Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing, Part 2 by Karen S Wiesner

Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing,

Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner

In the final of a two-part article, I evaluate aging, progress, and momentum as well as talk about the indisputable value breaks provide one in their particular discipline along with the damage protracted absences from said discipline can also do.

In the first part of this article, I talked about my goals for 2023. I have two more series to wrap up before I retire from writing. After that, I'm hoping to illustrate children's books. I'd hoped I could finish writing the first drafts of my last few novels in 2023. 2024 was my goal year for making the transition between the two disciplines of writing and art.

For the month of July 2023, while I was intensely writing the first draft of my final Peaceful Pilgrims story, I toyed with the prospect of going directly into writing the second to the last novel in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series throughout the months of August and September 2023. However, I was bordering on burnout. Without a break, my writing would suffer, and that's simply not how I wanted to go into any of my final writing projects. I want each of them to be my best work ever. I was at a crossroads: I needed a break, but, if I took one, I absolutely couldn't accomplish all I'd intended to in 2023. Retirement and beginning my next career in illustration would have to be put on hold. Again.

My poor husband heard my angst over this issue on a daily basis for the last two weeks in July, as I tried to decide the best course of action concerning my dilemma. He surprised me one morning when he told me about a weekly podcast he watches devoted to the discipline of swimming. In this particular video, the host talked about the pros and cons of taking a break from swimming. Although I've spent years thinking I understood the indisputable value breaks provide in writing, as well as the damage protracted absences can also do, I learned something as my husband summarized the points the swimming instructor brought up.

For swimmers in training, as my husband considered himself (though he really only competes with himself--or his alter ego Frank who swims one kilometer a day every day like clockwork), there are a lot of pros and cons to taking a short break or even a lengthy one from daily discipline. A lot can happen to the body when a swimmer isn't in the pool each day, and of course the longer the absence, the worse things can get.

First, the longer an individual has been swimming, the more natural it becomes for them. They develop a "water feel". Being in the water becomes so natural, their skills become honed and instinctive. Taking a break, that instinct is dulled, and not surprisingly the longer they're away from the water, the more drastic losing the "water feel" becomes. Once they come back, they'll have to work harder to adjust to being and becoming like a fish again.

Second, when you're swimming every day, you're building endurance and muscle, and your metabolism is high. You can do more, expend less energy with the task, and in less time. When you take a break, your tolerance for the activity lessens. While your muscles enjoy and benefit from the initial rest, before long they begin to atrophy if absence persists. Finally, while you're working out each and every day, you may be able to eat more and still burn it off without penalty. If you're not putting in the work every day and that stretches into even more time away, you may still be hungry; however, eating the same amount you did sans the exercise, you'll gain weight in a hurry.

Third, when a person swims each day, the body becomes stronger. With the powerful muscles that being fit provides, this person is better able to handle anything in life that requires physical activity. Short periods of rest--a day or two--can be very beneficial, allowing muscles to heal before being rebuilt even stronger. Just as you'd expect, muscle that's not being worked breaks down, which will happen if a rest carries on too long.

Creative pursuits aren't all that different from a physical activity like swimming. For instance, the longer you've been writing, the more you hone your writing craft--"word feel", if you will. The process of writing becomes natural when it's done often, every day, with proper discipline, and it can become instinctive. But breaks, especially long ones, can make a writer lose that instinctual edge. You'll work harder to produce the same results you got easily before you took the extended break.

When you're writing each day, you're building skills, endurance, and longevity in the pursuit of excellence. Your enthusiasm and passion will be high. You'll be able to do more, expend less energy, and produce quality results in less time. But take a long break, and your tolerance wanes quickly. You tire easily and, inevitably, your skills will begin to weaken and wither. You'll also find your ardor cooling, your hunger tapering off. You may feel disinterested or even apathetic about returning to the discipline you previously enjoyed.

Finally, when you're writing every day, your material becomes far stronger. Your stories will invariably be richer, deeper, and more powerful. Taking breaks between stages in a project can almost certainly improve the quality and quantity of your work as well as provide you with the refreshment and perspective necessary to continuing the task through to its successful completion. You can read my previous articles about the benefits of writing in stages on this blog here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search/label/writing%20in%20stages. However, long breaks from writing can set you back instead of propel you forward. You need momentum for long-term tasks, and that only comes from activity, not lethargy, which saps physical, mental, and spiritual pursuits. Once gravity pulls you down, you'll have to work harder to yank yourself back up again.

The takeaway here becomes clear when you consider that in nearly aspect of life, finding the thing that you're good at, the thing you love and are willing to work hard to gain or achieve success in requires that you juggle times of disciplined activity and short periods of revitalizing rest. Both are crucial to maintaining, sustaining, and ensuring progress. Just as overtraining can cause injuries, refusing to allow yourself to step away for a bit to recover physical, mental, and spiritual energy can lead to burnout or worse.

Another factor is the length of time you've been working on any certain discipline. Anything you've been doing for a long time and consistently over the course of presumed years will provide you with a healthy foundation for instinct, endurance, and strength. Each of these components will remain in place for longer, requiring more hardship to whittle the three cornerstones down. Core aspects drop away slower, because you can fall back on the basics you've been cultivating for a considerable number of years. Someone who's new to a discipline will see key competencies drop off much faster when they take short or long breaks from it. Conversely, if you've been training hard and you come to a full stop abruptly, your overall performance is likely to plummet just as suddenly. But if you're doing something almost casually, you probably won't notice a significant change in your functioning.

I've been writing for almost 35 years. If I had to compare my career to a physical activity, for most of it I was easily competing to be an Olympic athlete. Between getting old, the COVID isolation hitting me hard, and the life upheavals I experienced a few years back (more about that in my "Reflections of Life" article series, which you'll find posted here:  https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search/label/reflections%20of%20life), I came to an almost full stop very suddenly. I've been dealing with the fallout ever since…

Such as the fact that I'm now facing that the goals I made for myself at the end of 2022 probably can't happen the way I planned. I can't write two novels back to back anymore, like I used to, even if one of them is drastically less complicated than the other. I'll need to take a break from writing for the next several weeks after finishing the first novel I've written this year in late July 2023. I'll have things to do to fill the downtime, just a little each day while I take a refreshing break from the hard work of writing. Additionally, I can get in some of the art practice that will eventually help me when I'm settling into the new career as an illustrator. I'll be ahead of the game there since I'll have spent several years in advance honing the new craft I intend to put my all into once I retire from writing. Between September and October of 2023, I'll write the next, more complex novel that I'm working on this year. That will leave me just enough time the final two months of 2023 to at least outline the very last offerings in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series. It's not everything I hoped for. But, hey, it's still good.

It's very easy for me to get discouraged when I compare the "myself of today" with "myself of yesterday". I'm practically at a standstill when I look back at what I used to be able to accomplish every given year. I think I need to stop hitting the same brick wall of being disappointed with my output, of wanting to push myself harder. I may want to do more, but I've found over the course of the last two years that I simply can't anymore. I'm older, I have less stamina, and it just takes longer to make the magic happen. Even still, when I do get things done, I've found myself very proud of what I've managed to produce.

Instead of letting this same dejection knock me down over and over again, it may help me to compare myself to other writers. Most authors produce one novel a year and consider themselves productive. So, even if I only write two this year (perhaps pathetic in comparison to my previous five novels and five long novellas), I'm still doing double the norm. That's something. (If you write one a year, don't think you haven't accomplished much. You have. I just used to be a superhero and now I'm normal. It's a brand new world for me, one that's lacking the furious glow of the previous.)

So what if I'll only able to write two novels instead of the three I'd hoped to complete in 2023? So what I won't be able to retire from writing until 2024, at which point I can avidly begin my next career in illustration? Let's face it, I'm kicking and screaming every second, even as I accept this "downgrade". I imagine I'll fight against compromise in this regard the rest of my life.

Still, I'm not running a sprint here. My writing career has been a marathon, one I'm coming to the end of, and therefore it's even more necessary that I allow myself to slow down, catch my breath, and conserve my vigor so, when it's time to make that final push toward the finish line, I'll be in possession of 3 1/2 decades of instincts, endurance, and strength to help me complete the race. I call that success, even if I didn't get there with as much under my belt or anywhere near as fast as I intended.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing,

Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

In this two-part article, I evaluate aging, progress, and momentum as well as talk about the indisputable value breaks provide one in their particular discipline along with the damage protracted absences from said discipline can also do.

As I get older, I think more about how much energy I had in the past and how much I was able to accomplish in such a short time. Frequently, I'm shocked about how I was able to do all I did, juggling dozens of balls all at the same time--seemingly without break a sweat. That's not the case anymore. These days, I call my former, amazing ability to accomplish my superpower…one I've almost completely lost as I age.

In my youth, my superpower allowed me to write five full-length novels and five (usually very long) novellas in a single year--completing all the steps involved from outline to final polish for all these stories in that year. I'm not sure how long I'll continue to freak out that I have such trouble finishing a mere three novels (and no novellas at all) in a year's time now. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

As you can tell, there's some grief and discouragement involved, but I've nearly reached the stage of acceptance in this process as well as the ability to reevaluate the best way to go about completing the activities I expend my diminished energy on. One such review involves a topic that has been a favorite of mine throughout my career: Namely, the pros and cons of taking a break from writing. The reason I started thinking about this recently is because I'm constantly looking at what I want to get done versus what I'm actually accomplishing over time. I assess this from one year to the next as well as from one month to the next, since most of the steps in my writing projects take around a month to complete. In the middle of any given year, I want to check on my progress. Doing this allows me take a long view of my progress as well as to gauge my momentum (or lack therefore) over time.

I've talked about this before in this column, so some of you already know that I'm counting down to writing the final books in my last two series. At that point, I intend to retire from writing, and I'd like to begin illustrating children's books indefinitely. To that end, for the last couple years, I've been taking online art courses in several mediums, trying out different things, finding out what interests me the most and where my talents lie. I try to fit a week or so of "art practice" into my schedule each month. It's not easy to do this because during the short time (usually the last week of the month) I allot to applying my love of art, it threatens to steal all my interest from writing. So I need to keep it contained; I have to decide what's possible in that short time I give myself to devote to art. This new love threatens to overtake me if I indulge it even for a short time and too often. While I want to be learning art craft during this time before I retire from writing, I can't let it take over. I have to get back to my writing sooner rather than later because I'm determined to finish these final two series to provide myself and readers closure before I retire from writing.

2024 was my goal year for making the transition between the two disciplines of writing and art. At the end of 2023, I figured out that it was possible to outline and write during the course of the next year what I thought at the time were three books. I might not have time to revise and polish all of them until early 2024, but I could at least get the first drafts written. I started 2023 pretty optimistic. In the first few months, I accomplished an admirable amount of tasks. I finished off the books I'd started in 2022 after getting critiques from my partners on several of them. I wasn't happy with how much work all of those required, taking more effort and longer time than I ever intended to complete them. Again, that seems to be a new thing in this aging process. But, alas, several things got done and dusted. I also outlined the final story in my Peaceful Pilgrims Series and felt really good about how that series would end. I had to pause in progress on my novels to get ahead on a couple months' worth of articles for this weekly column, something I used to be able to slam out in no time and I wouldn't have to think about it again for the next year. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I finally got back to business on my novel writing goals for the year in May 2023. While outlining (again what I initially thought was) the second to the last book in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, I hit my first real snag in upsetting the goals I'd set for the year: I realized I still had too much material to cover to finish the series with a single book. Although I felt pretty far from solidifying the specific details on what was needed to wrap up the loose threads still dangling in this series (and still do at the time of this writing), I couldn't escape that there was no way to get it all into one book. Believe me, I tried. I definitely did not want the final offering of the series to end up 500 pages. I came to the conclusion that, with the number of viewpoints I would need to complete the series, it might be better to divide them into two separate parts. So one final book to finish this series became two, or one that will be presented in two separate parts. The two separate parts could end up novels or novellas, or one of each. At this point, I'm too early in the process to know how that will turn out. Bottom line: I definitely had a major setback to finishing what I wanted to in 2023.

At the six month juncture of 2023, I realized I'd fallen further behind than I wanted to be in my annual achievements by that time. I'd taken an entire month off because we had family members visit that we only get to spend a few weeks at a time with during the summer. While I had no regrets in doing that, it was a little depressing to think that my plan to finish writing the last books of the two series I have left to complete before I retire from writing might not get written this year after all. That means that my intention to begin illustrating children's books once all the stories I ever want to write are finished will have to wait. That was the second snag and undeniably a major setback.

In my discouragement (kneejerk reaction, I think, left over from my former superpower), I instinctively decided to pull the fire alarm so my goals for the year wouldn't be thwarted. Incidentally, I also had no time at all in the months of June and July to get any art practice in. Potentially, I might not be able to squeeze that time in during the months of August and September either, since I'd figured out during the first six months of the year that I was spreading myself out very thin with all I wanted to accomplish every month--between writing, art, articles for Alien Romances, and playing piano. Every single day was jam-packed, which is part of the reason why June ended up such a bust for me in terms of accomplishment. Even if I'd had time, I was mentally and physically too tired to do much of anything.

With a solid rest under my belt, I was determined to get back on track: I decided I'd write the two novels I'd outlined earlier in the year back to back. In July I would write the final book in my Peaceful Pilgrims Series. This was the shorter novel of the two and a pretty straightforward romance. I allotted writing 2-3 scenes on weekdays in July to the task of completing the first draft of that novel. The second novel would be longer and infinitely more complicated given that it would ultimately be a romantic paranormal horror suspense story, so I planned to give myself two months--August and September--to complete the first draft by writing only 1-2 scenes a day. That way I wouldn't become overwhelmed to the point that my daily writing would suffer.

