The next eight articles are going to be about characters and characterization. Before we get started, though, I want to point you to another excellent blog post from several years ago, titled The Night the Lights Went Out in Texas, by Keith Cronin, on Writer Unboxed. This paragraph sums up so much about the enterprise of story-telling, whether in fiction or non-fiction:

“But it really comes down to the people. (I look at the sentence I just typed, and realize I instinctively chose the right word with “people.” It’s hard for me to even refer to them as mere “characters” – that’s how real they’ve become to me.)”

That says it all, doesn...

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, one of the two holidays (two!) in which we honor and remember our military personnel, those serving today and those who have served in the past, especially those who were injured or killed in combat. As a veteran myself, I’ll be participating in a ceremony this evening. Courage in the face of mortal danger and sacrifice to it have long been—and should be!—staples of literature. James Scott Bell’s (@jamesscottbell) Of Miracles, Sacrifice and Story speak to this better than I can, so that’s where we’ll start this week’s Great Stuff.

And to my brothers and sisters in arms, thank you.

CRAFT

Nancy J. Cohen (@nancyjcohen) offers a veritable plethora of tips on how to make On-Site Research trips worth your time and expense...

The Great Cover Artist Search continues. Or resumes, to be more accurate about it.

I started a month or more ago and then other tasks took priority, but now, getting the cover designed is one of the last things I need to do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but this task is harder, or at least more time-consuming, than it might seem.

First off, where do you find cover artists in the first place? I’ve found four good sources:

1. Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer web site. Every month, Joel shows all the ebook covers submitted to him for review, and critiques some. That’s a big help in a lot of ways.
2. Other authors’ web sites. J. A. Konrath and Joanna Penn have named the cover artists they’ve used, for example.
3. Mark Coker’s list of book designers and cover artists on Smashwords.
4. The “Look In...

Wow! TONS of Great Stuff this week, in just about all categories. Titles, critique groups, emotions, made-up words, publishing paths, “scarcity thinking,” and dogs reading books! Even a traditional/self-publishing poll. Something for everyone.

CRAFT

Right up there with a great cover, a great title is critical to getting a potential reader to consider your book. That’s why Katie Weiland (@KMWeiland) provides 17 Steps to a Reader-Grabbing Title. Seventeen sounds like a lot, but she breaks them into 5 elements, 7 questions to ask, and 5 brainstorming tips, to make them easy to digest.

There are writers out there who hate critique groups. HATE ‘em. Sometimes there’s plenty of reason to. But sometimes not. Kris Montee, one of the sister pair who write as PJ Parrish, discusses this in

I need to “revise and extend” my last Critique Technique post.

Last time I wrote that things should be worse for the protagonist at the end of each section (or scene) or chapter of an article, short story, or novel than they were at the beginning. Well, that’s not entirely true. In a longer piece, and particularly in a short part of that piece, that may not be possible, or desirable.

Letting the scene’s or chapter’s protagonist make a little progress, or seem to make progress, has its benefits:

1. The reader is encouraged, and so wants to read further.
2. That progress gives the author more opportunities to make things worse for the protagonist: one step forward makes room for the two steps backward to come. (There we writers go again, being evil and devious!)
3. If the scene’s protago...

Making progress, step by step

Step by step, The Eternity Plague gets closer to becoming a published reality. Earlier this week I finished reviewing the work of a local copy editor. That’s an important step.

There’s still important work to do, however. When I began writing the book, lo those many years ago (2004!), I chose to set parts of the story at a medical research center I visited early in my research: the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center near downtown Dallas. Why? Well, it was–and still is–a highly regarded research center and a cousin of mine who works there was able to arrange for me to spend some time in the lab of one of its scientists. Very cool! AND, it wasn’t in Oklahoma, which was where I was living at the time.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong wi...

A double-13 day today, but you should feel lucky because there’s so much Great Stuff waiting below. Techniques for getting started or keeping going, for pulling in the reader, setting mood, and more. News about Smashwords and indie publishing. Making better use of social media generally and Goodreads and Twitter in particular. Even a link to an old video game based on The Great Gatsby! Check it out.

CRAFT

Just in case you don’t already have enough to read, or you’re looking for something specific that you haven’t found yet, Katie Weiland (@KMWeiland) lists 10 of My Favorite Writing-Craft Sites. Two you see mentioned a lot here—Writer Unboxed and The Creative Penn—are on the list, plus others I hadn’t heard of.

Not only is James Scott Bell (@jamesscottbell) an excellent writer...

I’ve written about beginnings in the last couple of posts. For the next couple, I’ll discuss the endings of sections or scenes, chapters, and the entire piece. I’ll look at the first two here.

Articles and short stories are often divided into sections or scenes, sometimes even into chapters. Books of all kinds are almost always divided into chapters, and those chapters often have scenes within them.

Why would a chapter, article, or short story be divided into scenes? In fiction, scenes contain the action in a specific time and place, from a particular point of view, or focused on a certain character...

Hey! What happened to Monday? I was traveling, that’s what. And Tuesday? Trying to catch up. And Wednesday? STILL trying to catch up. I’m almost there. So, herewith is an abbreviated and tardy version of Great Stuff: outlining and word choice and beginnings and endings; branding and Goodreads and mastery and saving your work on the cloud.

CRAFT

If you’re an outliner, you understand that your outline is a fixed thing, graven in stone. In What Comes After Once Upon a Time, Robert J. Sadler describes how a little item he threw into a story, not thinking it was going to turn out to be important, instead became a key element in getting his latest novel to its conclusion by a path he never intended. But he trusted his storyteller’s instinct and good things happened.

We all know that we s...

Last time I wrote about how the beginning of a piece is supposed to “hook” the reader, to make them have to keep reading past the first line, the first paragraph, the first page. Now we need to zoom out a little and look at the beginning of the piece as a whole. Specifically, we need to ask, “Is this the right place for the piece to begin?”

That may seem like an odd question: doesn’t an article, short story, or novel start at the beginning?

Not necessarily. You’ve probably heard that a story needs to start in medias res, a Latin phrase meaning “in the middle of things.”

Great. What things?

Things. You know. The action. The events. Which may, of course, be internal to on...