Character, Action and Tom Swift, Jr.

One of my great joys as a teenager was Tom Swift, Jr. books.  In the early and mid-1960s, they were produced as trade-sized hardcovers, priced at $1.25 and came out every four months.  I’d buy the latest one on a Saturday morning and be finished with it that evening.

I loved them for the science adventures and for the fact that there was lots of action.  And story action is the subject of this post.

Action should be thought of as what the main characters do to solve their problems.  Some stories are marketed as action-adventures, where the action is all there is…continuous action, without the characters spending a lot of time contemplating their navels or expounding on deep philosophical matters. 

One of my goals in writing Nanotroopers was to involve the reader in lots of action, right from the start.  To make this happen, the main character(s)…in this case Johnny Winger…has to be an action-oriented person, or a person in an action-oriented position.  Winger is a nanotrooper with Quantum Corps so he’s always fighting off bad guys and spies and trying to keep the peace in the world of atoms and molecules that is Quantum Corps’ theater of operation.  Keeping Winger involved in some kind of action hasn’t been too much of a stretch.

But action for the sake of action actually gets old, after a few chapters.  The action has to be in the service of the story, it has to advance the story.  Which means that in addition to fighting off bad guys, Johnny Winger has to occasionally run into roadblocks, problems he can’t resolve in his usual head-banging, slam-‘em- up- side-the-head fashion.  The action has to have a purpose.  In these cases, the purpose is show Johnny Winger as a person and how he reacts to different situations and scenarios, in other words to reveal and develop character.

Action doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  It happens or is caused by character.  I found this on Wikipedia concerning adventure stories and the role of action:

Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre as follows:

.. An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work.^[1]

D'Ammassa argues that adventure stories make the element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."^[1]

So danger is an important element of action adventure stories.  In Nanotroopers, there are several sources of danger.  Johnny Winger is often at risk to life and limb from Quantum Corps’ principal enemy Red Hammer.  Sometimes, the autonomous assembler technology at the heart of the series comes back to bite him, and his fellow nanotroopers.  Sometimes his own actions and headstrong impulses cause bad things to happen.  And ideally, as this serial story advances through its planned 22 episodes, Winger learns his lesson from being in all this danger and approaches future conflicts and problems with a smarter approach.  In other words, the main character is changed somehow as he encounters problems, conflicts and dangers. 

This is one of the reasons, though we don’t always like to admit it, that so many readers like action adventure stories.  They can live and experience vicariously the action and dangers of the main character and still live to read another day.  In fact when you get right down to it, this is one of the key reasons why we like stories period. 

Another aspect of any good action-adventure story is the pace, the speed of the action.  Our hero is constantly in and out of hot water, one close escape after another.  How do you keep the reader from going numb or zoning out through all this?  Vary the action.  Vary what happens.  Make the reader care about the character.  This means that the pot-boiler action sequences should be interspersed with quieter moments…the character reflects on what he has just escaped,  tells his buddies what just happened, gets laid or goes to the grocery store…things that can endear the character to the reader…hey, he’s just like one of us…I’ve done that very same thing.  An interlude between rock-‘em, sock-‘em action is necessary for the reader to take a breath, for the character to recoil and reset before the next escapade, and most importantly, for the character to gain some perspective on what is happening…in other words, to grow and change.

If this doesn’t happen, the reader won’t buy it and will find your character just a cardboard cutout to which things happen.  The story won’t be very satisfying.  Even furious action becomes tiresome if the character lets the same damn things happen to him again and again and doesn’t learn from the experience.  Different things have to happen, or the character’s own actions to resolve a problem cause a new problem…that’s real and your readers will experience it as real.

Action and character are closely intertwined in any fictional story and particularly so in action-adventure.   But the action has to have a purpose and the main purpose is to lead the character to growth, change or valiant defeat…not just fighting off the same monster day after day.

Just ask Tom Swift Jr. and his Super-Duper Electrohydraulic Flamajing.  He couldn’t have defeated those pesky Brungarians without it.

The next post to The Word Shed will focus on more details from the Nanotroopers series.

See you on March 7.

Phil B.

Notes on Red Hammer – Hong Chui 

My new serial Nanotroopers has as the principal enemy an Asian cartel called Red Hammer.  Red Hammer’s main goal in this series of stories is to steal or copy as much ANAD technology from Quantum Corps as possible, in order to further their cartel enterprises and defeat Johnny Winger and his nanotroopers once and for all.  Below is a more detailed description of this adversary….

1.     Red Hammer is a criminal enterprise formed in the late 2030s in Hong Kong and Southeast and southern Asia.  The first base of operations was at Lions Rock, in Hong Kong.

2.     Two ex-PLA generals—Zhang Ru Ji and Dao Li, were instrumental in forming Red Hammer.

3.     The current headquarters base is a Buddhist llamassary at the Paryang Monastery in Tibet.

4.     Red Hammer is an outgrowth of Chinese and Vietnamese criminal gangs, similar to Macau and Hong Kong-based tong societies. 

5.     Red Hammer is run by a Ruling Council, or Council of Rulers.  There are rumors that one or more members of the RC are artificial intelligences, even robots.  The current leader is unknown but may be an individual called the Keeper. (In reality, the Keeper is a device buried under the Paryang Monastery, uncovered by Red Hammer, which is a portal and communication device to a race of extraterrestrials that Red Hammer refers to as the Old Ones).

6.     One of the more visible members of the RC is the former Thai neurotraficante Theo Souvranamh.  Other members are Luis Escorial, General Zhang, General Dao, Vladimir Berensky, Dmitri Kulagin, and Andreas Echeverria.  They meet once a week, either at Paryang or connected in to Paryang.

7.     All Ruling Council members and most all Red Hammer agents are, upon joining the cartel, ‘infected’ with a small ANAD-like swarm of nanoscale bots, known as a Halo.  It resides inside their brains. This Halo is how Red Hammer controls its people.  It protects them from counter-swarms from Quantum Corps and other sources and helps keep them in line or keeps them from doing anything that might harm Red Hammer’s interests.  Once installed, it cannot be removed.  And under certain circumstances, the Halo can kill its host.  It’s a near-perfect, remotely programmable control device.

8.     Principal Red Hammer businesses are scope (an addictive drug), illegal fabs for rogue nanobotic devices, twist (pirated and rogue DNA or other genetic sequences), HNRIV (a hemorrhagic virus that kills and could easily become a global pandemic), Serengeti (an addictive antidote to HNRIV), and various extortion and protection rackets throughout Asia and Africa. 

9.     UN Quantum Corps and their new ANAD nanobotic systems are a direct threat to the fab and rogue nano businesses of Red Hammer.  The Ruling Council has issued a ‘main directive’ (zhiling touhao) to combat UNQC and eliminate the threat from ANAD.

10.  The Main Directive requires all Red Hammer stations and personnel to work “ceaselessly” toward frustrating Quantum Corps.  More importantly, Red Hammer wants to steal the configuration engine and software that animates ANAD.  If they can achieve this difficult goal, they believe they can neuter Quantum Corps and give themselves a virtually unassailable weapon to continue and extend their criminal enterprises into the Americas and Europe.   

11.  The Keeper is an advanced artificial intelligence (in swarm configuration) left behind on Earth by an extraterrestrial race known as the Old Ones several billion years ago. 

12.  The Keeper is a gateway to the Old Ones as well as an AI.  It is part gateway, part oracle, part deterrent and patrol, part computer/monitor and many other things as well.  It does not normally exist in physical form, but can configure into many forms. 

13.  The Keeper is the nominal head of Red Hammer.  All members of the Ruling Council are aware that the Keeper is not a human being in any normal sense.  Yet major decisions and directives for the criminal cartel are always handed down from the Keeper.  No one knows whether the Keeper generates these directives itself or whether it is somehow in touch with the Old Ones.

14.  The reason that Red Hammer occasionally has access to technology considerably more advanced than Quantum Corps is that the Keeper periodically provides new technology from the archives of the Old Ones.  This is not known outside of Red Hammer’s Ruling Council.  It is sobering to realize the menace and the threat that exists to the world from a cartel that can monopolize access to advanced technology from an alien race.  Were this to become known, Quantum Corps and most of the advanced nations of the world would take whatever steps needed to crush Red Hammer.  Therefore, this is Red Hammer’s most closely guarded secret.

15.  Because Red Hammer’s main base is in a derelict and abandoned llamassary in the Tibetan high country, there are some within Red Hammer, notably the Thai druglord Souvranamh, who think that Buddha himself, the Enlightened One, was (is?) in fact a composite representation of the Old Ones.  There is no proof of this. 

 

This introduction to Red Hammer will help you understand what will be coming as Nanotroopers unfolds.  It’s a vicious, mortal battle between Quantum Corps and Red Hammer. 

Let’s hope the good guys win…and remain good guys in the process. 

 

The next post, on February 29 (Leap Day) will be concerned with the role of action and character in the Nanotroopers series…i.e., where do these crazy ideas come from (think Tom Swift, Jr.).

 

See you on February 29.

Phil B.

This post provides an update on my science fiction novel The Farpool, currently a work in progress for 2016.

Outlines and Progress

As of this writing, I should be about half way through my outline.  I’ve written about 180 pages to date and most of my novels have been running from 220 to 300 pages when formatted for Smashwords.com.  I always have a detailed outline before I put a single word to paper (or screen).  Which leads me to this question: when should you deviate from your outline?  Should you deviate from the outline, if it’s well thought out?

Not an easy question to answer.   In general, I use my outline to keep me on track, to keep the story moving toward some resolution.  Novels are large works and you can get lost in the details.  Some writers just write straight through, from a few notes and clean it up later in editing.  Others like me, are detailed outliners.  I don’t deviate from the outline lightly but I do it when it seems like it will help the story: explore a character more, explore a setting or a theme more.  But a little of this goes a long way.  Readers want to know a little about the character and see how they struggle with a problem.  They want to see what the characters do to solve their problem and whether they’ll be successful.  That’s the essence of storytelling.  Everything else is secondary.

I find that I sometimes don’t have the requisite detail in my outline to feel comfortable with a  scene or a chapter.  When that happens, I write another page of “Notes on Scene X” or some such.  It’s like drilling down more deeply into an idea.  And often with that extra detail, I can go ahead and write the story from that and be better assured I’m accomplishing what I want.

In general, deviate from your outline when it helps the story. 

Jargon

One of the characteristics of novels like The Farpool, set largely on an alien world, is what to do about language and jargon.  In my case, the world is an ocean world and the people are fully marine beings.  I have extensive notes on their language and words and jargon.  But they should be used sparingly.  Why?  They slow the story down.

Science Fiction writers use alien languages and words to convey a sense of “alienness.”  This is not Metropolis, USA or Mayberry or Petticoat Junction.  It’s a world called Seome and the people live underwater.  Even though I have extensive notes on language and plan to include an Appendix with a lot of this material in the final draft, I have tried to minimize the foreign words in the main body of the story.  I did too much of this in an earlier version of this novel (which I wrote in the early 80s) and it interferes with the story.  So it’s a judgment call on the part of the writer: put in enough to convey alienness and not too much to slow down the story.  A serious editorial look at the first draft, reading it like a reader, will let you know which way you need to go.  You should err on the side of a few words here and there, and get on with the story. 

I anticipate being through with the first draft of The Farpool sometime in the late spring or early summer.  Then a few weeks will be devoted to editing and pruning, probably taking out some of the alien language that has crept in, and (ideally) a final draft can be uploaded to Smashwords around July 1, 2016.  That’s my planning date.

Will there be follow-on stories?  Probably.  I am currently planning on two.  This first novel is entitled The Farpool.  I’ve provided some general story details in earlier posts to The Word Shed.

Here are some details about what will follow….

1.     The Farpool: Marauders of Seome

The Ponkti (one of the kels of Seome that opposes our heroes and envies their monopoly on the Farpool) send mercenaries and agents through the Farpool and wind up in mid-20^th century Earth.  They hook up with the Nazis.  The Ponkti have stolen Omtorish technology and have modified themselves to operate as amphibious beings.  The Ponkti are very interested in German U-boat technology and especially their torpedoes.  For their part, the Nazis are interested in what the Ponkti can to do to help defeat Allied sonar and assault Allied convoys.  Bad things follow from this unholy alliance and the effects are felt on two worlds.

2.     The Farpool: Exodus from Seome

Seomish engineers and scientists determine that their own sun Sigma-Albeth B won’t last much longer.  But Farpool still works.  A decision is made, after discussion, to begin a mass exodus of Seomish kels and people through the Farpool, to the oceans of 22^nd century Earth.  They don’t tell the humans about this planned immigration.  When the humans realize what is happening, conflict develops.  Ultimately, they allow the Seomish to come.  Now two intelligent races, one terrestrial and one marine, must learn to co-exist on Earth.  But what is worse: the Seomish have unwittingly left a path for the Coethi (the real bad guys) to come through the Farpool and menace 22^nd century Earth, even as they are menacing 28^th century Uman worlds around the Galactic Halo and Spiral Fringe.  A greater threat may be coming. 

