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.

Post #265 July 26 2021 “First Paragraphs, First Pages” Everyone knows that first impressions are critical. It’s just as true in storytelling as in meeting someone for lunch. In this post, I want to describe a little technique I use to make sure I cover all the bases for making a good first impression on the reader. Following is a major part of the first page of my newest sf novel The Farpool: Diaspora, coming later this year…. Three days and a handful of hours after arriving in Jupiter orbit through the Atlantic Farpool, Europa Clipper had put in at Gateway Station for some light maintenance work and re-provisioning. Alicia Wu and Evgeni Kotlas were sitting at a table in the ship’s crew’s mess, nursing a few beers. Kotlas fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution. “Looks like a fuzzy beach ball,” Wu said. “With hair—“ Kotlas pronounced himself satisfied with the view. “Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds.” “You’re assuming I have a brain…I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for Farpool school.” It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles. “Ten seconds to separation,” Sonora called. The captain scanned her boards and instruments, pronounced herself satisfied with what she saw. Europa Clipper was docked at the forward nose port of Gateway Station, a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Alicia Wu had termed it. “Three…two…one…separating now—“ There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Sonora pulsed Clipper’s aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the Station. Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As Clipper backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a-half-day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation. Okay, so that’s an excerpt from the first page. I want to introduce a little acronym to help you as a storyteller remember to attend to the most important things in your first paragraphs and the first page. It’s called A-T-P. 1. The most important thing you can do as a storyteller in your first page is capture the reader’s attention. That’s the A in ATP. If you don’t grab the reader by the collar right off the bat and say, “Pay attention…this is important!”—you may never get them to enter the imaginary world of your story. 2. The next part of the process is to set the tone. This is the T. Or call it atmosphere. Is it a menacing tone, with overtones of foreboding? A happy, expectant tone? Is it a critical, rational, explanatory narrative? Do this with well-chosen words. 3. The final part of our acronym is to create a problem. This would be the P. Set up a conflict. Create some kind of barrier or obstacle for our hero or heroes to overcome. And make it important to the hero, maybe even life and death. Let’s look at my excerpt and see how I did on these three dimensions. Capturing Attention: Right away, I establish that this is Jupiter, not some farm in Iowa. It’s quite a sight, but with serious radiation dangers. And with an expectation that our heroes are going to be descending into that hard radiation bath, there are intimations of danger coming. Also, the title of the ship and the final paragraph of the excerpt show that our intrepid crew is headed for Jupiter’s moon Europa. They’re not headed to the QuikTrip for a smoothie. Setting Tone: Look at some of the words…cauldron, seething turbulence, fry your hair, cracked golf ball, dimpled and rutted. These are not happy, joyful words. They imply danger, a bit of menace, the possibility of unexpected occurrences, hazards and perils and risks aplenty. Our heroes seem to brave but determined people. Which raises a question: why are they doing this? Creating a Problem: Re-reading this excerpt makes me think I could probably do better along this dimension. I should make their central problem more explicit in this first page. The existence of hard radiation and the obvious dangers of what they are doing are part of the problem. Actually, a few paragraphs later, we realize our crew is headed down to the surface of Europa to start boring through its ice surface to the sub-surface ocean below. In editing and re-writing this section, I may well make that more apparent earlier in the text. So, that’s A-T-P. Use this little moniker to guide you in beginning your story in a compelling and engaging way. If you attend to these initial details in telling your tale, you’ll find your readers will be more likely to be sitting on the edge of their seats, wanting to hear and read more. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 2. In this post, we’ll take a look at what’s important on making a good last page for your story. See you then. Phil B.

Post #264 July 19 2021 “Promoting Yourself as a Writer” Many of the posts I’ve made to this blog over the last few years have been related to the mechanics of writing and storytelling. But to be a real success as a modern author in today’s hyperchaotic literary marketplace, you have to network, promote and market yourself and your ‘brand.’ This is something that doesn’t always come naturally to many writers, who are often disposed to be somewhat loners and introspective, though not all of course. But I’m that way. I want to spend the next few posts looking at ways we wordsmiths can dive into the modern world of commercial writer promotion and networking and make our brands better known and successful. Toward that end, I’ve come up with five ways we can do this. 1. Start a blog, like The Word Shed. I started this blog back in late 2015. Now it’s mid 2021. Creating and managing a blog is an easy way to make yourself known and approachable to potential readers. Engaging with your readers is really what it’s all about these days…understanding what they like, what they don’t like, answering their questions, arguing about details and plots and characters, etc. Your blog should steadily encourage others to post and as the blog manager, you should try to answer as many of these posts as possible. Running a blog is like creating and nurturing a little ecosystem of readers who read and write each other, all gathered around an interest in following and supporting you as an author. This is a potentially rich source of readers and growing your readership is what every author should be aiming for. I’ve seen my own grow since 2014, when my work first appeared online, to over 48,000 downloads. 2. Build and maintain an effective web site. This is one area where I could improve. I do have an author’ website. It’s at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt. But it needs updating badly as it doesn’t show but a fraction of my work. A good author’s website should offer a nonstop library-bookstore of all the author’s available work. Mike Shatzkin, of Digital Book World, offers this checklist: – List of all the author’s books, listed chronologically and by series – Landing page for each book, including the cover, a description, reviews, excerpts, links to retail sites and other important metadata that would help readers discover the title and decide to buy – Contact page so readers can easily send an email and get a response – Email capture – Social media buttons, so readers can easily sign up to follow the author on Twitter, etc. – Calendar with upcoming publication dates and scheduled public appearances – Page with links to articles and reviews by the author, as well as references to the author on blogs and in the press In addition to these things on an author website, Shatzkin recommends that authors all should have: – Up-to-date Amazon author page – Google Plus page (which is crucial for effective search engine optimization strategy) – Twitter and Facebook (optional) Seems like a lot of work but I believe it’s worth it, to give your readers a place to browse your work and make selections…and most important, to keep them coming back wanting more. 3. Join a writer’s group, or a critique group. I did a few years ago and it was a great decision. To hang out with people who loves books and writing and who are slaving away on their own projects, to give and take constructive criticism and tips and suggestions and pointers, is priceless. It makes you realize you’re really not alone in what can be a lonely occupation. Moreover, it’s a great way to network and meet people. The group I’m in meets once a week, every Wednesday and we are always doing some kind of writing and bringing something current to read. My group keeps me on my toes and doesn’t let me lag behind or slack off. 4. Attend writers’ conferences and conventions. Yet another way to meet and network. Plus they can be just plain fun. This may require travel, and so incurs the cost and time involved in that. But done expeditiously, with proper expectations, conferences and conventions can be a great outlet for your creative juices and may well inspire you with new ideas and new friends. Writers are actually human beings and have social needs just like everybody. Some of the best conventions are genre-related, like Mystery Writers of America or Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and their World Cons. 5. Write reviews. In my own work, I’ve seen spikes in my downloads after recent reviews, spikes even in works not being reviewed. Good reviews and ratings are priceless but even bad reviews make your work noticed and notice is what it’s all about. Readers’ attention is a limited resource and it’s getting harder and harder to capture your share of that. Writing and receiving reviews (for Goodreads and others; there are dozens, if not more) is a great way to achieve notice, even notoriety. You may well find that your willingness to review another writer’s work can translate into others’ willingness to do the same…quid pro quo. Networking and promoting your author brand is essential in today’s literary marketplace and anything you can do along the lines of my five suggestions will help gain you the notice and the readers that we all want. The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 26 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post #263 July 12 2021 “Five Reasons Why You Should Judge a Book by its Cover” In this post, I want to cover some reasons why book covers are so vital to selling books to readers, whether the books are print or ebook. We all judge books by their covers…because we have to, for some very good reasons I’ll enumerate. 1. A well-designed book cover represents the story in a condensed form. It encapsulates and projects the essence of a story in a way that you can take in instantly. 2. A good book cover appeals to your emotions or evokes a feeling. The cover should talk to your readers through typography, imagery and metaphor. Using my cover above, what feelings are evoked when you look at it? If I had done my homework right, you would be feeling a sinister presence right about now. Swamps are always scary places, where creepy things crawl out of the vines and grab your ankles. Skulls evoke a sense of dread, even death. Red type might make you think of blood and gore. 3. A good book cover should grab your attention immediately, even subliminally. You’re intrigued. Getting noticed in a crowded bazaar is a challenge for any author. Whatever you can do to intrigue the browsing buyer is usually a good idea…it’ll make them take a look, maybe even a second look. That’s what you want. 4. We’re already programmed by evolution to look for human faces and forms. Not all covers have people on them, but many do, even most of them. Why? Because we instinctively respond to human faces and forms…even dead ones. 5. The cover does something unexpected. Like Salvador Dali. I always think of Dali as the master of creepy art. You look at one of his paintings and you find yourself saying, “No. That just can’t be.” We’re used to patterns and Dali was a master at taking a simple visual pattern, something we see all the time, and inserting some object or twist that immediately jars you. You cock your head and rub your eyes, disbelieving. A good book cover often has something of the same effect, hopefully not as creepy, but enough to make you look twice and study it. 6. A good book cover should also be visually pleasing. Less is more. Simple and minimal. I have too many separate visual elements in my cover above, although I think your eye is naturally drawn to the skull. Maybe just the swamp alone…. 7. Here are some more tips I found from Writer’s Digest… 10 Tips for Effective Book Covers By: dmatriccino | February 17, 2011 As more authors opt for independent publishing routes, I’m getting more questions about secrets to good book design, production, and layout. Here are the 10 biggest things I learned about book cover design. Remember: Most people in book publishing believe that a cover is a book’s No. 1 marketing tool. 1. The title should be big and easy to read. This is more important than ever. (Many people will first encounter your cover on a screen, not on a shelf.) This is such a well-worn cliche of cover design that I have a designer friend with a Facebook photo album called “Make the Title Bigger.” 2. Don’t forget to review a thumbnail image of the cover. Is the cover compelling at a small size? More people are buying books on a Kindle or mobile device, so you want the cover to read clearly no matter where it appears. You should also anticipate what the cover looks like in grayscale. 3. Do not use any of the following fonts (anywhere!): Comic Sans or Papyrus. These fonts are only acceptable if you are writing a humor book, or intentionally attempting to create a design that publishing professionals will laugh at. 4. No font explosions! (And avoid special styling.) Usually a cover should not use more than 2 fonts. Avoid the temptation to put words in caps, italics caps, outlined caps, etc. Do not “shape” the type either. 5. Do not use your own artwork, or your children’s artwork, on the cover. There are a few rare exceptions to this, but let’s assume you are NOT one of them. It’s almost always a terrible idea. 6. Do not use cheap clip art on your cover. I’m talking about the stuff that comes free with Microsoft Word or other cheap layout programs. Quality stock photography is OK. (iStockPhoto is one reliable source for quality images.) 7. Do not stick an image inside a box on the cover. I call this the “T-shirt” design. It looks extremely amateurish. 8. Avoid gradients. It’s especially game-over if you have a cover with a rainbow gradient. 9. Avoid garish color combinations. Sometimes such covers are meant to catch people’s attention. Usually, it just makes your book look freakish. 10. Finally: Don’t design your own cover. The only people who should consider designing their own covers are professional graphic designers—and even then, it’s not advisable. Bonus tip: No sunrise photos, no sunset photos, no ocean photos, no fluffy clouds. So there you have it: some ideas on book covers. The next to post to The Word Shed comes on July 17. In this post, we’ll look at some good marketing tips for ebooks, from my own experience. See you then. Phil B.