Post #270 August 30 2021 “How Many Pages Should I Write Today?” Every writer faces the same question when he or she sits down at the computer in the morning: how many pages, how many words, should I write today? This is basically a matter of scheduling. For writers of novels and non-fiction books, it goes without saying that there’s no way you can do the entire work in a day or a week, probably not even in a month. You have to divide it up into chunks, mainly because you’ve got other things to do with your life along with writing. Case in point: I’m currently working on a science fiction novel called The Farpool: Diaspora. I anticipate that when the initial draft is done, it will come in at somewhere around 220 pages, when formatted for Smashwords.com. Each page runs on average about 400-500 words, so we’re talking about 115,000 to 125,000 words in total. Now, how to divide that up.... I’m doing 3-5 pages a day. That doesn’t sound like much. But it leaves me with time for other tasks and projects. Writing 3-5 pages a day takes me about 1-2 hours, depending. But it’s 15-25 pages a week. Divide 220 pages by 20 pages (on average) and you get 11 weeks, roughly about 3 months. Add another month for editing and re-writing. At the rate I have chosen, I can do a finished draft of The Farpool:Diaspora in three to four months. Plus I can work on other things and have a life. Could I write more? Of course I could. But you should choose a rate that is comfortable and sustainable over a long period, since it’s unlikely you can finish a novel-length project in a few weeks. There are some writers who bat out a draft in a single marathon session of a month but I’m not one of them. I take longer and take my time and try to do the thing right from the beginning. One the most important aspects of this writing process for me, when engaged in a lengthy work, is “staying in the story”, mentally. I find that a daily regimen like I described above is a great way to do that. Even away from my desk, I find my feverish brain cogitating on the next scene, the next sentence. Sometimes ideas for snatches of dialogue or plot variations will come to me when I’m working out, mowing the lawn, eating dinner, watching TV. I want that. Every writer approaches this differently. I’m also a detailed outliner and planner, when it comes to writing a novel, or writing anything. I’ve covered some of this in earlier blog posts, but I work from the beginning to build a fairly detailed outline, with character sketches and setting and background details readily at hand for the actual writing. Sometimes my outlines and sketches are detailed enough to be lifted and pasted into the novel text as is, or with little change. That makes life easier, as long as it advances the story. The story is everything. I’m even occasionally included an Appendix of some of this material at the end of some of The Farpool Stories, for readers who just can’t get enough detail on my imaginary world and its people. That’s a little peek behind the curtains at the logistics or the mechanics of daily writing life. I plan to do more of this sort of thing again. The Word Shed won’t publish on September 6, owing to the Labor Day holiday. My next post, on September 13, will cover details about a projected upcoming series called Terra Troopers, which should debut at Smashwords in late 2022. See you in 2 weeks. Phil B

Post #269 August 23, 2021 “Starting…” In recent days, our house has had issues with our 17-KW generator not being able to supply enough power to our AC compressor whenever the generator is running. It seems that the compressor requires about 115 amps for startup and 45 amps for running. This is at the maximum capacity of the generator to supply. We’re working on getting a new generator. Which leads me to the idea of what it takes to actually start a new novel. In the last week, I have done this. I have started on the newest novel in my Farpool Stories series. It’s called The Farpool: Diaspora and I hope to make it available in mid to late fall of 2021. Any start of a book-length work requires energy, just like our AC compressor. Along with energy, such an effort needs optimism, hope, attention to detail, determination and some kind of plan. Whenever I start a new novel, I feel a sense of infinite possibilities, and I’m not talking about that last glass of Riesling I just had. It can be a bit overwhelming. The best way I know to get a grip on that feeling and not be intimidated into putting the start off for another day is to have a detailed outline readily at hand. A few character bios wouldn’t hurt either. Structure makes the writer’s literary universe seem just a wee bit less intimidating. No race is ever won in the first few steps but the race can be lost in those steps. In the most recent Olympics (Tokyo 2020), one track and field hurdler missed his very first hurdle. He tried to finish but winning was naturally out of the question. Getting off on the right foot is important whether you’re running hurdles, swimming a 50-meter sprint or starting a new novel. It’s important not to be discouraged by the magnitude of the task before you. Most of my novels end up over 200 to sometimes 250, even 300 pages. You’re not going to be able to do that in one day. Just do a few pages every day and keep at it. Print out what you’ve done. If you’re like me, you enjoy the visual sight of pieces of paper mounting up, a tangible reminder of your progress. In anything involving a sustained effort over many weeks or months (or even years), discipline and persistence are key. There will be days when your resolve and energy flags a little. That’s okay. Don’t hyperventilate. Give yourself a day off. Then get back to it the next day. It doesn’t hurt to be OCD, like me. Writing 3-5 pages a day has now become, after many years of this, just another daily part of my life, like brushing teeth or eating lunch or working out. When that happens, you can say with some confidence that you’re actually a writer. After a month off from finishing The Farpool; Plague, it feels good to be back banging out 3-5 pages a day. Although I needed the time away from writing, it feels like an important part of me has reawakened. In the first week of my effort with The Farpool: Diaspora, I finished 25 pages of the first draft. I feel pretty good about that. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 30, 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 268 August 16 2021 “Wookies, Muggles and Other Made-Up Words” “Litor’kel ge.” This phrase comes from my made-up Seomish language, which appears in all of The Farpool Stories. It means something like “go with the flow,” or “may the currents be with you.” One of the great joys of writing (especially fiction) is the chance to make up words for effect. But as with chocolate candy and daytime television, you have to be careful not to overdo it. Too many words made-up can really make reading a story a struggle. Just look at Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, if you don’t believe me. Writers of fantasy and science fiction are probably the most accomplished at using made-up words and even whole languages in their stories. For The Farpool Stories, I even included an appendix in many of the titles that explained how the language of the sea-going Seomish people came to be. Check out the text below…. The Language Seomish is designed phonetically to carry well in a water medium. Hard, clicking consonants are common. The ‘p’ or ‘puh’ sound, made by violent expulsion of air is also common. Modulation of the voice stream, particularly at high frequencies (sounding much like a human whistle) produces the characteristic “wheeee” sound, which is a root of many words. Translation from Seomish to human languages like English requires some inspired speculation, since so many Seomish phrases seem to be little more than grunts or groans, modulated in frequency and duration. A good example is the Seomish word for Earth…Urku. After the Kel’vishtu (the Great Emigration), thousands of Seomish found themselves in the oceans of Earth. Despite differences in chemical makeup, temperature and salinity, the oceans of Earth haven’t caused great changes in the basic dialects of the Seomish language. Most Seomish words are grouped according to several characteristics: (1) Who is speaking (the personal); (2) who is being spoken to (the indicative); (3) state of mind of the speaker (the conditional); (4) the kel-standing of the conversants (the intimant). Each classification has a set of characteristic pre-consonants, to indicate the nature of the coming words, etc. Thus: 1. k’, kee, t’ 2. tch, g, j, oot 3. m’, p’, puh’ (both anger, dislike, distaste, etc), sh, sz (both joyful) 4. each kel identifies itself with a unique set of capitalized consonants, like a vocal coat of arms. Example: t’milee, or CHE’oray…Seomish versus Timily or Chory…English. Okay, so you don’t have to go to this great a length in your work. But it is fun. The key thing to remember, though, is when and where to insert made-up words. A little goes a long way. Just ask J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter stories. Here are some informal guidelines to consider when you want to insert a made-up word or phrase. 1. Are you trying to replicate a sound? In The Farpool Stories, I have a translation device called an echopod. I wanted to simulate the screeching and scratching it sometimes made when translating, so I introduced this: Shkreeeaaahhh. Hopefully you get the idea. 2. Use made-up words to inject realism. In The Farpool Stories, my characters are all marine creatures, like talking fish. Nobody would believe it if they all spoke in the King’s English (though there may have been early Star Trek episodes that did things like this). 3. Use made-up words to emphasize difference, even alienness. Once you meet the Seomish people and hear them conversing in their own clicking, honking tongue, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. 4. Always provide context nearby, in proximity to your made-up words. Take ‘muggle,’ from the Harry Potter stories. J.K. Rowling uses this word in context, so you know it refers to non-wizard folk. Some of her wizards even explain this to those who might not understand. Doing this in context is better, because it’s less jarring to the reader. Even if you didn’t know right away what “litor’kel ge” meant, you could discern the meaning from how the Seomish use it, as a sort of term of endearment or encouragement. 5. Keep the number of made-up words and phrases to a minimum. Space them out over several pages. Insert them into sentences and paragraphs where they are surrounded by English words for context. Judicious use of alien words will help the reader know that these are aliens or different kinds of people being described without interfering with the flow of the story or making the story unintelligible. Your reader will make the connections in his or her mind. Remember, your readers still speak and read English. Making up new words is the fun part of writing. Just don’t go overboard or become too enamored with the made-up words that you forget the story itself. Great as Frank Herbert’s sf novel Dune is, it sometimes takes the made-up language and words a little too far. If you can’t read and enjoy the story without having a dictionary nearby (even if there is one), you’ve gone too far. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 23 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post # 267 August 9 2021 “Chapters and Parts: Organizing Your Story” Virtually every book published, fiction or nonfiction, is divided into parts and chapters and other sections. While the publishing industry has its own guidelines on how this should be done, in this post I want to talk with you, the writer and author, about how to organize your story in ways that make sense…to you and the reader. Stage plays usually have three acts. Many teleplays for TV have 4-act structures. Let’s say you have a plot or outline of some kind. You have a narrative that starts off, builds to some kind of climax and then ends. How should it be segmented into chapters and parts? And what’s the difference between parts and chapters anyway? First off, let me say I’m not a fan of using parts instead of chapters. To me, a part is a major shift in the narrative, a major discontinuity. It’s something that chapters can do just as well. If you google the difference, the results tell you that a chapter is the details of an event, using context, characters and action. This search also produced a result telling me that a part was a subdivision of a chapter, though I’ve seen it the other way around just as often. One search result claimed that chapters were primarily used to make a book more user-friendly, which I think is true. To try to clarify this, let’s put some structure and guidelines to our discussion about structure and guidelines. I can think of 3 reasons why a chapter break (as opposed to a scene break inside a chapter) might be useful. 1. A chapter break can imply a change in location. One chapter might show events and actions in Casablanca. The next one might be on Mars. The chapter break reinforces in the reader’s mind that what is coming is different in an important way. This helps prepare the reader mentally and emotionally for a major shift in the narrative. 2. A chapter break can imply a change in time. Perhaps Chapter 1 takes place today and Chapter 2 is a flashback, showing events in the past. Or perhaps Chapter 2 is just a few days or weeks ahead. We’ve all seen films where the passage of time is graphically illustrated by spinning clock faces or newspapers flying around. These are like film versions of a chapter break. In my work, I like to begin each chapter with a little insert that indicates the place and time of the upcoming action. 3. Chapter breaks can also imply a change in character. Chapter 4 might be dealing with our hero Joe Blow and his efforts to fend off the evil Tralfamadorians (with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut). Chapter 5 might then be a depiction of Joe’s girlfriend Frieda and her efforts to grow more magic crystals to empower Joe and his superhero friends for future battles. Of course, the chapter and the narrative in general can switch back and forth. In fact, this is a good way to build tension in the narrative. But a chapter break would be a good choice in one chapter that deals mainly with Joe and the next one dealing mainly with Frieda. It separates the two in the reader’s mind. Chapters allow the storyteller to manage multiple plot lines and keep them straight more easily. Imagine a stage set in a stage play. After one scene, the lights dim and stagehands move furniture around to new positions. That’s a kind of stage version of a chapter break. I develop chapters in my stories at the tail end of my planning. First, I write down a ‘sequence of events,’ a list of things I think should happen in the story. Then I group them into whatever groups seem logical. Those groups become my chapters. In years past, I even made a table for different plot lines and wrote down in each column (row by row) what happened in that plot line. Then I would make chapters by grouping the table cells across the table into logical units. I don’t do this anymore, since I can usually get a sense of narrative flow just from my original sequence. Just remember this: chapters imply continuity and chapter breaks imply a change in that continuity. Longer books, fiction and nonfiction, need the flexibility that chapters bring to keep the reader’s interest and manage all the pieces of the narrative, forging them into some kind of coherent whole. Use chapters wisely and they’ll contribute much-needed structure to your story. Use chapters poorly and they’ll interrupt and poison the reading experience. The choice is yours. The next post to The Word Shed will come on August 16 and deal with made-up words and when to use them. See you then. Phil B.

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.