 

So look for The Farpool this summer at Smashwords.com and also at Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks and other fine ebook retailers.

Next post will look at how my serial story Nanotroopers is going (in a word, pretty well). 

See you on February 22.

 

Phil B.

I’m dedicating this post to ongoing marketing efforts.  When you write books that are available as ebooks on web sites such as Smashwords.com or other ebook retailers like Barnes and Noble and Apple ibooks, you have to be aware of how ebooks are marketed somewhat differently from print books.

Below I have reproduced a table where I have started to keep a record of downloads of currently available titles on Smashwords, my principal distributor.   This is a table of weekly downloads by title, starting 2-2-16.   This is a table of every ebook I’ve uploaded to Smashwords and how it has done. 

	Title	Week Starting 2-2-16	Week Ending 2-9-16	Change	Comments
1	JW & the Serengeti Factor	515	526	11
2	JW & the Amazon Vector	361	368	7
3	JW & the Hellas Enigma	331	339	8
4	JW & the Golden Horde	277	286	9
5	JW & the Great Rift Zone	254	266	12
6	JW & the Europa Quandary	211	223	12
7	Final Victory	93	93	0
8	The Eyeball Conspiracy	137	138	1
9	The Peking Incident	139	141	2
10	Root Magic	64	66	2
11	Nanotroopers Episode 1	174	207	33
12	Nanotroopers Episode 2	0	73	73	Uploaded 2-5-16
	TOTALS	2556	2726

 

As you see, over 12 titles uploaded at varying times from May 2014 to January 2016, over 2700 downloads have been recorded.

In ebooks, downloads are key.  Full or partial downloads are the ebook equivalent of browsing in a bookstore.  Since many of my ebooks are set to free in price (more on that in a moment), downloads are the best barometer of interest from readers. 

One interesting entry in terms of download activity is Item #11, the Nanotroopers Episode 1.  This was uploaded on January 14.  Between that date and February 2 (about two weeks), some 174 downloads were recorded.  This is a daily average of 9-10 downloads a day…a respectable rate for a new title, with little or no marketing behind it.  Look also at Item 12.  Episode 2 was just uploaded 2-5-16.  Over three days, some 73 downloads have occurred. 

It looks like my new serial Nanotroopers is attracting reader interest early on.  This is pretty heartening.

Now back to marketing.  Why set an ebook to free?  There are many reasons but one is simply this: some of my titles weren’t being downloaded that much.  Smashwords offers all kind of tools and advice on ebook marketing.  If your ebook isn’t moving, you’re not making any sales.  If it’s dead in the water, make it free.  I tried this myself and it works.  I saw an immediate spike in the affected ebooks.  I think it has to do with readers being willing to take a chance on an unknown author…they’re intrigued enough to read the description and peruse the cover image, and being free may just push them to click on ‘download’ and take a chance.

It’s all about building an audience.  Of course, it goes without saying that your book needs to be well-written enough to keep them coming back…in fact, your book needs to grab the reader by the lapel and smack them upside the head, then knock their socks off.  But then that’s true of any book, print or ebook.

I mentioned perusing covers.  Don’t let anyone kid you: covers matter…a lot.  Whether on a web site or in a bookstore, covers grab attention and direct reader eyes to your book.  There are plenty of authors whose ebooks were wallowing in the doldrums and who sprang for snazzy professional covers and found big spikes in their sales and downloads.  You can’t afford not to do that.

Having said that, I plan on doing the very same thing.  Six of my titles (the Johnny Winger books) are part of a series called Tales of the Quantum Corps.  My next step to rev up downloads in this series (note that all books in the series have been priced at FREE) is to spring for a professional ebook cover designer to work with me and come up with a series of themed covers for the series…covers that have a consistent, eye-popping look with minor variations to distinguish the different titles. 

I’ll probably try this with the Nanotroopers series too, once I get further into it and possibly with The Farpool as well as potential follow-ons to that story.  And I’ll let you know what happens.

There are plenty of other ebook marketing techniques offered by Smashwords, such as preorders, but more on those later.

Next post will come on February 15.  In that post, I’ll go back to the world of The Farpool and let you know how that story is going and what’s coming afterward.

See you then.

Phil B.