Karen S. Wiesner: Advance Your Career: Writing in Stages, Part 3

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Advance Your Career:

Writing in Stages, Part 3

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

This is the third of four articles with techniques to advance your writing career. 

In the previous part of this article, we talked about the first three steps in writing in stages. Let's continue. 

Stage 4: Setting aside the project 

You’ve probably noticed that three of the nine (four if you use all eleven) stages are setting the project aside. Letting your project sit, out of sight and out of mind, for a couple weeks--or even months--in between stages will provide you with a completely fresh perspective. Distance gives you objectivity and the ability to read your own work so you can progress further with it, adding more layers and dimensions to your characters, plots, and relationships. Another reason for setting projects aside between stages is that writers may reach a point where their motivation lags, and they want to abandon the story. Sometimes the author may not feel inspired to write a book he's just spent weeks or even months outlining (note that I've never spent more than 1-3 weeks outlining but other authors might not have the same experience I have), just as he may not want to revise something he's spent weeks or months writing.

Setting a project aside between the various stages it goes through also allows your creativity to be at its peak. The process becomes easier, too, and your writing will be the best it can be. Putting a work-in-progress on a back burner for an extended period of time will allow you to see more of the connections that make a story multidimensional.

To set your project aside between stages, return everything to your story folder. Keep this book on a shelf and on the back burner in your mind for as long as you possibly can. Get to work on something else so you won’t concentrate too much on this project, making it the center of your attention again.

As a general rule, every book I write gets a few months between stages, a break I really need from each project. I can't imagine going through all the steps in finishing a book back-to-back. I get so sick of a story when one stage carries into the next without pause that I can no longer see whether anything I'm doing is improving or ruining it. When one stage of a work-in-progress is complete, I'm eager to get away from it. Many times I leave a stage certain the whole thing is fit only for burning in the nearest fireplace, but, when I come back to it months later, I discover that all my previous hard work was well worth the effort.

Stage 5: Writing the first draft

Once you take the project out to begin writing the true first draft of the story, you’ll notice that you have everything you need to begin. The outline you created for yourself should contain everything your book will, only on a much smaller scale, and will include a scene-by-scene breakdown of the entire story, hopefully rich with dimensions and CPR development.

If your outline was solid when you finished it, that should translate into a book that needs only minor revision and editing to add a few more crucial layers once you write the draft. This isn’t to say that the book won't come to life, growing and fleshing out more deeply and vividly as you write the first draft. It does or should immeasurably. So there goes the argument that writing an outline will kill your enthusiasm for the book. If anything, it becomes even more exciting because you're taking the framework and foundation you set down in an outline and made it powerful, multidimensional, and cohesive with prose. I want to challenge those who say an outline kills your enthusiasm for writing the book to try this method anyway--a couple of times, if you’re willing. You really do have to experience this to understand it, but, when I write a book based on a “first draft” outline, magic happens because I watch the outline-skeleton taking on flesh and blood and becoming a walking, talking, breathing story right before my very eyes. If anything, it’s more exciting this way--and a whole lot easier. Life and soul are infused into the story and I'm free to explore possibilities that I may have only just touched on in the outline. It’s organic.

One thing I want to note is that at no time during my first draft do I ever, ever, ever go backward and start revising. Writing and revising are two very different processes and a simple need for revising can so easily become an outright overhaul. Not only does this stop your progress in its tracks, but you may not be doing your story a favor by trying to be in two separate mind-sets at the same time. But more about revising later.

Stage 6: Setting aside

Stephen King calls this “recuperation time”, and it really is that, considering the blood, sweat, and tears you’ve expended thus far (half done in the writing in stages process!). When you take the manuscript down again to begin revisions, followed by editing and polishing, “you’ll find reading your book over after a…layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours…and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else. …This is the way it should be, the reason you waited.” See Stage 4 for more details about setting a project aside.

Stage 7: Revising

Ray Bradbury described this stage as the time, after letting the story cool off, of "reliving" rather than "rewriting". Revision is, ideally, the process of reworking material in an effort to make what’s already there better and stronger. If an author jumps directly into writing a story without brainstorming, researching, outlining, setting aside before and after the first draft, this revision will be a mere second layer of the story and, inevitably, the author has left himself with the torturous work of untangling, organizing, reshaping, revising, and searching for three-dimensionality in three hundred or more disjointed pages. Many an author who employs this method of working may need to do multiple drafts or revisions to develop an editor-quality manuscript that is consistent, well layered, and mostly coherent. Whether or not it’s three-dimensional and the CPR elements are properly developed is up for debate.

In a midway version of best- and worst-case scenarios, revision may mean making significant changes to a draft, such as adding or deleting plot threads, completely rewriting certain sections, or fleshing out characters and relationships to make them three-dimensional. In a milder form (usually after the author starts with a solid outline he used to write the first draft), revision could translate into tweaking the three-dimensionality of characters, plots, and relationships to reinforce them, maybe incorporating last-minute research.

As I said previously, writing and revision are two completely separate processes that require different mind-sets, and therefore shouldn’t be done at the same time. While writing a book, a simple need to polish words, sentences, or paragraphs can become a complete rewrite. This isn’t a productive way to work when you’re attempting to finish the first draft of the book.

An unfortunate side effect of revising, editing, and polishing while you’re still writing (and, yes, so many writers attempt to do all four of these at the same time instead of separately, in their own distinct stages) is that you don’t get the necessary distance from the project in order to be able to revise effectively. You need to enter the revision phase with fresh, objective eyes once the first draft of the book is finished. In some ways, you need to view that first draft as if it's not your own work so you can perform the hard work that may be necessary. Only then can you see the story without rose-colored glasses, as it really is.

Let’s first talk about the difference between the revision process and the editing and polishing process, because these, too, are separate jobs that can--but ideally shouldn’t--take place at the same time. On the road to writing a book, you want to minimize major changes like rewriting an entire story thread; adding, deleting, or revising multiple chapters; and infusing three-dimensionality of characters, plots, and relationships. These kinds of major fixes will cost you a lot of time and effort (hence the need for an outline first). If you've utilized your outlined scenes while writing the first draft to make sure your story is progressing, the chance of detecting problems early will allow you to take corrective action in a way that isn't overwhelming. This prevents major revisions at the end of a project, when you’ve already committed hundreds of pages to a solid structure.

That said, yes, during this time you’ll be working on fixing more serious problems, but you probably will be doing some editing and polishing during this stage as well. You’re there; it wouldn’t make sense not to clean up some minor issue that isn't quite right, yet clearly needs a little elbow grease. However, what you’re really looking for during the revision is fixing anything in your story that doesn’t work or make sense. When you revise, you evaluate (and fix) any of the following: 

·         Three-dimensionality of characters, settings, plots, and relationships

·         Structure

·         Character, plot, and setting credibility, and the cohesion of these elements

·         Scene worthiness

·         Pacing

·         Effectiveness of hints, tension and suspense, and resolutions

·         Transitions

·         Emotion

·         Hooks and cliff-hangers

·         Character voice

·         Consistency

·         Adequacy of research

·         Properly unfurled, developed, and concluded story threads

·         Deepening of character enhancements/contrasts and their relevant symbols

Revision is a necessary, natural part of writing. Every first draft needs it. Revision will help you smooth out any rough edges in your first draft. Information dumps or illogical leaps (or critique partners that point out such things) will alert you to the sections that need to be reworked. You could put the information overload elsewhere in the book, break it up and scatter it throughout several scenes, or cut, condense, and polish it so it flows better and makes more sense. As for illogical leaps, you can fill in, tweak, or modify throughout a story to shore up weak areas and provide the justification for a specific element. You’ll also add layers as you do this, building on the three-dimensional qualities of your CPR elements.

I strongly believe that once an author begins this stage revision should be done as quickly as possible, with as little interruption from the material as possible. This won’t compromise the quality of your revision, I promise--just the opposite, in fact. Ideally, if you can set aside a block of time of about a week to work exclusively on revision, you’ll find that your story will be more consistent, and you’ll remember details much better. In my case, during revision days, I may be woken from sound sleep because a glaring error in some portion of the book will emerge from my subconscious. The whole book is quite literally laid out in my mind, ready to be accessed at a moment’s notice during this short revision period. If revision on a project is broken up by a period of weeks or months, especially if you’re working on other projects during this time, the book may suffer from consistency issues and possibly even structural and cohesion problems. If you can set aside a crucial, uninterrupted block of time (preferably one week) to focus on revision, your story will benefit from it immeasurably.

The revision stage is almost always the point where I can see the finish line--essentially when I'm ready to let it go. I think that's an important part of the writing in stages process. Unless and until you feel you're ready to let the book go because it's as flawless as you can make it, don't let it go. You'll probably feel the same way as I do at the revision step if you follow the writing-in-stages method in the order I've laid out. Getting to the letting-go point might be much harder if you're not using this process.

In the next part, we'll talk about stages 8-11.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 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 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

ICFA 2022

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts is happening this week -- the first live con we've had since 2019! You can read about the organization here, with a link to the program schedule (scroll down a bit) in case you're curious about what goes on at this combination academic and author/fan gathering:

International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

I'll report next week on how it goes.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How the Mouse Moves/ How the Toilet Rolls

I like sex, science, copyright law and order, privacy, and words. Not necessarily in that order.  I read a lot of legal blogs each week, and summarize what interests me as it/they relate to copyright and safe fiction-writing.

Privacy is a problem. 

Quoting Andrew Grove, co-founder, and former CEO of Intel Corporation:

“Privacy is one of the biggest problems in this new electronic age. At the heart of the internet culture, is a force that wants to find out everything about you. And once it has found out everything about you and two hundred million others, that’s a very valuable asset, and people will be tempted to trade and do commerce with that asset. This wasn’t’ the information that people were thinking of when they called this the information age.”

Credit to https://tmtlaw.co.in/data-privacy-2021-the-year-that-it-was/

Active authors are more exposed because of biographies, the need to network, the necessity of online research. To digress about research, last night, I watched "Irresistible" (HBO is having a free showcase weekend, presumably in honor of St. Patrick. I enjoyed Irresistible very much. One scene that caught my attention was when an arrogant Washington DC power broker chose to demonstrate the thoroughness of political research by telling a farmer's daughter that they knew that she owns three cats and spends a lot of time online looking up a certain STD.

I also finished listening to a John Grisham audiobook, "Camino Winds", which also had a strong thread about lack of privacy.

Legal blogger Theodore F. Claypoole of Womble Bond Dickinson LLP discussed a recent move by the state of Illinois to prohibit the police from using citizens household electronic data without a warrant. 

https://www.womblebonddickinson.com/us/insights/blogs/illinois-prohibits-police-use-household-electronic-data-without-warrant#page=1

I assume that lawmakers don't prospectively prohibit behavior that no one has considered, so seems probable to me that some police forces may be using household data without a warrant.  How far could one go? The interesting site Hackaday reveals that obsessive people can keep track of their own (or of a family member's) toilet paper usage through a smart and connected bog roll holder that counts the spins.

https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/keep-track-of-toilet-paper-usage-with-this-iot-roll-holder/

Imagine if that data got into the wrong hands!

For the lawfirm Steptoe, legal bloggers Stephanie A. Sheridan, Meegan Brooks, and Surya Kundu discuss privacy in the age of big data, with insights about retailers keeping tracking data on which customers return items (presumably that they purchased online.)

Quoting Steptoe:

"As technological innovations in e-commerce continue to explode, retailers are increasingly utilizing customer data to personalize customer experiences, prevent fraud, improve their services, and make money through third-party sales. New data analytics tools allow retailers to study a vast array of information—ranging from users' order history to their exact mouse movements—to better understand their customer base."

https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/privacy-in-the-age-of-big-data-key-developments-in-retail-and-e-commerce.html

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ac20ed1a-8b0e-45a3-b765-f7a50b7f72a6

One would assume that fraud-prevention is reasonable, but from personalized customer data, one could also infer whether or not a customer has a shopping addiction, and a company could discourage online shoppers from making legitimate returns.  The Steptoe lawyers discuss all aspects at length, and make a very valid point about right of publicity laws (which are a form of copyright laws).

Quoting Steptoe again:

"Right of publicity laws, which exist in similar forms in many states (both in statutory and common law form), prohibit the unauthorized use of a person’s identifying information for commercial gain. These statutes have traditionally been invoked by celebrities and other public figures whose names have been appropriated to falsely suggest that they endorse a product or brand. In these recent lawsuits, however, plaintiffs are alleging that retailers, publishers, and credit card companies violate their “right of publicity” merely by including their names or other identifying information on mailing lists that were privately sold or rented to third parties."

One of the assumptions about making an online purchase is that it is private, but what if it turns out to be less "private" than going into a bricks and mortar shop?

Legal bloggers Tim Gole,  Jen Bradley,  Clare Arthur, and Rishabh Khanna for the Australian law firm Gilbert Tobin take an entertaining and informative look at behavioural advertising and targeting.

https://www.gtlaw.com.au/knowledge/algorithmic-profiling-online-behavioural-advertising

Quoting a fractional example of their writing:

"You’re browsing online, looking for those new running shoes that are going to make you fitter in 2022. You close the browser and open a social media webpage and soon notice ads for those very joggers and similar products. Congratulations, you’re a subject of algorithmic profiling and online behavioural advertising.

You’ve probably already had similar experiences many times over. You’re likely aware that your online behaviour is tracked, and that there is a lucrative market in the advertising space for the purchase and sale of internet users’ profiles that are based on users’ online behaviour. What you may not understand is how your information is collected and behaviour is tracked, and the algorithmic profiling that occurs to serve you with this advertising."

Having ranted about this very phenomenon, I really liked their observations!

For the last word in global privacy, there is a study by TMT Law. 

Global  Privacy 2021

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

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

 

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: Advance Your Career: Writing in Stages, Part 2

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Advance Your Career:

Writing in Stages, Part 2 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} 

This is the second of four articles with techniques to advance your writing career. 

In Part 1 of this series, you read about advancing your career by using story folders, and now you've got a solid way of organizing all your story ideas to ensure you have lots of projects growing over a period of (hopefully) years. In the next three parts of this series, we'll talk about writing in stages so you're set up from the start to get the layering necessary to build three-dimensional CPR (Characters, Plots, and Relationships) elements. In the ideal writing situation, a book goes through eleven stages (though the last two are optional, which I’ll explain later), including:

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

Stage 9: Editing and polishing

Stage 10: Setting aside

Stage 11: Final read-through

Let's go over each of these, discussing the whys and wherefores for each step to ensure the creation of solidly layered stories.

Stage 1: Brainstorming

In Sometimes the Magic Works, Terry Brooks says that dreaming (a term referring to the back-and-forth process of brainstorming in the mind) opens the door to creativity and allows the imagination to invent something wonderful. It happens when your mind drifts to a place you’ve never been--a place you can come back to and tell readers about. This is possibly where writers got such a bad rap from those who see us constantly daydreaming. Little do they realize that, until a writer has brainstormed adequately, he won’t have a story to tell.

Constant brainstorming, or brewing, is the most important part of writing an outline or a book. No writing system, technique, or tool will work for you if you’re not brainstorming constantly during a project, through all the stages. From the beginning of a project--before you even write a word of it--through the outlining, the writing, and revising, and the final edit and polish, brainstorm! It's the second half of the secret to never burning out, never facing writer's block. (Waiting until a story is ripe to begin working on it is the first half.) Start brainstorming days, weeks, months, or even years before you begin working on a story; jot down notes as they come to you and put them into their own folder. If you want specific ideas for ways to brainstorm, the internet and other writing reference titles--including my own--are abundant on this topic.

Brainstorming is the very ambition, focus, and joy necessary to planning and completing a project. Both inspiration and productivity flow from this exercise, and brainstorming should never truly stop after you begin writing. Brainstorming is so often what turns an average story into an extraordinarily memorable one. Dreaming about your story infuses you with the inner resources to write with that coveted magical element that turns work into passion. It’s also the secret to sitting down to a blank screen or paper and immediately beginning to work without agonizing over where to start. Brainstorming has the amazing side effect of forcing a writer to move from Point A to Point B and to continue on from there. Having given you a few sparks, it helps you to connect the dots in order to get those elements to fit together, logically and cohesively.

Without adequate brainstorming, a writer has no motivation for fantasizing about every aspect of the story he'll write. The process of writing will be dry and agonizing, and he’ll likely never make it past chapter three. By brainstorming days, weeks, months, or even years before beginning tangible work on a story, you create the layers for your story over time; this type of planning also produces cohesion in your work. Brainstorm enough, and when you start the project, it’ll be like turning on a movie and writing fast to keep up with everything you see.

Stage 2: Researching

Research is a layer of the story, but it’s also a form of brainstorming. While you’re reading, you’re thinking of ways you plan to use the material you’re researching. Research will give you the knowledge you need to plan a story. It will also give you story ideas. That’s why it’s so important to do your research before you begin a project--not during, if you can help it. This isn’t to say that you won’t need to do some follow-up and/or further narrow your research when you realize your outline or first draft has taken a turn you hadn’t planned for, or needs more than you’ve already acquired. Ideally, you’ll do your research in between other stages in your various projects. Your research may form the basis for character development, an appropriate setting, and much of the plot, fitting them together naturally. You’ll know you’ve done your research well when you can write about everything in your story intelligently, without questioning anything, and when your research naturally becomes an integral part of the book. If you can't do that, you're not done researching yet or you need to rethink whether you want this to be a part of the book at all. Believe me, proper research is so critical to creating a strong story.

Stage 3: Outlining

I'm adamant about outlining every single story before I write a word of it. That's my modus operandi without fail, and it's not something I would ever want to stop doing because I truly believe it's the only way to be sure I have a solid story before I commit to writing. I don't see the point of writing (and rewriting again and again) a book that may not be strong enough or good enough to sell, if you're writing to be published. I consider that to be writing a book backwards. My goal is to find out if I have a strong story worth writing first--in my world, by creating a scene-by-scene outline--so I'll never have regrets and almost never have to do any of the steps more than once.

An outline is essentially any guideline a writer uses to create and assemble a story. Whatever form an author chooses to use, it needs to show the details behind the finished product--details that many times are invisible, fitting seamlessly with all the other elements of a story but need to be identified and developed even before writing begins, to ensure proper three-dimensional CPR development.

While unpublished or newer authors might want to just write without boundaries or prerequisites in order to teach themselves the process of crafting a solid story, published and career authors often desire more discipline if they're going to create amazing stories every single time. Unfortunately, the idea of a published author writing a story without some sort of plan is acceptable, even encouraged, and prevalent. Don’t get me wrong, those authors who have been through the process of writing a book many, many times have an outline regardless of whether it’s formally written down or not. Their own experience in the process is guiding them. An author who’s written nothing, or only a few books, and works without a plan to get him started may end up with unstable, disjointed stories of the sort that reviewers rip to shreds. Author Terry Brooks says, “I believe, especially with long fiction, that an outline keeps you organized and focused over the course of the writing. I am not wedded to an outline once it is in place and will change it to suit the progress of the story and to accommodate new and better ideas, but I like having a blueprint to go back to. Also, having an outline forces you to think your story through and work out the kinks and bad spots. I do a lot less editing and rewriting when I take time to do the outline first.” I would emphasize what he said about changing an outline to suit the progress of a story. Most writers don't realize just how incredibly flexible an outline is in that regard. Let's analyze that deeply.

First things first: A story needs the proper foundation, framework, and internal workings to be strong. Choosing the right elements before the first draft is begun will prevent endless rewrites and one dimensional stories. The primary goals in producing an outline are as follows:

•  To encourage your mind to brainstorm a story from start to finish (in my world, that means a summary of every single scene in the book), providing yourself with a strong, rich layer.

•  To allow yourself to see the holes in your story before you start writing the first draft. With a scene-by-scene outline, you have the means to evaluate what still needs work, what needs to be revised and fine-tuned, before you commit it to a full, written draft.

•  To help you stay focused when you start to write the book, keeping you from getting sidetracked by small details. Everything you need is right there in one consolidated document. You won't have to go looking for anything and interrupt your progress, because all the hard work of puzzling out your story was completed in the outlining stage. 

How does all this work in the real world? In mine, I always outline a book scene by scene before I write it. I work chronologically until my outline contains every single scene I’ll have in the book; it's also okay to write an outline in a nonlinear fashion. Sometimes it helps to know the end of the book before you outline the beginning and/or middle, so feel free to outline non-chronologically if the story comes to you in that way. Additionally, you may need to utilize a process I call “outlining and writing in tandem”, which basically means outlining as far as you can go, scene by scene, in the book; then writing the first scene if you stall, going back to the outline, and switching back and forth between these if you need to, always returning to the outlining and staying with it as long as you can. Use that method if you need to, until you get used to the idea and process of outlining a book before you start writing.

Something I want you to notice is that this isn’t simply an outline that you’re creating. When I outline, this is unmistakably the first draft of my book because it is my book…just in condensed form. An outline like this is so complete it contains every single one of my character and relationship developments, along with plot threads unfurled with the good pacing and the necessary hints or seeds of tension from start to logical finish. And, yes, my outlines do include pacing and tension, or at least allusions about where they should be included--it's a mini version of the book, after all. Because it’s an outline, it doesn’t even need to be my best writing.

Once my outline is complete and contains every single scene in the book, I read it over, filling in any gaps or holes, fleshing out the scenes with dialogue, introspection, action, descriptions, whatever. Basically, I revise the outline in the same way I would a first draft. Most authors don’t and won’t spend endless time revising the words and sentence structure in an outline, since they’re the only ones who’ll see it. And this 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--near the end. Revising less than a hundred pages of an outline will certainly be much easier than revising 400 manuscript pages. Incidentally, writing your manuscript based on an outline this complete might almost make you feel guilty, like you’re cheating, because the writing process should be simple at this point because you worked out all the kinks and smoothed out the rough or weak spots while outlining. That's my experience with outlining and I've written whole books about how to do that.

Now, before we go any further in proving the flexibility of an outline, let’s talk about something that most authors who don’t like to use an outline say: They fear using an outline will kill their enthusiasm for writing the book, or that their creativity will be hampered or caged. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never felt stifled by an outline. Just the opposite, in fact. The outline frees me to explore every aspect of a book--without risk. It allows my ideas (and my characters) to come to life on their own and grow. Use your outline to explore any angle you want. If new characters crop up, wonderful! Include them. If they’re not right for the story, removing them won’t take you much time at all. Explore a new story thread--follow it wherever it takes you. If it’s a logical thread, 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 a matter of deleting the offending scenes 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, characters, and concepts while outlining allows you to avoid spending countless hours laboring only to discover your ideas don't work. That's flexibility of story that can't be denied. A written draft is never so pliable.

Working the problem areas out of a story *within the outline* is ideal productivity, and it’s within every writer’s grasp. The clearer a writer’s vision of the story before writing, the more fleshed out, cohesive, and solid the story will be once it makes it to paper. Remember, your blueprint is just one of many layers of your story. If you’re jumping directly into the writing, you’re missing so many layers that will have to be tacked on awkwardly or laboriously overhauled and reshaped during multiple revisions…revisions that ultimately may not fix the foundational problems your story has.

In the next part, we'll talk about stages 4-7.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 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

Big Tech Tyranny?

Cory Doctorow's March LOCUS column discusses tech tycoons from the perspective of monopoly and world domination. Well, that phrase may be a bit exaggerated but not totally inapplicable, considering his term "commercial tyrant":

Vertically Challenged

Is meritocracy a "delusion"? Are people such as Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) unique geniuses, or did they just get lucky? One might maintain that some sort of genius is required to recognize opportunities and take advantage of the "luck," but that's beside Doctorow's point. He argues against "vertical integration" and in favor of "structural separation." Fundamental antitrust principles should forbid mega-corporations from competing with the companies to which they sell services. "Amazon could offer virtual shelf space to merchants, or it could compete with those merchants by making its own goods, but not both. Apple could have an app store, or it could make apps, but not both."

It's easy to see his point. It would be better if Google could somehow be prevented from giving preference in search results to entities in which it has a financial interest. On the other hand, more ambiguous "liminal" cases exist, a point Doctorow himself does acknowledge. For example, "Amazon might say it gives preferential search results to businesses that use its warehouses because it can be sure that those items will be delivered more efficiently and reliably, but it also benefits every time it makes that call." Granting the second half of that sentence, I'm still not sure this practice is a bad thing. Given a choice between two identical products of equal price, I DO tend to choose the one labeled "Fulfilled by Amazon" for that very reliability, as well as speed of delivery. As for splitting off Amazon's publishing services, as he advocates, I'd be dubious. I like the way Kindle self-publishing currently works.

Doctorow also brings up problems that may require "structural integration" rather than separation, to prevent Big Tech from evading its legitimate responsibilities. He tentatively calls for "a requirement that the business functions that harm the rest of us when they go wrong be kept in-house, so that the liabilities from mismanaging those operations end up where they belong." Is there a simple answer to the dilemma of maintaining the conveniences we enjoy while preventing the abuses?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Throttling Pirates

This week, Alex Ocampo of DMCAForce shared information about what is being called The Pirate Update (by DMCAForce).

On February 8, 2022, Google stated “when a site is demoted [by the Pirate update], the traffic Google Search sends it drops, on average, by 89% on average.” That statement came directly from Google about their efforts to remove those sites which they “received a large number of valid removal notices” as DMCA requires...

The article includes a link to a 2012 article about how Google penalizes sites that are repeatedly accused of copyright infringement by reducing their traffic by up to 89%.  Google provides details.
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality

TorrentFreak has more that is also more recent.  I apologize for not posting the url except as a link on the word "more". 

As copyright agent for aliendjinnromances and alien romances, I have never received a single infringement notice in the 12 years we have been blogging. Failure to respond to an infringment notice is supposed to be part of the process. Presumably, innoocent bloggers can also be throttled by accident. There are presumably over-automated piracy-fighting services that flag any content that contains a particularly sensitive keyword.

Talking of keywords, Angela Hoy of Writers Weekly shares a very good advice column about things not to do when promoting ones book.
https://writersweekly.com/marketing-secrets/6-things-you-must-avoid-when-marketing-your-book-by-amanda-steel?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

One of the recommendations (which I precis in my own words) is that newbie authors should avoid self-comparing their writing to that of best selling authors. Some writers did do this, which is why certain sites would exploit this trend by selling some best-seller author names as keywords.

Possibly, Bloggger Labels should also be used judiciously!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Karen S. Wiesner: Advance Your Career, Part 1: Creating Story Folders

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Advance Your Career, Part 1:

Creating Story Folders 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} 

 This is the first of four articles with techniques to advance your writing career.

Writers spin fantasies in their heads, and this is where most of their work is done in conceiving a story. In previous writing reference titles, I’ve likened the process of writing to brewing coffee in a percolator. The stories inside my head are in a creative coffeepot, brewing away. In the percolating stage of the writing process, stories come to life in large or small spurts. This can amount to a sketch of a character or two, setting description, some vague or definite plotline or action scenes, glimmers of specific relationships, and maybe even a few conversations. Most of it wouldn’t make sense to anyone except me. When a story idea is constantly boiling up, it’s time to put it into an outline form and puzzle it out. When it's not quite ready, it sits on the backburner, simmering gently. In this way, over the course of years, I can conceivably come up with everything I need to write without taking my concentration away from the story that I'm currently puzzling out. I have countless stories inside my head at any given time, brewing away gently until the time comes when they're ready to be written. That's why it's so important to have story folders to hold these ideas; they prevent me from forgetting anything that could become a vital piece of the story puzzle.

Using two-pocket folders and tablet paper (or whatever's on hand to jot notes on), write the title of each book on the front, and then transfer all your notes (including any outlining and writing you’ve done on the story--anything that you might need or use) into this folder. You can also do the same thing with a computer file or the memo section of an electronic device for each story idea if you find that easier than just writing something on a scrap of paper and putting it in the folder. In this way, whenever you have a thought about this story, you can write notes and tuck it into the appropriate place.

If you don't currently have notes but the story idea is strong enough, you can create a folder for it, planning to fill it over time. I have a specific folder just for glimmers of ideas. Sometimes a glimmer becomes a full-fledged story that gets its own story folder, so it's useful to keep a folder for any glimmers you may come up with over time.

By the time you’re ready to begin working on a particular story, ideally you’ll have a nice stack of "impending story fruit" to pick from. Again, I can't stress how important it to start each project with a "ripe" idea--one that's ready to go through the initial stages. If you don't have a story folder bursting with ideas, don't take it off the shelf until it's ready to be worked on--unless you have no choice because of an approaching release date. If you start and discover you can't get far--and your deadlines allow it--put it back and work on something that is ready. What you've added will be progress when you are more prepared.

Another reason for creating story folders as soon as you have the first spark of an idea is that, while jumping from project to project may be an effective way to work for some writers, ultimately it can prevent you from making significant progress with any one project. Most writers can’t concentrate on more than one story at a time (while also having a bunch of ideas simmering on the backburner) if they want to move forward steadily. You don't want story ideas to distract you if they’re moving at a frantic pace toward fruition while you're working on another project. When you have deadlines--or even if you don't--it's not a good idea to abandon a project you're working on just because something more exciting shows up at an inopportune time. This is natural though--you want it to happen. But if you’re trying to make headway with one project when another suddenly commands your attention, you need to find a way to set the new ideas aside and refocus your concentration on your current project.

You can do this by writing out notes on the new idea and relegating the idea to its project folder, which you can pick up and review at a more convenient time. Shelving the idea is a quick process with either of these because most of the time the notes you'll write about a growing story at a given time are only enough to fill a scrap note or a single sheet of paper. Occasionally, you may need to take a little more time to purge the abundant ideas from your head so they don't overwhelm you. In that case, find time to write down all the notes that come to you until you're stalled or are temporarily free of it. By shelving the story folder once more, you effectively retain all the ideas but stall "the harvest" until you have more time to focus on the project. Once you've done this, you can concentrate fully on your WIP again.

Finally, in creating story folders, you also give yourself the foundation for years of potential writing material. For career authors, this is so critical to your momentum and your ability to deliver well-crafted stories indefinitely. What will happen if you run out of ideas? Your career will stall and, let's be honest, readers are fickle. If you're not making yourself present and active, your books hitting bookstores often, you may be forgotten sooner or later. Creating story folders allows you to have many, many ideas in different stages of development over time, and that builds momentum. Since working on stories that are ripe is ideal, having story ideas on the backburner (simmering until the day you’re ready to put them into action) is imperative. Your stories written with this process will be better and stronger, especially if you're writing in layers.

Now you've got a solid way of organizing all your story ideas to ensure you have lots of projects growing over a period of (hopefully) years.

In the next three parts of this article, we'll talk about the necessity of writing in stages to advance your writing.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 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 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

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

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Ranking Dangers

The March-April issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article titled "The World's Most Deadly Animal," by Harriet Hall. The various candidates for this honor are ranked by the number of human beings they kill annually. A character in Robert Heinlein's TUNNEL IN THE SKY declares humans to be the deadliest animals. The villain in Richard Connell's classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game," who hunts his captives like wild beasts, would agree. Hall's list of the top ten most dangerous animals comes from this source:

Science Focus

Sharks and black widow spiders, which many people might think of when "deadly creatures" come to mind, don't even make it into the top ten. Lions do, barely, at the bottom. Hippos, elephants, and crocodiles beat them. The human animal (counting only homicides) rates second rather than first. The deadliest animal on Earth as quantified by people killed every year? The mosquito.

As Hall points out at the beginning of her article, our tendency to overlook mosquitoes and another high-ranking insect, the assassin bug, highlights the "availability heuristic." Facts and incidents that stick in our minds because of their sensational content tend to be perceived as more common than they actually are. There's a widespread attitude of, "Why is it getting so hot, and how did we get into this handbasket?" when in fact teenage pregnancy, adolescent illicit drug use, violent crime, drunk driving fatalities, and the worldwide number of deaths in battle have all decreased over the past few decades. We sometimes forget that frightening incidents and trends make headlines BECAUSE they're unusual, not commonplace. The occasional shark attack draws much more attention than thousands of malaria-causing mosquito bites.

Steven Pinker, in the section on phobias in his book HOW THE MIND WORKS, postulates that adult phobias are instinctive childhood fears that haven't been outgrown. These universal fears, which fall into certain well-defined categories, reflect the threats most hazardous to our "evolutionary ancestors"—snakes, spiders, heights, storms, large carnivores, darkness, blood, strangers, confinement, social scrutiny, and leaving home alone. In modern cities, the brain's fear circuitry often fails to function for optimal protection. "We ought to be afraid of guns, driving fast, driving without a seatbelt. . . not of snakes and spiders." Children have no innate aversion to playing with matches or chasing balls into traffic; instead, a survey of Chicago school kids revealed their greatest fears to be of lions, tigers, and snakes. Many writers of horror fiction draw upon intuitive awareness of our hard-wired terrors. The cosmic entity in Stephen King's IT targets children because, while adults obsess over mundane hazards such as heart attacks and financial ruin, children's fears run deeper and purer.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt