Short Story Success

Not all great writers are novelists!

Today's guest blogger, Nancy Sakaduski, is an award-winning writer and editor who owns Cat & Mouse Press and runs the Rehoboth Beach Short Story Contest. She helps writers perfect their short stories and prepare them for publication, and offers writing tips and advice through her blog and newsletters. Today she shares some tips from her new book, How to Write Winning Short Stories.

Some people assume that a short story is just a pared down novel, but that isn’t true any more than a single joke is a short version of a stand-up routine. Short stories contain many of the components of a novel, but those elements must be realized in a short format that forces discipline and economy.

Getting published establishes you as a professional and helps you build a bio. Short stories can be easier to get published because there are many outlets, including magazines, anthologies, and contests.

Contests force you to read guidelines and write to a deadline and word count, which is good practice. They are generally inexpensive to enter, and if you win, you may get cash, publication, or both. Even established writers can benefit from contests.

To get the judges’ attention, go beyond the expected. Read the tips for any contest and you will find phrases such as “stories that break the mold,” “that essential quality,” and “something new.” This means that to win a contest, you will need a memorable main character, a unique story that captivates, and a premise, situation, or setting that is unusual.

Where’s the twist? Look for a way to take your premise a step in another direction. A guy decides to rob a bank—okay, but what if when he arrives he finds a bank robbery already in process? A woman decides to break up with her boyfriend—okay, but what if he’s suddenly gone missing? Keep intensifying the conflicts and you’ll ramp up the appeal of your story.

Open with a bang. Spend the time to create a great title. Like the frame of a painting, the title should set your work off to its best advantage, not just package it. Next, craft a fantastic opening line and an attention-grabbing first paragraph. Hook readers as quickly as possible with action, dialogue, and intrigue.

Tap into a theme. Even a light, humorous story can touch on a deeper idea (“there’s no place like home,” “crime doesn’t pay,” “love is blind”), just don’t be too obvious. Let elements in the story take on greater meaning as the story progresses, so readers can discover their significance and recognize the message on their own. Theme is often revealed when characters come into conflict or when the protagonist faces the central challenge. It’s what the story “is about” at its core.

Take time with the ending. A good ending satisfies the reader, is in keeping with the genre and mood, is plausible for the characters and the story, and contains a bit of a surprise or revelation. It doesn’t have to answer every question, but it should satisfy the reader. Ideally, the ending arises naturally from the conflict in the story and often circles back to echo the beginning. The ending is where the publisher or contest judge pushes back in the chair and says “wow.”

Want more? Pick up the new book How to Write Winning Short Stories by Nancy Sakaduski - http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Winning-Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B01BHYO13E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455116883&sr=1-1&keywords=sakaduski 
and learn more about Nancy at  www.catandmousepress.com
 

So You Want To Be a Writer

Last week I shared my New Year’s resolutions with you. Now I’m curious about yours, especially if you’re thinking this is the year you become a novelist. My next few blogs will be for those who have decided to make that step – to write that book they’ve been thinking about, talking about and threatening to write.

First, let me salute your decision. Everyone wants to have written a book, but precious few are willing to devote the time and effort to create a full length manuscript. So if you’ve decided to, I want to help you get started.

What do you want to write?  The answer to that question should probably be the same as your response to: What do you like to read? If you’re a mystery fan you know what mystery fans like. If you’re a science fiction buff, you know the conventions common to the genre. If you’re read a lot of fantasy or paranormal books you have a sense of how far you can go before you exceed the readers’ suspension of disbelief.   

Beyond your genre choice, do you have a story to tell, or a point to make? Is there a social issue you want to address, or a lesson you need to share? Fiction is the idea way to do those things, but you need to know at the beginning what your objectives are. Even if your only objective is pure entertainment, you need to know that before you start writing.

You’ll also want to consider who your audience is. Who are you writing for? Will your novel appeal to men or women, young folks or more mature readers? Maybe you’re aiming at members of a particular race or cultural group. In any case, knowing your audience will help you shape your story.

So if you’ve decided you want to write a novel, spend the next week considering your genre, your theme, and your audience. In coming weeks I’ll help you figure out your story and your process. I’ll try to keep you motivated, help you find ideas and deal with those inevitable steps in the wrong direction.

Come back next week and be prepared to start writing. Time to get your first novel started.

On the Cusp of the Future

The Best Christmas Ever is finally over. Four generations gathered to open presents, eat too much and play with grandchildren some hadn’t even met yet. With the leaf in the dining room table plus two card tables we managed to seat and feed the crowd. And now everyone has arrived home safely.

What do we do after Christmas? Aside from packing away the decorations and eating leftovers, we turn our eyes to the New Year. This is when we look back and measure the accomplishments of the year past and make plans for the one coming up. This is when we make our New Year’s resolutions. I think those resolutions mean more if they are made public, so I figured I’d share mine.

I am a writer first, and I’m committed to some of the characters I’ve created. So in 2016 I resolve to publish the next Stark & O’Brien adventure. I need to continue Felicity’s story arc of emotional recovery from her knife wound. I will also complete a sequel to Beyond Blue. Those characters have been calling out to me, and I now have three story lines that can wind around each other nicely to show these detectives in more depth.

I’m also a publisher, and my goals for the business are simple in theory, but most challenging to execute. Intrigue Publishing has a dozen excellent writers under contract. In 2016 I resolve to do all I can to maximize the sales of their books and, by extension, their royalties. We have negotiated a contract with a stronger distributor and plan direct promotion to bookstores nationwide to boost sales. Scheduled contests and giveaways should help with ebook sales. And we are actively seeking new ideas to improve book promotion.

Finally, I’ve become a mentor to several new authors and I appreciate that responsibility. So for 2016 I resolve to help any interested aspiring authors get their first novel (or their next novel) plotted, written and actually finished. I’ll do much of that here, filling my blog with direction, insight and inspiration that will help new writer stick to it until they have a final finished novel on their hands.   

Well, those are this writing publisher’s New Year’s Resolutions. What are yours?

It's All About the Dialog III

Last month I wrote a bit about dialog, but it was all just mechanics. But remember that good dialog is so important to your fiction because dialog is the best place to reveal your character’s inner self.  It is also the place where you can most easily destroy your character, and your book.  I know you’ve been told that every writer should have his own individual voice.  If you want your characters to become real people, they too should each have an individual voice, and that voice should grow organically out of who that person is.

You must think of every character you create as a real person, as real as you or me.  How you speak is the result where you come from, your age, your ethnic background, your gender, whether you’re a leader or follower, and whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert.  So you need to know all of that and more about every character before he opens his mouth. Your speech is also affected by what groups you have belonged to.  For example, ex-cons and retired soldiers have distinctive speech patterns that are very different.

One final tip on making your dialog fresh and believable.  When you have a conversation written and you think it’s the way it is supposed to be, the final test is done by ear.  Read your dialog aloud.  Say exactly what you wrote, and if you find yourself tempted to change it in the reading, consider changing what is on the page.  If you stumble over an unintentional tongue twister, change that too because people don’t usually say things that are hard for them to say during conversations.  And pay attention to the word choices.  Consider this sentence from a book I was asked to critique: 

“Your sourpuss persona is rubbing off on everyone, including Whimsy.  She’s seven years old and by now you should have adjusted to being a parent—-she deserves more from you.  It’s Christmas, for pity’s sake!”   

Now, if you had written that and then read it aloud, I hope you would ask yourself - would the person who used a phrase like “sourpuss persona” also use a phrase like, “for pity’s sake?” 

The test by ear is the final test of whether you’ve written strong, believable dialog.  I hope these few tips will help you put better words into your characters’ mouths.

It's All About the Characters

Today I continue my exploration of the elements of fiction by looking at the imaginary people we create. Plots are important, setting is valuable, and it’s nice to have something to say, but fiction is ultimately about the characters.

