Writing Submission Materials for Kindle Scout

This post is about writing VERY short passages, inspired by Kindle Scout, a crowd-sourced contest in which the first few pages of unpublished novels are posted online and potential readers vote on which book(s) should receive a publishing contract. I entered my recently-completed novel, Pandora’s Promise (the third book in the Pandora’s Trilogy), and it was accepted right away. But it took me several days and much feedback from friends and colleagues to complete the entry.

                        

The two hardest parts of the submission process were writing a 45-character one-liner and a 500-character description of the book. Note that it is character, not word. Characters include punctuation and the blank spaces between words. You must write these minuscule passages in a way that will both explain what the book is about and entice potential readers to nominate it. The saving grace is that the one-liner, the description, and the cover should all work together to give a true picture of what readers will find in the book.

In any writing endeavor, be it an article, an email, or a novel, your prose will read better if you focus on what is truly important. With stringent space limitations, you can’t include all the main points, or even most of them. You’ll need to decide which ones best characterize the book and are most likely to interest potential readers.

In the case of Pandora’s Promise, there are so many important elements to the story it felt impossible to choose. It is a post-apocalyptic adventure with the fate of the human race in doubt. There are three main characters, each with her or his own story line. There are several important subplots, which seemingly have nothing to do with each other until all is tied up at the end. There are a number of hard-science fictional elements as well as subplots involving the emerging telepathic abilities of mutant animals. How could I possibly convey all this in only 45 characters? And how could I summarize such a complicated story in any number of words, let alone 500 characters?

As it turned out, having a tight space limitation was a good lesson for me in focusing on what was truly important in the novel.

Example: one of the most important subplots is the main hero’s interaction with a clan of telepathic elephants. This section, which had been read by several beta readers, was unanimously popular, so I felt it had to be included. Also, though the story is an action-packed adventure, it is also, at heart, a very intense love story, and I wanted to at least mention that. The fate of humanity, if not the world, is indeed in doubt due to a combination of genetic mutations and climate change. There are many other subplots and elements, including a section on how all these disasters came to be.

I decided right away that I wanted the one-liner to be a question: “Can X and Y save the world?” This gives a flavor of the importance of the stakes.  But what should I put in the blanks? These are some of the things I tried:

Can human love and ancient wisdom save the world? (49 characters)

Can courage and telepathy save the world? (41 characters)

Can human daring and sentient animals save the world? (53 characters)

Can love and telepathic animals save the world? (47 characters)

The only line that comes in under the cut-off is the second one, and to me it was too general: whose courage? What telepathy? Neither “human love” nor “love” conveys the idea of romance. Daring and courage give some hint of the action segments of the novel, but only a hint. I eventually realized that I was trying to put too many ideas in my one-liner, and should leave other ideas to the summary. I decided instead to focus on only two of the main ideas: the elephants, who are characters in their own right, and the love story, which, though it mostly remains in the background, is a strong motivating force for much of the action.

Thus I finally arrived at “Can true love and elephants save the world?” Which happens to be 43 characters.

The summary, in which I had the luxury of writing a 500-character passage, fills in many of the blanks. It implies that the elephants are sentient, and also offers a flavor of the action, as well as the hard-science fictional nature of the book, lest it be dismissed as fantasy. To see what I ended up with, go to my book’s page on Kindle Scout. If you do so before January 16, 2015, please also nominate my book. If I win publication, you will get a free advance copy of the e-book.

 

Technorati Tags: Kindle Scout,Pandora's Promise,Pandora's Trilogy,Simplifying writing,Writing to length

49. How to Keep Readers Turning Pages. Part II: Make life tough for your protagonist

In the last post I talked about building suspense into your novel by using cliff-hanging chapter endings. Another, even more important technique, is to make sure readers identify with your main character, then thwart that character every chance you get.

In a mystery or thriller, a good way to thwart your character is to place her in physical danger. In a romance, make sure that the would-be lovers misunderstand each other’s intentions, like many of the heroes in Jane Austen novels, or that there are serious outside pressures against the romance (as in Romeo and Juliet). Assuming your readers care about your characters, they will keep reading to see how the characters overcome these obstacles.

                                      

After all, if the two love interests in a novel meet, get along great, and don’t even have opposition from their families, why should anyone keep reading? If the dauntless detective follows one clue to another, in a straight line, and catches the villain without any peril or hassle, what’s the point in turning pages?

Here is the catch: working out a series of believable obstacles can be hard. But it is worth it if it keeps your readers reading.

In my third Pandora’s book there are plenty of major twists and turns in the plot, but I’m trying to focus on the small twists to keep the suspense going. For example, Zach and his traveling companion will confront major perils when they reach the Western West, but it’s a long and arduous trip there. A relatively minor obstacle that I have already written about is crossing the Mississippi river. 

As I’ve worked on revising this scene, however, I have come to realize that my original conception was too easy, so I’ve added the following obstacles: suspicious, hostile  townspeople; the necessity for the protagonists to prove they are who they say they are (which they are not, by the way); an exorbitant demand for money to use the town’s ferry; and the sudden, possibly calamitous recognition of Zach and his companion by one of the townspeople. (This last, by the way, makes an excellent chapter-ending cliff.)

The resolution to each obstacle in this journey to the Western West is always created by the protagonists themselves; and my hope is that each should feel satisfying and move the story along at the same time.

Technorati Tags: creating suspense in fiction,Pandora's Genes,writing the novel

48. How to keep your readers turning pages. Part I: the Cliff

In coming posts we’ll take an in-depth look at suspense—the plot element that keeps readers turning pages. Today we’ll examine one of the most venerable techniques for creating suspense: the cliff-hanger chapter ending.

                                        

The term “cliff-hanger” originated with old movie serials, which sometimes featured the hero dangling from a literal cliff before the film faded to black. Naturally, viewers would rush back the next week to discover how the protagonist escaped. In modern fiction, the same device is often used to end a chapter, especially in genre and children’s fiction. Instead of literal physical danger, the peril is often psychological (a horrifying secret is revealed, the protagonist receives shocking news).

Whatever the nature of the “cliff,” as we used to refer to them when I wrote my children’s suspense series, it is designed to keep the reader going for “just one more chapter.”

I used the cliff technique in my first two Pandora’s books, which each had three protagonists with alternating stories. I often ended one character’s story on a very dramatic cliff, and in the next chapter switched to  another character, describing how she or he got out of the peril that had ended his or her previous chapter.

Here are some examples of cliffs. Note that any type of cliff can contain elements of other cliffs, combining, for example, scary and thwart. The more dramatic the chapter ending, the more likely your readers will turn to the next chapter. 

SCARY CLIFF: It was so foggy she couldn’t see, but she heard the relentless pounding of feet behind her. Her breath was now coming in ragged gasps, and she couldn’t help slowing her pace. In desperation she glanced back—and saw a looming shape, now only a few yards behind her.

THWART CLIFF: As the zombies continued to pound the door, he glanced frantically around the room. A small window near the ceiling—would he be able to fit through it? He’d have to. Quickly, he pushed the heavy table to the wall under the window and climbed onto it. He could just reach the window. He ripped off his jacket and covered his hand, then smashed it into the window, hearing the satisfying tinkling as glass fell. Just as the door splintered and fell into the room he heaved himself up onto the sill… and saw the bars on the outside of the window.

SURPRISE CLIFF: When she glanced up, she felt her heart stop. It was Leigh—come back from the dead.

EMOTIONAL CLIFF: He continued to sit there, tears in his eyes, and I realized that everything he had ever told me had been a lie.

CHEAP THRILL: This is a special kind of cliff, used mostly in children’s thrillers. At its most raw, it’s a kind of cheat, and involves a false cliff. The Scary Cliff example above would be a Cheap Thrill if the first sentence of the following chapter were: She felt a familiar hand fall on her shoulder and a gruff voice said: “Tag! You’re it.”

Technorati Tags: novel writing,how to create suspense,cliff-hangers

Dostoevsky and the Sandy Hook Massacre

Note to my readers: Novels can present and elucidate difficult moral and psychological issues in ways that no other medium can match. The horrifying massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, again demonstrates that Dostoevsky’s greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has as much relevance today, in 21st-century America, as it did in late-nineteenth-century Russia, when it was written.

