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
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
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 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
Monday, July 19, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Five trends writers should watch.
In no particular order, here's what I'm watching this year:
1. Blurring between reality and fiction.
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.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
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.
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