What makes for good characters? Well, first and foremost, every character has a personality all his or her own.  The final indication of how good a character you’ve created is simply, how fully the reader feels he knows that personality, and how strongly the reader reacts to the character emotionally.  Speaking generally, good characters have four important markers.

1. They are people we recognize.  You know if it’s a good character when you say, “Hey, I know a guy just like that.  You might not be personally acquainted with any 19th century business owners, but we all know an Ebineezer Scrooge, don’t we? Is he a stereotype?  Yes… now. Are stereotypes bad?  Only if that’s as far as you take the character.

2. They are people with whom we can identify. They do the things you or I might do if we were ever in their extraordinary circumstances. If you were that smart wouldn’t you solve mysteries like Sherlock Holmes? Or have Sam Spade’s smart mouth and personal convictions?

3. They are people we can predict.  That comes from creating consistent characters.  And that comes from thinking your people through.  How do you get to know your characters that well?  One good exercise is to write your character into a number of different situations, just to see what he or she will do.  If you’ve developed them well, they may surprise you.  But then you’ll know how they’ll behave in your book or story.

4. And they are people who surprise us.  That may at first seem contradictory, but people surprise us in life all the time.  One reason is that none of us lives in a vacuum.  Our relationships and our environment shape us. My detective, Hannibal Jones, is of mixed heritage. I’ve added depth to the character by showing my readers how differently he behaves and speaks among his friends than he does in the mostly white business world of Washington. His behavior may surprise you in some circumstances, yet it’s completely consistent. As long as you can explain your character’s motivations, it’s okay for them to occasionally surprise your readers.  Consider: if the story had been told in a different order, Scrooge’s actions on Christmas day could have been as surprising to the reader as they were to the other characters.

Authors should know everything about their characters.  In fact, they should know far more than they tell the reader. You should know their history, their motives, their loves and hates, what they’re proud of and what they’re ashamed of.  That’s how they get to be consistent.

Next week I’ll talk about the importance of character names and appearances. 

It's All About The Plot III

I ended my previous blog on my approach to plotting with a mention of the secondary plot. When I write there’s always something else going on to distract our hero. Our hero has to save the world from nuclear destruction, while at the same time keeping his wife from running off or keeping his kid from using drugs or studying for that test so he can finish his degree. This is the human drama that goes on in the shadow of the larger mission. This makes it easier for the reader to relate to our hero because whatever it is, the secondary plot is something they’ve had to deal with too. It helps to complicate our hero’s life while making him a bit more human.

With all the major plot objectives in place I begin to flesh out the outline by creating a number of events I call beats. Beats, because like music and comedy, novels have a rhythm to them. Our hero faces a barrier, climbs it, rests, faces another barrier, breaks thru, rests, etc. This is how you control the pace. Moments of high tension alternate with moments of taking a breath.

Each beat is a scene, like in a play or movie, with a definite when and where the event takes place. They are the challenges our hero must face to attain his goal. They must appear in a logical progression, each leading logically to the next. They must each offer a real challenge to our hero, and they must get harder as he goes. Each time he is less sure, or at least the reader is less sure that he will succeed. 

Remember, the central conflict runs through your whole story, but it can’t be in every beat. Still, there should be conflict in every scene. So in addition to the central conflict, it’s good to have a chronic conflict. This underlying conflict can provide the opportunity for beats that don’t grow from the central conflict, offering a rest from the big picture. Chronic or underlying conflicts don’t necessarily have to be resolved at the end of the story.

You’ll also want to add internal conflicts. These scenes can really help characterization. Other beats can grow from transient conflicts. Even in scenes that require boring background exposition, transient conflicts keep the scenes from being boring.

So that’s it. I plan the order of the actual events that will take place during my hero’s journey toward success. It doesn’t need to be as obvious as The Odyssey, but that is the basic pattern. When I have enough beats to take up about 80,000 words, I’ve got a plot and it’s time to start writing. I start with a good strong hook that gets readers’ attention and tells them what kind of book it is. At the end I wrap-up of all the loose ends.

It’s as simple (and maddeningly difficult) as that.

It’s All About the Plot – II

Last week I said I’d explain how I go about plotting a story. Let me remind you that this is MY approach, and it may or may not fit your writing style.

My plots usually start with a “what if” idea. For example, the big idea for Blood and Bone came from a news story I was working on about a bone marrow donation program. I thought, “what if” someone needed a transplant and the only possible donor was missing?  My detective Hannibal would have to find the missing person.

So I have an idea of where the plot starts.  Hannibal needs to find a missing person. And I know where it ends.  Hannibal will find the missing person in time and save the day.

Now you may not have noticed, but I just gave you the outline of a story. 

Hannibal is asked to find a missing person =è Hannibal finds him and saves the day.

If I was writing something simpler, say, a fairy tale, the outline might be:

Hansel and Gretel get lost=è Hansel and Gretel get home.

This is the basic outline and from here I just add more and more detail until I’m ready to write. Notice that the story starts when the normal state of things is disturbed, and ends when the normal state is restored.   

The next step is to fill in a slightly more complex diagram:

                          Now what?                                             What now?                       

Problem presented==è much bigger problem appears --à  high speed finish=è hero saves the day.

The “problem presented” section is about a quarter of the book.  It only looks like our hero has a big problem until the second bit.  This is what I call the “now what?” point, at which our protagonist is temporarily at a loss for what to do next. (Goldfinger’s not just smuggling – he plans to rob Fort Knox.) That second bit is around half the book. At the end of that point it what I call the “what now?” point, or better yet, the “we’re doomed!” point, when all appears lost. (The Death Star is moving in and powering up!) Then the hero figures out the solution and it’s a race to the finish.  If you watch Hollywood movies with a stopwatch you’ll see they almost always use this three-act framework. For our familiar example it would look like this:

                    

Hansel & Gretel are lost=è  h & g are captured by a witch ===è  h & g escape & kill witch =è 

h & g get home.

Once I get this far I start looking for the secondary plot. Why? Well, that’s the topic for next week.

What's It All About?

I’ve been contemplating some of the questions I am often asked at writers’ conferences and clubs. It seems to me, contrary to obvious assumptions, that the simplest questions draw the most complex answers.

For example, there’s “What should I write?” If the person asking is seeing me as a fellow writer, they might really want to know what books are selling right now. If they see me as a publisher, they may really be trying to find out what my company is looking for. Either way I tend to take the questions literally. Therefore I answer the question with a question: “What do you read?” When I get a quick, strong response the rest is easy. If you’re an avid reader of romance or legal thrillers or horror tales, that’s what you should write. Write that book you really want to read. Occasionally someone is honest enough to admit they don’t read much. In which case my answer is: “Don’t write.”

Almost as often I’ll be asked something like, “What’s the most important part of a story?” Among fiction writers, this is sometimes a confusing issue. The person I’m talking with may want my take on whether fiction writing is an art or a craft (of course, it is both, and they are equally important.) Or they may be focused on the so-called elements of fiction. Perhaps they’ve written a character driven novel and are being told that a story is all about the plot. Or they have something to say, a strong theme but their first readers say it’s the dialog that pulls the reader into the story. Or they’ve created a wonderfully complex universe in their speculative fiction story, and a good friend has tried to help them by explaining that world-building isn’t what people want. They need to have a unique voice.

I get it. We all want to assemble the parts and build a sturdy novel or short story, and we want to know what part to focus most on. Sadly, the true answer is to the “most important part” question is: “All of them.” A great story with weak characters is as big a fail as wonderfully developed characters who spout weak dialog. Every one of those elements is vital to a great story. And the worst part is, you can’t even develop them separately. Those elements grow organically, like crystals, and rely on each other to grow strong. The setting helps shape the characters whose actions drive the plot that expresses the theme revealed in the dialog IF the story is being told from the right point of view.

That said, the elements of fiction can be discussed separately, and I’ll try to do some of that in the next few blogs.

Writing, Publishing... and Life

Here’s the problem: being a publisher requires a lot of focus. I’m also a professional communicator for the Defense Department. And then I am at heart a writer. People often ask me how I can ever get any writing done with all my other responsibilities.

But I’m not alone, am I? All writers are multitasking. Even if you don’t have a job to do, I’ll bet you have a family, a dog to walk or a cat to feed, friends who need you or just want to hang out, a room that needs painting or a car you should be washing. So, what do we do when this thing called life gets in the way of our passion – writing.

Well, like any addict, step one is admitting that you have a problem. The problem is that there are only so many hours in a day. It’s easy to focus on something else today. Then tomorrow something else grabs you. And the next thing you know, a month has passed without any writing getting done. Admit to yourself that your novel or short stories will never appear if you only write when you have the time.

Step two is to take a good hard look at your life. Figure out what your priorities are and you should actually list them. You should admit to yourself that there are things more important than your writing, but also determine those time eaters that are less important.

Step three is the hard part. Commitment. How much time will you give your passion? Two hours a week? Ten hours? There’s no wrong answer. You’ll write as much as you need to, but accept that you won’t be doing something else. Maybe that means you’ll miss Friday night at the club with your pals. Maybe you won’t keep up with Downton Abbey. But whatever the choice, you need to make a firm commitment to an amount of time your writing deserves and stick to it.

Then take a close look at yourself as a writer. What time of day are you creative thoughts flowing? Does your muse visit early in the morning, late at night, or mid-day during your lunch hour? Once you know that you can make a schedule. That’s right, you should pick up your calendar and block out your writing time. It should be someplace you can see it every day.

Once you’ve figured out how to keep life from getting in the way of your writing, stick to it! You’ll find that if you sit down to create every day at the same time your mind will quickly become conditioned to the schedule. When you sit down to write, the ideas will already be there, raring to go. And your writing won’t let your life get in the way.  

What Else Am I Doing Wrong?

Before the wildly successful Creatures, Crimes & Creativity Con I posted a blog about some big mistakes authors make, and during the Con there were several conversations involving that topic.

One thing we agreed on was that many writers underestimate the importance of editing. With 300,000 or so books being published every year, quality is an important discriminator for readers. Even if your story and prose are both great, if your book is poorly edited readers will not become fans and reviewers won’t want to finish reading it. I think poor editing is the most common complaint I hear about books, especially self-published and small press books.

It’s less specific, but one big mistake I think writers make is failing to get good advice. People ask their friends and family what to do with their stories, but sadly, those people are generally not experts at publishing or promotion. Those same writers often fail to take advantage of opportunities like the C3 Con, where they can sit with best-selling authors and get marketing advice from highly successful writers. There are lots of other, often free sources of reliable good advice such as social media groups and writers’ blogs. The wise author takes advantage of these resources.

Yet another major blunder some writers fall prey to is not putting enough focus on their specific market. The cool thing, as CJ Ellisson shared in her master class at C3, is that today’s social media platforms let you find and target the people who read books in your genre. And there are lots of ways to cultivate these readers beside just getting them to read, buy, read and review your work. Look at the number of writers who have built up a solid group of beta readers – those people who read their books before publication. Aside from providing valuable insight into the appeal of your story, these folks become invested in your book and that can start the word-of-mouth support you need to succeed.

I also have to list impatience as one of the biggest errors authors commit. As John Gilstrap reminded us in his keynote address at C3, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It takes almost all writers many years to become an overnight success.  By the time you hear about a writer he or she has probably already spent a lot of time working on their craft, getting published, finding their audience and building a following. You need to have a marketing plan, and you have to approach it with the long-term in mind.

I can think of three or four other big career-killing mistakes writers make, but they’ll have to wait until next week.

What's Wrong With Being Passive?

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, there are rules good writers are expected to follow.  One of the most commonly accepted rules, by editors of books and newspapers, is that good writing is always in active voice.  Recently a good friend and excellent writer raised the obvious question.  Why?

Put simply, a sentence in active voice presents the subject before the object, as in “Bill hit the ball.” In a passive sentence, the object appears first: “The ball was hit by Bill.” Passive voice often adds some form of the verb “to be” to a sentence, but one wonders why that is considered evil.  After all, people talk this way all the time.  No one will tell you that passive voice is grammatically wrong, and sometimes it just makes sense to emphasize the object of the sentence “The entire city was destroyed by that fire” makes it clear that this story is about the city, not the fire.

The fact that passive voice is very popular in governmental writing might be a clue to why the rest of the world hates it. It’s common to read that “Taxes were raised for the third straight year,” or that “the toxic waste dump was undetected for years.” What you may notice is that in the passive construction, it is very easy to leave the subject off completely.  It is consequently rather convenient to not name the person, group or entity that actually took the action. Passive sentences make it easy to obscure the blame.  You probably want your writing to be clear.  Passive writing helps a sentence be more vague.

Journalist Sydney J. Harris said, “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'”

So, while a writing instructor might tell you that active sentences have more pizazz, help a story to have a stronger pace and promotes clarity in your writing, I’m comfortable with the idea that writing in active voice is just the grown-up way to write.

The Best Path to Better Writing

There is no shortage of classes on line, at colleges and at writers conferences that promise to improve your writing.  All may be valuable (I regularly teach writing classes myself) but I believe that the best way to become a better writer is through reading… but you have to read the right way.

Read technically – If you want success in a particular genre, read what’s popular in your genre and note the commonalities.  Look at the book like a product being sold. How long a book do these readers prefer? (Fantasy novels and thrillers may range over 100,000 words.  Mysteries suspense books skew closer to 80,000.) How long are the chapters? How many major characters? How important is the setting? What are the conventions in this particular genre? (Cozy mysteries keep the violence off screen; hard boiled detectives have strong if untraditional moral codes; in Westerns, cowboys are more philosophical and skilled than they ever were in real life.) You may not choose to stick to these conventions, but you have to know and understand the rules to break them successfully.

Read emotionally – Let yourself just be a reader and FEEL the book you are reading. If you react strongly to a particular scene, ask yourself why.  Is it because of the use of particular details?  Key words?  How did this writer get you to feel this way?  When you read dialog that really feels right, try to figure out exactly what the reader did in that dialog.  If you find yourself breathlessly flipping the pages, back up and see how that writer hooked you so solidly and dragged you along.  And what if a scene doesn’t move you?  Go back and try to figure out why you didn’t like it.  Then you can say, “Well, I know not to ever do THAT!" 

Read comparatively – When asked how I learned to write mysteries I usually answer truthfully, that I outlined three books I particularly loved and deconstructed them.  Thru this technique I was able to compare these favorites objectively.  I could see how plots were developed, what they all had in common, and how they varied. In later years I’ve come to compare books in a different way.  I find it valuable to read more broadly, in a variety of genres. I’d never write a romance or science fiction myself, but I learn things from these other genres that I can apply to my own writing. Every novel has SOME romance in it.  Why not learn how to display that from the experts?  Every fiction author has to deal with suspension of disbelief.  The best sci-fi authors excel at that.  And while I’ll never write poetry, I have learned about how to use the language and a bit about rhythm and flow from reading it.

There’s nothing wrong with classes and critiques, but there is no better way to improve your own prose than by paying attention to that of others.

The Human Element

In this blog I’ve discussed several facets of the publishing business – submissions, editing, marketing and more.  But one part of our business that I haven’t gotten into is more ephemeral and harder to define. For want of a better term, I’m calling this side of the business the human element.

It is true that writing is both a skill and an art, while publishing is a business. But a publisher is more than a venture capitalist, investing in the potential value of a product.  That is because a publisher doesn’t simply invest in a book.  He also invests in the author, and dealing with the artistic temperament of a creative fiction writer is often much more challenging than dealing with that writer’s work.

For example, editing is the process through which good manuscripts become great manuscripts. At Intrigue Publishing, like most small presses, that process is collaborative.  Professional editors know how to improve pace, strengthen characters, and fill plot holes. But only the author knows how to present his theme, establish the chosen atmosphere and preserve her own voice. We want to end up with the best book possible, but we never want to take the book away from the writer.  Better to let the book and the writer go than to have an unhappy or bitter author in our stable.

The same applies to cover design.  Our job is to create a book cover that will get a reader’s attention, express the book’s genre and tone, and prompt the reader to pick that book up. But authors feel, often very strongly, that what matters is that their cover represents their story accurately.  So for many writers it can’t be a great cover if it depicts a scene that doesn’t actually occur in the book, if characters are facing each other who don’t meet in their story, or if the heroine is wearing a gown she would never wear.  This type of thing may not matter much to the big six publishers (or are there only five now?) but we don’t want to have one of our authors out there promoting their book but hating the cover.

Every press is bound to make decision an author doesn’t favor (we’ve debated the font, page layout and even chapter heads with writers) but we consider every choice carefully and always stand ready to explain why a writer’s preference isn’t followed.  We must never forget that it takes a special person to create a novel others will want to read, and that the publishing industry really rests on that human element.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

There is a handful of questions that every published author hears from time to time.  One of the most frequent is, “Where do you get your ideas?”  I usually give some smart aleck response like, “Over at Ideas-R-Us” or “Aisle 4 at Costco – cuz I need a lot of ideas.” If the actual question is, “Where do you get your ideas from?” I might say, “From behind the preposition at the end of that sentence.”  But today I’ll try to actually answer that query.

THE NEWS – Most of the ideas for  my crime novels and short stories come from newspapers and television newscasts.  Despite their efforts to be objective, reporters can’t help but present some theories about crimes they report on.  Whenever I hear that I like to play a “what if” game.  What if that isn’t what happened at all?  What if there’s a totally different motive? What if the witness (the arresting officer, the spouse) is lying?  Then I spin a story from that.  And it doesn’t have to be a crime story.  Sometimes a creative journalist will report on someone just doing something weird or unexplained.  I can make up a reason for the person to have base jumped from a city building or started a flash mob in the Metro that relates to a crime.

OTHER WRITERS – Sometimes another writer and I will brainstorm story ideas.  This can be a lot of fun, each reacting to the other’s plot points with a lively, “and then THIS might happen” or, “but at the same time, across town THIS is going on.”  We might leave that conversation with a clear story in mind, but the result is always that we go home and end up writing two very different stories that happen to take off from the same place.  This can even happen when I’m reading someone else’s story.  I might get to a point and say, “No no no… THAT’S not what happens next…” and then I’m off on a story all my own.

YOU – Story ideas often come up in unrelated conversations with friend and fans, and not even always in person.  For example, in trying to be both funny and provocative, I posted this on Facebook recently:

“Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles...”

Well, it did turn out to be a conversation starter, but among the responses was a friend’s post with evidence that the low speed limit might actually help stop the bad guys.  It was a news story with this headline: Teens Chase Kidnapping Suspect on Bikes, save5-year old girl.  Two teenage boys are being hailed as heroes after they chased a car carrying a kidnapped girl… on their bicycles.  Depending on your audience it may or may not matter that the teens were African American and the little girl was white.  But really… with a little imagination I could pull half a dozen good stories out of that little report.  Couldn't you?

So that’s where I get MY story ideas.  How about you?  AND, if you’re a writer, what common questions do YOU get?

I'm Baaa-aaaack!!!

A new beginning.  Every new year brings a chance to reexamine our lives and make a fresh start. For me, that process has resulted in, among other things, a new title for this blog.

In preparation for 2014 I had to plan my goals and objectives. In doing so I realized that describing this as an author’s life was no longer accurate.  The life of a publisher is also exciting, and hopefully of interest to those of you who aspire to be published authors, or who just want to know what it’s like to be one.  Besides, publishing is as big a part of my life now as writing, and the two roles are often in conflict.  We all have the same number of hours each day and have to choose carefully what we do with them.  But, as a publisher I have responsibilities to others and they often win out over my selfish desire to add words to my next novel. 

