Post #158 February 25, 2019

“Update on Time Jumpers and Do’s and Don’t’s of Serial Writing”

My first episode of Time Jumpers was uploaded successfully on 1 February.  To date, there have been 87 downloads (as of this writing).  It seems the series is off to a decent start.

Why write a serialized story?  I did other posts about this, so let me remind you of some of the reasons why this is a good idea, at this point in my career.

1. Serialized stories engage the reader more quickly and more directly.  The stories come out faster, on a schedule.  Readers can get their “fix” more often.  If they like the stories and the author is doing his job, they can provide quicker feedback and even have an impact on how the overall story proceeds.  It makes the reader feel like part of the story-telling process and helps the writer go where his readers want him to go.  It also helps the writer feel like he’s not writing in a vacuum…that there are readers out there and this is how they feel about the story.
    
   One writer, Jane Friedman in a column at Writer Unboxed, wrote this about serial fiction:
   For purists, a serial is a work that the author writes in progress, releases on a specific schedule or deadline (close to the time when the writing gets done), and is produced without a preconceived middle or ending. Such serials often involve reader engagement and may incorporate reader feedback that helps the author mold the story along the way. Bestselling science-fiction author John Scalzi launched his career on a serial, Old Man’s War, and of course everybody knows and even loves shows like All My Children. The soap opera is classic serial storytelling.
    
2. Serialized stories can help build an audience.  There aren’t a lot of paying markets for serials today, so many writers (such as me) do this for free, as a way of building an audience for related or later work.  In my case, I have 7 novels published through Smashwords.com that are part of a series called Tales of the Quantum Corps.  I have another series of 5 sf novels entitled The Farpool Stories. One of my goals in doing the Time Jumpers serial is to help establish a greater audience for both of these series through a common theme, characters, settings and stories. 
    
3. There are several advantages to writing serials.
    
   Robin Rivera, of writeonsisters.com, had this to say about the advantages:

• You can take every episode in a new direction. Explore opposing viewpoints of the same events. You can kill off characters or rapidly change their character arcs. In fact, the more you shake things up, the better your readers will like it!
• You have the luxury of being able to revisit the same world building and characters as many times as you wish. The story can go on for years, evolving and taking new directions while filling many seasons of serials.
• The pressure to finish the big story arc isn’t hanging over your head the way it is with a novel. A serial writer can go on chasing the same villain forever, as long as the smaller stories are exciting and there are enough clues to the larger plot mission to make the readers want to stick around for the ride.

1. But there are also disadvantages as well.  Robin goes on to say:

·         Slow, atmospheric writers need not apply! The market is competitive for all writing, but the pressure to create a knock-the-reader’s-socks-off opening episode for a series is huge. You must have memorable characters and a setting that feels real from the first installment. Being unforgettable is critical, because the reader needs to feel they can pick up the story after a break without missing a beat.

·         Action is the king of all serial fiction, and only the tightest writing works. The hook needs to come in fast. Each story installment must have some resolution to the current problem while also leaving something unresolved to encourage the reader to read the next installment, namely it needs a cliffhanger.

·         The serial format is not good for a writer challenged by deadlines. One of the most important aspects for building a serial readership is getting the next installment out quickly and when you’ve promised you would. If you establish a plan of releasing once a week or once a month, you need to keep with it until the season is done.

I’ve found both Robin’s experience and Jane’s thoughts to be both true and relevant to my own experience and I’m pretty new to this.  Especially the part about tightly knit writing and lots of action.  I’m thinking the experience of developing, writing and uploading my serial Quantum Troopers (about 8300 downloads so far with this serial alone) on a tight schedule made me a better storyteller.  Here’s hoping….

For the next post to The Word Shed, coming on March 4, I’ll provide an excerpt for an upcoming episode of Time Jumpers and we’ll look more closely at what makes good adventure and action writing.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

Post #157 February 18, 2019

“Plot Outlines and When to Ignore Them”

As an author, I’ve always been a big believer in planning and outlining your story ahead of time.  It keeps me on track.  But sometimes, you just have to deviate from the outline.  Here are some reasons why it might be necessary to ignore an outline and strike out on your own as a storyteller:

1. A main character has evolved in a direction different from what you expected or planned for.  When this happens, chalk it up to the likelihood that you’ve drawn a vivid personality who just can’t be confined to your outline.  It’s happened to me.  Sometimes, characters are just ornery and won’t be pigeonholed.  The trick here is to ask yourself if the story really should go off in this new direction.  Sometimes, that helps the story.  If it’s a surprise to you, it may well be to the reader as well.  The new plot direction may well turn out to be in better alignment with your ornery character and make more sense, make a better, more believable or satisfactory story.  Just think about it before you allow it happen.
2. You’ve written yourself into a corner.  This tells me that I didn’t plan as well as I should have.  There were questions I didn’t ask or didn’t answer and now I’m in a pickle.  Go back to your outline.  Were there developments or ramifications you didn’t anticipate?  Can you get the story back on track, maybe by introducing a new character or bending the storyline just a little, a small tweak?  You may need to go back to the beginning and lay in some motivations and dialogue or narrative to build a bridge out of the corner you’ve written yourself into.  Here’s a case where your original outline likely wasn’t thought out as well as it should have been.  Better luck next time…this is how you learn the craft.
3. The story is going nowhere.  It reads and sounds aimless and meandering.  It has no life.  Although maybe your writing itself is a little flat—it happens to all of us—more likely, this indicates an outline problem.  You didn’t attend to the basics of storytelling as well as you should have: introduce the hero, give him a problem not easily solved, and a reason to need to solve it.  Then throw complications in his path and watch him struggle.  In the end, he (or she or it) overcomes all the complications and solves the problem or fails magnificently and learns something useful in the process.  See if your outline meets these essential building blocks of any well-told story.
4. Deviating from your outline actually improves the story.  You have an outline.  You think it’s detailed enough, anticipating plot twists and turns but something happens and it seems like striking out in a new direction makes for more conflict, more believable narrative or action, and it’s more consistent with your overall theme or story line.  Think about it.  Does deviating from the outline better meet the basics of storytelling?  Why?  Answer these questions and you’ll know whether or not it’s a good idea to head off to some place new. 
5. There’s just action for the sake of action but no real purpose.  We’ve all read stories where, at the end ,when your old Aunt Bessie asks you what the story was about, you say, “I have no idea.”  If your story develops from your outline as a stream of action sequences with no clear goal or path to anywhere, go back to that outline and study it.  Compare it to the basics of storytelling and remember: your hero should be changed in some way by what happens.  Maybe he’s wiser.  Maybe he’s dead.  But change, growth, adjustment, a moral for God’s sake, that’s what the best stories have.  These things go by different names but they’re talking about the same thing.  Good stories have morals, messages, warnings…this could happen to you so watch out!  If you’re outline has led you to something that doesn’t clearly have these attributes, the outline is no good.  Go ahead and toss it in the round file.
6. And please…do yourself a favor and study up on the basic mechanics of storytelling. 
    
   I outline stories in some detail to prevent these things from happening.  Sometimes, they do anyway.  Outlines keep me on track and when I get off track, I have some idea of where I’m trying to get back to.  I don’t have any scruples against deviating from my outline but I don’t do it unless the reasons cited above are operating and I believe the story will be improved if I do.
    
   Some writers say they just love sitting down at their desk every morning, not really knowing where the story will take them.  They like to be surprised.  Which is fine as it stands.
    
   Just not for me.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 25, 2019.  In this post, we’ll take a look at the early returns from my new series Time Jumpers, maybe a short excerpt from an upcoming episode and then talk about some of the do’s and don’t of series and serial storytelling.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.

Post #156 February 11, 2019

“Building Character Backgrounds and Bios”

Recently, even as I have been working on my new series Time Jumpers, I have been doing character bios for a novel coming up in 2020.  This led me to some ideas about how to build believable backgrounds for your main characters.  I do this in novel-length work so I can keep characters straight and consistent and give them a history to refer to from within the story.  I also do it to try and get inside the heads of my characters and understand what makes them do what they do.

Below is the opening from one of my character bios from Time Jumpers:

Jump Commander Nathan Golich

Age: 35 terr (35 Urth years)

Height: 6’2”

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair: Completely bald

Face: Hard cheek planes, angular with a prominent chin, with chin dimples

Other Distinguishing Features:  Droopy black moustache; piercing hard brown-black eyes; big ears and big hands.

A Short Biography:

JCDR Golich is executive officer of the 1^st Time Displacement Battery at Kinlok Island, on Seome (Storm to the Umans) and second in command to Jump Captain Dringoth. Golich was born in 2779 (U(rth) time), month of Half-Crescent (written as 2-1/2 C-79) in a small village called Nomad Township on Keaton’s World.  Father was Kennard Golich, deputy mayor of Nomad and formerly a life-support-systems engineer.  Mother was Mariska Golich, pilot-officer aboard one of many airships (skyships) that ply the dense atmospheric skies of K-World between communities.  Nathan has one sibling: sister Naomi, now a master chef at one of Nomad’s best-loved restaurants (the floating restaurant Tsunami), which drifts about K-World’s one large body of water…Loch Lithgow.

And it goes on from there.  For this character, I have about 3 pages of this kind of detail.  For others, I do more, sometimes up to 8-10 pages. So why go to all this bother?

Golich is a major player in Time Jumpers.  I want to know where he came from, who he is related to, why he is the way he is and some detail on major events and influences on his personality as he lives his life.  I want to know his background.

For major players, I like to describe them physically and then go into some detail on their early years.  What formative influences made them the way they are?  Did a parent or sibling die or abandon the family?  Early influences are profoundly influential in how we develop and grow.

I describe their schooling, who their best friends were, maybe a favorite memory from growing up, a trip or an encounter with someone who changed their life, for good or bad.  All this forces me to develop ideas on the world that this character grew up in and how it may differ from ours.  It’s all part of filling in the gaps of my knowledge about this imaginary world. 

Later on in the bio, I describe best friends in higher education, favorite adventures, influential and formative occurrences.  Let’s see what happened to Nathan Golich in his teenaged and young adult years…

K-World has long been known for the ferocity of its weather and Nathan learned early on how to survive in the sudden storms that could pop up.  The planet is some distance from its sun Sturdivant 2180, but not so far as to provide adequate shielding from the sun’s occasional bursts of intense radiation.  All K-worlders learn from an early age about when and how to take shelter from the Fires in the thousands of caves and man-made shelters dotted around the land and in the cities and towns. 

When Nathan was 11, his mother Mariska was caught in one such Fire (a severe type known as a Level 2 flamer) while aboard a skyship cruising toward another town.  The ship caught fire and went down in the Loch with no survivors.  Nathan was devastated.  To this day, he associates the Loch with the death of his mother and becomes quite nervous around storms and large bodies of water.

It was partly to compensate for the loss of his mother, that upon ‘graduating’ Net Tutor and succeeding in the Downloads, that Nathan applied to and was accepted into the Skyship Academy and went into training as an apprentice pilot.   

From ages 17 to 24, Nathan served as apprentice, later full pilot of several skyships in the Sky Service.  His favorite ship was K-Max, which mostly made runs between Nomad Township and the capital city of Nestor, several thousand kilometers away.  The Nomad-Nestor run was a real challenge for any skyship pilot as it crossed some of Loch Lithgow and also large mountains, a desert (‘The Dunes’ or ‘The Sand Sea’ with its mesodonts able to fly and take down unwary ships) and even swamps such as ‘The Shivers’, for the way the waters always seemed to tremble under seismic disturbances and strong winds.

This kind of detail gives me a lot to work with in the episodes of Time Jumpers where Golich appears.  Sometimes, the detail of these bios even suggests future stories. 

But you have to be careful with this kind of detail.  No reader wants to suffer an info dump as you describe every little thing that happened to your character.  Work these details into the story when and where the opportunity arises, a little at a time.  They add texture and realism to your characters so that readers feel they have an actual history with all the twists and turns we all have.  It makes your characters come alive and allows readers to identify with characters…hey, something similar actually happened to me.

