Archives for July 2010

A Massive Conspiracy in Fiction Writing

July 22, 2010 by Randy Ingermanson 10 Comments

Today we’ll analyze a one-sentence storyline for a novel involving a massive conspiracy. But don’t tell anyone!

Seth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hey Randy, I’m new to this website, but I’ve already learned lots from your articles. I just recently started looking at the blog page, and was wondering if you were still doing one sentence critiques. I noticed that they were in March, so I may be behind the times, but hopefully you can still take a look at this.

“An adopted boy’s search for his real parents accidently uncovers a massive conspiracy that may threaten millions of lives, including his.”

Randy sez: I periodically run clinics on this blog to critique one-sentence storylines. It’s a great exercise for every novelist, and you can always improve. The last clinic was in March and we worked for a couple of weeks on submitted storylines. We certainly didn’t run out of them, but we just couldn’t do them all. Let’s analyze Seth’s storyline in detail, a few words at a time:

“An adopted boy’s search for his real parents…” is a good way to start out a storyline. It’s been done before, of course, but no story is ever completely original, so that’s not a bad thing. A search for parents strikes an emotional chord in just about everyone. This sounds like it’s going to be an intensely personal story.

“…accidently uncovers a massive conspiracy…” now switches gears and shows that the story is both personal and public. That’s good. Any story that threatens lots of people is going to be interesting to a large group of readers. But the wider the scale of the story, the more important it is to personalize it. It’s a lot easier to care about the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War when you are personally invested in the lives of Scarlett and Melanie.

A couple of issues that should be addressed:

The correct spelling of the word should be “accidentally.”
It’s not clear to me that it matters that the discovery is accidental. If not, then it’s best to trim this word, because every single word in a one-sentence storyline needs to be necessary. A 14-word sentence is better than a 15-word sentence, all other things being equal.
Massive conspiracies are good stuff, and they form the foundation of many good novels. However, there’s the rub — many other good novels have had massive conspiracies. The editor is going to be asking, “How is this massive conspiracy different from all other massive conspiracies?” Seth, you MUST answer that question in this storyline. Unless you do, the editor thinks, “It’s been done. No thanks.” So what you really need to do is explain in a few words what the massively conspiring conspirators hope to achieve. Do they want to destroy the Federal Reserve? Emasculate all the fighting men in the US Army? Corner the market on rum-flavored teddy bears? Each of these is a different (and undoubtedly fascinating) story. Each of these is UNIQUE.

“…that may threaten millions of lives, including his.” It’s a fine thing to threaten millions of lives in a novel. It’s an even finer thing to threaten the life of the protagonist. However, this is not something you want to tell. It’s something you want to show.

Just as an example, suppose that I have a story about a terrorist plan to explode a nuclear weapon at the Super Bowl (the storyline of one of Tom Clancy’s novels, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS.) If Tom wrote a one-sentence storyline, it might go like this: “Arab terrorists create a nuclear bomb with plans to detonate it at the Super Bowl in Denver.”

With that level of detail, it’s really not necessary to add a phrase about the number who might be killed: “Arab terrorists create a nuclear bomb with plans to detonate it at the Super Bowl in Denver, which may threaten millions of lives.”

See the difference? When you tell specifically what the disaster is, you don’t also have to tell what the horrible consequences are. You also don’t need to add that the hero of the story also might get killed.

If the storyline were a bit more specific, I could make some tweaks to tighten it up. However, in this case, I don’t know enough about the story to know exactly how to do that. I don’t know what sort of conspiracy this is or what the possible consequences are. So all I can say is this: Make it more specific and you’ll have a good strong storyline.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

On Beefing Up Your Novel

July 21, 2010 by Randy Ingermanson 11 Comments

in Fiction Writing

If your novel is too short, is there an easy way to make it longer? How do you beef it up without adding lard?

Rob posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

This is a follow-up to the question about scene/chapter length. When writing a novel with short scenes (i.e. 1000 words) it seems you run into the challenge of coming up with MORE scenes to make a full novel. For me, I always feel like I’m coming up short. If I want to write a 100,000-word novel with 1000-word scenes, that means coming up with 100 scenes. Seems like a lot of scenes to invent. I’m tempted to make scenes longer just so I don’t have to work so hard. 🙂

Is there a method to “beefing” up a plot?

Randy sez: The trend these days is to shorter novels. Ten years ago, the number I heard for a full-length novel was about 100,000 words. When I went over 110,000 (which was most of the time), my editors let me know I was stretching the budget. When I went over 120,000 they either got a special dispensation from the pope or they told me to cut back. (Hint: cutting back is easier.)

So these days, if you come in at 90,000 words you’re fine. So rather than “beefing” up your novel, you really want to “tofu” it down.

If you can’t come up with that many words, making scenes longer isn’t the answer. Each scene has a natural length. That may be 100 words. It may be 3000 words. I’m pretty sure I’ve written scenes that short and that long. If you try to make a scene longer or shorter than its natural length, you distort the story.

What do you do if you need more words than you’ve got? The simple answer is to add another story thread. Your main story focuses on your lead character (or lead pair if you’re writing a romance). If you want to add another story thread, then add another major character, write a one-sentence summary for his story, then expand that to a one-paragraph summary, then expand that to a full page synopsis. Make sure that this story thread intersects with your main story thread at every possible opportunity.

Add more story threads until you have enough of that pesky “beef” in your story. I typically have 3 to 5 viewpoint characters in a novel. Of course, one of these dominates the story, but generally one or two others have really major roles to play.

That’s how I add beef to a story, because I’m a character-oriented writer. I’m wondering if plot-oriented writers (or setting-oriented or theme-oriented writers) have a different way to approach this. What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Do you have any tricks and tips for adding beef without adding lard? Leave a comment and share your secrets!

Blog of the Day: Those of you who’ve been following my thoughts on the brave new e-future we face in publishing may find this blog post from a couple of days ago of high interest: “Publishing is the New Literacy” by blogger Jane Friedman on her “There Are No Rules” blog at Writer’s Digest.

Does An Author Choose His Title?

July 20, 2010 by Randy Ingermanson 10 Comments

in Publishing

If you publish a book, are you allowed to choose your own title? Or do you sell your soul to the publisher when you sell your book?

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I was wondering how much control do authors have over the title of their books. I have read from authors like J.K. Rowling and D.J. MacHale that they picked their titles for their books, I have read from Bryan Davis that his editor changed the title of his trilogy from what he was calling it. You even mentioned you have had your editor change the title of one of your books. So could you help clear this up for me, thank you.

Randy sez: Many titles get changed by the publisher. Remember that when a royalty-paying publisher buys the rights to your book, they’re investing a substantial amount of money — typically several tens of thousands of dollars. If you were investing that much money, you’d want to make sure you did everything possible to recoup that investment. That’s why publishers think they should have a say in your title. Of course, they’re right.

My own titles have often been changed by the publisher or at the request of my publisher, generally after consulting with me. Here is a list of all my published books, with their original titles:

WHO WROTE THE BIBLE CODE? (a nonfiction book on what was then a controversial topic). My original title was GOD, STATISTICS, AND THE BIBLE CODE. The publisher thought that was a so-so title (they were right) and made a number of suggestions. I felt that none of them really worked any better, so I made some suggestions of my own, and the publisher accepted one of them. (It was a takeoff on Richard Elliott Friedman’s bestselling book WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?).
TRANSGRESSION. My original title was AVATAR, which the publisher felt sounded too New-Agey. It’s possible they were right, but I always thought that my title fit the book better. My publisher gave me four alternative titles to choose from. I chose TRANSGRESSION from that list. Personally I still like AVATAR, but now that James Cameron has done a blockbuster movie with that title, I don’t think I can ever republish the book under its original title.
OXYGEN. This was my first book co-authored with John Olson, and his original title was O2. That is the chemical name for the usual form of oxygen that you breathe and we thought it was a very cool title. Our editor knew it wasn’t a good title, and he quickly convinced us that OXYGEN was a better one. I believe he was right. He also made sure that we got a really good cover for the book and he worked hard to make sure that it was a commercial success. I may as well thank him publicly here, because he did a great job on the book. Steve Laube, thanks — you made OXYGEN fly.
THE FIFTH MAN. Again, I co-authored this with John, who wanted to call it FIFTH MAN. Our publisher wanted to add the word “the” in front of that. So far as I’m concerned, either title is fine.
PREMONITION. The original title for this book was QUEEN OF HEAVEN. My publisher thought this carried some implications they didn’t want, and they asked me for some alternatives. I gave them several, but none of us were excited about any of them. Then, because this book was a sequel to TRANSGRESSION, I decided to go for phonetic similarity and I suggested the title PREMONITION. My publisher liked this and I think that it was a good title and fit the storyline well.
RETRIBUTION. This was my original title and my publisher thought it worked well, especially since it was a sequel to PREMONITION. This was my first book published with the exact same title that I gave it at the outset. My publisher also gave it a really nice cover, for which I really ought to thank them. Thank you, Zondervan!
DOUBLE VISION. This was my original title for the book and the publisher liked this one so we kept it. The book was about quantum mechanics and ambiguity and it also featured a love triangle in which an engineer with Asperger’s syndrome has to choose between two women, each very different, but each very appealing to him. The title was suggested to me by the song “Double Vision” by Foreigner. (What can I say? I grew up in the 1970s.) Each of the 5 parts of the book bore the name of a song: “Point of Know Return,” “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Dust in the Wind,” “The Grand lllusion,” and “Double Vision.” Remember that titles can’t be copyrighted, but lyrics can, so I took care to quote no lyrics in the book.
WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. This was the original title suggested by the publisher when they asked me to write the book. There is a slight ambiguity in the title. Is it a book to help dummies know how to write fiction? Or is about writing “fiction that dummies will like”? Plenty of people have pointed out this ambiguity. My view is that the “for dummies” line of books is so well known that there really isn’t any ambiguity. In any event, the book was their idea, so I thought they should get to write the title. When we mapped out the book, my editor and my co-author and I were completely agreed on one point — we wanted it to be the highest quality we could possibly make it. We didn’t want a dumbed-down book, whatever the title might say. We gave it our best shot.

Those are all my published books. As you can see, most of them got their titles changed in transit. In some cases, that was an improvement. In other cases, it was a wash or possibly a slight disimprovement. I don’t think any of the changes made things clearly worse. In talking with other authors, I am pretty sure that most of them have had similar experiences.

So, Tim, you might as well get used to the idea now that your editor might not like your title. She might insist on changing it. She might be right.

This is one reason why my one-time mentor, Sol Stein, strongly recommended AGAINST putting the title of your book in the header of your manuscript. As Sol said, suppose you have a perfectly dreadful title for your book. (I think the example he gave was ARKHOPPER or something like that.)

Imagine your editor is reading your manuscript and is really getting into your story, but every time she flips the page, she sees ARKHOPPER right at the top. If your manuscript has 400 pages, that is 400 negative jolts to your editor’s system.

Why do that to her? Why do that to yourself? Just put your last name in the header of your manuscript. That’s enough. (If your last name is “Arkhopper” you might want to consider changing it.)

Blog of the Day: For those of you interested in my recent column on The Future of Publishing, you might be interested in the posts on Steve Laube’s blog for today and yesterday. Steve raises a lot of interesting issues, and one of them that I hadn’t thought about at all has to do with foreign rights and how to respect those in a world where an e-book can technically be delivered anywhere on earth, but perhaps not legally. (Yes, this is the same Steve who once acquired several of my books. He’s now an outstanding agent who represents several of my author friends.)

Ain’t Got Good Grammar?

July 19, 2010 by Randy Ingermanson 8 Comments

in Organizing

Can you get a novel published if your grammar ain’t no good? That’s a good question and it deserves a better answer than a mere “yes” or “no.”

Elizabeth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

My question is about grammar. I’ve just started to take my writing seriously and noticed that my grammar is not all that great and needs some real improvement. I’ve tried reading grammar books, but they seem to confuse me as to what I should do. Do you have any suggestions on this? I know I need to have good grammar to get published later on in life.

Randy sez: This is a good time to talk about your strengths and your weaknesses. Everybody has strengths. Everybody has weaknesses. Is it better to focus on the strengths or the weaknesses?

Strengths are those things that you do Xtremely well. An editor says “yes” to your book because of your strengths. But no writer on the planet is strong in everything. Some writers are strong on plot and only mediocre on character. Some are the opposite. Some writers shine on dialogue. Some on their creation of a compelling Storyworld. Readers have different tastes, but they typically gravitate to writers who are strong in what they like, even if they’re not so strong in other areas. If you’re going to get published, you need to be strong in at least one area.

Weaknesses are those things that you do Xtremely badly. An editor says “no” to your book because of your weaknesses. A weakness is a show-stopper, and you will find it very hard to get published if you have any serious weaknesses.

The strategy I teach for improving as a writer is the two-pronged approach:

Identify your strengths and find ways to make them even stronger. Never outsource this, because if something is truly your strength, then it’s almost impossible to find somebody else who could do it better than you do.
Identify your weaknesses and find ways to bring them up to the acceptable level. Don’t waste time trying to turn a weakness into a strength. That would be pointless and would waste vast amounts of time. Either find a resource that can teach you how to make your weaknesses at least acceptable, or else outsource this task.

Just as an example, if I were back in high school and wanting to go out for a sport, it would be idiotic to try for the weightlifting team (I’m a beanpole and always will be) or the baseball team (my eyesight is too bad). But my lean physique makes me a good candidate for the track team and I’d be ideal for the 5k, 10k, or marathon. It would make all kinds of sense to do mostly endurance training (my strength), with just enough weight training (my weakness) to give me a decent finishing sprint, and with no attempt at all to improve my eyesight (my other weakness).

Now moving on to Elizabeth’s actual question, her weakness is grammar. Elizabeth, you have two choices:

Door #1: Improve your grammar to the point where it’s acceptable. You’ve tried this and it isn’t working. Stop trying.

Door #2: Hire a freelance copyeditor or proofreader to bring your grammar up to snuff. This seems to make the most sense to me.

The bottom line on weaknesses: Either get the help you need to become acceptable, or outsource it to somebody for whom it’s a strength.

The bottom line on strengths: Focus a substantial amount of your effort on becoming world-class in your strength. Most of the rewards go to those who are really, really, really good in one particular thing. Remember that nobody can possibly be really, really, really good in everything. Pick one strength or two and focus your efforts on those.

Get Retribution for 99 Cents

July 17, 2010 by Randy Ingermanson 2 Comments

in Uncategorized

I recently discovered that copies of my novel RETRIBUTION are currently on sale at CBD.com for only 99 cents. Many of my fans believe, as I do, that RETRIBUTION is the best novel I’ve published.

RETRIBUTION is book #3 in my City of God series, a time-travel series of novels set in first-century Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish Revolt. Two of the characters, Rivka and Ari, are visitors from the 21st century, stranded in the first century after a physics experiment gone horribly wrong.

Rivka is a nice girl from San Diego who grew up in a Messianic Jewish family and then went to work on an archaeological dig in Israel.

Ari is a nice guy who grew up in Israel and got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics and got mixed up with a not-so-nice experimental physicist and wound up on the wrong side of a wormhole with the girl of his dreams.

Both Rivka and Ari know that Jerusalem is going to burn and all her people will be killed or carted off into slavery in just a few years. So they ought to be united in doing everything they can to get out of town.

But they have a serious personal conflict. They’re married, and they’re really, truly in love with each other. But Rivka is a devout Christian girl and she’s never going to change. And Ari is a devout atheist turned devout agnostic turned loyal Jew, and he’s never going to change. So they’ve got some religious differences and there’s no way in the world to resolve those.

Plus, Ari’s got some physics skills that come in incredibly useful to his friends who are plotting to destroy the Roman overlord. Ari’s a pacifist, but he’s also a loyal Jew and he would do anything to help his people. Rivka is a historian and she knows beyond any doubt that Rome can’t be beat, and the best thing to do is run for the hills. Both of them are right and both of them are wrong, because there just isn’t any good answer.

Rome is intent on exacting retribution from the Jewish freedom fighters. And in this part of the world, at this time in history, Rome gets whatever she wants.

I’m a physicist myself, but it’s not widely known that I also have a long interest in history and I know an awful lot about Jerusalem in the first century. I spent about 20 years researching the books for my City of God series. I taught myself to read Hebrew. I follow the world of Israeli archaeology — and got myself mixed up in one the biggest archaeological fights of the decade, the debate over the alleged Jesus family tomb. Why? Because I like to. Some people are just sick, sick, sick research puppies. I’m one of them.

You can find out about all of my books on the Books page of my personal web site.