So, yes, high on my list of things to do is completion of the next Hannibal Jones mystery.  And I am dedicated to making sure the second Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference is even better than the first.  But as editorial director of Intrigue Publishing I owe it to my partners and the emerging writers I work with to read and appraise incoming manuscripts with care, and help the authors we sign with to make their manuscripts as good as they can be.  So I add to my goals the release and publishing of at least six exceptional works of fiction.

There is also the matter of promotion to face.  Only now, in addition to marketing my own novels I must dedicate time and energy to promoting my company and helping to establish our place in the publishing community.  So my objectives now include attendance at a certain number of conferences and assisting with events that support our authors.

But I am off to a pretty good start. I’ve set myself some deadlines.  I’ve cleaned out my office so I now have an uncluttered place to work.  I’m scheduled to be on panels at two literary conferences.  I’m 58,000 words into my next novel and realized this week that it needs another suspect. And Intrigue already has three magnificent books in the hopper scheduled for 2014 release.

SO, if you’re interested in how I juggle my different roles and seek balance in my life, or if you just want to know how my books and publishing venture are doing, keep reading this blog.  And if you have something to say about the writing life, or the life of a publisher, please send me your thoughts and opinions at ascamacho@hotmail.com. I am always happy to host guest blogs.

And I’m always happy to see comments on my blogs.  In this case, what are YOUR plans for 2014? And how will you stick to those plans?

Good-bye, Mr. Majestyk

As I write this the world has been without Elmore Leonard less than five hours and I am feeling the loss of my greatest writing mentor, although we never met.

Leonard didn’t win a boatload of awards and I don’t think he was ever regarded as a great literary figure.  Nor do I think he wanted to be.  What he did was write stories that hooked you at the start, held you thru the middle, and gave you a satisfying ending.  He was the master of crisp, realistic dialog that always rang true.  And he wrote the best damned characters in the English language, bar none.  That’s why he was a writer’s writer, the guy all us fiction writers wanted to be.  That’s why Stephen King called him The Great American Writer.

Leonard’s career started in the 50s with westerns.  He responsible for one of the best known western films (Hombre) and one of the all-around best westerns of all time (Three-ten to Yuma.)  His misbegotten people just trying to make it, combined with his dialog tells their hearts, made the transition to crime fiction so natural, that many of his works seem to fall into both camps.    

Leonard gave us more than 50 great novels, at least 19 of which went to the screen.  As such he is responsible for kicking off a lot of Hollywood careers including those of Roy Scheider (52 Pick-Up,) Burt Reynolds (Stick,) and Charles Bronson (Mr. Majestyk.)  And there is no doubt that he saved John Travolta’s career when it was on life support with Get Shorty.      

A healthy stack of Leonard short stories have also become films or television shows.  One of his short stories, “Fire in the Hole,” has offered Timothy Oliphant the role of his career on the TVshow Justified.

I feel a more personal loss than many today, not because of the great entertainment we will miss in the future, but because of all that I learned from the master’s work.  I learned all I know about creating characters that readers will care about by studying Leonard’s stories.  I learned the importance of both common and unique traits, of small mannerisms and emotional variety, and of terse, telling comments.  I learned how to put feeling into description and how to hold a point of view. 

And I learned one other thing: that a good writer can go whole chapters without using a single adverb.  You can search a long time without find a word that ends with “ly” in any of Leonard’s book.  Short, direct sentences driven by active verbs give his writing more life than almost any other author.  I’ve avoided adverbs in this piece in his honor.

I don’t know if Elmore Leonard is riding the range now like a ghost rider in the sky, but I would bet that the angels are begging him every day to tell them a story, because his stories always told you what it was like to be human.

So long to my greatest mentor.  Elmore, I’m still trying to walk in your footsteps.