July was, to say the least, an exhausting month. My writing quality each day was high, and that's about the best thing I can say. I was doing a lot, getting close to overreaching with how much I was producing on a daily basis (up to 27 pages/8000 words a day sometimes!). By the time the last week of the month rolled around, I was still looking at finishing the final eight scenes before the month concluded and several new things both writing and non-writing related threatened to give me even more to do each day that I wasn't sure I could handle.

The thought of finishing the Peaceful Pilgrims story in July and instantly moving into writing the next in my final series in August and September was intimidating, demoralizing. My brain screamed mutiny at the mere prospect. I was grateful that the last Peaceful Pilgrims book promises to become one of my best (after I wrap up the other steps I'll need to perform in the course of completing it). However, it was very clear to me even before I got to the last week of finishing the novel that I couldn't move into writing the next novel without a break. How much of a break, I wasn't exactly sure, but I knew burnout was inevitable. I was at a crossroads: If I couldn't accomplish all I'd intended to in 2023, my retirement and beginning my next career would have to wait, but I couldn't take the risk that my writing would suffer if I rushed ahead and forced myself to plow right into the next project without taking some kind of a break.

My poor husband heard my angst over this issue on a daily basis for the last two weeks in July, as I tried to decide the best course of action concerning my dilemma. He surprised me one morning when he told me about a weekly podcast he watches devoted to the discipline of swimming. In this particular video, the host talked about the pros and cons of taking a break from swimming. Although I've spent years thinking I understood the issue of the indisputable value breaks provide in writing, as well as the damage protracted absences can also do, I learned something as my husband summarized the points the swimming instructor brought up.

In next week's part of this article, I'll cover the general connections we can make and extrapolations that can be applied when studying the pros and cons of taking a break in nearly any discipline, and I'll conclude the status of my 2023 goals.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Other People's Medical Misfortunes

Just because Amazon has made a movie --about the infamous tossing (out of a car window) of  a severed male member-- does not mean that any writer can write about such an event. That particular event preceded HIPAA (medical privacy law), and movie rights were probably bought and sold.

Legal blogger Kristin Starnes Grey, writing for Ford & Harrison LLP  discusses the pre-HIPAA case on the HR Entertainment Blog and offers wise advice when one is tempted to write about another person's medical misfortunes.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5708cabe-d129-44e1-b3bb-f6f62f3ebd6b&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-05-10&utm_term=

or here:
https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/05/08/lorena-john-bobbitt-and-the-hipaa-privacy-rule/#page=1

On the other hand, apparently, HIPAA does not protect medical information revealed by some of those for-entertainment-only "fitness" tracker apps. The proprietors of those apps, especially if you allow "sharing" with your Facebook "friends", are lawfully allowed to sell any information you provide to Facebook.

I doubt that Facebook is much interested in whether you drink zero or 8 glasses of water. I can't help wondering if those treacherous little trackers can tell whether, and for how long, you --if you are male-- shake hands with the otherwise unemployed in a North-North-Westerly elevation with a 6" range of motion.

Maybe you should take your Fitbit off sometimes?

Given that some European country is talking about making it illegal for parents to bring up their children Vegan, maybe one should think twice about the dietary information one fills in and shares.

Legal blogger Sara H. Jodka for the law firm Dickinson Wright discusses the finer points of Medical Privacy and HIPAA, and advises app users to beware.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a2556e9b-2a29-4b8a-8178-b57b4d921011&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-05-10&utm_term=

or here:
https://www.dickinson-wright.com/news-alerts/app-users-beware

To make what I hope is fair use of one tiny weeny tip in that very useful blog, read that HIPAA form that the receptionist asks you to sign.  Cross out any wording in the fine print where you give the doctor permission to share your ultra super secret private medical information over any unsecure method (email perhaps?) that the doctor and his staff deem convenient.

You know that certain free mail providers read your e/f/g/ymail and track your purchases, if you have receipts emailed to your email account?

Finally, and perhaps not medical-misfortune-related, Microsoft has a new and thoroughly helpful process to discourage the politically incorrect writer from articulating, or even thinking inappropriate thoughts.

https://prepforthat.com/microsoft-word-to-use-ai-to-monitor-for-political-correctness-infractions/

Presumably, for now, this technology is optional.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Reviews 41, Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio - Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream

Reviews 41

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio

Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream 

Reviews posts have not yet been gathered into an index.  Find them by searching author or title or Reviews or reviews.

Today we'll look at a huge, long, novel launching a new series THE SUN EATER Book One, Empire of Silence.

Here it is on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Silence-Eater-Christopher-Ruocchio-ebook/dp/B07693PKH7/

You'll probably want the Kindle version because the font in the hardcover is rather small and crammed -- for a reason we'll be discussing here.

So as I was reading this book (all of it; it is a page turner!), I was also involved in editing the second book in a Trilogy in my Sime~Gen Universe, and there's a relevant story in that comparison.

This back-stage story I want to tell you is relevant to spotting trends in Publishing and figuring out their origins.

I have been involved in fanfic since I was in 7th Grade, wrote novels when I was in High School and college (thankfully unpublished), and dove right into Star Trek fandom when I first saw it because friends from Science Fiction fandom (Bjo Trimble among them) were pounding the table about this wonderful TV Series (yes, it was and is wonderful!)

So I wrote the non-fiction book, STAR TREK LIVES!

precisely to introduce the general public (non-science fiction readers who loved Star Trek) to fanfic.

I aimed to rip aside the veil of contempt with which the general public shrouded all science fiction -- "kiddie crap" worthy only of comic derision.

I (and a cast of millions) blew the lid on Star Trek fanfic, and the world has changed.

As evidence that Star Trek had done something on TV that no previous Radio or TV drama had ever done, I footnoted my novel HOUSE OF ZEOR.

House of Zeor was at that time the first novel (but not first story) to be published in the Sime~Gen Series ( Sime/Gen was the logo then, but later changed by the fans to avoid the inaccurate "/" designation).

And it turned out I was correct in pinpointing the unique element in Star Trek's appeal.

I had designed HOUSE OF ZEOR to appeal to the Star Trek fans who most loved the Spock Character, and to touch the same creative nerve that the broadcast TV series touched in them.

And as predicted, many Star Trek fans wrote Sime~Gen fanfic -- at one time there were 5 regular Sime~Gen fanzines being published offset and/or mimeo.

We have most of that fanfic posted for free reading on simegen.com.

My ambition was always to bring those fanfic writers -- and their original "take" on Sime~Gen -- to the wider readership who buy professionally published novels.

And we are doing that right now -- as I'm reading the currently published Hardcovers such as EMPIRE OF SILENCE from DAW books (which also first published several Sime~Gen novels in Mass Market Paperback originals.

So as Wildside picked up the Sime~Gen backlist, and also published the several novels that got swallowed in publishing house collapses later retrieved, we went ahead with our fanfic writers to put out the first anthology of original fan written stories (some from the old fanzines rewritten, and some brand new ideas the writers have had after years of writing Star Trek fanfic).

 Now we are bringing up a masterful trilogy by Mary Lou Mendum, completely rewritten to step onto the main historical TIMELINE of the Universe, presenting the detailed narrative of how certain oddball personalities become positioned to move History forward (quite by haphazard accident, you know) while struggling to do Good For Humanity.

FEAR AND COURAGE on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014TDP8JQ/


That is THE CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES - Book One is now available, and we were working on Book Two as I read EMPIRE OF SILENCE.

And the writing lesson is all about STYLE.  The fanfic style, targeting an audience of those already steeped in the mythos of a fictional world (like Star Trek, Star Wars, vs. the professional writing style targeting a broad, or gigantic viewership.

CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N383GS2/

Jean Lorrah, who joined Sime~Gen with her first published novel, FIRST CHANNEL (the third published in the series),

...has since been studying screenwriting craft and marketing screenplays (even won an award for it), and has fully internalized the terse, to-the-point, not-one-second of viewer time wasted or distracted with detail, STYLE required to tell a story visually.  We were taught this style by Traditional Publishing's major editors, but visual story telling requires an even higher precision styling.  Reading the SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting retrains the story crafting to the broadest of all audiences (the 4-bagger).

FIRST CHANNEL on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OYUFN0/

To broaden an appeal to a wider audience, ELIMINATE DETAIL, and "BTW" events, and decorative additions (detailed description etc).  Put all that information in the plot.

The more TERSE the style, and the more clean and definitive the scene structure, the broader the potential audience.

SAVE THE CAT! on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Blake-Snyder-ebook/dp/B00340ESIS/

That is true today -- but may not be true 20 years from now (say 2029).

The force moving to this direction of more lazy plotting, more larded on irrelevant detail, is the force that is making audiences for anything SMALLER (e.g. fragmenting the monolothic TV audience which had only 3 TV stations that broadcast only 4 hours a night).

That is STREAMING.  All the different mega-giants in this industry of episodic story-telling (Netflix, Amazon - retailers of fiction) are trying all sorts of different topics, formats and styles that "narrow-cast" or more directly target a sensitive area of a small audience (creating fans).

In STAR TREK LIVES! I called that "the Tailored Effect" which is what made Spock fans love the show and never notice McCoy and Kirk (and Chekov) were equally mysterious and interesting.

Nobody calls it that now, but everyone is using that basic principle -- that the narrower your audience, the more intense their pleasure and resulting "glued to the page" behavior.

In other words, what is "popular" or "Mass Market" must, necessarily eliminate exactly what you most want in your fiction payload.

Science Fiction fans are always "unusual" people -- on the tail of some bell distribution curve.  They may be at the norm in many attributes, but always have some specific attribute that is way off the charts.  Most fans have more imagination than the norm of the bell curve -- are willing to suspend disbelief to read a Romance of a human and an Alien.

To appeal to the FEW, fiction has to be "cheap to make" because it must be made at a profit.  E-publishing, and now Streaming media using digital cameras are RELATIVELY cheap to make. There are still the fixed costs of writing, editing, copyediting, and setting up the manuscript or recording the actors doing the play.

But those costs are coming down, and the means to create such salable items as e-books or YouTube video casts, are within the technological know-how and financial means of huge numbers of people.

Fanzines first arose using spirit duplicators and rapidly converted to mimeo (fans had Gestetner mimeograph machines and stencil cutting type writers in their LIVING ROOMS!!! -- equipment usually then found only in schools or corporate offices were obtained second hand by ordinary people for the hobby of publishing).

So, now, the means to professional produce and distribute (even publicize) fanfic are available to most people -- all you need to add is talent, skill, and will power.

Professional business structures (Traditional Publishers of books, Hollywood Studios), for-profit purveyors of expensively produced stories, are learning that there is profit to be made serving tiny markets but serving them well.

That lesson was the major point in STAR TREK LIVES!  People with unusual taste in fiction are profitable.

One of Gene Roddenberry's major contributions to TV Science Fiction was the art of containing costs.  He did a lot with very little money (yeah, and today that really shows, but on B&W small screen TV's it didn't show so much.)

Now the genie is out of the bottle.  Tiny markets are being well served with stories in styles that please the taste of those tiny markets immensely (but might jar the nerves of many other markets).

To learn STYLE, a writer must read lots and lots of books they really dislike.  It's the job.  The more you dislike a book, the more you can learn to make your writing into something you will like - even love - 40 years later.

What Jean Lorrah did to Mary Lou Mendum's second draft of Mary Lou's Fanfic series which we published in an offset press run of a fanzine (about 1,000 copies) has not been done to EMPIRE OF SILENCE, Christopher Ruocchio's THE SUN EATER Book One.

Jean is broadening the potential audience by sharpening the craftsmanship (cut-cut-cut -- add back show don't tell in different places -- rearrange information -- rephrase more tersely).  In the process, material cut from the fanzine version will be spun off into more stories.

That's what fanfic does best -- compress whole novel series into a few paragraphs and call it a scene in a larger story.  That is, fanfic gives readers who know the Universe thoroughly a whole new perspective on what they think they know.

Star Trek fanfic gave readers a reason to view the shows again (and again) and go to the movies several times.  Read a fanfic, go watch again and it's a totally different story you are seeing.

But to achieve this effect, fanfic lards in vast amounts of irrelevant detail, dwelling and dwelling on ideas, decoration, "depth" of characterization at the expense of plot movement.

Frankly, I like fanfic better than I like most professional fiction.

However, we now have a new audience, with new writers speaking to them about the problems of this new (tech based) world we now live in.

Christopher Ruocchio is one such writer who has plunged into creating a Science Fiction series, The Sun Eater, around a "colorful" Character (who might star in most Historical Romances!).

And to reach and grab this younger audience into his created world, he has not relied on the structures common in Gaming (which tends to emphasize plot, and opposing forces, at expense of Character Motivation).  He has instead painted his world with excessive detail.

This novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE,

is written as if it were fanfic in a Universe you should know.

Ruocchio uses the Historical Fiction technique of a Main Character, who was the key player in changing the course of galactic history, reminiscing about his early life and how he came to be that key player.

It is the presentation mode made famous in some Arthurian legend novels, and many very early novels in that legend.  It goes back deep into the roots of human storytelling.

This is the kickoff novel creating a "world" -- as House of Zeor introduced Sime~Gen to the readers who had missed the short story in WORLDS OF IF Magazine.

But where House of Zeor is about 75,000 words, Empire of Silence is about 269,360 words and that doesn't include the appended glossary.

House of Zeor presents a whole new "language" based on perceptions that the reader does not have -- yet does not append a glossary.

In my estimation, about 25,000 words could have been cut from Empire of Silence without in any way impairing the visualization of this new galactic empire or the presentation of its historic movement.

Those 25,000 extra words are the reason the font in the hardcover is so small.  Books can be produced only in certain page-counts.  It is the job of the "book designer" to cram all the extra words into a page layout that comes out to be the exact number of pages in an integral number of "folios."  A folio is the folded over unit you can see by looking down onto the top of a book. Printing machines can make only certain sizes of these folded over units - all the books from a particular imprint run through that same machine. So the book has to be expanded or contracted to fit the machines that print it. This is the reason some books have blank pages at the back.  Think about that as you polish your final draft. The age of your target readership determines the optimum size print.

In doing such a line-edit cut, the Characterizations (and a nice Romance that is just skipped over in narrative), and the motivations as well as political concepts could have been brought to the surface in clean, unequivocal terms so that fanfic writers might pick it up and embroider on it.

Cutting, when done with deliberate craft to a specific point, can improve the art as well as broaden the potential audience which would revel in the romp of imagination.

"Deliberate craft" is what Jean Lorrah has mastered in screenwriting exercises.  You will be able to see the results when the entire CLEAR SPRINGS TRILOGY is published.  We are keeping the 3 Den & Rital stories online for comparison.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/CHANGE.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/mlm/shiftc01.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/LEGACY.html

Mary Lou added the science for improving selyn battery technology to enable heavier than air flight to her previous fanfic plot-line of "launch a Sime Center out-Territory."

At some point, we might post the intermediate draft so you can see how Jean and I cut, polished, refocused, and cut-cut-cut, to make these novels both enjoyable (as the original fanfic) and conforming to professionally published Mass Market standards.

So, by reading this novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE (which you will enjoy and will probably want the sequels), and by comparing it to Mary Lou Mendum's fanfic on simegen.com, and to the professionally published Clear Spring's Trilogy, you can (painlessly) gain a grasp of how fanfic STYLING has become DAW Hardcover Mainstream traditional publishing acceptable.

Once you can draw the line connecting all 3 "dots" (1970's Science Fiction Hardcover, 1990's fanfic, 2020's Hardcover/Streaming) , you can make a prediction of your own about how 2040's Science Fiction STYLING will blend Mass Market with Fanfic Styles.

Write the next STAR TREK LIVES!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mundane Psionics

Many characters in fantasy and science fiction possess psychic superpowers. They can read thoughts, view events at a distance or (maybe by touching an object) in the past, or see the spirits of the dead. In a sense, we don't have to fantasize about having such abilities, because we already do, sort of. Through writing, we can transmit our thoughts directly into the minds of other people we'll never meet face-to-face. While reading, we receive the thoughts of the writers, even if they died centuries ago. Film allows us to travel in time, in that it shows us scenes from the past. We can even see dead people in the prime of life. Through recording technology, we hear their voices.

Psychologist Steven Pinker, in "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" (a chapter in his book THE STUFF OF THOUGHT), speculates on why taboo words—profanity and obscenity—have been forbidden or restricted in most human cultures. Often against our will, "dirty" words force images into our minds that we may not want to entertain. Unlike eyes, ears don't have "earlids" to shut out objectionable sounds spoken by other people. Also, as he points out, "understanding the meaning of a word is automatic"; "once a word is seen or heard we are incapable of treating it as a squiggle or noise but reflexively look it up in memory and respond to its meaning." Language equals thought control. The official Newspeak dialect in Orwell's 1984 strives to make heretical thoughts literally "unthinkable"—at least as far as "thought is dependent on language."

Many fantasy novels postulate that magic depends on a special, often secret language. In one of my favorite series, Diane Duane's Young Wizards stories, learning wizardry consists mainly of mastering the Speech, the universal language of reality understood by all creatures, including those we ordinarily think of as inanimate. A wizard affects the world by using the Speech to persuade an object, creature, or system to change. However, some speech acts in the mundane world also alter reality. Enactive speech not only describes an event but makes it happen, e.g. taking an oath of office or uttering the words, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."

A prayer in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer titled "For Those Who Influence Public Opinion" makes this petition: "Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read, that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous." A heavy responsibility for authors, especially in this divisive, volatile era!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 20: Crafting A Path to Selling Fiction

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 20
Crafting A Path to Selling Fiction
Guest Post by Miriam Pia 

After hearing from Deb Wunder, a professional writer who found her voice in non-fiction,

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

I can now bring you a Guest Post by Miriam Pia who crafted her own path through side-channels and specialty magazines as the world shifted to Electronic Publication.

This is the 20th post in a series about Marketing Fiction in a Changing World.  Here is the index to all of those posts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Many of the previous posts are about that changing world, about building an audience online, about connecting with that audience using various media based tools.

In this series, I have also noted many of the non-systematic changes publishing has undergone, in the haphazard way that Disruption works in a human-based-culture.

Draw a line from the print-only publishing world, to our own Indie publishers who work E-book only or E-book and Print on Demand (sometimes plus audiobook) only, but never distribute through brick-and-mortar stores. Look at how Amazon has disrupted Mass Market Publishing, and how Mass Market has fought back.

Distribution is the industry that is undergoing massive disruption of the kind we looked at last week.  The whole publishing industry was founded on Distribution from wholesaler to retailer. That structure has been disrupted. Understand how and why, and craft your own path into best seller status.

Today's distribution model is completely changed, yet (as with the post on Depicting Disruption last week) entirely the same. It is just a different technology being used to do the same task: gather and connect with a Readership.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So here is our Guest, Miriam Pia describing her path.

--------------------------

Crafting A Path
by
 Miriam Pia

Jacqueline Lichtenberg asked me to blog a little bit about my adventures with publishing so far.


Well, it has been what I myself consider a little bizarre.

Like most writers I started out as a child who learned literacy.  My mother encouraged me to write in English daily.  Unlike August 2010 to 8 April 2016, I was living in a nation where English is the main language.  By the time I was 12 or 13 years old I read a lot for recreation as well as having been a good girl who read what the teachers told me to read.  At some point, that means I was getting decent to excellent American educational publisher materials, and "Big 6" publishing house hits from bookstores and libraries.  Like most writers, back then I did not think about it that way.


My first adult awareness of publishers was a little unusual.  My boyfriend's parents ran a writing business from the family's living room and that guy's youngest brother used to write short fiction and submit them to magazines.  I lived with my boyfriend and was exposed to a lot of what went on, considering, but of course it was nothing like it was for the parents running the business or the young guy submitting fiction stories.

Mostly the parents expressed that they had to copy write for corporations to earn an entire living and the youngest would periodically report having received another rejection from another magazine.  He either said that he stuck the rejection slips onto a nail in his bedroom wall or else he said that Steven King used to do that.  For some reason I don't even remember which.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend felt even weirder than he had before he brought in a girlfriend who would also write a novel while hanging around at home.  The clackety clack had already been getting to him, and this only made it ...harder to quit smoking.


A few years later I had a first publication as a professional thanks to an older woman I met as a senior work colleague at a university.  She had a go at starting her own newsletter and included me as one of her published authors.  She paid a penny per word for a poem and a short story.  I was so happy to go pro!


It was more years later before I got anywhere with professional writing again, and for a while my best luck was to get a free copy of magazine.  There were several years when pagan magazines helped me.  A British magazine Comhairle Cairdre and another called Time Between Times published nonfiction and fiction.  I barely remember what happened that made it work, but I can tell you that I succeeded in not offending some English lady who ran a magazine or publishing company that controlled multiple magazines.

Another couple of years later, I felt I was having a tough time making any headway.  I managed to communicate online with some pagans enough that one lady took pity on me and let have some book reviews for Pangaia.  Goddess forgive me if it was actually Pagan Dawn magazine and not Pangaia.  It was like 15 years ago.   Some editor took pity on me.  Sorry but that's really how it was.  I was glad.  I had fun writing a few book reviews for a reasonably reputable magazine.

The next breakthrough I had was when I submitted a short story to the Iliad Press Summer Art Awards.  They gave my story an Honorable Mention.  While not a first prize and no cash, in this case a small press told me that my work was not horribly substandard which was really nice but not as nice as a prize with money involved would have been.  That was in like 2001 or 2002.

An Indianapolis paper NuVo accepted a couple of letters to the editor from me, but I never developed the rapport to write for pay with them. NuVo is a  newspaper that markets the entertainment industry to college students and yuppies in Indianapolis.  I did go to the same cafe as a woman who wore more dresses and succeeded in getting that same publication to pay her to write for them about food.  They mostly use staff writers and the first years earned about $13K for the year back at the beginning of the 21st century.  Most of them have degrees and majored in either communications or journalism but the organization has some wiggle room for the one who gets there some other way.


The International Society of Poetry publishes poetry anthologies and runs contests.  They serve a market that is predominantly to support amateurs in having a good time, but they also send out some rewards for work they think is particularly good and once or twice each year they run a contest in which the top prize is tens of thousands of dollars and a relatively serious publishing contract for like a book of poetry or something.

They published a few of my pieces in books and online.  They gave me 2 Editor's Choice Awards, but again, those awards did not include me winning money.  One award was in 2003 but the other was in 2008.   They have a mixed reputation because,  as mentioned above they crank out large anthologies which mainly serve amateurs as a way to have a good time and share some work with family and friends or to enjoy having a bunch of work by other people who were not known before.  They publish a lot of free verse poetry .   All of mine that they used were just 23 lines of free verse.

After that, my big breakthrough with publishers was another surprise.  It was corporate clients, who hired me to ghostwrite. That meant I wrote 'blind'.

Here's what I mean.  In the magazine industry most editors hire people who have read the magazine for a while and have really learned the style.  Writing that way is 'with sight'.  Blind is like with blind dates .  I just had no idea.  Magazine publishers say this is horrible practice but there it was: corporate publishers wanted this and I went ahead and did it.


Thanks to that, I got paid more than I had before as a writer but instead of an artist marketing my own creations I was writing something for someone else.  I had bid on the project so I had some idea.  What I liked best about it was that it mimicked good relationships with editors and managing editors at magazines and publishing companies in that I knew I was hired so I wrote and they paid me.  Especially when I needed to earn money that worked much better for me than spending God knows how long trying to get Fussy Editor 73 to decide she liked me or my article pitch enough to look at it after I wrote it and then maybe their magazine would use it and send me $20 half a year later.

Instead, I was hired and I wrote and they paid me for what I wrote.  That is what happens with traditional magazines and publishing companies after Fussy Editor 73 has concluded that you or I are good as gold but until then, good luck (sarcasm intended).  I would still like to befriend Fussy Editor 73 and the others, but wow, it can be tough.
So I wrote for people who don't know me and who's names I have mostly forgotten, to write and get paid.  The vast majority were corporations which means that my work appeared all over the place but usually as part of a corporate blog or on a website and without my name appearing anywhere.  I don't even know where my work appeared - which is hilarious in some ways and like a fun house mirror for my ego as a professional writer.


Here is a partial client list.  A few of the places I do remember are Closeout Explosion, BookRags, Latham Shindler's short stories.  There were also Jermaine Davis and Alan Northcott and Victor Ogazi.  There was EastBiz and an Atlanta Real Estate Blog and years later Allmand and Amp and Void Visuals.  The reality of writing professionally, in this way, has made some of what should be perfectly clear a bit of a blur, mainly because I was home working from my living room or typing away in a cafe most of the times that I did that work.  There have been other clients in the near and distant past.  Some may be offended to be mentioned, whereas others might be proud to be.


The most frequent project types with the corporate clients were articles.  Here is where we find a big difference between the way I worked and some norms in the industry.  What I did is both good and bad.  It is bad in that the majority of professional writers would have specialized much more by now.  For example:  'I'm a fashion article writer for such n such set of magazines based in NYC.' Or 'I do grant proposals'.  Instead, I am still in the professional stage of exploration, and have tried a number of different types of writing projects and continue to try more.

The good part about this, is that, over time, there are some signs of specialization anyways and thanks to the flexibility of some of the freelance services I have more freedom to go ahead and try to develop my skills in new areas within professional writing.


During the second decade of the New Millennium I finally had another type of breakthrough, in that I finally got a publication by book publishers with myself as the real and official author, rather than having ghostwritten a book or part of a book for a corporate or private client.

As most people can imagine I was delighted to get published by a regular press rather than being self-published.   It is true that personal connections helped in that a guy I found online who was a playmate of my older brother's, 30 years ago, helped get a publisher he knew to not ignore my submission.  Wilder Publications was able to publish as a POD a self-help / intro to philosophy booklet that I released and wow, do they want me to sell more copies above cost.  I agree but that gets into another part of the job.

Here is my self-help book:
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Big-Questions-Life-Answer/dp/1617208647

Before then, I had a profound personal drama with an Indian publisher Alethia.  I was thrilled because they accepted a novel that I had written in 2006 and again  it was not self-publishing and I was glad.

They got so far as to design the cover but they did not release the novel according to the schedule that appeared in the contract so instead of that novel coming out with a price in Rupees from the publisher based in Pune, India it came back to me.

A few years later, that novel found release through SBPRA which is an author subsidized deal.  I need to find the readers and sell lots more copies but it is nice that there is a nice professionally produced version of this novel for sale.  That one got released in 2015.


Way back in the previous decade there was other excitement, hope, drama then nothing because Artemis publishing told me they were interested in a work of academic philosophy that I had produced.  My understanding is that they collapsed and were not able to follow through, and in 2016 I still have not found another publisher for that work, but have updated and modified that work.  I would rather not self-publish it because of personal limitations.  I just think self-publishing works better for certain kinds of people. It requires certain skills, only some of which I have.

This year, SBPRA
http://sbpra.com/miriampia/
is working with me to release a science fiction novel under a pen name.

Whether sensible or insane, I threw a male pen name onto that one for a couple of simple reasons.  Even though both Jacqueline Lichtenberg and I are women who write science fiction, it is possible, most SF fans are young men.  There are older men and women who like it, but the market is still young men.

What I meant by the male pen name was for young  men to just see some other guy's name on the cover of some book and for them to just go for it even if for some weird reason they feel like they should go for something that some other man did.  Due to the nature of my own ego, my real name is listed in the acknowledgements.  Some will be offended but others will love the little trick.

The pen name is Robert Fitzgerald Jr. by the way, and the first novel on which that name appears is The Children of Loki which is about  interstellar mercenaries.  That man known as ‘Rock’ could portray the novel’s main character – Kiel Bronson, but to portray Gezka FaucMerz would rely on graphic arts and other special effects magic.  There are other male and female characters who are more normal.  What I am getting at is fully explained whenever one reads the novel.

 I have had some comedic fantasies about using a male actor to portray Robert Fitzgerald Jr. at book signings so the men can find the guy who wrote the novel they like.  Anyway, I may have created something I had not anticipated trying that, but that novel is due to be released later this year.    I mean,  I am the author so I would do the actual signing but uh – well, I’d try to make a rather amusing game of it when the young men show up to meet RFJ and there I am at the table with a pile of books and some guy dressed up as RFJ, so they’ll not be disappointed somehow.

That's what I have experienced with book publishing so far.

Meanwhile, I have periodically tried to get a literary agent and I would like traditional publishing company contracts.  I will continue.  I have had one agent, associated with SBPRA for a year several years ago.

At this point, that is what has happened to me.  I feel I still have a lot to learn.

Miriam Pia

http://sbpra.com/miriampia/

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Big-Questions-Life-Answer/dp/1617208647

http://miriampia.com/

https://miriamspia.wordpress.com/?ref=spelling

------------------End Guest Post-----------

This post depicts the actual life of real professional writers.  Being a "professional" means putting your hand to any and every opportunity to make money. You acquire the craft in order to sell that skill.  It is not personal. You just do it.  

Then there is the Art of Writing.  That is personal.  You don't sell your Art. You hide it inside the craft that fits your Art into the commercial distribution channels.

As noted above, those commercial distribution channels are still seething with "disruption by technology."  Read last week's post on disruption and think about how your Art can find a place in that ever-changing world.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reviews 23 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Stone and a Hard Place by R. L. King

Reviews-23-by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Stone And A Hard Place by R. L. King


R. L. King is one of the writers highlighted on my page of writers who have been influenced by my writing.
http://simegen.com/jl/influencedbyJL/

I want to point you to Book 1 in R. L. King's series The Alastair Stone Chronicles,  because I truly admired the strong, disciplined structure of this novel.

It's an easy, quick read -- great kind of thing to read on an airplane but you won't toss it in the trash when you get to your destination (or delete it from your phone -- paper and Kindle versions on Amazon).

  http://amazon.com/gp/product/B00UGBEQYY

Besides being a great story about a master of Magical Craft taking on an Apprentice while dealing with a cross-dimension incursion by a genuine Monster Entity, this novel is worth any writer's time to study.

It's not a Romance, but the plot is driven by Relationships and a good, solid sexual relationship, too.

All the Characters (except the Monster) do things because of how they "relate" to the other characters.

We see what it means to hold someone in contempt.
We see what it means to think you should hold someone in high regard.
We see what it means to acquire high regard for those who supply "strokes" or good feelings, who      bolster your self-esteem whether you should have any self-esteem or not.
We see what it means to perceive an elegant devotion to Charity and  throw down in support of that  lofty goal.
We see what it means to be self-critical.

This novel creates an interlaced web of Relationships all of which contribute materially to the plot.  There's love, contempt and even embryonic hatred.

We can see all of this in one panoramic perspective because of the underlying structure of the novel.

That structure is invisible to the consumer, the casual reader, which is just as it should be.  The casual reader should swoop through the story eager for "what happens next" -- and indeed that is exactly how this book reads.

The strict, disciplined structure reminiscent of Hollywood movies or network TV shows causes the page-turner effect.

After you've read the book, check the beginning then check the ending.  Also check the middle.

Spoiler:
SPOILER
SPOILER

But the truth is the following analysis does not spoil the pure enjoyment in this novel.

There is an unexpected death near the end.  It is not foreshadowed, except poetically.  You keep asking yourself how in the world is the writer going to keep this character alive after all this -- but all indications are that the writer will keep that character alive.

But no.

Poetic Justice is served up cold.

Here's the relevant 3-part series on this blog on Poetic Justice and how to use it as a device.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_15.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_22.html

Now, given that the plot calls for that shock-scene of the death, and a huge Karmic Reveal, together with (all in a couple of paragraphs) a glimpse into the future lives of this character, and possibly the past lives of the Main Character who survives, maybe into the Relationship between them established over lifetimes, -- how can the opening of such a Paranormal Action-Mystery novel be structured so the ending makes sense, but is not telegraphed to the reader?

If the opening telegraphs to the reader too much, then the reader will become bored and stop turning pages.

Well, the genre is "Mystery" primarily (not Romance).

If it were a Romance it might be classed as Paranormal Action-Romance and the opening would be the first meeting of the two characters who would fall in love -- very likely opening on them fighting each other, maybe in Arcane Combat.

This is clearly a MYSTERY.

But it partakes of the elements of Science Fiction, too.

The mystery in question is the arcane equivalent of a science mystery -- a piece of data that doesn't fit accepted theory.

So as the author says, it is an Urban Fantasy because the setting is contemporary (sans cell phones), and the science involved is Magic.  From my NOT SO MINOR ARCANA series on Tarot:

 
I think it is much more than just Urban Fantasy -- mixing many genres seamlessly, including hints of a coming Romance.  Some major publishers still shun this type of mixture -- but of course it is my own personal favorite.

So as the novel progresses, investigation shows there are some theories that cover the observation, but no big detailed reference works to cookbook through fixing the problem.

Since paranormal mystery genre is to be the envelope, the writer chose to open the plot as you do with a mystery, and to close with the solution, and a denouement as you do with a mystery.

The typical closed-form detective novel, or TV show, starts with the discovery of the body, or a bit of evidence that a crime has been committed.  This kicks off the Plot -- but not yet the Story.

Stone and a Hard Place starts with a prologue, and a wildly gorgeous opening line.

"Adelaide Bonham was convinced that her house hated her."

The whole novel is about that House, it's hatred for Adelaide, what kind of person she is, how she manages to accept an unacceptable explanation of what she has observed, and what she does both because of that acceptance, that observation, and what she does in spite of that acceptance, and what becomes of the House because of it all.

Adelaide an old, frail, infirm woman, a widow who has inherited the house passed down to her husband by his ancestors.

She is not a typical old widow.

She's courageous, exemplary, set in her ways but willing to accept new ideas.

But she is not the Hero of this Story -- not the Main Character.

That's why her conviction that her house hates her is in a prologue, not the opening of Chapter One.

Stone And A Hard Place is not about her, not her story, not her destiny.

She, like the first character you see on a TV Series episode opening where the week's body is discovered, is part of both plot and story -- she is obstacle, goal and enabler, even perhaps Protagonist, but not Hero, not Main Character.  She both prevents and then instigates plot events.  But the novel is not her Story.

Many readers of this blog know I usually send back (mostly unread) any manuscript sent to me for evaluation that begins with a Prologue.

The art of the prologue is incredibly difficult to master.

Artistically, the prologue must be a major narrative hook -- draw the reader into the story.  But at the same time, it must not fix the reader's attention and present the reason to read this novel.

The reason to read the novel is paragraph 1 of Chapter 1 -- it is not the prologue, which as it's name indicates is the "log" (like Captain's Log) of "what came before the story" that instigates the plot.

Be advised, most readers routinely skip anything labeled prologue, so usually it's better to call it Chapter One and make it the springboard into Chapter Two.

In this case, though, what you have here is a perfect example of a novel that must have a prologue, and a perfect example of a prologue that contains nothing but prologue material.

You find perfect examples like this in Mystery and Police Procedurals -- the Event that the Main Character must investigate.

The beginning writer tends to grab at the prologue to solve a writing structure problem no other tool in that writer's toolbox seems suited for.

Usually, that is the beginning writer's up-welling urgency to write the story, shoving aside anything that would slow down the writing -- including learning new techniques necessary to tell the story in just the way that the story demands.

That is not what happened here in Stone And A Hard Place.

This prologue is a precise example of not only when to use a prologue but how and why.

This prologue is part of the formula of the Detective Story, and sets out the main problem The Detective will have to solve.

The plot has "reveals" about the way the Reluctant Detective gets sucked into solving this problem, what he discovers that's vaguely suspicious, what he learns that is definitely suspicious, what makes him very wary of the size of the problem (tip of the iceberg and he knows it) -- what and how he researches, what is known about this problem, what he thinks about what he discovers, what he decides to do about it, what happens (not as a consequence of his decision plot-wise, but as a consequence poetically, karmicly, of who and what he is).

Each bit of information about the mystery, about why this old woman thinks her house hates her, what she does about that, what the Detective ( a master Magician named Stone who is facing a very hard place in his life) does as a consequence of what the old woman does, is Revealed at exactly the correct place in the narrative all the way to The End and the epilogue.

The precision pacing is not just the order in which information is revealed, but also how many words are devoted to revealing each piece and giving the reader time to absorb and understand that information.

The information feed in this novel is perfect.

The Mystery Plot begun in the Prologue forms the backbone of the Plot.  The Mystery Formula sets the pacing.

The Story begins at the Chapter One opening.  (for a Mystery formula this is exactly the correct choice.)

Chapter One introduces our Reluctant Detective with his awareness of the karmic problem of his life, the life-stage he is passing through at this very moment.

The opening line is perfect:
"Alastair Stone suspected the Universe was conspiring against his desire to keep the two sides of his life separate."

And at the end of the novel, we see that is indeed the case -- poetic justice, karma, has overwhelmed and transformed his life, and he is complicit.

The next few paragraphs of the opening (brief, hard-punching paragraphs perfectly crafted) convey the information that Stone will now take on an Apprentice at the behest of a figure who is an Old Friend.  That figure is thought of many times throughout the novel, and then tinkers with Stone's destiny again in the Epilogue.

The epilogue is titled appropriately Chapter Forty-Six, Two Weeks Later, instead of epilogue.

Why is this not titled epilogue?  Because it does not cap the prologue with a final bit of information completing the plot begun in the prologue.

It is not an epilogue, but a denouement to the mystery, dealing with the damage left in the wake of resolving the conflict.

Chapter Forty-Six delineates the wrap-up of the Story (not the Plot) and indicates what the Reluctant Detective will choose to do next because of the losses sustained in this adventure and the scars only beginning to form on his psyche as the two parts of his life have been smashed together with the force of karma.

Within the first few paragraphs of Chapter One we also meet Stone's "magically oblivious girlfriend" -- who later figures in the story significantly, particularly in saving Stone's life.  They're sleeping together but  not living together -- lots of romantic tension that isn't yet a romance.

Then Chapter Two introduces Stone's everyday life (as a Professor of the arcane at a regular university where the topic is treated as a mythical curiosity), and his first meeting with his new Apprentice.

The main characters are all introduced in the correct order, the order of their effect on the ending.

The body of the novel is all about juggling responsibilities to train the Apprentice while dealing with the Monster In The House, and with the overcoming of the personal angst caused by Stone's inability to keep the two sides of his life separate and still keep his self-respect.

The Point of View shifts, but never wanders.  The writer does not use point of view shift because she doesn't know any other way to get the information to the reader.  She chooses Point of View Shift because it is the correct tool for this information feed at this specific point in the novel.  It is all very disciplined, very precise.

The entire composition follows the "Beats" delineated in Blake Snyder's Save The Cat! series on screenwriting.  Scene structure, climax points, each one is placed exactly where it belongs by adjusting the number of words necessary to move the story and the plot ahead.  That word-count discipline is a big factor in the page-turner effect.

Read this novel, enjoy it, then dissect it beat for beat, count paragraphs, words, and how dialogue is mixed in tempo with narrative, exposition, and description.  There is a firm hand behind this novel, and a very high precision sense of structure and pacing.

As Save The Cat! points out repeatedly, structure and pacing make the difference between an "Opens Everywhere" film and a campus Arts Playhouse showing or two.

Structure and pacing are all about audience size.  But though both structure and pacing are necessary conditions for wide distribution, they are not sufficient conditions.

This novel has the potential to reach and please a very large, very broad audience given the right kind of publicity and promotion.

In today's world, that kind of publicity and promotion is rarely possible for a work of mixed genres like this one.  Urban Fantasy is one of the labels that allows for such a mixture.

If you are writing a mixed-genre -- or perhaps think you are writing a very pure genre -- study this novel's ingredients.  It is a smoothly blended mixture of all my favorite genres.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com