Post #174 July 1 2019

“How Much Research is Enough?”

To address the question in the title above, I refer you below to some conditions that may occur in your writing adventures, conditions which, if they do occur, will indicate you have enough research to complete your story.

All writers do research.  Some call it other things: background, inspiration, listening to your muse.  Most writers I know enjoy this aspect of their craft, for in doing research to support a story, they learn all kinds of new things.  But remember that a story is more than just some research notes slammed together with a weak plot and weaker characters.  You’re telling a story, not developing an encyclopedia.  The story has to be paramount.  The story guides everything.

With these thoughts in mind, below are some indicators that show you’ve probably done enough research.  You know you’ve got enough research….

1. When you’re living in the story world.  When you dream of being in the story.  When the story consumes your daily thoughts and you view everything around you through the lens of your story.  To be ‘in the story’ is a very special place.  It doesn’t happen all the time.  It means you can tell the story from the perspective of someone who is right there, which means you’ll put the reader right there too.  That can make for some very powerful story telling.  Research and details don’t tell the story but they can make a good story even better, adding realism and power to your narrative.  Most readers of fiction I know want to be transported to other places and other times, live vicariously through the story and its characters.  Research helps that notion of verisimilitude…resemblance to the truth.
2. When the story wants you to start writing it.  You feel anxious to get going.  You have energy, motivation, and once you’ve started writing, a certain rhythm comes over you.  Researching and learning are all fine and good but when you feel this way, research time is over and it’s best to get on with the story. At this point, you’re ‘in the story.’ It’s part of your being.  I think every writer feels this way once in a while. 
3. When there’s no more room in your research and notes box.  I often use boxes to contain physical articles, books, maps, etc for my background and research.  Even today, I can look around my office at several boxes stashed away in corners, filled to overflowing with materials for novels I wrote years ago.  When you can’t physically cram anything else into the box and your computer files are starting to flow off the screen, you’ve done enough research.
4. When the background and setting details become more interesting than the story itself.  Writers have to watch out for this one.  It’s an occupational hazard.  Writers of fiction (really all writers) are naturally curious beings.  We want to know everything about our areas of interest.  I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a child and to this day, I’m still a bit of a space cadet, indulging my interest with astronautical things that may or may not show up in later stories.  When you find yourself pursuing research avenues to the exclusion of the story, or putting off the story to get that one more piece of information (which may or may not be relevant or important to the story), you’ve done enough research. 
5. When you ‘info-dump’ details into the story to justify all the research work.  Jeez, I spent days tracking down that description of the mansion on the hill…I’d better put it in the story so all that work wasn’t wasted.  This is especially an issue for science fiction and fantasy writers, who glory in world-building and developing whole-hog alien cultures.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m like so many sf readers, who love to immerse themselves in a truly alien world and culture and try to figure things out.  SF and fantasy writers even add appendixes to their stories to unload all the details they couldn’t work into the story; I’ve done this myself.  But a little background goes a long way.  Give the reader some credit.  Put in a few details and let the reader use his imagination to fill in the rest.  They like that. 
    
   These are some of many indicators that I use to alert myself that I need to get on with the story and stop burying myself in the background and research.  Being highly organized too, I always use what I call my Next Steps checklist to make sure all my research bases have been covered.  When everything is checked off on this list, I’m pretty sure I’m ready to begin actually telling the story.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 8.  In this post, I’ll look back at the early history of writing and reveal how storytelling, which began as an oral tradition, figured out how to glom on to the new technology of linguistic symbols to expand the reach of storytellers through time and space, to reach audiences far removed from the local clan and campfire.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.
    
    

 

Post #173 June 24, 2019

“You Can and Should Judge a Book by its Cover.”

Two years ago, I upgraded my series Tales of the Quantum Corps with all new covers.  Smashwords (my ebook distributor) recommends doing this on a regular basis as a way to pump up your downloads.  To date, I’ve seen some spikes, not huge, but there has been some increased activity in downloads since I started uploading new covers.

There is an old saying: don’t judge a book by its cover.  Baloney.  We all judge books by their covers.  We have to and we should.  A good book cover captures not only the reader’s attention and interest, but when done well, captures the essence of the story itself.  A really good cover pops and can’t be ignored.  How readers respond to covers varies with each reader but there are some good practices that should be followed in designing a book cover.

Before I get into these practices, I’ll show you how the cover of one of my books has evolved.  The book is Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor, book one in my series Tales of the Quantum Corps.  Here’s the original cover…

   

It’s got the basics: the title and my name.  The image is some kind of virus particle…on a black background.  Looks ominous, befitting the story in many ways.  I liked it because it’s simple, it was easy to create, and it sort of implies something we don’t see all the time…a virus particle magnified a few hundred thousand times.  The story involves a nanoscale robot called ANAD, which is able to function at the same size scale as a virus…in fact, in the book I imply that ANAD is derived from and functions as a programmable virus.  So the image fits the story.

I upgraded the cover to the following…

The new cover is richer visually, more stimulating.  We’re still at the level of atoms and molecules (remember the story hasn’t changed) but now it looks like some kind of vortex or whirlpool has trapped all the atoms.  There’s still the title and author’s name, but now I’ve added the fact that it’s part of the Tales of the Quantum Corps, implying the existence of other stories. 

Only time will tell if the new cover stimulates even more downloads.  Or whether it’s really an improvement at all.  With that, let’s look at some good practices in book (especially ebook) cover design.

Digital Publishing 101 has a web site that offers some well-thought out tips and techniques for cover design.  In particular, the authors speak of 3 critical elements of book covers:

Background

Image

Type

 

Background:

Your cover should have a background color, texture or image rather than being plain white. Plain colors can be a bit dull so consider using a graduated color background or a background image. A good quality image will add a professional look provided it doesn’t conflict with other elements and provides strong contrast for the typographical elements.

