Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 2

I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 2

by Karen Wiesner

"Believe in your dreams. They were given to you for a reason." ~Katrina Mayer

As a writer, the question I get most often is where my ideas come from a lot. While I can honestly say everywhere, more often than not, dreams play a huge role of my fiction writing. Something about that twilight between sleep and dreams is a veritable playground for imagination! Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is one of my series, in particular, in which many of the stories within it stemmed from a fragment of a dream that I was able to develop into a story. In the course of the next several posts, I'll be going over how these these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me.

This is the second of four posts focusing on my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series and the vivid nightmares or ideas that inspired the titles.

Karen Wiesner's Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series

** Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts.

Don’t close your eyes… **

BOUND SPIRITS, Book 1

** As a child, Esme was kidnapped and locked in a cold, dark basement. Her friends were rodents, insects, and the changeable terror that held her hostage. The only thing that kept her sane those nightmare years were her books. She’s been on the run since her escape a few months ago, never expecting to find another bound spirit come back to life. **

I’d wanted to write a ghost story for a long time—inspired after reading THE WOMAN IN BLACK and THE MAN IN THE PICTURE by Susan Hill (actually, nearly any ghost story written by her). I love that atmospheric kind of story with almost a gothic horror edge. After brainstorming over the course of many months, I came up with the idea of having the ghost story in a very unlikely place—a campground/county park. As soon as the setting was established, I thought, In fiction, what is a ghost but a bound spirit? Well, that gave me a great idea about having a heroine who’d been kidnapped as a child and held captive for most of her life until her escape. So…another bound spirit.

Reviews and Honors for BOUND SPIRITS:

5 star review and Reviewer's Top Pick from Readers Favorite

5 star review from Huntress Reviews

5 star review from Harriet Klausner

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from author Jenna Whittaker

5 star review from author Barbara Custer

4 star review from RT Book Reviews

4 star review from The Romance Reviews

4 star review from author Marilyn Byerly

THE BLOODMOON CURSE, Book 2

** An unsuspecting nurse is lured to an ancient family mansion said to hold both ghosts and horrifying secrets in order to care for three orphaned children. Amberlyn was brought to Bloodmoon Manor to uphold the family legacy. Either she finds a way to escape with the children…or she becomes the next bloodmoon bride. **

Way back when I first got the idea for writing this book, my intention was to write a “modern gothic”. Everyone laughed at this because it’s like an oxymoron. But I wanted to write something with the palpable atmosphere you find in old fashioned gothics, only I wanted to put it in a more modern setting. I also loved the idea of putting the heroine in a place where she was basically trapped, no way in or out.

Reviews and Honors for THE BLOODMOON CURSE:

2006 Dream Realm Award Finalist

2006 eCataromance Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominee

2015 BTS Red Carpet Reader's Choice Award Nominee

5 star review from Huntress Reviews

5 star review from Fallen Angel Reviews

Fallen Angel Reviews Recommended Read Award

5 star review from EuroReviews

5 star review from Sime~Gen

5 star review from eCataromance

5 star review from Gotta Write Network

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from The Romance Reviews

4 1/2 star review from Once Upon a Romance

4 1/2 star review from The Romance Studio

4 star review from BTSemag

CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3

** Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again… Corinne has become the heir of her dead husband's family estate. Crooked House lives up to its disturbing name, as does the last of the line who disappears so often she could believe he's a ghost. But to believe is to accept the claims of ghost hunter, Rafe Yager: The longer she stays in Crooked House, the less chance she'll ever leave. **

The basis of CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3 of my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, was formed when, in a dream, I saw a woman visiting some obscure relative of her brand-new husband. The house was weird and creepy, to say the least. When I woke up, I decided to merge bits of this with an idea I'd been toying with them about having the hero's sister in THE BLOODMOON CURSE be the heroine in another “modern gothic”. I was going to send Janine to some obscure relative, kind of like in Naomi A. Hintze’s novel YOU'LL LIKE MY MOTHER, a favorite story when I was a teenager. I’d planned to name it THE FAMILY or CROOKED HOUSE, both of which inspire something menacing in the right genre. I was also playing a horror video game around that time that gave me some ideas about getting stuck in a house inhabited with ghosts and other menacing supernatural creatures sucking out human physical energy.

CROOKED HOUSE has a lot of the classic elements of a ghost story--vengeful ghost, haunted house, tough-guy hero and vulnerable heroine--with some unique twists and turns in the form of a cursed ring, a novice white-witch best friend who literally has no idea what she's doing, a ramshackle house in Bloodmoon Cove serving as a portal into the spirit world, along with a reluctant ghost hunter that's one of the last descendants of the (fictional) Mino-Miskwi Native American tribe whose elders disappeared during a ritual at their sacred place at the top of Bloodmoon Mountain a hundred years ago. That ritual ripped a hole in the mountain and let loose a flood of spirits that haunt Erie County.

This is funny and a little creepy real life event, but I live in an old Dutch Colonial style house (think “Amityville Horror”). Since we moved in this house, we've had what we call demon flies (which are something I wrote into CROOKED HOUSE). Literally, we’ll kill one and another one…or a dozen…will appear a second later. I once closed myself into our small sunroom, closed all the windows, and put towels under the door to prevent the flies from escaping. Then I proceed to kill them one right after the other. This went on for ten minutes or so, and I must have had a hundred dead flies in the room with me. I suddenly got freaked out because this was completely unnatural and terrifying. I fled the room and didn’t go back into it for a long time afterward. Incidentally, we're said to live in the most haunted house in our town and the unexplained spirit(s) that keeps messing with our electronics could be the reason why. I'm only mostly joking there.

Reviews and Honors:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

4 star review from Readers Favorite

4 star review from Huntress Reviews

Have you ever been in a house reputed to be haunted? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Find out more about Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series here:

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBJ7XP

Happy reading!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Bird Brains

Research published in the journal SCIENCE in 2020 raises the possibility that crows have mental abilities formerly thought of as restricted to our species and other higher primates:

Crows Are Self-Aware

It's been known for a while that corvids (crows, ravens, jays, etc.), like monkeys and apes, use tools and recognize faces. These birds bring gifts to people they like and never forget people who injure or offend them. Experiments show, however, that they also apparently think about their own thoughts. A brain structure called the pallium, performing the same function as the cerebral cortex in mammals, holds densely packed neurons in greater quantity than in even some much larger animals such as elephants. This arrangement makes up for the smaller body and brain size of birds. The firing of neurons in the crows' brains during the experiment described in the article suggests that crows think about problems in somewhat the same way we do.

Parrots are highly intelligent, too. They don't just "parrot" human speech but often utter words in the proper context, such as asking for what they want or saying "Hello" when people arrive but not when they leave. As the famous African Grey named Alex demonstrated, parrots can work with numbers, too. They also pass some intelligence tests on the same level as five-year-old children:

Parrots Pass Classic Test of Intelligence

Here's a Wikipedia article on bird intelligence:

Bird Intelligence

For me, one exciting implication of these facts is that we now realize an animal doesn't require a large brain to be intelligent. Sapient aliens on other planets wouldn't have to resemble us in size or shape. Imagine a world dominated by brainy birds. With wings instead of arms, birds have limitations on their ability to use tools. What if they evolved with six limbs, though, like all the higher animals in the manga series A CENTAUR'S LIFE? Birds on a planet where the standard higher-life-form body plan includes six limbs rather than four could have legs, wings, and hands. Thus they could develop a civilization with material artifacts recognizable to us as products of higher intellect.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Copyright and Wrongness

Can you opt out of being pirated? Perhaps, if you act quickly... at least in one particular instance.

 

"SFWA's Legal Affairs Committee is issuing an alert to inform members of a situation in which the government of New Zealand has decided to ship more than 400,000 books they are de-listing from their catalogs to the Internet Archive for digitization and inclusion in its Open Library. These are for the most part older books, but many are still in copyright. New Zealand is allowing authors who do not wish their books to be digitized to opt out, but time is running short: the deadline for doing so is December 1." 

The links below are a good starting point.

https://natlib.govt.nz/about-us/strategy-and-policy/collections-policy/overseas-published-collection-management#opt-out-process-for-rights-holders

 

For more information, check out the starter page.

https://natlib.govt.nz/about-us/strategy-and-policy/collections-policy/overseas-published-collection-management

 

The Internet Archive is allegedly being sued by four major publishing houses. Apparently, it collects copyrighted works from numerous sources, and even if authors have successfully requested that their works are removed in the past, the works may still be "re-upped". 

 

They claim to have over 2,300,000 modern  e-books.  The search function is unduly reassuring, by the way.  For instance, if you were J.K. Rowling, you could not find your books by searching under CREATOR, nor yet by searching for the most obvious words in TITLE.

https://openlibrary.org/

One might think that an internet library is perfectly right and good, but in most countries in the world, there is the Public Lending Right, and authors are compensated every time a book is loaned to a patron.

Even in the USA, where there is no such thing, publishers set limits to how many times a book can be loaned out before a fresh copy has to be licensed (and the author receives royalties on  that.)

https://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2018/03/article_0007.html

 

 

For an example of "permissionless innovation" on steroids, look at the Sugar Mountain man, who seems to specialize in finding "workarounds" of the rights of "little people".

 

Music Tech Policy put out a powerful piece about the meaning of the Metaverse that includes this zinger.

"....We know that Facebook's architecture never contemplated a music or movie licensing process. Zuckerberg built it that way on purpose--the architecture reflected his bias against respecting copyright, user data and really any private property rights not his own. Not only does Zuckerberg take copyright and data for his own purposes, he has convinced billions of people to create free content for him and then to pay him to advertise that content to Facebook users and elsewhere. He takes great care to be sure that there is extraordinarily complex programming to maximize his profit from selling other people's property, but he refuses to do the same when it comes to paying the people who create the content..."

Read all about it here:

https://musictechpolicy.com/2021/11/11/does-the-metaverse-have-rights-permissionless-innovation-bias-and-artificial-intelligence/

 

 

The so-called "Happiest Place On Earth" is alleged to be neglecting or refusing to pay royalties to authors of in-copyright literary works that they have acquired from defunct third party publishers.

 

Find out more:

https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/

And if you agree that writers must be paid, please spread the word!

 

All the best,

 

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™

http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

 

 

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 1

I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 1

by Karen Wiesner

"Believe in your dreams. They were given to you for a reason."

~Katrina Mayer 

As a writer, the question I get most often is where my ideas come from a lot. While I can honestly say everywhere, more often than not, dreams play a huge role of my fiction writing. Something about that twilight between sleep and dreams is a veritable playground for imagination! Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is one of my series, in particular, in which many of the stories within it stemmed from a fragment of a dream that I was able to develop into a story. In the course of the next several posts, I'll be going over how these these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me. 

This will be the first of four posts focusing on my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series and the vivid nightmares or ideas that inspired the titles. 

Karen Wiesner's Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series

** Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts. 

Don’t close your eyes… **

While writing up the proposal for BOUND SPIRITS, which became the first book in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, I had an idea about writing a series of ghost stories. I love scary, terrifying ghost/spirits stories as well as fun or playful ghost ones, but I also like the idea of exploring well beyond the boundaries of what a typical ghost story is considered to encompass. I intend to delve into the depths of supernatural elements with haunted places, cursed objects, portals to other worlds and/or time periods, and even unfathomable creatures from those other realms that have crossed into ours on Bloodmoon Mountain.

At the time I was working on this spark of a series concept, I was also strongly considering pulling a standalone novel I've written, THE BLOODMOON CURSE, from its publisher at time, as it'd been lagging there for quite some time. THE BLOODMOON CURSE was very mildly a ghost story, so it certainly fit the theme. Also, the book featured a small (fictional) town called Bloodmoon Cove, and I thought that would be the perfect setting for an otherworldly series. The Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series was born.

In late 2013, I got the rights back to THE BLOODMOON CURSE. I'd already finished BOUND SPIRTS long before that time and didn't want to wait around for it to be published, so I decided to make BOUND SPIRITS the first book in this new series. THE BLOODMOON CURSE became the second.

The (fictional) county the Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is set is Erie County--what I think is a clever play on Lake Erie, which is one of the nearby Great Lakes (named for a Native American tribe in the area), and also because the town and those surrounding it (including the fiction city of Grimoire that's been featured often in the series) are “eerie”.

Have you ever dreamed something that became the basis of a story? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Find out more about Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series here:

https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBJ7XP

Happy reading!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Taboos as Time Goes By

I've been musing over the past couple of days about social taboos, particularly constraints on language. The latter especially affect writers; there used to be words that were labeled "unprintable" and seen on the page only in pornography. Norman Mailer's novel THE NAKED AND THE DEAD subsitutes a similar-sounding nonsense term for a common four-letter word frequently uttered by soldiers. An oft-repeated anecdote claims Dorothy Parker once said to him, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell f--k."

In everyday polite interaction, there are still some taboo conversational topics. We can hold forth at length about the excellent dinner we ate at a restaurant over the weekend. Among relatives or close friends, it's okay to "geeze" about one's bathroom-related physical problems. But we can't remark that we had great sex over the weekend, except to the person we had it with (or possibly in intimate, alcohol-fueled same-gender gatherings). That's never an acceptable topic for general conversation.

Taboos change over the decades, generations, and centuries, of course. Eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne includes what appears to be a perfectly sober, respectable mention of the four-letter word for excrement in his TRISTRAM SHANDY. Radical shifts have occurred within my own lifetime. The "unprintable" F-word for sexual activity and S-word for excrement are now printed and spoken freely with (in my opinion) regrettable frequency. On the other hand, we're well rid of a term that was commonplace, although not considered polite, in my youth and is now so taboo that published works never show it written out, except sometimes in fictional dialogue—the N-word for Black people.

Consider the film of GONE WITH THE WIND. It gives the impression that the director made numerous concessions to be allowed that single "damn" in Rhett Butler's final line of dialogue. In the book, Prissy objects to being sent to look for Rhett at a "ho'house." In the movie, she has to say something like "Miz Belle's place." Earlier, we don't hear Scarlett's whispered question about the woman Rhett compromised; in the novel, it's shown as, "Did she have a baby?" When Rhett and Scarlett have a furious quarrel during her last pregnancy, Clark Gable says, "Maybe you'll have an accident," instead of using the word "miscarriage" as in the book. Most absurdly, when Rhett angrily tells Scarlett in the novel, "Keep your chaste bed," the movie rephrases the line as, "Keep your sanctity." Mentioning chastity is borderline obscene? LOL.

Non-verbal taboos, naturally, change too. In the 19th century, exposed feminine ankles were considered risque. Yet in some tribal societies, women routinely go bare-breasted in public. Film-makers used to be forbidden to show a man and woman in a bed together, leading to the notorious twin-bed arrangements of married couples on old sitcoms. Although I lived through part of that era, it still jars me when I watch old movies and TV shows and witness almost everybody casually smoking EVERYWHERE. And, to cite a custom not grounded in either health considerations or sexual mores, in my childhood a woman wouldn't be dressed correctly if she showed up at church without a hat or shopped at a department store in slacks instead of a dress or skirt.

Robert Heinlein casually drops references to changing social taboos into his novels. The protagonist of twin-paradox interstellar adventure TIME FOR THE STARS returns to Earth after almost a century of near-light-speed travel (still a young man) to be shocked that decent girls and women are no longer required to wear hats in the presence of unmarried males. After thirty years in cryonic sleep, the narrator of THE DOOR INTO SUMMER wakes from suspended animation to find that in the year 2000 a formerly innocent word, "kink," has become an unspeakable obscenity. In some subcultures in the far-future universe of TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, nudity is perfectly acceptable at mixed-gender social gatherings.

For a fascinating exploration of why certain apparently irrational taboos and other "bizarre" customs have rational origins and serve pragmatic social purposes, check out COWS, PIGS, WARS, AND WITCHES (1974), by anthropologist Marvin Harris. Also recommended: His follow-up book THE SACRED COW AND THE ABOMINABLE PIG (1985), more tightly focused on food-related taboos and customs.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How To Make Your Hero Invisible

For years, I have been sitting on two ideas because I have two different breeds of occasionally-invisible heroes in my alien djinn romances series.

My twin Djinn princes, Devoron and Deverill rely on colors that the human eye cannot see. For instance, human eyes cannot see the pee trails that incontinent-by-design shrews leave in the woods. It was never necessary to mention this until I tell their stories, because as far as I remember in my God Princes of Tigron series, they were only noticed from the POV of another Djinn.

The other sometimes-invisible hero is Viz-Igerd, King of the Volnoth. His species is amphibious, and they have squid-like skin which can change color at will. I could have described their skin as chameleon-like, but squid also use their skin for sexually aggressive flashing in addition to camouflage. There are artists who use "camouflage art", and it is really interesting, but would not work in the wild without a very lengthy set-up. One's ambush hero would have to live like a spearing-type Mantis Shrimp, and his love life would be decidedly dub-con.  (Dubious Consent.)

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

Karen S. Wiesner, Tension and Twists, Part 3 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner  

Tension and Twists, Part 3 

Based on COHESIVE STORY BUILDING (formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FICTION NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building}) by Karen S. Wiesner 

This is the final post focusing on how (and why) to build tension and twists into your fiction.

Release and downtime are also absolutely necessary in every story. But only with a cohesive logic in the build-up of downtime, suspense, and black moment, and with an equally meshed logical resolution, will your reader be left satisfied and smiling upon closing the book. This in no way, however, means that you can’t throw a twist in at the end of your story—provided that it fits logically and cohesively with what you’ve already set up in the beginning and middle of the book. In this article, I'll provide tips for incorporating effective tension and twists into your fiction. 

Tips for Creating Tension and Suspense

·                     Use doubt to create suspense. The unknown is the “it” factor when creating suspenseful novels—and novels must indeed be suspenseful or your readers will have nothing to stick around for. If you can truly make your characters (and readers) believe that the main character will never reach his goals, you’ll have succeeded in creating a book that absolutely can’t be put down. Involving the reader means making sure that your story is cohesive enough to draw him inexplicably in, right where you want him. A cohesive story will never allow the reader to become too comfortable. 

·                     Let mood and senses create the atmosphere you need for suspense. Remember that mood is a carefully constructed means of building suspense. Essentially, it’s a springboard with limited purpose. In order to sustain it, you must involve the reader. Prepare for it with cohesive characters, setting, and plot, then use all of the senses to build the appropriate tone. You wouldn’t want a slapstick tone in a drama any more than you’d want a sensual tone in playful story intended for children. 

Mood (or tone) is a carefully constructed means to build tension and suspense, and the mood almost always fits the genre, though of course the mood of an individual scene is more changeable. Science fiction generally has an adventurous tone. Suspense has a tense mood. Gothic has a heavy feel of foreboding.

 

The most effective way to capture mood is to use the senses. Where are the characters in your scene; what are they seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, tasting, feeling (the little-acknowledged sixth sense)? What emotions are they dealing with?

 

If you want to create a sensual atmosphere, describe the scent of a candle burning, the touch of silk against bare skin, the strains of romantic music playing, or a heroine’s reaction to the appearance of her lover. If you want to set the mood for danger, make the character tangibly aware of the temperature (cold—goose bumps on skin); the lighting (darkness or shadows); a revolting smell; a sudden sound or the eerie absence of sound. If you want to create a tone for character shock, have him in the middle of a bite of what had previously been a delicious meal. With this mood, the food becomes sawdust in his mouth, the taste unnoticeable or unappetizing, and he chokes when he finally attempts to swallow it.

 

Use sense descriptions at their most potent times. This kind of description brings the reader directly into the story. You give him something tangible in your vision. He moves and uses his senses right along with your characters. Create a natural means to blend all the elements of your story. 

·                     Contrast to keep readers on edge. Pair a pessimistic hero with a bleeding heart heroine. Paint the image of a beautiful rose growing steadfastly in a desolate landfill. Develop character personalities and backstories, settings, and plots that make these contrasts blend together naturally.

·                     Pace your story to keep it flowing smoothly, even as tensions run high. Don’t rush to pick up story threads. Keep the reader guessing. Draw out scenes involving rescues and explanations, and offer readers unsatisfactory alternatives to the problems your characters face. Cohesion is crucial when pacing your story, since organic mingling will create the need for (and enable) pacing that matches. Imagine that you introduce into your plot a time element. If the hero doesn’t act by a certain time, the worst horror he can imagine will happen. Pacing picks up considerably. Now imagine that this hero is given a glimpse of his happily-ever-after, but he no longer believes he can succeed. After all, he’s tried everything and failed. The pacing will naturally slow down because he’s at the bottom. Suddenly, conflict arises and the hero has absolutely no choice but to act. He finds a way to save what he cares about most. The pace picks up again. All of this works causally with your characters, setting, and plot. 

·                     Foreshadow by hinting at what is to come, not by answering the crucial questions of a story. Foreshadowing needs to be built into a story in advance. A writer can’t foreshadow something he doesn’t know will happen. Properly developed foreshadowing brings together all the elements in your story. In Conflict, Action & Suspense, William Noble calls foreshadowing “a fine technique for developing suspense and extending action because it offers a possibility that will pick at the reader”. If your reader cares about your characters, he’ll pick up on foreshadowing immediately and every time it’s touched afterward. It’ll worry him to no end. And that means he’ll be involved and hanging on every word. 

·                     Use flashbacks to slow down the action and/or provide missing details, hidden motivation, or even an answer to a mystery. Flashbacks can be in the form of a scene, a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word. Flashbacks will come naturally out of character, setting, and plot development. It’s tricky to write an effective flashback. Therefore, the purpose in using it must always be clear to the author and the reader. 

The best part of a creating effective tension and twists is that your readers will invest themselves in it mentally, emotionally, and possibly even physically (if you can make them cry or bite their nails, you’ve got them hook, line, and sinker!). You’ve created a net the readers won’t want to get out of until they know everything, and they’ll feel like they’re leaving a piece of themselves behind each time they reluctantly set the book down—especially that last time when they read “The End.”

Find out more here about COHESIVE STORY BUILDING here: 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/cohesive-story-building/ 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QJ09DQM 

Do you have a tip for writing effective tension or twists? Leave a comment to tell me! 

Happy writing! 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner 

Unimaginable?

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column tackles the issue of scenarios that are allegedly impossible to imagine:

The Unimaginable

The specific scenario he discusses here is the end of capitalism. Lots of authors, he points out (including himself) have written about postcapitalist, sometimes post-scarcity societies. What's hard to imagine, he suggests, is the process of transition from the present to those hypothetical futures. Doctorow cites several examples of SF works that portray postcapitalist worlds, few of which go into detail about how those societies came about, Kim Stanley Robinson being one exception. Would the shift happen through violent revolution or gradual evolution?

Anyway, the job of science-fiction and fantasy writers is to imagine things, however wild or seemingly improbable, right? John Lennon's song "Imagine" claims "it's easy if you try" to conceive of such things as a peaceful Earth with "no possessions," no "greed or hunger," and "nothing to kill or die for." Imagining a utopia (not that I'd want to live in his, since I have doubts of the desirability of a world without countries or possessions, not to mention Lennon's anti-religious slant) may be easy, but visualizing how to get there involves a whole different order of difficulty.

Many, if not most, fictional futures, of course, aren't meant as literal predictions but as cautionary "if this goes on. . ." warnings or optimistic thought experiments in constructing societies better than our own. Few people would want to live in Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE. In the former, the rewriting or obliteration of history as a core policy of the despotic regime deliberately leaves the question of how Big Brother rose to power unanswerable. THE HANDMAID'S TALE (novel) offers a few glimpses of the transition but no detailed account of how we might get from here to there, while the TV series expands on these hints in extended flashbacks but still leaves many questions unanswered.

Although Edward Bellamy claimed his 1888 utopian novel LOOKING BACKWARD: 2000-1887 wasn't intended as a literal plan for political action, a movement to implement his ideas sprang up, in the form of "Nationalist Clubs" active in American politics well into the 1890s. In time Bellamy himself did get involved in this movement, which achieved some practical results before dying out. As attractive as some aspects of Bellamy's vision seem to me, I don't expect to see it become reality, although a few elements exist already—for instance, the cashless society. On the whole, though, over twenty years have passed since 2000, and we're not there yet. Bellamy's faith in the capacity of social structures to change human nature within a generation or two (abolishing greed, violence, etc.) seems naive today. I don't expect a world government such as LOOKING BACKWARD and many near-future SF novels take for granted. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a worldwide confederation similar to the EU eventually developed, but probably not in my lifetime.

One thing I especially like about S. M. Stirling's long-running Emberverse series, beginning with DIES THE FIRE, is that it depicts not only the violent collapse of civilization as we know it, along with the immediate post-apocalyptic scenario, but also the transitional phase experienced by the survivors and their rebuilding of a new society. The series follows the changed world over the course of two generations. We witness how the new world develops into neither a dystopic hellscape, an ideal utopia, nor a duplicate of the old order, but something simply different, better than the present in some ways and worse in others.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Karen S. Wiesner, Tension and Twists, Part 2 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Tension and Twists, Part 2 

Based on COHESIVE STORY BUILDING (formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FICTION NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building}) by Karen S. Wiesner 

This is the second of three posts focusing on how (and why) to build tension and twists into your fiction.

Release and downtime are also absolutely necessary in every story. But only with a cohesive logic in the build-up of downtime, suspense, and black moment, and with an equally meshed logical resolution, will your reader be left satisfied and smiling upon closing the book. This in no way, however, means that you can’t throw a twist in at the end of your story—provided that it fits logically and cohesively with what you’ve already set up in the beginning and middle of the book. Let's talk about incorporating effective twists into your fiction. 

Incorporating Twists 

Most twists come at the end of a story. But this isn’t to say you couldn’t have twists at other points in the story as well as more than one twist, each coming at various intervals. Adding twists to your stories are exciting to read because the author leads the reader so effectively to believe one thing (a thing that also makes perfectly logical and cohesive sense) while completely turning the tables at the last minute.

Putting twists into each story spark is a sure-fire way to turn a suspenseful story into a nail-biting one. To get started, ask yourself, In light of the rest of my story and the cohesiveness I need to provide, what’s the most shocking thing I could have happen? What is the reader absolutely not expecting? 

A twist should be set up properly from the very beginning of the book to make it believable. It must fit logically and cohesively with what you’ve already set up in the beginning and middle of the book. Using an outline can help you prepare for that without requiring you to write an entire draft before you realize your resolutions are too predictable. Resolutions need to fit perfectly with every angle this twist presents. 

Think about the book (and the movie, which is just as good) Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow. If you haven’t read or watched this before, I encourage you to do it at your earliest opportunity. The twist at the end utterly haunted me for years afterward. The truth was there before my eyes the whole time, yet I never saw it, and it punched me in the stomach brutally when it came. 

A twist is so breathtaking because it comes out of nowhere (despite the fact that the reader will have to concede that all the evidence to point to it was there from the start) and it satisfies the reader worlds more than a predictable outcome ever can. In some cases, the twist may be the very thing the reader wanted to happen but didn’t dare let himself hope for. 

When I finished the outline for my action/adventure romance Undercover Angel, the seventh book in Incognito Series, I found myself with a story that made complete sense, following the course that I’d set up from the beginning and throughout the middle to the end. Nevertheless, I was ultimately disappointed with the outcome and knew my readers would be, too. The resolutions were simply too predictable to truly satisfy me. So I sat down and thought to myself, What is the most shocking thing I could possibly make happen in order to make the reader gasp when she gets to the end of the story? When I realized what it was, I went back into my outline and reshaped it from start to finish to fit this new twist as well (better, really) as the predictable resolutions did. When my critique partner read the outline, she said she’d fully expected the predictable resolution and never had the slightest clue about the twist until it hit her square in the stomach—and she loved it. This trick worked to fulfill the breathtaking longing in the reader for an unexpected shock. 

Always look for the unexpected twist in your story because it makes it so memorable. There are always obvious scenarios that can be developed in response to the sparks introduced in your story but your goal is to generate the unexpected in your readers. Discombobulate them within the confines of logic, satisfactory resolutions, and cohesion. 

In Part 3, we'll talk about tips for creating tension and suspense.       

Find out more here about COHESIVE STORY BUILDING here: 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/cohesive-story-building/ 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QJ09DQM 

What's your favorite twist in a book or movie? Leave a comment to tell me about it! 

Happy writing! 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner 

Survival Through Storytelling

Recently I came across an ad for a book subtitled something like, "How to survive hard times by telling stories." I can't find it again, so I don't know the title, author, or specific subject matter. (Google and Amazon didn't help because the terms are so general.) Not knowing leaves me free to speculate about what that phrase means. To me, it suggests that we cope with difficult experiences by shaping them into narratives that discover purpose in the seeming randomness of the ups and downs of our lives.

We human beings are storytelling creatures. We share jokes, urban legends, and episodes from the daily news. If we're enthusiastic about a book or movie, we often can't wait to rave about it to fellow fans. Think of a small child trying to recite the plot of a film, each sentence starting with "and then. . . ." Everybody enjoys telling others about experiences they've lived through, good or bad, although some people do it more skillfully than others. Every family has tales passed down from parents, older siblings, and other relatives. Memories get polished into anecdotes retold and embellished over the decades and generations. Two of the world's major religions, Judaism and Christianity, have their roots in stories (the Exodus from Egypt and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, respectively).

As C. S. Lewis mentions somewhere, we can find "escape" in literature by reading even the most depressing or tragic work of fiction, because it provides a temporary distraction from our own mundane troubles. Moreover, stories impose order on the untidy incidents of everyday life, in which no sequence of events has a definite beginning or end. Narrative makes sense of the world. As writers are often warned, the argument "but it really happened" can't justify a farfetched scene in a novel. Reality doesn't have to be believable or logical; fiction does.

I'm reminded of my favorite Terry Pratchett passage, this often quoted dialogue between Death and his granddaughter in HOGFATHER:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

Off topic, RE Halloween: Vampire fans might enjoy my duology TWILIGHT'S CHANGELINGS, starring a vampire-human hybrid psychiatrist:

Twilight's Changelings

Another good introduction to my vampire series is the stand-alone romance EMBRACING DARKNESS:

Embracing Darkness

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt