Post #186 September 30, 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.  One of my best-selling books (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 is 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 next post to The Word Shed comes on October 7, 2019.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.
    
    

 

 

 

 

Post #185 September 23 2019

“Handling Rejections Part II”

You get a letter in the mail or an email: “Thanks for letting us review your story.  Unfortunately, we feel it is not quite right for us.  Good luck in the future.”  Or words to this effect.  Congratulations.  You’ve just been rejected.  It’s an occupational hazard for every writer who puts his or her work out for consideration.

Nowadays, much of my work is published online so I don’t have to deal with rejections, just the ever-shifting daily download numbers.  But I still write short stories and novelettes that I try to place with print publications.  And from them: lots and lots of rejections. In fact, I recently started shopping around an sf short story called ‘Upload Incompatibility.’  In one of the rejections, the editor said he liked my prose but the narrative didn’t hold him. 

This led me to make several changes, after which I re-submitted to another market.  And back came a standard rejection letter. 

How should a writer deal with this?

Emma Bowd, on the website writersandartists.co.uk has this to say about rejection letters:

(My editor) used to tell me that being a writer is like being a farmer – you work for many years on a product (without income) and then, when it’s time to go to market, you literally do not know if there is going to be a glut of your product or no demand at all.

She also wisely said that the book would “end up where it’s meant to be” – and painful as it was, I completely agree with this. It is so wonderful to be with a publisher that completely ‘gets’ my work and is so very supportive of me. 

So the message is, keep going and believe in your work. Always revisit your manuscript after a rejection letter and take what positive feedback you can from it and tweak accordingly. A manuscript is an evolving entity. And you are the only person in charge of its destiny.

All good advice, especially the part about learning from each rejection whatever you can and tweaking accordingly.

Many years ago, I submitted a story to the old OMNI magazine.  The science fiction editor sent me an interesting rejection.  He liked my writing and suggested that I had the makings of a decent novel but needed to change the focus from one of character relationships to the hard science at the core of the story.  I didn’t (and still don’t) fully agree with this assessment but he was honestly trying to put me in a position of future commercial success.  By the way, this basic story has become the nucleus of a new science fiction novel that will appear in 2020, entitled Monument.  Look for it.

Writers can’t take rejection letters personally…of course, that’s easier said than done, if you put any real effort into your work.  It can’t be personal.  The editor doesn’t know you.  They know only the work.  Some editors have informed me that my work or my story was a very good story, polished, engaging, well-written, just not quite what the publication was looking for at that time.  Editors always say study the publication first.  Read copies.  That way you’ll know what they’re looking for.  And that makes sense.

I’m working on a science fiction short story now entitled “The Battle of the Gauntlet.”  It’s not finished and naturally, it hasn’t been sent around yet; I’m collecting feedback from fellow writers and friends whose opinions I value.  I have made some changes based on this feedback, so hopefully the story will be better for it.  Soon, I’ll send this story out and see what happens.

I’ll leave you with some Do’s and Don’ts about handling rejection.  This is from author J.T. Ellison and her website jtellison.com:

Do – Give yourself permission to be upset when a rejection comes. If a piece of chocolate or an ice cream cone will make you feel better, then have it. Enjoy a drink with friends. Be social.

Don’t – Comfort yourself with destructive behaviors, like going out on the town and ending up blowing in a tube. It’s just a rejection letter, not the end of the world.

Do – Go for a walk.

Don’t – Burn your manuscript, shred your notes, and delete all the files on your computer. Seriously.

Do – Take a day off from writing and read a book.

Don’t – Call all your friends and tell them you’ve decided not to be a writer anymore.

Do – Step away from the computer for a few hours, allow yourself a break from the cycle.

Don’t – Call the originator of your rejection to ask why they didn’t like your project. Really, that’s just not a good idea.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on September 30, 2019. 

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

Post #184 September 16 2019

“The Eureka Gambit”

As a writer who feels more comfortable in longer fictional forms, I often have to plan new projects ahead by several years.  In this blog, I’ve posted recently about my upcoming series Quantum Troopers Return (first episode available in February 2020) and an upcoming science fiction novel called Monument.  But I’ve actually been planning projects further out than that.

One on my next projects, likely not available until late 2020 or more likely in 2021, is called The Eureka Gambit.  It’s an alternate history novel, a sort of what-if? story.

Below is an excerpt from my notes on Chapter 1.  I’ve actually plotted and outlined the entire story, but there is still a lot of background and research work to do.  Note the date in the chapter intro.

Chapter 1

Dasht-i-Kavir Desert, Iran

Lat. 35 North, Long 53 East

November 26, 1943

0235 hours

It is past midnight in the Iranian desert, some 150 km from Tehran.  A convoy of trucks waits patiently alongside a cleared landing strip in the desert hardpan.  There is a sound of distant aircraft.  Suddenly, landing lights come on, outlining the crude runway.  Then, one after another, three Junkers Ju-52 small transports bearing no markings make bumpy landings on the strip, a location their maps call Alpen-Eins.  The landing lights go out immediately and the scene is then illuminated by lights from the trucks.

 

Standartenfuhrer Otto (‘Scarface’) Skorzeny emerges from one of the planes and witnesses a hurried transfer of men, equipment, guns and munitions from the planes to the trucks.  There are nearly a hundred men, three detachments of Operation Long Jump, all handpicked from SS Battalion Friedenthal for this special mission.  Their target: Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, all meeting in two days in Tehran at the Soviet legation.  The gathering is code-named Eureka.

Skorzeny knew that an advance party of six German radio operators  had already dropped by parachute near Qum, 60 km (37 mi) from Tehran. An existing Abwehr network had been set up in a villa in Tehran. From this location, the German observers had radioed numerous intelligence reports back to Berlin. A second group of operatives, led by Skorzeny, had now been dropped into Iran for the actual kidnap attempt in late November.

In Tehran, the Abwehr field station had readied a villa and a warehouse for their stay. The first reconnaissance group had traveled by camel, and were loaded with weapons. They would stay at the villa. The second group would be led by Skorzeny himself and would be housed in the warehouse.

Skorzeny supervises the transfer and loading of gear, discusses conditions with White, Gold and Black detachment commanders (Obersturmfuhrers) Hans Eisler, Jurgen Holtz and Fritz Born, and reviews the latest intel on Soviet, British and American security force deployments in and around Tehran.  Consulting crude maps by flashlight, they discuss the best route into Tehran to their safe house, their weapons and ammunition supplies, the forecast weather and the best exfiltration route, for they fully expect to be back at Alpen Eins with their special ‘cargo’ in less than three days.

 

There is a sudden commotion on a nearby road.  Detachment troops have spotted an old bus wheezing along the road in the middle of the night.  It’s a routine passenger bus, en route overnight to the nearby town of Samnan.  At Skorzeny’s orders, the German commandos flag down the bus, order all passengers off for interrogation, and then commandeer the bus for their own use.  The passengers are marched off into the desert (there are some sixteen of them, men, women and two children).  We hear staccato burps of machine guns in the distance.  The commando detail escorting the passengers returns to the convoy.  The passengers don’t come back.  They have all been executed and left in the desert.

 

Finally, the transfer is done.  The trucks form up into a crude convoy with the bus in the middle.  Several dozen troops board the bus.  It will be taken to the safe house in Tehran that is their destination.  The convoy gets underway, even as the Ju-52 transports are revving engines and preparing to take off again into a black, moonless night sky.

 

The last of the planes is airborne and the landing lights are doused.  But a small crew stays behind to gather up all evidence of their work.  The runway lights and markers will be used again in three days, for if all goes well, the convoy will return with their hostages in tow and the planes will be used to exfiltrate them to distant places, ultimately to a castle in the Austrian Alps, guests of the Third Reich. 

 

The convoy moves quickly through the desert and approaches Tehran before sunup. The trucks scatter and disperse to take different routes into the city, though they will all wind up at the same place.  Their destination: an abandoned warehouse on Mehrabad Street, down the street from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Ascension. The trucks all contain various innocuous-looking gear and even farm produce to cover their real cargo. 

 

One truck encounters a Soviet military checkpoint as they enter the city.  There is high tension as the Soviet troops (part of a 3000-man contingent of Red Army, NKVD, Interior Ministry and Border Patrol troops) examine the truck, its crew and cargo, and their (forged) papers.  But the Germans manage to elude or pass through the checkpoint, thanks to Iranian sympathizers who ride with them.  One Iranian is even a local police chief and he vouches for the truck and its equipment as needed to support crowd control for the upcoming conference.

 

After some discussions and consultation with headquarters, the Soviets let the truck pass. 

 

The truck eventually reaches Mehrabad Street, which is mostly deserted at this early hour.  Skorzeny gets out, hears the local call to worship from loudspeakers of a nearby mosque and brusquely orders the truck to be quickly off-loaded and hidden.  Then, over the next hour, the other trucks and men of the convoy and appear at the warehouse and do the same.  The other detachment commanders have safely made it into the city without major incident.  Skorzeny knows the easiest part of Operation Long Jump has been successfully completed. 

 

As the men check off and stow their gear and bed down to lie still for the daylight hours, Skorzeny and his commanders go over the details of the next phase carefully, reviewing every little detail: the route to the Soviet Embassy compound, likely security deployments, the floor plan of the critical buildings, the timing, the weather, traffic conditions in that part of Tehran, their supplies and route out of the city back to Alpen Eins.

 

Finally, exhausted but unable to relax, Skorzeny walks outside with Fritz Born and they  reminisce about the operation they just finished several months before, rescuing Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans.  Skorzeny opines that Mussolini was a breeze. 

They both know that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt will be much harder targets.  The sun comes up over the ornate gold dome of the Greek church, they see churchgoers beginning to appear and both hear the wailing of the muezzin admonishing Muslims to come to a nearby mosque.

 

“Perhaps, we too should be praying,” Skorzeny mutters, dousing his Sulima-brand (Turkish) cigarette.  They both laugh at the idea and duck back inside. 

 

 

So that’s the excerpt and this is a good example of how I outline a novel chapter.  From what you have just read, I should be able to write a 15-20 page chapter, with characters and appropriate background to kick this story off.  I expect to begin writing this one next fall, at the latest.

Look for it in early 2021.

The next post comes on September 23.  See you then.

Phi. B.

Post #183 “Novels and Short Stories” September 9, 2019

I’ve been writing novels and short stories since the late 1970s.  I’m more comfortable with the longer form.  I’ve often asked myself why this is. 

Short stories can range in length from a few thousand words to maybe 15,000 words.  Anything longer tends to be called a novelette or a novella by industry.  For round figures, let’s say a short story should be less than 10,000 words.  That’s about 30 plus pages using average type and font.  So the whole story has to be set up and delivered in that length.

For comparison’s sake, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) calls a short story something no longer than 7500 words.

Whether a novel or a short story, any story has to have some kind of plot, with one or more characters, some kind of problem to solve and some obstacles to solving it.  A novel is more expansive in laying this out.  Here’s one of the main differences between the two forms:

1. A short story sets the character right in the middle of the problem immediately. 

A novel has some luxury in the way it opens, setting the character in his setting and presenting him with a problem.  In fact, there may be a rising crescendo of problems in the longer form.  You can’t do that in a short story. 

Short story writers have to be sparse with words, extremely selective and make every word count and carry the story.  No long soliloquys, no luxuriating in philosophical discourses about the meaning of life and “what I did when I was four years old to make me the murderous sociopath I am today.”

1. In a short story, the character usually faces one problem.  It could be a big one or a small one, but there isn’t room or time to build a number of problems up to some cataclysmic ending.
    
   Short story characters run headlong into their predicament pretty quick, ideally on page one.  Fiction editors say (and most readers would agree, I believe) that they want to be grabbed from the very opening sentence.  There’s truth in that for novelists too, but with short stories, lay out the problem early and plunge the main character in it like he’s taking an ice bath in Sweden in January. 
    
   Novels can have subplots, all of which hopefully contribute to and lead to the main character encountering and resolving (or not) the big problem.  Short stories have one plot line and one or a few problems.  There isn’t time or space for more.
    
   Literary historians say that short stories evolved from our oral storytelling traditions, that is, from parables, fables, even anecdotes.  They’re compressed and concentrated, though they should have the same elements as any good story: exposition, complication, crisis, climax, resolution.  Sometimes the resolution part is pretty abrupt, unlike a novel.
    
    Short stories are not little novels. 
    
   The third main difference between the two forms is this:
    
2. Short stories get written, published, critiqued and turned around faster in the marketplace.  Writers get faster feedback from short stories.
    
   In my own case, I have found that my particular talent, such as it is, needs a longer form to stretch out and become manifest.  A short story is a closet, a novel is a veranda or a screened porch (if you grew up in the American South as I did).  You can’t relax with a short story.  You have to squeeze every bit of story you can out of every single word.  Thus, writing short form fiction is a great discipline for any writer, however successful they may be at it. 
    
   Now to answer my original question: why do I personally prefer novels to short stories?
    
   I like being able to explore a fictional world (especially important in science fiction) in detail and I like being able to explore more than one character and from more than one direction.  I particularly like developing parallel plot tracks that intertwine and support each other and come together in the end to slam the reader with one big aha!  It’s like juggling a lot of story “balls” at the same time but when it works, it’s a sight to  behold.  It resonates.  Hell, it virtually twangs with meaning, like a guitar string vibrating with harmonic frequencies.  I know that sounds corny but the great novelists can do that.  As for me, I’m still learning. 
    
   I write novels more than short stories and enjoy them more because I feel more comfortable in them as a storyteller.  Like many writers, I sometimes archive short stories and novelettes into story collections, if I can’t publish them in print.  I’ve done that with my online collection Colliding Galaxies, available at Smashwords.com.  There will be another online collection coming next year entitled Elliptical Galaxies, with approximately 8 stories therein.
    
   But I still like the novel form better.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on September 16.
    
   See you then
   Phil B.