Facing a New Year

Happy New Year! -- even though it is an arbitrary date. Why not the precise day of the winter solstice instead of over a week later? Or, better yet, the spring equinox? The ancient Romans originally set the beginning of the year in March, the debut of spring, which has a certain fitness. That year contained ten months of 30 or 31 days each. Wikipedia has a detailed article about the changes and reforms in the Roman calendar over many centuries:

Roman Calendar

Earth's movement through space has the inconvenient feature that a full revolution around the sun (year) isn't evenly divisible by the moon cycles (months). So having twelve months in a year doesn't work properly; days are left over, making each month, except February, longer than a moon cycle. The original Roman calendar had "intercalary" clusters of days or even whole "extra" months, depending on which era we're looking at. According to Wikipedia, "winter was left as an unassigned span of days," later replaced by January and February. Moreover, in the early calendar, weeks had eight days, a figure that doesn't fit properly into the phases of the moon or divide equally into 30 days.

To make matters worse, the solar calendar doesn't have an even number of days, requiring insertion of "leap days" at fixed intervals.

In ancient Rome as well as some other societies, the intercalary days were considered unlucky. Is it unlucky to be born on February 29? Even if leap year babies, like the hero of PIRATES OF PENZANCE (who got trapped by that technical point in his apprenticeship contract), have far fewer birthdays than the number of years in their lives, I suppose they still get annual birthday celebrations. I sort of like the idea of a cluster of "unassigned" days in a year. They could be holidays with no obligations of any kind.

As I've mentioned in the past, I don't make "resolutions" anymore. I do set "goals," modest, mainly short-term ones. My immediate goal in January, as usual, is to finish my annual vampire fiction bibliography update and send it to interested parties before the end of the month. In terms of writing goals, I have two more "orphaned" (by a company that went out of business) erotic paranormal romance novellas to revise slightly and submit to my new publisher who's been re-releasing them. I plan to re-release on my own a spicy, humorous paranormal romance work with Lovecraftian elements that consists of a linked pair of stories from the same former publisher. With a different publisher, I have one older paranormal romance novel, non-erotic, awaiting re-release. Although I have no new fiction in mind at present, that situation could always change later in the year.

In other areas of life, I aim to get back to riding my stationary bike a full 29-30 minutes in each session rather than slacking off to barely above 25 minutes, as I've done too often lately. Also, I tentatively agreed to sign up for the coffee hour duty roster at church, and I plan to follow through with that activity. I'd like to declare a goal of catching up with the dozens of manga volumes in my to-read stack, but that's probably a fantasy under the category of, "If I can't die until I've read all these, I'm destined to live forever." The collection is infinite, because several new manga are added every month. There is, however, some possibility of catching up with the prose books in the pile before they multiply beyond control, because I usually manage to keep up and got behind only within the past couple of months.

Wishing you the best of luck with your goals for 2023. And, to repeat one of my favorite quotes from MASH, "Here's to the new year. May she be a durn sight better than the last one."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Wrong Word

First, I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

Second, I defend the Oxford/Harvard/Cambridge comma. There is no necessary link between health and prosperity, at least, not grammatically speaking.

Third, there may have been a new tweak in WORD, so I should like to share a heads-up for authors and editors.

On Friday, I downloaded a document, edited it, made a copy, which I renamed and added highlighting to that renamed copy to show the changed that I had made. Then, I uploaded the revised version and emailed it back to my correspondent with a note in the body of the email explaining my edits.

I could not remember all the original "sins" in the first download, so I went to the unchanged original download, and discovered to my annoyance that the "original" contained the new highlighting and the editing.

I went to the "download" history and re-downloaded the original, and it, too, had the highlighting and the editing.  I had to clear my history, go back to the original email, and download the original again in order to see what the mistakes were.

A1 is not always helpful.

One of the mistakes involved poor word order, and suggested that a fence could move itself. As a LOTR fan, I imagined a wooden fence with ENT powers. Or Triffid abilities. 

https://www.ic-s.org.uk/2017/03/05/trees-walk-yes/

I've ranted before about the 1st Amendment when it comes to advertising. IMHO, students who get poor PSAT or SAT or ACT grades in the English grammar section, ought to be able to launch a class action against advertisers who have barraged them with bad examples.

For instance, there is one where a pitch-person says, "As a teacher," (this dietary supplement)... does this/that/or the other for the speaker.

A dietary supplement is not a teacher.

Another pitch-person says, "As an athlete," (this dietary supplement)... does this/that/or the other for that speaker.

A dietary supplement cannot possibly be an athlete

Getting this sort of thing wrong can make the difference between a 29 and a magic 31.

One of my favorite legal bloggers is Jeff Greenbaum of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. He has shared a very helpful article on Advertising law isses on which to keep an eye in 2023

https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102i3j9/what-advertising-law-issues-should-you-keep-an-eye-on-in-2023

The list includes Artificial intelligence by Greg Boyd; Copyright by Brian Murphy; Dark patterns by Terri Seligman; Donation programs by Kelly O'Donnell (and there are authors who do extensive fundraising for charity, so this is important); Endorsements by Jordyn Milewski; Privacy by Daniel Goldberg; and more which might not be so useful for authors, but are still interesting.

Authors advertise, so it is well worth a look.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

 

Karen S. Wiesner: The Four Myths Your Muse Desperately Wants You to Believe, Part 1

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Four Myths Your Muse Desperately Wants You to Believe, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

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

This is the first of four posts dealing with how writers can get their muses to work with rather than against them.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t always believe my muse was working with me. When I first started writing, I was convinced my muse was a sadistic taskmaster who enjoyed having enormous power over me. He (apparently my muse is male) could make me happy, he could make my life everything I could ever want...and he could make me utterly miserable by working me to death, leading me every-which-way just to get a finished book, or leaving me altogether just when I needed him most. It was all under his power, and I believed I had to accept the situation or he’d take the words away—maybe for good.

Now, most writers are stereotypical hosts: They believe if their muse leaves them, they must have done something horribly wrong. If the muse comes and guides them on a magical journey of enlightenment, they feel utterly blessed. They accept whatever their muse throws at them simply because the muse has exactly what they need. The words, the words! We need the words! Anything to get them! 

The muse likes to withhold its favors from us because it gives it even more power over us. It likes to lead us in the wrong direction or make us slave endlessly—working and re-working the same things over and over—to make us realize just how dependent we are on it. Who created writer’s block and spread the rumor that a writer’s dirge will be played if we defy our omnipotent muse? Guess.

This for-part article takes a stab at the all-powerful muse and shatters some of the myths it leads us to believe are the truth in order to keep us in line.

Myth One:  You have to be a slave to your muse.

Writers who are slaves to their muse are positively on fire for their craft...when the muse has them in its fickle grasp, that is—then and only then. When the muse is withholding favors, these writers may feel they have no sense of purpose or direction. When they’re in the grip of writer’s fever, they’re the happiest, most fulfilled people in the world. When they burn out like a comet in the night,—and it is always that dramatic—they’re miserable. They write day and night for a couple weeks or months solid, conceivably producing anywhere up to fifty or more pages a day. Writer’s block and burn-out are constant fears. Muse-driven authors may or may not finish a project. If they’re unpublished, more often than not, they don’t finish. They tend to write in a non-linear, chaotic fashion, heeding the muse in whatever direction it calls. There is no feeling of control over this creative urge they have. These authors are terrified of their muse; they, essentially, worship it from afar, not daring to get too close and disturb the Almighty Bard. They are willing, superstitious slaves to their muses.

Does this describe you at this point in your writing? Don’t worry. Almost every writer starts out this way and may continue because she’s been told it’s the only way, or she’s superstitious and deathly afraid of defying her muse.

During my years as a slave to my muse, each book I wrote required a minimum of twelve drafts (read:  start to finish overhauls). I never used an outline; I couldn’t even imagine how any writer could see far enough ahead to use an outline when I couldn’t see the present scene before I wrote it, let alone see these things in detail. I wrote by the seat of my pants, never knowing what would happen from one scene to the next. Frequently, I ended up with a thousand pages of useless drivel, too. Other times I at least came out of the book knowing what was right and what was wrong with the project. I could then set it aside for a while and come back to it fresh later, ready to start all over again with those “right” parts.

After writing a dozen books like that, I got better at the whole process of writing and I could write four of these overhaul drafts instead of twelve, coming out with a fairly clean novel. It still wasn’t as efficient as I wanted to be. Let’s face it, it’s exhausting and intimidating to go into writing a book thinking you’re going to have to do this at least four times before you get it right.

I had my life happen to me all at once when I was twenty-nine—I had my first child and my first book accepted for publication almost simultaneously. A fickle muse wasn’t what I needed. I was forced to make a decision about how I was going to juggle everything, and quick.

In the next part of this article, we'll talk about another myth your muse desperately wants you to believe.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of First Draft Outline

Volume 1 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

Modernizing Scrooge

Many of Shakespeare's plays have been transmuted into modern settings, such as WEST SIDE STORY (from ROMEO AND JULIET), SHE'S THE MAN (from TWELFTH NIGHT), and 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (from THE TAMING OF THE SHREW), not to mention at least one animated animal drama, Disney's THE LION KING (from HAMLET). Jane Austen's novels have become a source for modern romantic movies, e.g. BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE) and CLUELESS (from EMMA). The classic film of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was updated to the time when it was made (1950s) rather than its original 1890s setting.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL, of course, boasts a huge number of film adaptations, some of which have contemporary settings. Three movies illustrate different ways of approaching such a project: A DIVA'S CHRISTMAS CAROL obviously takes place in an alternate universe where Charles Dickens's novel was never published. Nobody in the cast seems to find anything odd about a Black superstar singer named Ebony Scrooge with a dead partner named Marley (one member of the female trio Ebony belonged to at the beginning of her career) and a manager named Bob Cratchit who has a sick child called Tim. Ebony has a niece, rather than a nephew, with whom she reconciles at the end. This retelling is fun and, in my opinion, surprisingly good. The characters in the comedy-drama SCROOGED, on the other hand, are thoroughly genre-savvy, being involved in a production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL themselves. Its star's happy ending has one feature most adapatations don't; he wins back his former lover, the movie's Belle substitute. AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL, whose Christmas Present action occurs during the Depression, completely revamps the story with new names and backstories for the characters within the familiar basic plotline. Although the Scrooge figure, Ben Slade, is aware of the book, he hasn't read it. It's clear he's not much of a reader, especially given his decision to destroy the repossessed contents of a bookstore for the books' paper and leather components. When he glances through the novel, he pronounces it "claptrap" and is even more resistant to belief in spirits than old Ebenezer.

Of the three, I like the last one best. The Depression-era setting resonates with the wealth-and-poverty dichotomy of the original story's Victorian background. Ben Slade (played by Henry Winkler -- very effectively, too) has similar financial power over the less fortunate characters as Scrooge in Dickens's book. In fact, Ben has more power, since the action takes place in a small New England town, where he's virtually the only rich, influential person. The wintry landscape visually enhances the story, too.

Like many classics, A CHRISTMAS CAROL can be reimagined to a considerable extent while still keeping the fundamental plot and characters recognizable (Mr. Magoo? Mickey Mouse's Uncle Scrooge?), even if a modern milieu is chosen and requires omitting the "Bah, humbug!"

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Two Crucial Writing Goal Sheets by Karen S Wiesner

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Two Crucial Writing Goal Sheets

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

Once you become a published author, the pressure to maintain the standard of quality with every book is crucial. Publishers and readers will expect that, as you the author have to of yourself. That’s why it’s absolutely essential to become a productive writer as soon as you can--ideally, before you sell your first book. You’ll be confident about what you can do, and you’ll have more to offer any publisher who contracts for your books.

A good rule of thumb for unpublished writers is to stay one or two projects ahead of your submissions. If you’re a published author, you should stay one or two projects ahead of your releases. Three to six months before a new year, you need to be thinking--or preferably working--on next year's projects.

Writing Goals

The purpose of a writing goal sheet is to help you determine how much time you need to spend turning your formatted outline into a manuscript draft. To complete this goal sheet, you’ll need to have a rough estimate of how much you can accomplish on a daily basis. As a general rule, writing at least one scene a day, regardless of how long or short that scene ends up, is ideal. If you’re prone to writer’s block, the chances of burning out or hitting a roadblock are significantly less when you’re brainstorming on one scene a day instead of two or more. Furthermore, each scene must be written with its own mood and objective--it can be difficult to switch gears in the middle of your writing session when you have to move on to the next scene. If you stick to writing one scene every day, you’ll rarely feel you’re doing too much or too little. If your scenes are consistently too long or short, you may need to re-evaluate whether your pacing is on track, and make any necessary adjustments.

For some authors, it works best to write a certain number of pages a day instead of a scene or more a day. Personally, I find this method to be inefficient, though I know everyone's different and what works for one writer is unimaginable to another and vice versa. Writing page by page, even if you’re going strong, do you stop at 10 pages using this method? If you’re not feeling inspired at all, do you quit at 10 pages, even if you’re in the middle of a scene or, heck, in the middle of a sentence? How does that work? Regardless of whether it's not really that dramatic where a page-by-pager cuts off for the day, to me if you haven't finished the scene, you are essentially in the middle of something that has a very specific mood. To come back the next day (or whenever) is to interrupt that mood, which you'll have to start from scratch to get back into when you return. It would drive me crazy to work that way. However, if you choose to write a certain number of pages per day, your goal sheet would be based on the projected length of the book. The chart below will help you estimate the number of pages in your complete manuscript based on the number of words you’re shooting for:

(estimated 250 words per page)

50,000 words = 200 pages

60,000 words = 240 pages

70,000 words = 280 pages

80,000 words = 320 pages

90,000 words = 360 pages

100,000 words = 400 pages

Therefore, if you estimate your book will be 50,000 words and you want to write 10 pages a day (not taking holidays or weekends into account), your goal sheet might look something like this:

1/1: write 10 pages

1/2: write 10 pages

1/3: write 10 pages

1/4: write 10 pages

1/5: write 10 pages

Test yourself for a week or a couple weeks by writing however many pages you can and taking notes on what you accomplish each day. At the end of the time, figure out your average number of pages per day. Then add a page or two to your daily page goal to challenge yourself.

It might sound impossible to accurately predict how long it’ll take you to complete a project, especially down to the day (assuming life doesn’t throw you any radical curves). But there is a method for doing just that that anyone can use. You need to complete the following steps before you can make your prediction:

1.     Develop a solid idea of how much you’re able to write per working day. (This method works best if you write scene by scene rather than page by page.)

2. Determine whether you’ll work weekends or holidays, and what your schedule (personal, writing, and your other job, if you have one) is like for the time period in which you’ll be working on this particular book.

3. Complete a formatted outline, with scenes divided.

First, make sure you allow the outline sufficient shelf-time before you begin writing. Next, plan to give yourself at least a week or two before you start writing to go over your outline and make sure it’s still solid.

Using a blank sheet of paper and your formatted outline, make a list of the scenes within the book, putting one scene on each line. Obviously, these scenes will come from your formatted outline. You can simply make a sequential list of scenes, as shown below:

scene 1

scene 2

scene 3

scene 4

scene 5

Or you can specify chapter and scene number:

Prologue

chapter 1, scene 1

chapter 1, scene 2

chapter 2, scene 1

chapter 2, scene 2

Figure out how many working days you’ll have in a month. (I generally don’t write on weekends, so for me, most months amount to approximately twenty working days.) Now, get out your calendar or planner--whatever you use to schedule your days. Any standard calendar of the upcoming months will work, but if you have events (dentist appointment or whatever) planned during the time you’ll be working, you’ll want to take that into account on your writing goal sheet.

Decide the date you want to begin writing and mark it down on your writing goal sheet next to the first scene. If you’re writing one scene per day, you will then write the next date by the second scene, etc. Don’t forget to skip weekends and holidays if you don’t plan to write on those days.

8/9: prologue

8/10: chapter 1, scene 1

8/11: scene 2

8/12: chapter 2, scene 1

8/13: scene 2

By the time you’ve put a date next to each scene in your book, you know exactly when you’ll be done with the first draft.

It’s my experience, after outlining and writing close to 150 books, that an outline will be approximately a quarter of the size of your finished story. There certainly can be a wide variance because every project is different and some authors write consistently short or long scenes. The list below is an estimate of how the number of scenes in an outline will translate to novel length, assuming there are roughly 250 words per page:

up to 20 scenes in an outline = a novella-length work of 7,000–15,000 words

30–40 scenes in the outline = 50,000–75,000 words

41–70 scenes in the outline = 76,000–90,000 words

71 or more scenes in the outline = 100,000+ words

Here are some examples of how I figured out my own schedule estimations:

Vows & the Vagabond

·       46 scenes at 20 working days per month

·       2 months, 6 days to write an 80,000 word novel, not including editing, polishing, and proposal

·       budget 2 1⁄2 to 3 months for project completion

No Ordinary Love

·       68 scenes at 20 working days per month

·       3 months, 8 days to write a 90,000 word novel, not including editing, polishing, and proposal

·       budget 3 1⁄2 to 4 months for project completion

Tears on Stone

·       74 scenes at 20 working days per month

·       3 months, 14 days to write a 110,000-word novel, not including editing, polishing, and proposal

·       budget 4 months for project completion

You’ll notice I budgeted some extra time at the end of the writing process--that's for editing and polishing.

As soon as an outline is complete, you can work up a writing goal sheet, taking into account shelf-time and a week or two for outline review and revision.

Yearly Goals

Once you have a writing goal sheet, you can then translate the information from your writing goal sheet directly into a yearly goal sheet, something like:

Yearly Goals With New Writing Goal

WHAT I want to accomplish	WHEN I want to accomplish it
Write Vows & the Vagabond	January 10-February 26
Write Tears on Stone	March 8-June 8
Write No Ordinary Love	July 3-September 4

Accurately estimating the time you’ll spend on various projects during the year will be very helpful when you’re filling out your yearly goal sheets. If you want to see examples of detailed, multiyear goal sheets, visit my WIP page here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/works-in-progress.html.

Remember: Being productive should not mean being rushed. If a story needs more time, give it all it needs--as long as you continue to meet your daily goals. If you’re a beginner, you may need to be more flexible, but having personal goals can help you no matter what stage you’re in. Should you find that you’re daily goals make you feel rushed, take time to evaluate whether you’re trying to do too much. Would one scene per day be more manageable for you than two? Be more flexible with yearly goals than daily goals.

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

Holiday Parodies

Have I previously recommended POLITICALLY CORRECT HOLIDAY STORIES, by James Finn Garner? Although slightly dated to the specific "politically correct" preoccupations of its publication year, 1995, it's still funny enough to invited multiple rereadings. It begins with an amusing mock-serious reflection on "the task of liberating the holidays from the oppressiveness of tradition." For instance, what does "the senior lifemate's tale about the animals imprisoned in the barnyard" who receive the gift of speech on Christmas Eve tell us about our relations with other species?

The body of the book transforms "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" and four familiar tales or songs. The classic tribute to the night before Christmas becomes "'Twas the Night Before Solstice," with a critique in verse of the overweight, carcinogen-consuming, reindeer-exploiting home invader and the commercialized holiday he promotes. In the stories, Frosty the snow persun (sic) leads a protest march of snow people against global warming all the way to Washington. Considering the number of days in that area with temperatures above freezing, even in winter, the event doesn't end well for the participants. The title character in "The Nutcracker" raises an army against the expansionist aggression of the Mouse King but ultimately, with Clara's help, seeks a peaceful resolution, recognizing that mice have been feared and marginalized for too long. Rudolph the Nasally Empowered Reindeeer organizes a union to uplift reindeer and other oppressed North Pole employees.

The longest and most detailed retelling, naturally, satirizes "A Christmas Carol." It starts, "Marley was non-viable, to begin with. . ." setting aside philosophical questions about the nature of death and the afterlife, that is. After undergoing "Past-Regression-Future-Progression" therapy, as opposed to the Negative Alternative Outcome (i.e., George Bailey) procedure, Scrooge comes to the conclusion, "I'm the victim here." Hence, the heavenly bureaucracy plans an even more extreme treatment for him.

You can find the book on Amazon here:

Politically Correct Holiday Stories

Garner also published two collections of similarly fractured fairy tales and a book of "politically correct parables" (which are less irreverent than one might expect).

My favorite holiday parodies, however, come in the form of Lovecraftian versions of popular songs on two albums from the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, A VERY SCARY SOLSTICE and AN EVEN SCARIER SOLSTICE. The website also offers songbooks with lyrics and footnotes:

H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society

Click on either "Music" or "Holiday Treats" to find the albums. Some of my favorite selections: "Away in a Madhouse," "Have Yourself a Scary Little Solstice," "I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth," "I'm Dreaming of a Dead City," "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen," "Little Rare Books Room" (to the tune of "Little Drummer Boy"), and "Harley Got Devoured by the Undead" (to "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"). It might be unwise to sing these songs too loudly, though, lest you call up what you cannot put down. :)

Merry winter holidays and happy New Year!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Wet Words

When I play word associations, I go from "wet" to "work".  No doubt Clint Eastwood is to blame; I must have watched The Eiger Sanction at too verbally impressionable an age. 

I had not heard the expression "a wet signature" before this week, when legal blogger Sarah Phillips of the mostly UK and European law firm Abel Imray caught my attention with her globally-applicable Practical Guilde To E-Signatures.

Original Link:

https://www.abelimray.com/resources/newsletters/practical-guide-to-e-signatures

 

Lexology link:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2c9f6b22-76b9-4e24-8bf6-9dc3193c8589

 

The blog explains what an e-signature is, the forms it can take, the advanced versions used by DocuSign or AdobeSign, and QSDCs, and best practices around the world.

 

Personally, I am wary of the security of a system where the signer has the choice of maybe 5 signature-like fonts. How does one remember what one chose (apart from studying the copy of the contract)? And wouldn't that give an identity thief a one-in-five chance of guessing correctly?

 

As for the scribble that one is asked by the HVAC service guy to fumble on his ipad with one's finger, it seems to me that an X would be just as good. 

Legal bloggers John Yiokaris and Fabrice Pilla of Sotos LLP offer a Canadian perspective on what is, and what may not be, legally binding in Canada with respect to e-signatures.

https://sotosllp.com/the-legal-validity-of-e-signatures-updates-on-ditching-the-pen/

 

Fantasy author Bethany Atazadeh  has a video on three or four ways of doing a virtual book signing, but she appears to use actual wet words. You can do online searches for other tips about virtual signings.

When I was first traditionally published, we were warned to have a special "author" signature which is different from one's banking/voter-registration/contract signing John Hancock. It's probably yet another reason to write under a pseudonym.

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: Presentation is King, Part 3

A Reader's Commentary

Presentation is King, Part 3

by Karen S. Wiesner

In this final of a three-part commentary using author Christopher Paolini's two series, I talk about the conundrum of how important presentation is with massive sagas.

While I was reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, the first installment in Fractalverse, I started to ask myself why I've always had such trouble finishing--or frankly, even beginning--any of Christopher Paolini's books. Everything is in his favor: He's an excellent writer, no dispute there. Some of my favorite books are written in the fantasy genre, as his The Inheritance Cycle is. I adore dragons. I love science fiction, and, when combined with horror, it's a win-win for me. The bottom line is that I highly recommend the two series written by Paolini to any fantasy and sci-fi lover.

However, almost unconsciously while I worked to get through To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, my brain was analyzing my reactions to reading all of his offerings. I enjoyed the most the first parts of both his series. Then I got bogged down. In last week's commentary, we talked about three explanations for why this was the case. We also established that we live in a time in the publishing industry when there are fewer and fewer readers and almost nobody has an attention span that extends beyond a few hundred words. So what options are there for those of us who want to be die-hard readers but find the sheer size and complexity of many of the books and series published these days intimidating and overwhelming?

Potential Solutions

I'm absolutely sure that if the author and/or the publisher had presented the six individual parts of Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars in separate volumes instead of one massive book, I would have enjoyed them so much more. My silly brain would have accepted each was an installment of the whole and wouldn't have demanded I read through the ponderous tome in the way it was presented to ensure I got the scope of the story. I could have come back into each individual segment fresh, especially if they were published back-to-back over the course of a few months (in the case of To Sleep… maybe 3-6 months). I believe I would have been eager to devour each portion if they'd presented them in a different way that prevented my head from being overburdened by too much in one place at one time.

To keep costs down, one cover design could be created, possibly in different shades for each section (see below), with the part in the series highlighted on the front, as in To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Part I; To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Part II, and on through Part VI. To avoid losing readers who are cheap (and who can blame them?), each segment could have been priced at $1.99 to $2.99.

 

Can I also just interject here that reading physical copies of books as large as Paolini's are is an exercise in arthritis foreshadowing? Even the mass market paperback {mmp} of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was agony. My poor hands were cramping, holding up this unwieldly, bulky conveyance of words. Yes, maybe this is a good case for ebooks, and I know it compels a good many toward digital editions. That's great. I highly approve. But I've never loved ebooks. They give me a headache and, frankly, I'm still holding something fairly heavy despite that the device I use can actually contain thousands of books instead of one. For those of us who still love a printed edition, smaller volumes would be ideal.

Also, the recaps that tend to be in each subsequent book in a series needs to be minimalized. In other words, one page instead of five plus. I appreciate that refresher and believe it needs to be there, but distilling the story thus far down to the core elements is all that's truly needed. Maybe the author could have the full synopsis on their website in case readers want more detail.

Additionally, the appendices are fantastic. I love them myself. However, when they become compendiums on their own, they need to be published separately for avid fans of the series. Paolini's publisher actually did publish a 32-page supplement to The Inheritance Cycle, called Eragon's Guide to Alagaësia, providing a collection of information about the characters, settings, and objects referred to in the novels. It was published just prior to the fourth and final volume and hinted at the upcoming end of the series. However, when a book is already gigantic, appendices that are more of "series facts at your fingertips" entries might be unquestionably more useful to readers. As in, "Who or where or what is this again?" Glance in the back, where vital information is presented in a user-friendly way. "Ah-ha! Blank filled in. Now I can return to my immersive reading." 

Finally, I think die-hard and dabbling readers alike find it much easier to digest everything that's required of them in these labyrinthine sagas within film or TV series adaptations. Something about that visual medium allows for simpler absorption. So good news for fans of Paolini: In July 2022, it was announced that a TV adaptation of The Inheritance Cycle was in early development with Disney+. In August 2022, it was revealed that To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (and potentially the whole Fractalverse?) was being adapted as a television show by another production company.

While I'm sure the possible solutions to my conundrum about how so many massive sagas are presented and maybe should be presented instead could warrant full articles and certainly debates on their own, I bring us back to the point of this commentary:

Presentation is king!

Readers love series. That's not going away. But we're losing die-hard readers with every passing year and, as a result, more and more dabbling readers want shorter, easier to digest volumes, presented in a variety of creative ways that may be more appealing than holding something that's as thick as concrete block for long periods of times.

 Happy reading!

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

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

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

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

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https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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Giant Viruses

Scientists have discovered and revived a 30,000-year-old virus, not seen since the Upper Paleolithic era, buried under the Siberian permafrost:

Ancient Giant Virus

This organism is "giant" on the virus scale; that is, it's big enough to be seen with an ordinary microscope. Fortunately, it poses no danger to humanity. It survives and reproduces by infecting a species of amoeba. However, the fact that this microbe remains infectious after so many millennia of dormancy implies that "it's possible that dangerous viruses do lurk in suspended animation deep belowground. . . . These viruses are buried deep, so it's likely that only human activities — such as mining and drilling for minerals, oil and natural gas — would disturb them."

Has any SF novelist used this premise in an apocalyptic novel about a pandemic for which no immunity or cure exists? Inevitably, the concept of a dangerous organism frozen in suspended animation for tens of thousands of years brings to mind the alien shapeshifter discovered in Antarctica in John W. Campbell's classic story "Who Goes There?" (adapted to film at least three times, first as THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD). Also lurking at the South Pole, prehistoric shoggoths are awakened in H. P. Lovecraft's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.

Or could microscopic life on Mars from thousands or millions of years ago be merely dormant rather than extinct?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt