Karen S. Wiesner: I Want to Write a Series. Now What? Part 1

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

I Want to Write a Series. Now What?

Part 1

Based on Writing the Standalone Series (formerly titled Writing the Fiction Series {The Guide to Novel and Novellas})

“The [series] tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.” ~T. S. Eliot

This is the first of two posts dealing with writing a series.

“The disease of writing is dangerous and contagious.” (Abelard to Heloise)

Following a series can also become a relentless obsession and it’s the hallmark of why readers read series, why writers write them, and why publishers publish them. The mania is spreading. So how do you get started?

Whether you’ve been pondering starting your own or you’ve finished a first book and don’t want to let go, there are a lot of things to work out when writing a fiction series.

Developing a Plan for Your Series

If a series doesn’t have a “tie” that connects each book, it could hardly be called a series. Developing the Ties from one book to the next prevents readers from questioning the point of the series. These Ties can be any or even all of the following:

·         Recurring character or couple (think Aloysius Pendergast in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Pendergast Series or J.D. Robb’s Eve and Roarke from the In Death Series)

·         Central group of characters (such as George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and the members of Kate Jacobs’ Friday Night Knitting Club)

·         A plot or premise (as in Robin Cook’s Jack Stapleton medical mysteries or Dan Brown’s treasure hunts in the Robert Langdon Series)

·         Setting (Forks, Washington in Twilight or Harry Potter’s Hogwarts)

As in the series examples mentioned above, what connects the books in a series should be evident in each entry. Ensuring this kind of continuity requires advance planning. Ideally, you want to start developing your series as early as you can. To get things going, let’s consider what separates series writing from novel writing.

1) Understanding Story Arcs Verses Series Arcs

Every work of fiction has a Story Arc or a continued storyline. The Story Arc is short-term since it’s introduced, developed and concluded within the individual book. In clear contrast to a stand-alone novel, a series almost always has a Series Arc as well. A Series Arc is a long-term plot thread that’s introduced in the first book, alluded to in some way in each middle book, but is only resolved in the final series book. The only exception to this rule is an open-ended series in which all the books are stand-alones and there’s no need for a Series Arc that resolves in the last book. Earlier we mentioned examples of open-ended series like the Stapleton and Langdon ones.

Series that will have a definitive end do need a Series Arc whether clearly or subtly defined. The Series Arc is generally separate from the individual Story Arcs though they must fit together seamlessly to provide logical progression throughout the series. As an example, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the Story Arc is the sorcerer’s stone plotline. The Series Arc, in the most simplified terms, is good overcoming evil. The Series Arc runs progressively and cohesively beneath the individual Story Arcs in each successive book.

Is it necessary for a series that’s not open-ended to have a Series Arc? Absolutely! In a series that will have definitive closure, you’ve presented a nagging situation in the first book that must be settled satisfactorily in the last. Without that, readers who have invested time, money, and passion will feel cheated. To write a series is to promise an acceptable resolution. If, in the course of Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven Series, Kendra and Seth didn’t defeat the evil threatening the Fablehaven preserve and stop the plague that could have led to a hoard of imprisoned demons escaping into the world, Mull would have left his fans crying foul because he broke the pledge of a satisfactory resolution implied in the first book.

Spell out your Series Arc for yourself as much as you can so you can work from that premise from start to finish.

2) Evaluating C-S-P Series Potential

Readers fall in love with characters, settings and plots. They want conflict but don’t want you to hurt their heroes. They want different but don’t want things to change. But a character, setting or plot that doesn’t change also doesn’t evolve, doesn’t remain life-like, and eventually becomes boring.

Series characters, settings and plots should have longevity and intriguing potential that continues to grow, never stagnate or wane, throughout the course of a series. While none of these should ever have a radical transplant from one book to the next, it’s crucial they’re affected by changes. Consider the three P’s that make characters (and just as certainly settings and plots!) three-dimensional:

1) Personality (always multi-faceted with strengths and weaknesses, and capable of growing, being molded, deeply delved, and stretched)

2) Problems (combining light and dark, good and evil, simple and complex—not necessarily in equal parts)

3) Purpose (evolving goals and motivations wide enough to introduce new and unpredictable themes into a series but narrow enough for focus in individual stories)

Without the introduction of something new for series characters, settings and plots, you’ll give your readers nothing to hope for beyond the first book. The best way to plant seeds for series exploration is to evaluate your C-S-P (Character-Setting-Plot) potential. Basically what this means is you establish “Plants” in the first and middle series books that can be used at any time during the life of the series to expand all three of these components. Naturally, the sooner you set these up, the more believable they’ll be when it’s time to fully develop them. As an example, in the Robert Langdon Series, the main character frequently mentions the Mickey Mouse watch he wears—not something most grown men would be caught dead in. In his case, it was a gift from his parents on his ninth birthday, something rife with sentimental value, and, considering that much of this series revolves around 24-hour deadlines, the significance of this object is heightened. If the first time the symbolic accessory was mentioned was when Langdon was thrust in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid in The Lost Symbol, Book 3, the reader would have been figuratively drowned as a consequence. Obviously the appropriate place to explain the watch would be in a time of passive reflection (in the first book in the series), not during life-and-death action three books in. Luckily, this item was planted early enough that its appearance over the course of the series didn’t feel contrived or convenient to the plots.

Most authors include numerous “Plants” in the first book in a series without realizing it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t deliberately insert them, too. When considering your C-S-P series potential, do free-form summaries for all of the questions below. Don’t worry if you can’t come up with much right away; simply use this as a jumping-off point as the series progresses. Go on the assumption that these seeds may be planted (and left mostly unexplored) in the early books for development in later titles:

·         How can you outfit all series characters with heroic traits and habits as well as flaws and vices that can lead to natural growth as well as interesting plots?

·         What occupations, hobbies, interests, and idiosyncrasies can you give characters that can be gradually developed?

·         What relationships and potential enemies/villains can you add to expand the series potential?

·         What lessons, backstory or experiences can be hinted at for later revelation and development and may lead to suspenseful plots or emotional crises?

·         What life conditions, challenges, trials, grudges, grief, betrayals, threats, heartaches or obsessions (romance, marriage, divorce, parents/children, illness, medical ailment or death) can characters face that may lead to compelling situations throughout the series?

·         What locations can you set the series and individual books in to expand characters and plots?

·         What world, regional or local events, holidays, important dates or disasters (natural or man-made) can provide a catalyst?

·         What quest—fortuitous, cursed or anywhere in-between—can be undertaken?

·         What item or object can you place that can become the basis for plot, setting or character development?

Keep one rule firmly in mind when you’re planting the series seeds that will give you both longevity and flexibility for the road ahead: Always leave plenty of Plants unexplored! The last thing you want to do is lock yourself in too early. In the early books in the Pendergast Series, it was revealed that the FBI agent’s wife had been killed years earlier. Superficial details about this death were alluded to but kept sparse and flexible enough that, when the authors moved into their Helen Trilogy quite a few books later, they could easily mold this event any way they needed to and maintain believability. Had they locked down specific details early on, the trilogy might never have seen the light of day.

Hints and allusions are ideal—even required, as we’ve seen—when you’re introducing C-S-P series potential in one book and then developing in another. In real life, no one walks around with a list to show others of the people they know, the places they’ve been, or the things they’ve done. These are introduced a little at a time. In the same way, from one book to the next, you explore the facets of C-S-P slowly, developing them beyond the static state they started in as you go along instead of all at once. If you give too much detail too soon, you may find it hard to change or adapt when the time comes to use a Plant.

Additionally, keep in mind that, if no one wants to see more of these characters, settings, and the series premise that sparks plot over the long haul, the series is pointless. Always spin established facts on their axis so the reader will have a new, emotional and unexpected journey in each additional story within the series. Every offering must be at least as exciting as the one before. These are the ingredients that bring readers back for more.

In Part 2, we'll talk about organizing series details.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Writing the Standalone Series

Volume 3 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

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

Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Artificial Blood

Here's an article about an artificial blood substitute being developed by a research physician from the University of Maryland School of Medicine:

Artificial Blood One Step Closer

It's not meant to replace regular blood transfusions, but as a supply in emergencies for purposes such as to "stabilize a patient’s blood pressure or facilitate blood clotting." The goal is "to develop a bio-synthetic whole-blood product that can be freeze-dried for easy portability, storage, and reconstitution." Instant blood, just add water! The main ingredient will be "ErythroMer, the artificial blood product made by KaloCyte, a company co-founded by Dr. Doctor in 2016 with bioengineer and synthetic chemist Dipanjan Pan, PhD, MSc, professor in nanomedicine at Penn State University, and Philip Spinella, MD, a military transfusion medicine expert at the University of Pittsburgh." The two other main components are "synthetic platelets and freeze-dried plasma."

Here's a Wikipedia entry about various kinds of blood substitutes:

Blood Substitute

The most difficult function to duplicate, as well as the most important, is the transportation of oxygen. Several different varieties of manufactured hemoglobin have been tried. Another potential alternative might be growing red blood cells from stem cells in vitro.

As a fan, scholar, and writer of vampire fiction, naturally I wonder whether the University of Maryland's artificial blood product could nourish vampires. Could it serve the function of True Blood in the Sookie Stackhouse series, allowing vampires to "come out of the coffin" as accepted members of society? Whole blood includes many components besides those found in present-day blood substitutes. Which of those ingredients are necessary for vampires to thrive? If the growth of stem-cell-generated hemoglobin could be perfected, that would seem the best product for both medical uses and vampire nutrition.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Karen S. Wiesner: The Ins and Outs of Outlining, Part 3

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Ins and Outs of Outlining, Part 3

Based on FIRST DRAFT OUTLINE (formerly titled FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS)

This is the final of three posts dealing with outlining.

In the final segment of my outlining series, I offer tips for creating a useful outline that translates into cohesive story building and career momentum.

Tip 1) Creating Story Folders

To get started, always create story folders for every single germ of an idea you have and do this throughout your career. Each time you have something to add, jot down a note and insert it in the folder, thereby building up and developing the story over time and getting it ready to be outlined. In this way, you allow each story to “percolate” on the backburner of your mind over a long period of time, which is absolutely ideal since the more you have to work with, the easier every story will be to work out. Brainstorming for a long time—preferably years—is a proactive way of advancing your story writing and ensuring the future of your career success. Additionally, creating and utilizing story folders throughout your career also allows you to stay focused on current WIPs and not have your brain “divided” by working on more than one project at a time.

When it's time to outline a project, take out you story folder, which should contain a good number of the pieces you've created and will now be puzzled out, developed and adjusted, expanded or cropped until the story is complete, whole and solid. Essentially, you jump in and, in this process that requires endless, productive brainstorming, you work chronologically from the beginning of the book to the end, outlining every single scene.

Tip 2) Brainstorming Continuously

Something I don't think I can ever overemphasize is the vital importance of brainstorming in every stage of your writing to keep your productivity at a pinnacle. Brainstorming is what turns an average story into an extraordinary one. It’s the magical element every writer marvels about in the process of completing a book.

A popular novelist said that for her next book, she was going to hold it inside her until it was like a piece of fruit on a branch bowing almost to the ground it was so ripe. Isn’t that an incredible picture of how a story can grow in our minds until it absolutely has to be written? That’s exactly as it should be (though you can do the same for an idea that’s not ready—it’ll just be a lot harder). Ideally, don’t start your story until you have a lot to work with. The productive writer starts with a solid story that’s ready to drop into her hands like ripe fruit. When I’m working on a project, I try to brainstorming day and night, whatever I do, wherever I am, whenever I possibly can.

Something every author covets is the ability to sit down to a blank screen or page and begin to work immediately. The secret to doing that is brainstorming! When you brainstorm constantly and productively during both the outlining and writing processes, you’ll always be fully prepared to begin working without agonizing over the starting sentences or paragraph. Brainstorming keeps your writing so fresh, you don’t have to worry about getting stuck at any point. It's the secret to avoiding writer's block forever.

Tip 3) Outlining and Writing in Tandem

When I first started outlining, I would inevitably hit a road block working chronologically. Each time it happened, I'd skip around and work on scenes that I knew would come in at some later point in the book, and so the middle and end of the book began to gain structure. As I worked, all my scenes and ideas were expanding in my mind and on the page, taking on layers of richness, complexity and depth. {Note: Very early in my outlining, I used a process I call “outlining and writing in tandem” which was outlining as far as I could go scene by scene in the book. When I hit a roadblock I couldn't seem to get past jumping around in the outline, I would start writing the book at Chapter One, scene 1. Sometimes writing that scene showed me what should happen next in my outline. In that case, I returned to outlining the book as far as I could go from there again. If I hit another roadblock, I’d write the next scene in the book. I always returned to the outlining, if I could, as soon as I wrote a scene because the process of writing exploded and grew the idea in my mind, giving me ideas for how to progress the story from the point I was in outlining it.

My goal, of course, was to finish outlining the book long before I finished writing it. See First Draft Outline for more specifics on the “tandem” writing process. This is something I no longer need to do. I outline a book from start to finish each time. The longer we write, the more books we finish, the easier it should become. We grow more adept in our writing the longer we do it.

Keep working like this, going back and forth, always trying to return to chronological order scene drafting when you can, pushing the storyline forward toward completion, until your outline contains every single scene in the book. Once the outline is complete, take a short break to give yourself a little distance, then read the outline over, filling in any holes. Basically, you're revising the outline in the same way you would a first draft. When you're satisfied that everything is there as it should be, you'll see one irrefutable conclusion: This is unmistakably the first draft of your book because it is your book…condensed. An outline like this is so complete that it contains every single one of your plot threads, unfurled with the correct pacing and the necessary tension, culmination and resolution from beginning to end.

Tip 4) Setting the Stage for Strong Characterization, Plots, and Conflicts in the Outline

Your outline is the place to work out your story settings, plot conflicts, in-depth characterization before starting the actual book. This allows you to focus on scenes that work cohesively together and advance all of these. Additionally, tension, foreshadowing, dialogue, introspection, action, descriptions, etc. can best be done within the outline (without it having to be your best work--just give yourself directions for all of these within the scene you need them in your outline), building strength while adding texture and complexity.

If you know where your story is going before you ever write a word of the first draft (in other words, you've already plotted every single scene of the story from start to finish so you know what's supposed to happen in each one), your story has a firm foundation that supports the framework of your story. You've worked out the kinks in the story in the outline and ensured that the writing and revising will go smoothly and easily. Best of all, what you end up should be utterly solid, requiring only minor editing and polishing to make it publishable. You will almost never have to face a sagging middle, deflated tension, a poorly constructed plot thread or weak characterization again because all those serious problems had been fixed in the outline stage.

Tip 5) Revising Less

You may find this hard to believe, but I discovered yet another cool side effect of using this method. I can now write a full-length novel (based on my first-draft outline) in a month or less, usually, by committing myself to writing two scenes a day. (Obviously shorter works would take even less time than that.) If you write only one, though, you’re still progressing and probably at a faster rate than you would not using the method. Also, because the story is so solid in the outline, revision amounts to removing clutter to make the story understandable, to prevent tripping hazards caused by clumsy prose, and to infuse a story with vivid, interesting narration that says succinctly what it is you want it to say, concurrently bringing the whole story to vibrant life. After my critique partner has gone over the book, a final polish (reading the book off the computer—where I’ll catch more typos) completes the work and gives me confidence that it’s ready to go to my editor.

Most of my editorial revisions are minor common sense suggestions to refine word usage and smooth out the flow of sentences. I can’t remember the last time an editor pointed out a structural issue. I’ve been very fortunate to enjoy both excellent reviews and multiple awards, and a warm reception from readers. Additionally, I’m able to complete more books each year because I use the most effective method for completing each and every projects.

Tip 6) Goal-setting

Once you have that solid outline, you’ll know every single day what you’ll be writing, which has a two-fold perk: You can plan how long it'll take to write the book down to the day (if you have 40 scenes and write 2 a day, it'll take you 20 days to finish the book, right?) and you never have to sit down to a blank page, floundering because you have no idea how to fill it. You know where the story is going and exactly what needs to happen in each scene.

The more efficient you are in the process of writing each book, the more momentum you build in your career because you can offer more high-quality books in less time. The days of an author leisurely writing one book a year to offer to his or her fans are long past. Authors have to offer countless releases every year to compete, especially if they're writing as eires. So writers have to learn how to produce more high-quality books in less time to have anything like a success career these days. The methods contained in my 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection can help you do that without exhausting yourself and ensuring that every single book is the best you can possibly make it.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of First Draft Outline and Cohesive Story Building

Volumes 1 and 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

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

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Creative AI?

There's been a lot of news in the media lately about AI programs that generate text or images. One of the e-mail lists I subscribe to recently had a long thread about AI text products and especially art. Some people argued about whether a program that gets "ideas" (to speak anthropomorphically) from many different online images and combines multiple elements from them to produce a new image unlike any of the sources is infringing artists' copyrights. I tend to agree with the position that such a product is in no sense a "copy" of any particular original.

Here's the Wikipedia article on ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer):

ChatCPT

The core function of that program is "to mimic a human conversationalist." However, it does many other language-related tasks, such as "to write and debug computer programs" and "to compose music, teleplays, fairy tales, and student essays" and even "answer test questions," as well as other functions such as playing games and emulating "an entire chat room." It could also streamline rote tasks such as filling out forms. It has limitations, though, which are acknowledged by its designers. Like any AI, it's constrained by its input, and it may sometimes generate nonsense. When asked for an opinion or judgment, the program replies that, being an AI, it doesn't have feelings or opinions.

This week the Baltimore SUN ran an editorial about the potential uses and abuses of the program. It includes a conversation with ChatGPT, asking about various issues of interest to Maryland residents. For instance, the AI offers a list of "creative" uses for Old Bay seasoning. It produces grammatically correct, coherent prose but tends to answer in generalizations that would be hard to disagree with. One drawback is that it doesn't provide attribution or credit for its sources. As the editorial cautions, "That makes fact-checking difficult, and puts ChatGPT (and its users) at risk of both plagiarizing the work of others and spreading misinformation."

A Chat with ChatGPT

Joshua Wilson, an associate professor of education at the University of Delaware, discusses the advantages and limitations of ChatGPT:

Writing Without Thinking?

It can churn out an essay on a designated topic, drawing on material it garners from the internet. A writer could treat this output as a a pre-first-draft that the human creator could then revise and elaborate. It's an "optimal synthesizer" but lacks "nuance and perspective." To forbid resorting to ChatGPT would be futile, he thinks; instead, we need to figure out the proper ways to use it. He sees it as a valid device to save time and effort, provided we regard its product as a "starting point and not a final destination."

David Brooks, a NEW YORK TIMES columnist, offers cautionary observations on art and prose generated by AI programs:

Major in Being Human

He distinguishes between tasks a computer program can competently perform and those that require "a humanistic core," such as "passion, pain, longings. . . imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy." He advises the next generation to educate themselves for "skills that machines will not replicate," e.g., creativity, empathy, a "distinct personal voice," etc.

Some school systems have already banned ChatGPT in the classroom as a form of cheating. Moreover, AI programs exist with the function of detecting probable AI-generated prose. From what I've read about text-generating and art-producing programs, it seems to me that in principle they're tools like spellcheck and electronic calculators, even though much more complex. Surely they can be used for either fruitful or flawed purposes, depending on human input.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

To Be, Or Not....

Today, my topic is indentity and copyright, rather than Hamlet's existential dilemma.

What happens when two creators (authors, photographers, painters) have the same name? In the case of a father and son, a tag might be added, as in the case of Pieter Brueghel The Elder, and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

Suppose two artists are not related, but have almost the same name, and one is far more talented in the eyes of the art world and also --perhaps-- rejoices in an unimpeachable reputation. An owner of a work by the obscure painter might wish very much that the signed work he has is a valuable early work by the famous author of the same name. (I hesitate to use "namesake" because that usually implies that the one was intentionally named in honor of the other.)

The famous artist denies that he was ever an ex-con and the creator of the painting in question, and the owner of the one time incarceree's landscape has the gall to sue the famous artist for not being the artist.

 

Legal blogger Zach Dai of the Sheppard Mullin Richter and Hampton LLP Art Law blog explains the fascinating and outrageous case (my characterization) and its sequel.

https://www.artlawgallery.com/2023/02/articles/artists/not-my-work-when-artists-dispute-authorship/#page=1

 

See also 

https://www.artlawgallery.com/2016/08/articles/artists/update-i-swear-its-not-mine-artist-sued-for-denying-he-created-art-piece/

 

In another case discussed in the legal blogosphere last week, legal blogger John C. Greiner of the law firm Graydon Head and Ritchey LLP discusses an object lesson in who owns the copyright in a newsworthy photograph of oneself, taken on ones own iphone... but when someone else pushes the button.

https://graydon.law/iphones-and-copyrights-in-photos/

 

If you are going to a celebrity party, try to be... prepared. Take a sheaf of waivers in your purse! Or stick with the selfie stick.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: The Ins and Outs of Outlining. Part 2

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Ins and Outs of Outlining. Part 2

Based on FIRST DRAFT OUTLINE (formerly titled FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS)

This is the second of three posts dealing with outlining.

In Part 1 of this article, we talked in-depth about how a complete outline that you write before your first draft of any story will contain everything your book will, only in a much more condensed snapshot. A “first draft” outline is equivalent to the first draft of a manuscript because it has everything your manuscript will. Writing your book based on an outline this complete might almost make you feel like you’re cheating, because the writing process should be simplicity itself. The clearer a writer’s vision of the story before the actual writing, the more fleshed out, cohesive, and solid the story will be once it makes it to an actual first draft.

My book First Draft Outline (formerly titled First Draft in 30 Days) goes in-depth about outlining and goal setting. The follow-up title, Cohesive Story Building, focuses on writing in stages and story building with multiple layers that mean strength and cohesion for your book. If you write one draft and revise that, you only have two layers. That's why just jumping into the story without an outline doesn't produce the same results or complexity. With the kind of layering I talk about in Cohesive Story Building, a story is three-dimensional, strong, realistic and richly textured. When these two writing reference manuals are used together, your writing process can become a well-oiled machine focused on productivity, high-quality, and unending momentum. These references contain the secrets of how I became so prolific. Between these two books, I cover every single stage of writing a book in-depth and step-by-step, so each aspect is detailed from start to finish.

In the ideal writing situation, a book goes through eleven stages (though the last two are optional, which I’ll explain later). These are the layers that build texturally complex stories and characters and they include:

Stage 1: Brainstorming

Stage 2: Researching

Stage 3: Outlining

Stage 4: Setting aside the project

Stage 5: Writing the first draft

Stage 6: Setting aside

Stage 7: Revising

Stage 8: Setting aside (and, while sitting, critique partners are going over it)

Stage 9: (after I get it back from critique partners) Editing and polishing

Stage 10: Setting aside

Stage 11: Final read-through

You’ll notice that three of the stages are about “setting the story aside”. I believe a book is best if you give it time to breathe between the stages. Letting your projects sit for a couple of weeks—or even months—in-between stages will provide you with a completely fresh perspective. All writers get too close to their stories. Distance gives you objectivity and the ability to read your own work so you can progress further with it.

Another reason for setting projects aside between stages is that writers always reach a point where their motivation runs out, and they may simply want to get away from the story as fast as they can. Who wants to write a book you’ve just spent weeks or even months outlining? Who would want to revise a book you’ve spent weeks or months writing? With every single book, I get to rock bottom and I’m convinced that if I ever see the manuscript again, I’ll tear it to shreds. Setting it aside between the various stages the project goes through really gives me back my motivation for it. I’m always amazed at how much better I can face the project again when I haven’t seen it for a couple weeks or even months. I fall in love with it again. The next stage in the process becomes easier, too, and that helps my writing to be much better. When working in stages, each step is a layer that’s added to the book, a layer that makes it stronger, richer, and more cohesive--and realistically three-dimensional.

One final reason for working in stages is that I’m able to start brainstorming on upcoming projects sometimes years in advance. When it’s time to work on that project, I have a ton of ideas and the motivation to get them down and that carries me through the outlining. Because I’ve always got multiple books going at one time—each one in a different stage of the process—I’m constantly brainstorming on these projects in the back of my mind. That’s so crucial to the overall strength of your stories and for the momentum of your career. Working in stages is the absolute height of productivity. I can't imagine how to do it any other way and still continue to write solid novels and meet all my deadlines.

When I started out, I was a seat of the pants writer all the way and I wrote about 12 drafts of every single book to get a single one that was decent. So I had to figure out how to do this more productively, especially after I got published. I think my books teach the most effective ways of getting from A to Z in writing and also planning a successful career in writing.

I'm a strong believer in never doing more work than you need to. In the beginning, you might need to fill out endless worksheets and checklists because that's the best way to learn how to develop your story. But you should only ever do what you feel benefits you and your story. The point of all writing methods is to find out how you work best—take what you can, discard the rest. Creating an outline in whatever form that gives you the strongest guide for writing you novel is a crucial layer in developing every single story. If you want to see an example of how I write in stages throughout every given year, check out my Works in Progress page here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/works-in-progress.html

In the last part of this article, I'll provide tips for creating a useful outline that translates into cohesive story building and career momentum.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of First Draft Outline and Cohesive Story Building

Volumes 1 and 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

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

Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Vampires Rule

I recently read a novel with an unusual slant on a world ruled by vampires, DAY BOY, by Trent Jamieson. It takes place in a rather dreary post-apocalyptic world. The narrator is a teenage "day boy," a vampire's mortal servant. These vampires suffer from the movie-invented disability of helplessness during the sunlit hours, so they can't get along without human helpers. One thing I admire about this novel is the realistic treatment of predator-prey ratios. The narrator's small town harbors only about five "Masters" (vampires). While they don't normally kill their donors, they still exercise caution about expanding their own numbers.

It's listed on Goodreads here, with reviews, including mine:

Day Boy

Books and films about vampire-dominated worlds too often portray societies overrun by the bloodthirsty undead, with ordinary humans as a small, hunted remnant. There's no way that model would be sustainable unless the vampires can survive on animal blood and/or a reliable supply of bagged blood. For the latter, they would still need human victims to "donate" unless a synthetic substitute has been invented, as in the Sookie Stackhouse series and its TV adaptation, TRUE BLOOD. And even with the artificial blood supply, in that series the undead remain a minority.

S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy, beginning with A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, features a subspecies of Homo sapiens who combine the traits of vampires, werebeasts, and sorcerers, with the power to warp reality in their close vicinity as well as control human minds. They aspire to restore the prehistoric Empire of Shadow, when they openly treated the human majority as livestock and slaves. The vampire-shapeshifter species is a tiny minority of the total population, though, as apex predators should be. For instance, in the present the principal antagonist reigns over her own private village where she's the only resident Shadowspawn. Its human residents are well treated, a few supplying her with blood in regular rotation, while most serve her in other capacities or just keep the town running. The blood donors ("lucies") have to endure only one downside to their pampered lifestyle, their mistress's cheerfully sadistic personality.

A 1991 anthology, UNDER THE FANG, collects a variety of original stories on the theme of vampire-dominated societies, including a collaboration between Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Suzy McKee Charnas in which Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain and Charnas's Professor Weyland meet in unpleasant circumstances. You can find copies of the book here:

Under the Fang

Considering that vampires are typically envisioned as solitary predators, it seems likely that if they did take over the world, they wouldn't bother with the day-to-day business of ruling. They would probably control human officials who'd do the actual work, while the structures of society would function much as usual, aside from the obligation of catering to the needs of the vampire lords. As Stirling's evil Shadowspawn princess asks in A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, "Do I LOOK like a bureaucrat?"

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

TOSS This

Two wrongs don't make a right.

That is my opinion. It has also been called an idiom,  a proverb, occasionally a rebuttal of defence/defense for lack of candour, or for violent retaliation, and more.

As a copyright enthusiast, I believe that when a songwriter writes a song, the lyrics of that song are protected by copyright and the rights to publish and copy and exploit that work (the song lyrics) belong exclusively to the songwriter and to anyone to whom he or she or they assign(s) the copyright.

They do not belong to someone who copies the lyrics verbatim, even if --perhaps-- a word or two of the transcription is misheard or misspelled. That is not, in my opinion, transformative. 

So that is "Wrong One". "Wrong Two" is currently being litigated. May fan-transcribed lyrics be copied and pasted onto another site, whether or not the TOS of the site hosting the fan-transcribed lyrics forbid "scraping"?

I would say, "Pot meet Kettle".

Excellent legal blogger Pramod Chintalpoodi of the Chip Law Group discusses a most interesting case that may come before the Supreme Court, to wit:

"Does the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allow a business to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?"

https://www.chiplawgroup.com/do-website-terms-trump-copyright-law/

The lower courts focused on the strength and force of browsewrap. They neglected to parse the meaning of "its" (in the content of "its content"). I await SCOTUS question time with bated breath. Not "baited". Never "baited".

Matters may be more complicated if the lyrics in question predate 1972, and I am not a lawyer, but even so, the "law" seems to relate to "sound recordings" (the sound track) and not to the rights to the poetry.

https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-17-copyrights/chapter-3-duration-of-copyright/section-301-preemption-with-respect-to-other-laws

TOSS is my play on words for Terms Of Service, btw. I hope the case is granted certiorari.

Talking of copyright infringment and scraping, and of intelligence, Intellectual Property legal blogger Jeremy Goldman of the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC poses a fundamental --and quite topical-- question about the rights under copyright laws of creators, namely:

"... do content creators have the right to authorize or block AI systems from collecting and using their content as training data?"

As Mr. Goldman says,  "In the United States, copyright subsists in original works of authorship fixed in tangible media of expression."

https://ipandmedialaw.fkks.com/post/102i5io/do-ai-generators-infringe-three-new-lawsuits-consider-this-mega-question

It is a meaty piece, and I may return to chew on AI another time.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Karen S. Wiesner: The Ins and Outs of Outlining, Part 1

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Ins and Outs of Outlining, Part 1

Based on FIRST DRAFT OUTLINE (formerly titled FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS)

This is the first of three posts dealing with outlining. 

Some authors swear by outlines. Others say it stifles creativity. Those who are against outlining have strong opinions about them: They're a wasted effort. They can do the same thing by just jumping right into a story without a blueprint of some kind. They'll get more done if they skip this step. The exact opposite is the case, as I'll explain in this article. My writing reference, First Draft Outline (formerly titled First Draft in 30 Days), details creating an outline step-by-step and this can (and should) be done for all works of fiction, any size, whether a full-length novel or flash fiction. I use an outline for every single fiction project I undertake. There's no way I could consistently create solid books the way I do without one.

My feeling about outlines is simple: Why make the process of writing a book as hard as you possibly can by churning out hundreds of pages to get what probably won't be a workable first draft of a story and will require endless revisions, when, with the right preparation, you can create an outline so complete, it actually qualifies as the first draft of your book and includes every single scene of your book--meaning you can sit down and start writing immediately every day? With an outline like the one I talk about in my writing reference titles, you can see your entire novel from start to finish in one condensed place--including all the workable parts and all the unworkable ones.

Creating an outline like this puts the hard work of writing where it belongs—at the beginning a project. If you work out the kinks in the story in the outline, you ensure that the writing and revising are the easy parts. Revise your outline until you've got a completely solid story. In general, a regular full-length novel is around 400 manuscript pages. A “first draft” outline usually ends up being approximately a quarter of the size of the completed book. Revising 100 pages of an outline will certainly be much easier than revising 400 manuscript pages! Which would you rather revise? Because it’s an outline, it doesn’t even need to be your best writing. Most authors don’t and won’t spend endless time revising the words and sentence structure or whatever, in an outline, since they’re the only ones who’ll see it. That makes for a lot less obsession over every word and sentence, and puts the revision where it should be in the logical order of writing a book—at the end.

With your first-draft outline, you’ve made the revision process much easier for yourself. You can revise the outline as much as you need to in order to fine-tune your story, and you’ve virtually eliminated the need to overhaul (or scrap) the manuscript itself later.

Many authors fear that using an outline will kill their enthusiasm for writing the book or that their creativity will be hampered or caged with one. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never felt stifled by an outline. The outline frees me to explore every aspect of a book—without risk. Use your outline to explore any angle you want. If it’s logical, keep it. If it’s not, delete it. You’ll only lose a little time, and your story will be stronger for it. If you realize halfway through or even all the way through outlining a book that some of your ideas aren’t working, it’s just a matter of deleting the stuff that doesn't work and starting again in a new direction. This is a change that probably won’t take longer than a few days to make in the much shorter outline (instead of the months or even years it might take to identify and correct a full draft of a book created without an outline). Exploring new angles while outlining allows you to avoid spending countless hours laboring and only then finding out these ideas don’t work.

Your completed outline will contain everything your book will, only in a much more condensed snapshot. A “first draft” outline is equivalent to the first draft of a manuscript because it has everything your manuscript will. It may or may not be something you can show an editor yet, but it truly will be all there. The hard work is over. Writing your book based on an outline this complete might almost make you feel guilty, like you’re cheating, because the writing process should be simplicity itself. The clearer a writer’s vision of the story before the actual writing, the more fleshed out, cohesive, and solid the story will be once it makes it to an actual first draft.

For those who use the argument that outlining kills your enthusiasm for writing a story, I want to challenge you to try this method anyway—a couple of times if you’re willing—then ask yourself this question: How do you feel after you finish a first draft that you know will require a blood-shedding amount of time and effort to revise? You feel exhausted and sick of the story, don’t you?

Let’s say you have to revise that same book a second time because the first time wasn’t good enough. Now how do you feel? Like you never want to set eyes on the story again, right? Imagine if you have to do this more than twice—say, three or four times to get a publishable manuscript. Imagine yourself rewriting and polishing this story all throughout this process, in a way that truly feels like you might never be finished.

You really do have to experience this to understand it but, when I write a book based on a “first draft” outline, pure magic happens because I watch the skeleton—the framework of the book contained in my outline—putting on flesh, becoming a walking, talking, breathing story. If anything, it’s more exciting this way—and a whole lot easier! I almost never have to rewrite the story. Revision after a first draft amounts to fine-tuning something that’s already working well. Try it a few times yourself.

My book First Draft Outline goes in-depth about outlining and goal setting. The follow-up title, Cohesive Story Building, focuses on writing in stages and story building with multiple layers that mean strength and cohesion for your book. If you write one draft and revise that, you only have two layers. That's why just jumping into the story without an outline doesn't produce the same results or complexity.

In Part 2 of this three-part article, we'll talk about how your outline jumpstarts the process of cohesive story building.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of First Draft Outline and Cohesive Story Building

Volumes 1 and 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

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

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Clones as Organ Donors

I've recently read an excellent novel called NEVER LET ME GO, by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of THE REMAINS OF THE DAY. (I've seen the film adaptation of the latter, but I don't plan to watch the movie of NEVER LET ME GO. The story just strikes me as too depressing to view as a dramatization, without being filtered through the narrator's voice as in the book—and I generally LIKE sad stories.) NEVER LET ME GO traces the youth and coming-of-age of children cloned for the sole purpose of serving as organ donors. Kathy, the narrator, and her friends have always known, on some level, what their purpose and inevitable destiny are, but their vague awareness becomes more explicit as they grow to adulthood. The reader learns about their world along with them, through extended reminiscences by Kathy, who as a young adult serves as a "carer" for other donors until she eventually has to assume the latter function herself. She knows once she progresses from carer to donor, she will probably live through three or at most four donations before she "completes," i.e., dies. The clones don't serve as donors for the specific individuals whose DNA they share (whose identities, of course, they never know) but as general organ banks. The characters we follow grow up in a sort of orphanage / boarding school, where they live a fairly good life; they later learn that theirs is one of the best group homes, whereas others treat their inmates worse. We never learn details about the other homes, the background of the cloning project, or the science underlying it. Nor do we find out how the public was induced to accept this radical development. The novel seems to take place in an alternate mid-twentieth-century. This version of England has pre-cellphone, pre-internet technology, yet judging from the apparent ages of older donors mentioned in passing, reliable human cloning has existed for well over twenty years.

The novel focuses on the relationships among the characters, their gradual discovery of the full truth about their own status, and the ethics of treating human beings as manufactured products. Therefore, it doesn't delve into the scientific dimensions of the cloning process. Toward the end of the book, a retired guardian (as their teachers are called) mentions controversies over whether the donors have souls. Nobody brings up the obvious fact that a clone is simply an identical twin conceived at a different time, who grows like any other person and is as human, with as much of a soul (if souls exist) as anybody else. Another unanswered question raised in the story is why the characters can't have babies. There's no biological reason for clones to be infertile. Are they genetically manipulated to be that way? Surgically sterilized in childhood?

Wouldn't it be more efficient for donors to provide spare parts specifically for the people from whom they're cloned? No risk of organ rejection that way. Some of Heinlein's imagined futures include clones produced to supply organs for their originals. In these books, it's clear the cloned bodies never come alive, are never persons at all but only inert shells. One such body is used in THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST to fake the death of Lazarus Long's mother. In principle, an individual could achieve immortality by having his or her brain transplanted into a cloned body when the birth body wears out.

For most purposes, though, why grow a whole body at all? Surely it would be easier to develop cloning technology that could generate particular organs as needed. You could get a new heart, liver, kidney, or whatever with your own DNA and with none of the ethical issues involved in mass-producing live, conscious people to serve as spare-part factories.

So, although NEVER LET ME GO raises fascinating issues, and its characters' plight is deeply moving, it doesn't seem to me a likely portrayal of a realistic scenario.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt