The other ways to screw up your first pages

Okay, a quick review. In the first few paragraphs of your manuscript, you need to hook your reader and created reader identification and suspension of disbelief.

But that's not all you have to do. There are three other small matters to attend to within those very very FIRST paragraphs. (Hey, nobody said it would be easy. If you're not doing the these things, that's probably why you're not selling.)You must:

• Prove you have a voice
• Begin your story
• Avoid giving an editor a reason to say no.

Stay tuned.

Selling blue pigs

Sell the small details, sell the big world. NOT the other way around.

This is closely akin tothe previous principle. Really, it’s just filtering the
above facts down to what you really need to sell the world.

Blue pigs, right? Remember Lonesome Dove and the blue pigs on the porch?

It’s like selling anything. Get the customer nodding over small things and
you’re going to close the sale. Get your reader to buy into one bit of your
world and they’ll forgive a lot later on. Remember, they WANT to
suspend disbelief. They WANT to love your book. All you have to do is
get it right so they can.

So, there you are. Four techniques for creating your world.

Resting on the seventh day optional.

Creating the world and reader identification.

Work with facts, not conclusions. Focus on your sensory details.

Run down a list of your senses. What to you hear, see, taste, feel, smell?

Write those facts, not the conclusions from them. And oh, if you’ve
given your character a few extra senses, either because it’s an alien or a
psychic, run through those, too.

You’ve seen this at work a thousand times, even if you didn’t realize it.

Take old Western movies, for instance. How do you tell the bad guys
from the good guys?

Classic: the good guys wear white hats. They have lighter-colored horses.
Modernly, they don’t smoke (unless you’re doing some sort of anti-hero
thing, maybe.)

Or take the Vulcans. When they place their fingertips on your temples
and get that pained, constipated look on their faces, you know they’re
doing a mind meld, right? They don’t say, “I’m in your mind.” They just
grimace.

That’s the way senses work. Ours and the Vulcan ones.

More on the "As you know, Admiral," mistake

The “As you know, Admiral,” syndrome is quite common in
technothrillers. Heck, I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions. You
know what I’m talking about—it’s when the hotshot pilot who’s about to
take off on a suicide mission says something like, “As you know,
Admiral, the Phoenix missile has a maximum range of one hundred
nautical miles and flies at a speed of Mach 4.”

Now, don’t email me to complain that that’s not accurate. I don’t care. I
don’t write missiles very often any more.

The point is that there’s a character telling another character stuff that
they both already know. Come on, the guy’s an ADMIRAL. You think
he got those stars without knowing what a Phoenix can do? No – he
didn’t, and you’ve violated a bunch of principles of good storytelling,
including the ones about creating human characters.

Now, there ARE times when you’ll need to fill your reader in on
technical details of some sort or another. That’s fine, with two caveats:
do it in narrative, not dialogue, and don’t do it in the first paragraphs.
Because that’s what we’re talking about here, right? The first few pages.

One other small point about first paragraphs and worlds – many new
writers lack confidence that they’ve actually created the world. They’ll do
something, then do it again in another way just to make sure they’ve
made their points.

You’ll get over this with time. The immediate cure is to have an
experienced writer look over your work.

Second, the world has to be immediate. It’s got to be all right there,
humming along and working at the moment the reader opens the book.

ASSUME the world. Plunge into middle of the scene in the everyday world
you’ve created. Don’t spend any time explaining it. Just have your characters
react to it. 

Two ways to really screw this up are the backstory dump and the infamous, “As
you know, Admiral.”

Backstory is why the world and the characters are the way they are. Writers
have a tendency to want to explain the rules and delve into their characters’
motivations right up front. Don’t do that. You’ve got time. Assume the
world—plunge into it.

Do not data dump fives pages of backstory into the beginning. In some
cases, a prologue is one way around backstory issues, but you can’t use them
just any time you want to. A prologue must be about a pivotal episode
separated in time and/or space from the actual story. It’s not just a way
around the hard work of getting backstory in.

Execute a backstory dribble by assuming that the reader knows the world
and letting the context define the terms, or by explaining them in the context
of a minor conflict. (The Ebook Backstory Dribble is available at BAMWriters.com

Examples:

Context:

It had been two weeks since his last seissa, but Charrtq’s scent was still mild
and pleasant. While rolling around in hot sand held no attraction for me, I
supposed if I’d had feathers, I would have felt differently about it.

Minor conflict:

“Let me use your tajj.”
“No, I just had it calibrated. Besides, my mother is supposed to riff me
sometime. Her brother is sick.”
“Selfish.”
I kept quiet at that. Every time Dale was unplugged from the web, it was
someone else’s fault and I had no intention of….

Science fiction writers are exceptionally good at this. Check out Challenger’s
Hope by Feintuch or any good SF writer.

Techniques for Suspending Disbelief

First, create complete worlds, not partial ones. You can’t sell the world
if you don’t believe it yourself.

Wait, that’s not exactly what I mean – it’s not necessary that you believe
it but it is necessary that you’ve created it in such detail that you would
believe it. It’s got to be all there, all the details.

Good writers can sell a world they don’t believe it. But it’s almost
impossible to sell a world that’s not adequately created.

I don’t mean that you need to know the details of your world’s orbital
mechanics. It doesn’t need to be that large. But you do need to know
your characters and why they’re doing what you’re doing.

If you've read BAM:Structure, you already know this. You know it
because you had to sketch out the levels of conflict and the escalations of
those conflicts and those couldn’t exist without knowing what the world
looked like.

More on suspending disbelief tomorrow.

Final Thoughts on Reader Identification

A few final pointers. First, defer a physical description of the character until
you’ve established that reader identification connection. Once that’s set, the
reader will buy almost any combination of hair and eye color and such.

Second, write toward your secrets. Don’t write away from them. You may not
use your secrets in your final version, or you may change the details
sufficiently so that they’re not recognizable. That’s fine. That’s what you
should do. It’s the emotional resonance and content you’re after and
sometimes the only way to capture that is to write into fear.

Here’s a weird truth: what you may think is so odd or aberrant or completely
bizarre and alien in yourself, so strange that to reveal it would result in your
being completely ostracized by polite society – that’s what people will
identify with most. Not in the sense that it’s happened to them, too. But
something about our deepest issue evokes empathy in almost everyone, and
empathy is a good thing in terms of reader identification.

Finally, one warning. Don’t confused creating likable characters with reader
identification.

For more techniques, check out FIRST PAGES at BAMwriters.com

What your character REALLY thinks.

Remember, we're still on creating reader identification. Think about this now.

Caste the human quality in terms of what it is from your character’s point
of view. For instance, supposed your character was abandoned by his father
at an early age and even today, as an adult, is seeking his father’s approval.

You and I see that, we know that. But does your character think of it that
way? No, he doesn’t. And he most particularly did not think about it in those
terms when he was thirteen years old. It was a very different issue to him. He
felt anger, perhaps, abandonment – but would he have called it anger or
abandonment? How would it have felt to him? How would it manifest?

Back to this idea of being human: for most thrillers and much other fiction,
your character has also got to be larger than life, capable of those acts of
bravery and heroism that the rest of us just dream about. That doesn’t mean
they can’t be human—in fact, they must be if your reader is to identify with
them. That means they’ve got to have weaknesses and flaws, quirks and
habits just like the rest of us.

Pretty obvious, isn’t it? And most writers do eventually do that. But the thing
is, you’ve got to do it right up front. Not in the first ten pages. On the very
first page.

For more techniques, check out FIRST PAGES at BAMwriters.com

Being a weirdo and reader identification

Bring up that weird thing that you think is so odd no one will ever identify
with – that people always identify with.

The weirdest one that ever got mewas when an author wrote about the fascination with high places and
standing on the edge and a compulsion to jump just to see what it would feel
like. That’s really the point at which I understood what strange critters people
are.

People have lots of things like that embedded deep inside them. Universal
secrets, if you will. Those always resonate – and quite powerfully, too, since
they’re secrets.

That’s how you create reader identification: by creating very human
characters. Human the way we actually are, not how we’d like to believe we
are.

Pyrrhic Victories

Second technique for reader identification: set up one of those strange
contradictions of being human in the first paragraph. Pyrrhic victories are good here.

• How could you hate someone you loved?
• He wanted to go home but was afraid to.
• It was what she’d wanted for years—so why didn’t it matter now?

For more techniques, stay tuned. Or check out First Pages at Bamwriters.com.

Commonality Creates Reader Identification.

State that common human quality or experience up front as a hook in your
opening paragraphs.

• He knew what it was to be afraid.
• Jim understood betrayal.
• How had things gone so wrong?
• Why had his mother abandoned him?

Tomorrow: Pyrrhic victories

Creating Reader Identification

Don’t confuse reader identification with creating likable characters. That’s
one way of getting your reader to identify with your characters, but not the
only way. And maybe even not the best way.

Here’s the bottom line: something in your character has to resonate or
enthrall the reader at some gut level. What is human in your character has to
touch that same quality in your reader.

You’ve got to do that within the first few paragraphs. Preferably in the first
paragraph. No warm up time, no throat clearing. In a sense, it’s part of
hooking the reader, but on a different level. The hooks we talked about in
the last chapter are meant to intrigue your reader’s mind or emotions. This
one’s all about ego. It’s about, “What happens to the character happens to
ME!” It operates on a very different level.

How exactly does one do that? Not an easy thing. Start by realizing that
people are not all good or all bad.

That’s not just gratuitous philosophy. It’s a place to start with creating
identification. Let me repeat the above: What is human in your character
has to touch that same quality in your reader.
 
So. Create a human quality in your character early on, something that your
reader can identify with.

How? As always -- stay tuned. Specific techniques tomorrow.  Or if you can't stand
to wait, go check out First Pages at BAMWriters.com

Three ways to hook a reader

• Explosion: The DaVinci Code. Strong verbs, violence, action, set up
the exotic locale and bigger than life characters.

• Character Hook: The Sun Also Rises and David Copperfield. We’ve got
heroes and boxing champs in the opening sentences, followed by some
contradictory sort of info that fleshes out our characters.

• The World: Lonesome Dove. You just can’t beat blue pigs—in
context—for setting a world. Note that we don’t learn a lot about
Augustus but we do know a fair amount about his world almost
immediately.

So—decide what kind of opening paragraph you want, in general terms.
Then, in three or four sentences, do what these examples did. If you get
stuck, stay tuned. We'll talk about templating some opening paragraphs tomorrow.

A word of caution: pick one way to hook. Don’t try to do a character, action
and world hook all at the same time. Sell the small details, set the hook, then
move on to the rest of the story.

This is all taken from my ebook First Pages at BAMWriters.com

The first three paragraphs of your novel

Within the first three paragraphs of your manuscript, you must:

1. hook your reader
2. create reader identification
3. convince the reader to suspend disbelief.

But first, let’s talk about what we we’re talking about. We’re talking about
printed pages. Paragraphs with words and letters.

Yes, audio books – love ‘em. Especially Cracker Barrel’s cool deals that
enable you to check out books in one store and return them at the next store
down the road.

But audio books and movies and all that – that’s after the book is written and
sold. Not to say you shouldn’t keep those possibilities in mind. You should.
But focus on the fact that someone is going to be reading your words,
probably silently.

The problem with a lot of writing groups is that they read pages aloud. If the
writer is the one doing the reading aloud, there’s probably a fair amount of
nuancing and enthusiasm going into the performance.

What you need to write is something you can sell, not something you can
read aloud: a book that’s meant to be read as books are normally read.

Here’s a big secret: some things that work on the screen, in real life, or in
other formats DON’T WORK IN BOOKS. All the countless mental
stutterings that manifest as “Well, uh, okay, hey,” etc., for starters.

Similarly, oral story tellers – and there are some masters out there – have to
get used to the fact that their readers aren’t going to see that funny little
expression on your face when you tell about the goat that got stuck in a gate
– it’s all got to be on the page.

Now, with that in mind, how do you actually do it? Stay tuned. More specifics coming.

A first paragraph template

At some point, someone's going to accuse me of being formulaic. How exactly is that different from studying what's worked for other writers? Not sure, but just to forestall any argument, let me tell you this -- templates are a place to start. Not the final product. Feel free to break the rules once you know them well enough to do so successfully.

Writing is rewriting. Lists, checklists, templates -- all gleaned wisdom, a place to start so you're not staring at a blank page. Want to argue about it? Fine, carry on. I'll listen to you when you've had ten or more books published.

Back to the template -- I say again for possible penetration -- this is a place to start. Here's how I might structure the first few paragraphs using an action hook.

FIRST PARA

Sentence one: Hook
Sentence two: Set world.
Sentence three: Set story

The bomb ticked. Nothing else made a sound inside the aircraft. It was up to
me to stop it.

First Sentence: At my last advanced fiction class, we compiled a list of
“we’re THERE” words. Nazis. Nuclear. Blue Pigs. Any of those will work.

I’m being a little facetious with that, but not entirely. You’ve got to have a
killer hooking word in that first sentence. Remember, your first readers are
editors and agents, people who see lots of first sentences. Yours must be
solid gold.

Second Sentence: Note that the important part in the second line is not the
silence – it’s the way it establishes that we’re inside an aircraft. I could also
have done something like, “The Boeing Sky Eagle plowed through the sky at
thirty-one thousand feet.” That also puts us inside an aircraft.

Third sentence: Here we establish that we’re in first person and sets up the
fact that it’s written in first person. This works but if you can get that first
person fact into the very first sentence, that’s even better. (We’re going to
deal with some first person POV issues in a later section.)

REMEMBER -- no matter how you structure this, you must always be aware of your distance from the reader. More on that later. Remind me if needed because it's a critically-misunderstood part of POV.

Missing in Action

Where have I been and why is this blog not updated? Good question. Here's the short version -- I may or may not get around to posting the longer story.

Let it suffice to say that on 1 June 2010, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, I had surgery to remove a golf ball-sized tumor on my pituitary gland. Recovery has been uneventful but slow. Benign, slow-growing, but probably has been affecting me for some time.

Now I'm back. Stay tuned.

Five trends writers should watch.

In no particular order, here's what I'm watching this year:


1. Blurring between reality and fiction.

2. Big surprise -- digital.

3. Filters: publishing houses or fans?

4. Bestseller: says who? Will it matter any more?

5. Published -- death by overuse.

1. Blurring between reality and fiction.

Creative nonfiction. Warcraft. Facebook and Twitter. Expect the traditional lines between fiction/nonfiction/reality to continue to blur. Writers who understand how to capitalize on this trend will score big.

2. Big surprise -- digital.

Most of the major studies predicted increased popularity of ebooks and other digital media. Even with the less-than-impressive Kindle formats and even-less-impressive price, the popularity of digital media is breaking all expectations.

3. Filters: publishing houses or fans?

I'm going out on a contrarian limb here and say that readers have never really cared who the publisher of a book is. The only major exception has been on the far ends of the spectrum -- Harlequin and Knopf, for instance. But Random House or Putnam? No, most readers don't know or care.

But with the masses of crap flooding the market these days, eventually a filter will emerge. Will readers start noticing who publishes what and automatically dismiss the iUniverse, PublishAmerican and ExLibris imprints? Or will third party citizen reviewers emerge as the gatekeepers? It's an excellent chance for a publisher to jump into the gap, but none have so far.

4. Bestseller: says who? Will it matter any more?

It used to matter. Still does in some circles. But not as much as when "traditional" publishing dominated the market. Every Tom, Bill and Penny is watching amazon.com rankings within a particular sub-sub category and immediately crowing over "bestseller" status when the rank breaks 1,000,000.

5. Published -- death by overuse.

Same thing with the term "published author". Tom, Bill and Penny can all be "published" simply by forking over the required fees and filling in the blanks on a template cover. I've got news for you: that doesn't count. Or at least it didn't. Nowadays, the wise consumer asks, "Published by WHOM?" before accepting the self-proclaim "published author" at face value.

Booksurge merges with Createspace

I have to say, Createspace.com makes it very easy to put content into print. In today's world, is that what publishing is about? We need to take a serious look at what a book is and how we define the process of moving content out of our minds -- and off our desks -- and into the rest of the world.

How publishers calculate a novelist's advance

Cover price x advance orders x royalty rate x 1.3 x .5 x.6 = advance

For those of you who have number phobias, read on to find out how it all works:

The publisher gets advance orders. Say advance orders on this hardcover at 4,000 books. The publisher will often order a multiple of that number, the third factor in the above formula. If the order multiplier is 1.3, we end up with an initial print run of 5,200 books. If the hardcover is priced at $22, that's a potential gross of $114,400. The author's royalties would be approximately ten percent of that, or $11,440.

But wait. That's if the publisher sold every copy and that just doesn't happen.

Bookstores and distributors order book essentially on consignment. They've got a year to return the books for full credit. Hardcovers they actually ship back. Paperbacks, they just strip the cover off and mail that back. That's why you'll see that notice in the front sometimes about, "If you bought this book without a cover."

Sell-through is the term used to define what percentage of a print run is actually sold to consumers. A good, STRONG sell-through is 50%. In this case, that would be 2,600 books, or net royalties of $5,700.

So that's what you'll get, right? Nope. There's more.

Fifty percent is a GOOD sell-through. You might have a lousy sell-through.

To allow for that possibility, you're not going to get that entire $5,700. The publisher has some percentage of that that is policy. If, for instance, policy is 60%, you'll get an advance of $3,420.

I ran this by one of my editors and here's his response:

Your formula is sensible and in the ball park, although smaller publishers need a higher sell-through than larger publishers. There are two factors you didn't include, however. Let's say that the advance as calculated should be $3,420. The publishing director or business manager will press the editor to be conservative and offer an advance of, say, $2,500. The author's agent will likewise press the editor to offer an advance of $5,000, feeling that the extra cash up front will force the publisher to spend more money on marketing and publicity, in order to ensure recouping the advance. That doesn't necessarily happen, of course, but that's the way agents think. And agents would rather have their percentage up front, anyway. And then there is the pernicious practice of some publishers of holding some of the royalties back from the author as a reserve.

Just Released: The Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence

Well-trained martial artists concentrate on efficient and powerful moves. No telegraphing, no extraneous movements. Minimum effort for maximum effect.

The Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence will show you how to get the maximum return for the minimal expenditure of your time and talent.

This is what you’re going to do:

• Set up a blog
• Write a series of notes
• Schedule the posts
• Cross-connect it all

Sounds easy, eh? But the ins and outs of how exactly to wire it all are not all that obvious.

You probably already know what Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and a few other social media destinations are. You may even have accounts with one of or all of them. If not, don’t worry. They’re very easy to set up.

I focused particularly on writers who want to sell books, so you’ll see a few references to readers and writers and publishing. But this system will work for any subject/cause/ business/obsession. Just substitute the word “clients” when I say readers and “your industry” when I say publishing.

So, if you’re ready for the down and dirty on establishing your internet presence, check out the Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence. Click here!