 

Image:

Some book covers can work well without an image if the other elements work together. But a strong image can lift your cover design, give it a focus and convey something important about the book’s subject or style. As with background images, make sure this image is of high quality and consider using a stock photo library if you don’t have anything suitable. The image must work with both the background and, importantly, the type. If you need to use an amateur image, you can often improve it with smart cropping or special effects such as fading but don’t overdo these: Like the use of too many fancy fonts, it can end up looking, well, amateurish.

 

Type:

Typography is a real art and sets the best book designers apart from the rest. On covers, effective typography is perhaps the single biggest success factor. It must suit the book’s genre and, most importantly, be clear and readable at the smallest scale.

The top half of the cover is prime real estate so, as a general rule, use it for your main type area. You’re unlikely to be able to fit in much more than the title and author, with perhaps a short subtitle or series cover line visible in the larger images. Non-fiction titles might be better to drop the author to free up space for a subtitle unless the author is well-known.

Covers are the one place you can forget about working with the narrow range of e-reader- and web-friendly type styles because the cover type will only appear in an image. The sorts of fonts that work for covers are quite different from the fonts that work best for body type. For instance, readable body type is fairly open while strong headline types are tighter with less white space and, often, more height. You should only use one or two fonts on a cover and they need good size and contrast against the background and images.

There are lots of great sites for fonts on the internet. One which specializes in good quality free fonts is Font Squirrel (www.fontsquirrel.com).

 

Spend some time on your book covers.  Or engage the services of a professional.  Smashwords highly recommends using the services of a pro.  I’ve elected to do my own covers for the main reason that I know the story better than anyone.  But probably, I’d benefit from a professional approach as well.

 

The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 1.  We’ll be looking at how much research is enough for you tell your story believably.

 

See you then.

Phil B.

Post #172  June 3, 2019

“Book Titles: What’s in a Name?”

Every book has a title.  Some are good and some aren’t.  What makes an effective book title?  Let’s explore the art of giving a title to your book.

First, let’s ask a question.  What purpose does a book title serve?  I can think of several.

1.  Identifies the work.
2. Captures the story in a few words. 
3. Grabs the reader’s attention.  Brings the reader in.
4. Sells the book.
5. Genre compatibility 

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

1. Identifies the work. This should go without saying.  You want to select a title that positively and uniquely identifies your book.  Name authors don’t have this problem as what is really being sold is the brand name of the author.  Your title should identify the book along several dimensions (see #5 below).  Is it science fiction?  Mystery?  Romance?
2. Captures the story in a few words, maybe even one.  My best-selling book (in Smashwords downloads) is called Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor.  Not a few words but it does identify the main character and a key location or element of the story.  One of my latest sf novels was entitled The Farpool.  Probably a better title.  Punchier and with a word that you don’t see or hear very often.  Which leads me to….
3. Grabbing the reader’s attention.  Here’s one title I like because it immediately grabbed my attention: Freakonomics.  It’s a juxtaposition of two words that aren’t normally put together.  It seems just wacky enough to make you want to look a little closer.  By the way, one-word titles are all the rage now:  Twilight, Endurance and so forth.  Be careful with this, though.  Your word choice should reflect the story in some way, and ideally, it should offer an unusual perspective or angle or alternative use of that word, maybe in a way you never thought of before…something to get the reader thinking: “Hmmm, maybe I should look at this more closely.”
4. Sells the book.  The whole purpose of a book title (and it should be amplified and work well with the cover too, by the way) is to sell the book.   Readers want to know what to expect when they see your title.  You probably wouldn’t name your science fiction masterpiece Galactic Love.  Love is a word associated with romance, not sf.  Frank Herbert named his best-known book Dune, which is a great title.  It neatly captures images of lots of sand, deserts, brings to mind the kind of cultures that develop and live in deserts, the importance of water, etc.  This one simple word carries quite a punch and performs multiple duties in identifying and selling the book.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s a great read as well. 
5. Genre Compatibility.  This idea is alluded to above, when I mentioned how you wouldn’t normally put “Love” in the title of a science fiction story.  Readers want to be reassured that what they’re potentially buying is what they expected.  Titles help provide that assurance.  One way to do this is to, as an example, go through the science fiction section of your local bookstore or your favorite web site and list common words in the titles.  That’ll give you some idea of what words to use in your titles. 
    
   As an example, here’s a list of Arthur C. Clarke titles from my bookshelf, right beside me:
   2001: A Space Odyssey
   The Songs of Distant Earth
   The Fountains of Paradise
   Rendezvous with Rama
   A Fall of Moondust
    
   What do you see in common with these titles?  References to space, earth, cosmic things.  And if you look at the covers of these books, you’ll see images of Earth and astronomical settings. 
    
   Think of Carl Sagan’s wonderful novel Contact.  It’s one word.  It implies extraterrestrials and aliens and a whole syndrome of thought that surrounds these subjects.  And it works with the cover too: some editions show huge radio telescopes and stars in the background.  There’s no doubt what you’re getting when you look at this book or buy it.
    
   Titling books, fiction or nonfiction, is both art and science.  It isn’t hard to generate titles.  Lots of writer web sites will do that.  The art comes in when you choose your title to meet the 5 conditions I’ve listed above.  
    
   One web site I consulted as research for this post even adds discoverability as a key concern.  The site talks in great detail about keyword search and search optimization as other factors to consider, in this age of digital content and ebooks.  But that’s a topic for another time. 
    
   The Word Shed will take a three-week hiatus from June 3 to June 15.  It’s vacation time. The next post comes on June 24.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.