I do character bios to give me some idea about who these imaginary people are, to be consistent and believable with how I portray them.  I recommend doing them to some degree for all your main players.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 18, 2019.  See you then.

Phil B.

Post #155 February 4, 2019

“Knowing Your Readers”

Recently I had an opportunity to actually talk with one of my readers.  He’s in the same Sunday School class as me and had just downloaded and read one of my novels (Final Victory).  He liked it and gave it a very favorable review on Goodreads.com.  This got me to thinking about how writers and authors can really know their readers, the consumers of what we do.

1. Blogs like The Word Shed are a great way to get to know your readers.  Managing a blog allows me to enter into a dialogue with people interested in me and my work.  We exchange views on plots and storylines, characters, details of setting and, inevitably, on factual errors that crop up in the story.  Readers love to point out errors to authors.  But authors shouldn’t take these observations the wrong way.  When a reader does this, they’re telling you they’re interested enough in your work to care, interested enough to point out inconsistencies or mistakes.  Writers should take these ‘criticisms’ to heart and be thankful for readers who are willing to take the time to do this.  Keep the dialogue going.
2. Another way to know and connect with your readers is in writers’ groups, conferences and workshops.  I’m in a local workshop for writers.  Writers are readers too.  They often have insights you might never have thought of.  It’s always valuable to have new eyes and perspectives on your work.  They tell me what they like, what I do well and what I don’t.  I don’t have to point out how valuable that can be, in crafting ever-better stories that meet the expectations of your readers.
3. Emails and reviews are a third way to get to know your readers.  Several years ago, a reader of Final Victory in California had posted a very nice review of this novel on Goodreads.  In his review, he communicated to me that he would like to email me on some separate observations.  I did email him (his name was Scott) and we began a very fruitful exchange that went on for some time.  He pointed out some mistakes in the story and allowed as how he was writing something similar for Amazon.  I wound up reviewing and critiquing his story draft (just a few chapters actually), as he did for me.  I don’t have to tell you how useful this exchange was and I wish Scott well in his literary endeavors.  The emails that went back and forth were invaluable in establishing for me what I had done well and what needed work.  This is almost like having your own personal editor.  Readers who will do this for you should be rewarded in some way…maybe excerpts and sneak peeks of upcoming work. 
4. A fourth way to engage readers and get to know their likes and dislikes is to meet them in person.  This can happen in a Sunday School class, as for me, or even better, in conferences.  Generally, I’m not a great fan of writers’ conferences, but they can be an  important source of constructive (or otherwise) criticism.  Conferences are also useful for networking purposes, something not to be ignored in a solitary occupation like writing.  Maybe you could even organize a coffee klatsch or something similar to gather interested readers for an informal discussion, like a book club.  Feedback from readers is money in the bank.
5. The last way to know your readers is a way that is easier for writers who publish their work online.  My publisher/distributor is Smashwords.com.  The website keeps extensive statistics on downloads of titles.  From these statistics, I can easily spot trends.  What’s popular?  What’s flat or not that popular?  For my own work, statistics consistently show that my science fiction is more popular than my alternate history stories or my horror stories (89% of my downloads are science fiction).  Ergo, I should spend most of my time writing science fiction and uploading stories in that genre, because readers download more of those, by a wide margin. 
    
   Not only that, but certain titles consistently show greater download activity than others.  I should investigate why that is.  Is it because the story is particularly well written?  Is it because the story resonates with something in the news or in pop culture?  Maybe I should write more stories like these.   The data available in download statistics is invaluable in spotting trends and it’s really another way that readers are communicating to you what they like and want.  Every successful business studies its sales statistics for trends and indicators as to what they should do.  Writers should do this too.  In fact, Smashwords offers all kinds of analyses for authors as they can aggregate data and trends from hundreds of thousands of titles and authors across their platform.
    
   Getting to know your readers really requires a successful author to do or at least try all these things.  The more you can know and engage with your readers, the better guide you’ll have as to what works, what doesn’t and what they like about your work and want more of. 
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 11, 2019.
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.