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/apr98/tracking-your-submissions-4987 , which is by far the best I found on the subject suggests The Working Writer  http://dolphinsoftware.bc.ca/,  and while it seems a bit dated it would likely work. There is also a story tracker app for the iPad/iPhone that has generally good reviews. I also found Submission Tracker http://www.submissiontrackerapp.com/ and while it has nothing to do with writing since it's for tracking submission is Mixed Martial Arts I found it way to entertaining to leave out.

Perhaps the easiest and best way to do this though is with something may have heard of called spreadsheet. I am completely out of my depth with suggesting how to do this, but for making a list like this I know it works well and other people have suggested that. http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/how-freelance-writers-track-article-pitches-submissions/

Now to the real point of this article. If you are a writer or someone who is simply good at this type of thing I am pleading with you to share anything you know about how to do this better. I have described a number of processes I have used and I can keep track of things using them, but I'm not a fan of anything I've done and I'm sure someone out there has found a far better solution. Please share that solution with the rest of us.

Writing Excuse: I'm Too Busy

There is no more universal excuse in the modern world than I don’t have time. There are a hundred ways to say it, but it comes down to the simply I’m to busy excuse. And in all but the most extreme cases it’s simply not true. People have time for their priorities. What they really mean is that I have other things I would rather be doing. That perfectly fine in many cases, but if you want to be a writer then you have to find a way to make time because while I’ll defend anyone who puts words to paper in some format or another as a writer if you don’t actually type something you’re not a writer you just like the idea of being a writer.

I can already hear people saying that I really don’t have time. If you’re in a military boot camp, in a doctoral residence that keeps you working 18 hours a day or some similarly demanding situation then you can excuse yourself for the moment, but even then in most cases it’s a short term determent and if you’ve been using the excuse for more than a few weeks you’re lying to yourself. You can make the time if you want to.  

Step one is to understand that your writing is important because you’re important. It is acceptable and important for you to take time for yourself. Your kids, spouse and friends will understand that, but only if you do. Treat your writing as unimportant and so will they. That means scheduling time to work and treating it like work. Enjoyable work, but still work.

Next you need to understand that you don’t need a lot of time. Pick up a notebook or get a word processor for your phone and begin to take notes when you have downtime during the day or take the write your novel on your phone in those down times.

It has been done.

And you do have those down times. The odds are no one will notice if you write a few things down during the long office meeting, your kid won’t see you taking notes during halftime at his basketball game and no one is going to see you in the bathroom. There are plenty of other times as well. Stuck on hold, it’s the perfect time to grab your notebook and write. This is after all important to you so do it.

You’ll still need some time at the computer in most cases and you’re too busy for that, right? No. You have a priorities issue. You get time off work every year right? How about instead of visiting the beach you find someplace quite and lock yourself away. Plenty of writers do this including a number of well known authors. They lock themselves away for a week and write the first draft of their novel. And since you’ve been taking notes and working out the story in the spare minutes you can do that. 

The other option is to do a very small amount every day. Writing just 100 words a day will let you write 36000 words in a year and you can even take off Christmas, Thanksgiving, your birthday and two other random days. And once you’re used to that you’ll discover 100 words won’t take you anytime at all. It’s only one or two paragraphs and once you’ve decided to do it and really focus it shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes a day. Though in most cases I think you’ll find you spend more time doing it once you make the decision even though you didn’t have the time before.

We all have busy lives but writers make time for writing. Stephen King wrote Carrie while teaching English, J.K. Rowling is a single mother who wrote in cafes because taking her baby for a walk helped her fall asleep.  Countless other less well known authors have kept jobs long after being published and continue to put out more work. The question isn’t whether you’re busy it’s what your priorities are. If you care about something you’ll make time for it and if you don’t care it’s better to admit it and move on. 

Reading is an Act of Trust

I was thinking about writing as an art and how it differs from other forms of art and I recognized something that I had never really articulated to myself before. I think writing is one of the only forms of art that people pay for before they know if it’s good. Even other forms of story media generally give clues to the quality before you pay.

 It’s hard to imagine any way it would work with any other form of art. I have a painting here, no, you can’t remove the curtain before you buy it. My music is great, so please buy it before you listen to it. And so on. A movie is a bit closer but they give us previews that are the best parts and with a comic book you can know if you’ll like the art before you give anything for the story.

It’s not just money though. I give away a fair amount of writing and most books have preview chapters. But there is still far more cost in time and effort before you have any idea if what I wrote is good. Sure the back cover might make you chuckle or the first line is great, but buying or even deciding to read a novel is agreeing to spend the next ten hours with someone. Sure you can always leave, but you don’t want to have to.

This dichotomy is most clear to me at comic book conventions. I have two novels which I bring and sell. They sit next to posters, comics and the offer for hand drawn sketches and the reaction to them are very different than any of the other art. There are naturally the people who just don’t read books, but even the people who do have a much different reaction to a novel than a comic book. They ask what it’s about something they almost never do with a comic book. They’ll turn it in their hand and flip through the pages without reading anything and rarely will they read the back. A tiny summery text that attempts to represent a two hundred page story in two paragraphs of writing that has a different tone and style than anything inside the book and rarely they’ll decide the premise is interesting enough and buy my book.

But in the end it comes down to trust. They know almost nothing about my book. They are simply trusting me with their time and possibly their money with no real evidence that I’m a good writer besides two paragraphs on the back cover of a book. And beyond that they are trusting that I’m someone who they want to spend many hours listening to tell a story. They trust that the painting is good before the curtain is pulled back, that the music is good before play button is pushed. Of course if they have already seen my work then that trust is easier. If someone who does music I love has a Kickstarter I’ll give them money before I hear the song and the same is true of a book from an author I love, but in the case of the author there was still a first time when I had to give them a chance.

In the end I give people that chance for the same reason anyone does. Fiction or Nonfiction, short or long, happy or sad, A good book allows me to see the world in a different way. I step into the mind of someone else and understand them a bit better. I learn to care about kids making rockets in their back yard, about hobbits and wizards, about living statues and alien creatures. It is art and for me at least it is the art that reaches in the deepest and changes me the most. So I’ll keep looking for the people I can trust. The writer I can enjoy a long evening with. The ones who help me to see a bit more clearly, to think a bit more deeply and to care a little more and I will continue to endeavor to create stories that will do the same for someone else.