Post #272 October 4 2021 “Bringing a Fictional Series to a Successful Conclusion” I am currently halfway through my current project, called The Farpool: Diaspora. This is the seventh title in my series The Farpool Stories. With one more to come, I can see the end of this series coming in the spring of 2022. The final title will be The Farpool: Destiny. I have bittersweet feelings about this series coming to an end. With over 6700 downloads across all titles in this series, it’s been fairly successful and I’m grateful to all my readers for that. Still, all things good and bad must come to an end. In this post, I want to discuss how to bring a fictional series to a proper and successful conclusion, one that does justice to the overall story arc across the earlier titles and is satisfying to readers. First, note that not every fictional series has an overall story arc. Some are just a series of independent stories with continuing characters and settings and an overall theme to more or less tie everything together. The Farpool Stories has both. Below are 5 things to consider when bringing your fictional series to a satisfying end. 1. Will the story arc be completed, coming to a satisfying resolution (assuming there is a story arc…see above)? In order to accomplish this, the story arc really should be thought out and planned for from the beginning. Not that ideas can’t change and stories veer off in unexpected directions. A series story arc faces the same needs as any fictional story. There must be characters facing a serious problem. The heroes must want or need to solve this problem. They must struggle against forces and perhaps themselves to achieve this, facing and overcoming obstacles as they do so. And in the end, your heroes must either achieve their goals, vanquish the monsters or fail magnificently while trying. With these ideas in mind, does your series bring the story arc to a satisfying conclusion? Are all these loose ends and hanging plot lines tied up or resolved…not easy over the course of a series. In my own work, there are hundreds of details I’ve had to keep track of. 2. Have your main characters grown or changed in any significant way? Or do they keep facing the same problems with the same approaches every time? Of course, in real life, people actually do this. But in fiction, especially in a series, it’s more believable if your heroes learn something valuable as the story comes to an end. They may learn what their limits are. They may learn they can exceed these limits if they try. They may learn who to trust. They may become smarter about life. They may have learned what’s really important. All these things happen to real people too. It’s just that in a fictional series, to live vicariously in your hero’s shoes and see them overcoming great, even impossible odds, with guile, cunning, wit, endurance or whatever, is particularly gratifying for a reader, who may have invested many hours in following your hero’s exploits. 3. Have you tied up loose ends, different plot lines and maintained continuity to the end? This is particularly important, as readers notice these details. “Whatever happened to Elmo when we left him on that cliff, hanging by his fingernails.” If you forget to at least give the reader an idea of what became of poor Elmo, the reader can only conclude that he wasn’t that important anyway and why the hell was he even in the story? Play fair with your readers and don’t go off gallivanting down different plot lines without providing some way back to the main plot line for the reader. 4. Have you laid the groundwork for future stories? Of course, this is not absolutely necessary, but it is smart not to burn your imaginary world behind you. You never know. I have no plans for any more titles in The Farpool Stories, but I can’t say I’ll never re-join this imaginary world, in which I have invested years of writing, research and outlining and presumably my readers have done the same. We can’t know what the future will bring and it’s just possible that enough readers will demand more stories for you to seriously consider not shutting the door on their hopes. It happened to Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes and it can happen to you. 5. Is there an ultimate moral or lesson here? How is the final story to be guided to this point? Have you laid the foundations in previous stories? If they’re already in print, as mine are, then you’re constrained to follow the tracks of what came before. You don’t want to violate continuity too much or your readers will shake their heads and tsk-tsk at your ineptitude. If you did your homework and planned all this out from the beginning (allowing for unexpected changes or writerly serendipity), that final moral should now be in clear view. You just have to get there. And really, the final story should be largely focused on getting there, still allowing for the requisite plot twists and turns of a readable story in this final episode. It’s a bit of an art contorting your plot and characters to bring them to where they need to be and pull if off believably. Do make the effort. 6. Finally, saying goodbye to people you’ve lived with and suffered with is hard, even if they are imaginary. When it’s all over, give yourself a break. Go to the beach…or the mountains. No, just go to the beach and revel in that feeling of accomplishment. It’s kind of like swimming laps in the pool…it feels so good when it’s over. Take a deep breath, put your worn-down mind on something else and live a little. Then…get back to work on that next project. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 11. In this post, I’ll let you take a peek behind the curtain on some of my upcoming projects. See you then. Phil B.

Post #271 September 13 2021 “Terra Troopers” Several posts ago, I mentioned that I am developing a new series of stories called Terra Troopers. In this post, I want to provide a little more detail about this proposed new series. The basic premise is that warfare and conflict between states has now (several hundred years into the future) migrated underground. States attack each other with subterranean vehicles called geoplanes and use this technology to create earthquakes and seismic tremors on demand. Criminals and non-state actors use the technology to extort others for money and demands. How might this come about and what might happen if it did? The initial novel is titled Aftershock and should become available in the latter half of 2022. In this story, a criminal cartel called Red Sword (with ties to the People’s Republic of China) uses geoplanes to hold entire cities and nations hostage to terrible destruction from below ground. A US Geological Survey seismologist and an Army intelligence officer believe a recent increase in quakes is not caused by natural forces. Fighting a disbelieving bureaucracy, they work to prove their thesis and find that possible recent tests of a Chinese subterranean vehicle are related to these tremors. But convincing their own superiors of this as well as confronting this new menace with effective countermeasures is difficult and forms a good part of the story. Eventually, the US Army forms an Underground Strike Command, out of existing armored divisions, to fight off Red Sword. USGC eventually evolves into US Terra Guard, which will have the same relationship to the Army as the Marines do with the Navy and Space Force with the Air Force. The series of up to 10 novel-length stories that follow will show how Terra Guard evolves and develops as well as detailing their many missions against adversaries making use of this new theater of conflict. A few of the story titles will be titles like “Geoplanes,” “Fault Zone” and “Subduction.” I have 10 titles already laid out but no outlines as yet. Aftershock will be the initial title that lays the groundwork (so to speak) for the whole series. I envision each story as a standalone novel, about 100,000 words (160-180 pages) but all part of the greater story arc as Terra Guard battles Red Sword (and indirectly China) beneath the Earth’s surface. This series will obviously depend a lot on geology, geophysics and seismology. Many of the settings will be underground, in geoplanes and otherwise. I’ll try to make the science understandable, deployed in small chunks and as accurate as I can, consistent with the narrative demands of the stories. I’ll have to do a lot of research to provide believable background for the series. As indicated above, I see these stories as likely set in the 22nd century, far enough away to provide some room for imagination and the unexpected. Major characters will include Major Jake Swift, an Army armored division officer and probably a tank commander, who gets assigned to Underground Strike Command and later becomes a leading advocate and tactician for the newly formed Terra Guard, a sort of Billy Mitchell of the subterranean world. Additional characters could Colonel Jurgen Lubeck, another Army armored forces import and Major Krystal Payne, an Army G2 (Intelligence) specialist and possible love interest for Swift. Of course, I’ll also have key figures from the US Geological Survey, and adversary bigwigs inside Red Sword and the Chinese Ministry of Defense and government. All in all, Terra Troopers will be a fairly major undertaking, if I decide to do this. As yet, I have no outlines for any story, not even Aftershock, the kickoff tale, but that should come. I’ll need detailed outlines for each story, major character bios, science background for the settings and the technology, some ideas on how Terra Guard would be organized and structured to complete its mission. In my previous series Tales of the Quantum Corps, Quantum Troopers and Quantum Troopers Return, I used the UN as the guiding agency. But in Terra Troopers, I intend to come back to the good old United States and make Terra Guard fully American, with adversaries and conflicts a natural outgrowth of events going on today (2021). Oh, and by the way, my imaginary vehicles—the geoplanes—can function as submarines in the ocean as well and could even show up beneath the surface of other worlds in our Solar System, like the Moon and Mars. Look for Aftershock at Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers sometime in the latter half of 2022. I’ll keep you up updated on this big new project. The Word Shed will take a 2-week hiatus for me to spend a few weeks on a late-summer beach vacation. We’ll post again on October 4. Hope you had a great summer and a memorable Labor Day. In upcoming posts, I’ll detail how my current series The Farpool Stories is advancing to its conclusion. I’m currently writing the first draft of The Farpool: Diaspora and will conclude this series with The Farpool: Destiny sometime in the first half of 2022. See you October 4. Phil B.

Post #270 August 30 2021 “How Many Pages Should I Write Today?” Every writer faces the same question when he or she sits down at the computer in the morning: how many pages, how many words, should I write today? This is basically a matter of scheduling. For writers of novels and non-fiction books, it goes without saying that there’s no way you can do the entire work in a day or a week, probably not even in a month. You have to divide it up into chunks, mainly because you’ve got other things to do with your life along with writing. Case in point: I’m currently working on a science fiction novel called The Farpool: Diaspora. I anticipate that when the initial draft is done, it will come in at somewhere around 220 pages, when formatted for Smashwords.com. Each page runs on average about 400-500 words, so we’re talking about 115,000 to 125,000 words in total. Now, how to divide that up.... I’m doing 3-5 pages a day. That doesn’t sound like much. But it leaves me with time for other tasks and projects. Writing 3-5 pages a day takes me about 1-2 hours, depending. But it’s 15-25 pages a week. Divide 220 pages by 20 pages (on average) and you get 11 weeks, roughly about 3 months. Add another month for editing and re-writing. At the rate I have chosen, I can do a finished draft of The Farpool:Diaspora in three to four months. Plus I can work on other things and have a life. Could I write more? Of course I could. But you should choose a rate that is comfortable and sustainable over a long period, since it’s unlikely you can finish a novel-length project in a few weeks. There are some writers who bat out a draft in a single marathon session of a month but I’m not one of them. I take longer and take my time and try to do the thing right from the beginning. One the most important aspects of this writing process for me, when engaged in a lengthy work, is “staying in the story”, mentally. I find that a daily regimen like I described above is a great way to do that. Even away from my desk, I find my feverish brain cogitating on the next scene, the next sentence. Sometimes ideas for snatches of dialogue or plot variations will come to me when I’m working out, mowing the lawn, eating dinner, watching TV. I want that. Every writer approaches this differently. I’m also a detailed outliner and planner, when it comes to writing a novel, or writing anything. I’ve covered some of this in earlier blog posts, but I work from the beginning to build a fairly detailed outline, with character sketches and setting and background details readily at hand for the actual writing. Sometimes my outlines and sketches are detailed enough to be lifted and pasted into the novel text as is, or with little change. That makes life easier, as long as it advances the story. The story is everything. I’m even occasionally included an Appendix of some of this material at the end of some of The Farpool Stories, for readers who just can’t get enough detail on my imaginary world and its people. That’s a little peek behind the curtains at the logistics or the mechanics of daily writing life. I plan to do more of this sort of thing again. The Word Shed won’t publish on September 6, owing to the Labor Day holiday. My next post, on September 13, will cover details about a projected upcoming series called Terra Troopers, which should debut at Smashwords in late 2022. See you in 2 weeks. Phil B

Post #269 August 23, 2021 “Starting…” In recent days, our house has had issues with our 17-KW generator not being able to supply enough power to our AC compressor whenever the generator is running. It seems that the compressor requires about 115 amps for startup and 45 amps for running. This is at the maximum capacity of the generator to supply. We’re working on getting a new generator. Which leads me to the idea of what it takes to actually start a new novel. In the last week, I have done this. I have started on the newest novel in my Farpool Stories series. It’s called The Farpool: Diaspora and I hope to make it available in mid to late fall of 2021. Any start of a book-length work requires energy, just like our AC compressor. Along with energy, such an effort needs optimism, hope, attention to detail, determination and some kind of plan. Whenever I start a new novel, I feel a sense of infinite possibilities, and I’m not talking about that last glass of Riesling I just had. It can be a bit overwhelming. The best way I know to get a grip on that feeling and not be intimidated into putting the start off for another day is to have a detailed outline readily at hand. A few character bios wouldn’t hurt either. Structure makes the writer’s literary universe seem just a wee bit less intimidating. No race is ever won in the first few steps but the race can be lost in those steps. In the most recent Olympics (Tokyo 2020), one track and field hurdler missed his very first hurdle. He tried to finish but winning was naturally out of the question. Getting off on the right foot is important whether you’re running hurdles, swimming a 50-meter sprint or starting a new novel. It’s important not to be discouraged by the magnitude of the task before you. Most of my novels end up over 200 to sometimes 250, even 300 pages. You’re not going to be able to do that in one day. Just do a few pages every day and keep at it. Print out what you’ve done. If you’re like me, you enjoy the visual sight of pieces of paper mounting up, a tangible reminder of your progress. In anything involving a sustained effort over many weeks or months (or even years), discipline and persistence are key. There will be days when your resolve and energy flags a little. That’s okay. Don’t hyperventilate. Give yourself a day off. Then get back to it the next day. It doesn’t hurt to be OCD, like me. Writing 3-5 pages a day has now become, after many years of this, just another daily part of my life, like brushing teeth or eating lunch or working out. When that happens, you can say with some confidence that you’re actually a writer. After a month off from finishing The Farpool; Plague, it feels good to be back banging out 3-5 pages a day. Although I needed the time away from writing, it feels like an important part of me has reawakened. In the first week of my effort with The Farpool: Diaspora, I finished 25 pages of the first draft. I feel pretty good about that. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 30, 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 268 August 16 2021 “Wookies, Muggles and Other Made-Up Words” “Litor’kel ge.” This phrase comes from my made-up Seomish language, which appears in all of The Farpool Stories. It means something like “go with the flow,” or “may the currents be with you.” One of the great joys of writing (especially fiction) is the chance to make up words for effect. But as with chocolate candy and daytime television, you have to be careful not to overdo it. Too many words made-up can really make reading a story a struggle. Just look at Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, if you don’t believe me. Writers of fantasy and science fiction are probably the most accomplished at using made-up words and even whole languages in their stories. For The Farpool Stories, I even included an appendix in many of the titles that explained how the language of the sea-going Seomish people came to be. Check out the text below…. The Language Seomish is designed phonetically to carry well in a water medium. Hard, clicking consonants are common. The ‘p’ or ‘puh’ sound, made by violent expulsion of air is also common. Modulation of the voice stream, particularly at high frequencies (sounding much like a human whistle) produces the characteristic “wheeee” sound, which is a root of many words. Translation from Seomish to human languages like English requires some inspired speculation, since so many Seomish phrases seem to be little more than grunts or groans, modulated in frequency and duration. A good example is the Seomish word for Earth…Urku. After the Kel’vishtu (the Great Emigration), thousands of Seomish found themselves in the oceans of Earth. Despite differences in chemical makeup, temperature and salinity, the oceans of Earth haven’t caused great changes in the basic dialects of the Seomish language. Most Seomish words are grouped according to several characteristics: (1) Who is speaking (the personal); (2) who is being spoken to (the indicative); (3) state of mind of the speaker (the conditional); (4) the kel-standing of the conversants (the intimant). Each classification has a set of characteristic pre-consonants, to indicate the nature of the coming words, etc. Thus: 1. k’, kee, t’ 2. tch, g, j, oot 3. m’, p’, puh’ (both anger, dislike, distaste, etc), sh, sz (both joyful) 4. each kel identifies itself with a unique set of capitalized consonants, like a vocal coat of arms. Example: t’milee, or CHE’oray…Seomish versus Timily or Chory…English. Okay, so you don’t have to go to this great a length in your work. But it is fun. The key thing to remember, though, is when and where to insert made-up words. A little goes a long way. Just ask J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter stories. Here are some informal guidelines to consider when you want to insert a made-up word or phrase. 1. Are you trying to replicate a sound? In The Farpool Stories, I have a translation device called an echopod. I wanted to simulate the screeching and scratching it sometimes made when translating, so I introduced this: Shkreeeaaahhh. Hopefully you get the idea. 2. Use made-up words to inject realism. In The Farpool Stories, my characters are all marine creatures, like talking fish. Nobody would believe it if they all spoke in the King’s English (though there may have been early Star Trek episodes that did things like this). 3. Use made-up words to emphasize difference, even alienness. Once you meet the Seomish people and hear them conversing in their own clicking, honking tongue, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. 4. Always provide context nearby, in proximity to your made-up words. Take ‘muggle,’ from the Harry Potter stories. J.K. Rowling uses this word in context, so you know it refers to non-wizard folk. Some of her wizards even explain this to those who might not understand. Doing this in context is better, because it’s less jarring to the reader. Even if you didn’t know right away what “litor’kel ge” meant, you could discern the meaning from how the Seomish use it, as a sort of term of endearment or encouragement. 5. Keep the number of made-up words and phrases to a minimum. Space them out over several pages. Insert them into sentences and paragraphs where they are surrounded by English words for context. Judicious use of alien words will help the reader know that these are aliens or different kinds of people being described without interfering with the flow of the story or making the story unintelligible. Your reader will make the connections in his or her mind. Remember, your readers still speak and read English. Making up new words is the fun part of writing. Just don’t go overboard or become too enamored with the made-up words that you forget the story itself. Great as Frank Herbert’s sf novel Dune is, it sometimes takes the made-up language and words a little too far. If you can’t read and enjoy the story without having a dictionary nearby (even if there is one), you’ve gone too far. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 23 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 267 August 9 2021 “Chapters and Parts: Organizing Your Story” Virtually every book published, fiction or nonfiction, is divided into parts and chapters and other sections. While the publishing industry has its own guidelines on how this should be done, in this post I want to talk with you, the writer and author, about how to organize your story in ways that make sense…to you and the reader. Stage plays usually have three acts. Many teleplays for TV have 4-act structures. Let’s say you have a plot or outline of some kind. You have a narrative that starts off, builds to some kind of climax and then ends. How should it be segmented into chapters and parts? And what’s the difference between parts and chapters anyway? First off, let me say I’m not a fan of using parts instead of chapters. To me, a part is a major shift in the narrative, a major discontinuity. It’s something that chapters can do just as well. If you google the difference, the results tell you that a chapter is the details of an event, using context, characters and action. This search also produced a result telling me that a part was a subdivision of a chapter, though I’ve seen it the other way around just as often. One search result claimed that chapters were primarily used to make a book more user-friendly, which I think is true. To try to clarify this, let’s put some structure and guidelines to our discussion about structure and guidelines. I can think of 3 reasons why a chapter break (as opposed to a scene break inside a chapter) might be useful. 1. A chapter break can imply a change in location. One chapter might show events and actions in Casablanca. The next one might be on Mars. The chapter break reinforces in the reader’s mind that what is coming is different in an important way. This helps prepare the reader mentally and emotionally for a major shift in the narrative. 2. A chapter break can imply a change in time. Perhaps Chapter 1 takes place today and Chapter 2 is a flashback, showing events in the past. Or perhaps Chapter 2 is just a few days or weeks ahead. We’ve all seen films where the passage of time is graphically illustrated by spinning clock faces or newspapers flying around. These are like film versions of a chapter break. In my work, I like to begin each chapter with a little insert that indicates the place and time of the upcoming action. 3. Chapter breaks can also imply a change in character. Chapter 4 might be dealing with our hero Joe Blow and his efforts to fend off the evil Tralfamadorians (with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut). Chapter 5 might then be a depiction of Joe’s girlfriend Frieda and her efforts to grow more magic crystals to empower Joe and his superhero friends for future battles. Of course, the chapter and the narrative in general can switch back and forth. In fact, this is a good way to build tension in the narrative. But a chapter break would be a good choice in one chapter that deals mainly with Joe and the next one dealing mainly with Frieda. It separates the two in the reader’s mind. Chapters allow the storyteller to manage multiple plot lines and keep them straight more easily. Imagine a stage set in a stage play. After one scene, the lights dim and stagehands move furniture around to new positions. That’s a kind of stage version of a chapter break. I develop chapters in my stories at the tail end of my planning. First, I write down a ‘sequence of events,’ a list of things I think should happen in the story. Then I group them into whatever groups seem logical. Those groups become my chapters. In years past, I even made a table for different plot lines and wrote down in each column (row by row) what happened in that plot line. Then I would make chapters by grouping the table cells across the table into logical units. I don’t do this anymore, since I can usually get a sense of narrative flow just from my original sequence. Just remember this: chapters imply continuity and chapter breaks imply a change in that continuity. Longer books, fiction and nonfiction, need the flexibility that chapters bring to keep the reader’s interest and manage all the pieces of the narrative, forging them into some kind of coherent whole. Use chapters wisely and they’ll contribute much-needed structure to your story. Use chapters poorly and they’ll interrupt and poison the reading experience. The choice is yours. The next post to The Word Shed will come on August 16 and deal with made-up words and when to use them. See you then. Phil B.

Post #266 August 2 2021 “The Last Page” In the previous post, we looked at how to write a compelling first page for your story. I introduced an acronym called A-T-P to keep you on track as to what’s important. But, clearly, the last page is just as important, if not more so. Below, I’ve included the last few paragraphs of my most recent sf novel, The Farpool: Plague, now available at Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers…. Below the waves, circling around the foundation and the outer vortexes of the SPACETRAIN farpool, Charley Meyer finally came to a hard decision. As fast as she could pull, she headed back to the breakwater and the steps up to the Paseo. On Calle Vortice above the promenade, she messaged for an autocab to Quito, using her Farpool pass as payment. Two hours later, now in the capital city, she left the autocab at Mariscal Sucre hyperport and purchased a hyperjet ticket to Bermuda. The flight lasted two hours, with two stops…Miami and New York. Once she had reached Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International at St Georges, she rented a jitney and sped over the hills and narrow twisting lanes of the island to Great Sound Beach, to a marina she knew about, other side of Hamilton harbor. From the jetty, ignoring the curious stares of outside diners and early evening strollers, she ditched her Farpool uniform and went full commando. She did a racing dive into the cold waters of the Sound and headed north, descending, sounding off the Mid-Atlantic Ridge off to her right to get her bearings. It had been awhile and she couldn’t run the risk of getting lost…or running into a Ponkti fleet assembling. Unerringly, feeling more and more that this was the right thing to do, she headed north by northeast, for the Muir seamounts. For Keenomsh’pont and what was left of Muir City, ready to man the barricades if she had to. Ready to defend her people from the coming onslaught. Okay, so that’s the excerpt. To me, your last page has to accomplish several things, most importantly including wrapping up the story in some kind of satisfying conclusion that makes sense, seems inevitable (after the fact), and secures all the loose ends. Many and maybe most last pages, or story endings follow one of three approaches. 1. Everybody lives happily after ever (the hero achieved his goal or failed magnificently) 2. The evil goes on 3. Some kind of big confrontation is coming (later, perhaps in another story) I believe most people would say the excerpt above fits #3 best of all. I did several horror stories years ago in which I used #2, pretty common in those types of stories. To be sure fiction and stories are emphatically not real life. Real life is messy, confusing, repetitious, mostly boring except for moments of terror and always unpredictable. Fiction is a condensed form of real life, where the operative term is verisimilitude…resemblance to the truth. In fiction, the storyteller guides what happens, and does so in such a way to bring matters to a believable conclusion, which hardly ever happens IRL. Having said that, the way a storyteller concludes his story has a lot to do with how his readers or listeners will remember and regard the story as they ponder it later on. “He got what he deserved.” “Wow, I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that.” “She was incredibly strong and brave…maybe there’s something I could learn from her example.” Decide ahead of time where you want the story to go and how you want it to end. Some writers do the story ending first and work backward (not me). Some insist they don’t know how the story’s going to end until they get to the end (don’t believe them). Once you have a general idea of how all the events are going to turn out, then you can script the narrative to arrive at that place in some kind of fashion that makes sense, is believable, and satisfying. I can’t emphasize that last sentence enough: if your ending isn’t believable and satisfying at some level, the whole story will seem a waste of time to your readers. The last page or the ending is the icing on the cake. It’s what everything in the story is working toward. In the past, we might have called it the moral of the story, the thing that’s important for the reader to remember. Give your last page some extra thought. Then steer the ship of your story on that course from the beginning, understanding there might be a few detours and storms along the way, and maintain that heading. Your story and your readers will be better off for it. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 9. See you then. Phil B.