                                   

I’ve been thinking about Ivan Karamazov lately, and so--a Google search revealed--have a number of columnists, including Ross Douthat of the NYT; Sean Kirst of the Syracuse Standard; and Chris Owen, a blogger on religious topics. In “Pro and Contra,” Part 5 of The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan, the oldest brother, and his youngest brother, Alyosha, the putative hero of the novel, discuss the existence of god and the existence of evil in the world. Ivan, who is a learned man, has been reading news accounts of the suffering of small children at the hands of their parents and other tormentors. As a good-hearted, empathetic man, Ivan cannot accept the existence of such evil in the world and explains to Alyosha, a novice monk, why the suffering of small children leads him to despair and doubt about a benevolent God.

The writers I cited above focus on one answer to Ivan’s argument--given implicitly by Alylosha and later in the book more explicitly by Alyosha’s mentor, the kindly Father Zossima-- that at judgment day all will be revealed and we will understand the necessity for suffering. But Ivan doesn’t buy it.

It is not, he tells Alyosha, that he doubts the existence of God, rather that he cannot accept a system in which the ultimate happiness of mankind depends on the unavenged tears of innocents.

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end,” Ivan tells Alyosha, “but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?” Ivan asserts that he would not accept such a bargain, that such a price for admission to heaven is much too high. “And so,” he concludes in one of the most famous passages in the novel, “I hasten to give back my entrance ticket.... It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

The moral arguments in The Brothers Karamazov (and other works by Dostoevsky) are so effective because the writer created such believable characters, real-seeming people we can identify with and understand, even when we do not agree with them. Ivan’s arguments have always resonated with me, just as Alyosha’s or Father Zossima’s have rung true to other readers.

Today, more than 130 years after Dostoevsky completed his great novel, Ivan’s words make me  think of Sandy Hook and what happened there. At present it appears possible, even likely, that this unspeakable tragedy may lead to some small measures toward national gun control. It is clear from accounts in the news and on TV that the slaughter has changed a lot of minds on all sides of the political spectrum. If this new perspective does lead to some restrictions on gun possession, it will be a very good thing for our country.

But a part of me hangs back from celebrating. If sensible gun control laws are finally implemented, the message seems to be that a rational gun control policy could not even have been talked about until after the brutal sacrifice of twenty small, innocent children. I can’t help but wonder what Ivan Karamazov would have to say.

Technorati Tags: Dostoevsky,Ivan Karamazov,Sandy Hook Elementary School

46. How to shape the story as it progresses

I’m around one-third through with the rough draft of PANDORA’S PROMISE, the third book in my Pandora’s series. I began it back in the late eighties, after I had published the first two books, but came to a parting of the ways with my publisher and never finished it.

I continued to work off and on for a couple of years, using one of the methods I describe in my post on how to beat writer’s block, writing at least one sentence each night before going to bed. In this way I amassed more than 20 K words. Several weeks ago I transcribed those hand-written pages, smoothing and expanding as I worked.

I discovered that much of what I had written consisted of notes about what would occur in the book. For example, in the first part of the story Zach and his traveling companions cross a broad mid-continental river that I think of as the Mississippi. 

My notes said, “Zach crossed the wide river, finally meeting the western west.” I expanded this to:

Zach… stood gazing across the wide river as the chill wind, smelling of fish and oil, caressed his face and hair. On the other side was the Western West, a destination he’d dreamed of for many years. It looked no different than the land on the eastern side of the river: meadows edged with woods, gently rolling hills. But Zach could not suppress a thrill at the thought that it was new, and that there might be marvels here beyond his imagining.

 I had not really been plotting or outlining as I continued to expand the draft; rather had been using the technique I have described as “plot-as-you-go.” But I realized that the book was coalescing around four major stories, so I took some time to re-read and worked out a more formal outine (though still not something my old English teacher would have loved).

Unless there are some major surprises, I can tell you now that Pandora’s Promise will be in four Parts, the longest of which will be Part II: The Pros, which follows Zach to the Western West. The second longest will probably be the segment  set two or three generations before the beginning of the first book, in which we learn more about life before the Change. I now know roughly the entire story except for one important strand, which I'm hoping and assuming my subconscious is working on.

The well-known horror/mystery writer, Harry Shannon (www.harryshannon.com), told me that when he plans a book “I find it useful to block out the main sections of a novel in advance, much like one would a screenplay. As Aristotle said, all stories have three essential parts--beginning, middle and end. What triggers each of those sections? How do I avoid a "mid-point" sag half way through? I outline very loosely, though. If I go into great detail I get bored, and never finish the book, because I already know everything that's going to happen!” 

I like Harry’s take on this. And I feel that I’m in a good place with my “threequel” now. I have the beginning, middle and end blocked out in my mind. But there is just enough unknown about the story to keep me going.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,plotting the novel,revising fiction,Harry Shannon

45. Five Truths About Researching a Novel

1. All writing requires research. This is as true for fiction as for nonfiction, even if you’re just writing a short story. I was once assigned to write a short story about Jack Frost for a children’s “horror” anthology. All I knew about Jack Frost was that in some mythologies “he” represents winter. Before writing, I spent some time looking up legends of Jack Frost, to get an idea of what “he” might look and act like. I didn’t use much of the material, but it made me more comfortable in my depiction of Jack Frost as a mischievous but dangerous sprite, which made the story easier to write.

                                Jack Frost

2. You must always sweat the small stuff. As a novelist, your job is to make the world your characters live in as believable as possible. For those who write historical or present-day fiction, it’s important to to at least touch on the minutiae of daily life. What do your characters have for breakfast? What are their leisure-time activities? In science fiction, these realistic details make your world more relatable. In my sf novella The Ptorrigan Lode, which takes place on a space station, there was not much room for detail, but I tried as best I could to give a flavor of the clothing (working women wear chadors, while tourists wear revealing street dress) and eating habits (they “dial up” food at home, and also visit restaurants).

3. Every detail must be followed up. In Pandora’s Genes and Pandora’s Children, I gave long, hard thought to what life would be like in a future world with none of the conveniences we take for granted. I did quite a bit of research on medieval life, and even bought a book on “the forgotten crafts.” Since the Pandora’s world has no petroleum products, my characters use “fish-oil” in lamps. I envisioned some sort of mutant fish that were used for this purpose, but neglected to ask myself how these fish were harvested and processed. Was this done by each household, or was there a small industry? I didn’t think of those questions till they were pointed out by an attentive reader. I have since worked out the answers for myself, and will use them in the third book in the series, which I am now writing

4. No research is ever wasted. As a former writer of nonfiction books, I have researched many, many subjects in depth. One of the topics I used to write about is sports, and I’m finding that my in-depth knowledge of American professional sports is coming in handy while writing the Pandora’s sequel. So is my first-hand  knowledge of the “flyover” parts of this country, which I visited many times on cross-country drives and bus trips when I was younger. Which leads me to:

5: Everything is research.

 

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,The Ptorrigan Lode,research for fiction

44. Skipping from Scene to Scene

My post last week (Beethoven or Mozart—what kind of writer are you?) has gotten me thinking more about my own writing process. I seem to be Beethovian through and through: not only in writing a whole novel, but also when writing small sections within that novel.

Although I only have about thirty new pages (in addition to the 100 pages previously written), I’m working steadily on the third Pandora’s book. But I can’t seem to go in a straight line. As I recommended in an earlier post, I’m focusing on individual scenes. These are scenes that I either have a lot of notes for, or have worked out pretty well in my head. However, as a Beethovian I am incapable of getting all the way through a scene without stopping to make notes as new things occur to me, or add something to a different scene, or change my focus completely.

Some of what I’m writing takes place BEFORE the first book began. In response to requests from many readers, I am telling what happened before and during the Change, explaining exactly how it was caused. I’m having fun with this. I knew most of it, of course, though it was never fully explained in the first two books. But I’m also learning a great deal as I write.

                          Mid-21st Century Oil Spill

For example, I have found out how global climate change in the middle of the twenty-first century made the Change worse than it would otherwise have been. I have also discovered that the Gulf Oil Spill in the early part of this century led directly to the terrible mistake that caused the Change.

If you have not read my first two Pandora’s books, none of this will make sense to you, but here is the take-away message: When putting together a long and complicated plot, it is not only allowed, but it can be helpful to write scenes out of sequence. This is especially true if those scenes excite you. You are likely to find, as I am, that these out-of-sequence scenes then inform material that follows and make it much richer, as well as easier to write.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,writing the novel,writing a sequel