On Formulaic Blogging
Copy Blogger offered a post, 3 Reasons Why You Should Be a Formulaic Blogger. Much of such reasoning is sound, yet. . ..
One of the main reasons I’ve neglected this blog for so long is that I was rebelling against that type of blogging. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with writing posts titled 7 Seriously Successful Secret Slogans, or Ten Totally Teriffic Tips.. Many people like that kind of content, yet. . ..
The question is, who are you writing for? I once read such blog posts voraciously. I don’t’ anymore. I know others who have been involved, both as bloggers and blog readers as long as I have. Those posts attract novices. If my own experience is any kind of guide, it seems that those posts don’t attract readers who want more information or who appreciate considering aspects of their craft in deeper detail.
I starter my first blog in 1999 and ran it for four years, eventually totaling over 1500 posts. The blog, Mystic Cowboy, slowly attracted a following. I noticed that the depth and variety of the content shifted during that time. What I found was that as long as I kept exploring topics that interested me, there was no problem coming up with content. The blog eventually achieved 1,000 unique visitors a day. That’s nothing compared to what Joe Konrath sees, but does represent modest success, especially since it wasn’t intended as a promotional tool.
I hit an emotional wall when my personal life took a downward turn and stopped writing. That wasn’t because I had no more to say, but because, well, let’s just say that nothing held much of my interest for several years.
As writers and authors, we are encouraged to create and maintain blogs in order to build a platform. Unless we get extremely lucky, gaining a following takes continuing dedication and discipline. And, for most of us, that requires that we gain something personal from the act of blogging, itself. Just blogging because some agent, teacher, or publisher tells us that we should isn’t a great enough motivation to sustain long term effort. It’s a prime reason why most blogs fail.
I’d say the same about writing as marketing. I you enjoy marketing, and the formulaic type of blogging that most often comes from marketers, the impetus to sustain your blog will not fizzle out. If you aren’t fed by writing that kind of content, you will quit.
So, is formulaic writing bad? Not if you enjoy it, but that isn’t the only way to blog. If you find that another format motivates you better than writing formulaic blog posts, that’s the one that most likely will keep you coming back the many, many times it takes to build a following.
On Reading Classics
Mur Lafferty writes at I should be writing with the question about how to read science fiction. She finds that she has problems reading some of the classics in the field. in regards to Earth Abides, she found herself “bored and annoyed” with the elitist (attitudes) of the protagonist “who is CERTAINLY not going to hand out with whores and drunks.”
That’s an interesting problem. As writers we need to read. As reviewers we need to have a certain minimum degree of tolerance for various styles and voices. Yet, some writing will always end up annoying us. Do we read it anyway, especially the classics?
I certainly have faced this problem with many classics. I felt like I waded through three Dickens’ novels I read last year. There was a writer who was paid by the word and seldom used one word when three or five would do. What I consider amazing is that he was able to write well inspire of his obvious financial bias towards verbosity.
What value is there in reading classics? Does it help the writer? My literature professors certainly thought so. My own conclusion is that insofar as the classics illuminate universal human themes they enrich us and broaden our understanding of motivations, needs, and aspirations.
Reading only the current bestseller titles may entertain us but probably sheds little light on the more meaningful aspects of humanness. I love thrillers. You may love soap operas or stories about the rich and famous. Most of that material is pretty shallow. I’m not knocking it. Entertainment is valuable, if seldom broadening. Should we read the classics? Good question.
On problem, the one that Ms. Lafferty encounters, is that older works reflect older attitudes and social standards. Those attitudes may annoy us. That’s a valid consideration. It’s hard to get much out of even a classic if it pushes too many negative emotional buttons.
I would like to comment on reading science fiction in particular. One of the reasons that speculative fiction is written is specifically to explore possibilities other than those we currently face. Some of the work, like Orwell’s 1984 is incredibly depressing. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart is marginally less so, though it is a post-apocalyptic novel.
Ms. Lafferty found the writing “elitist.” By 21st century standards, that’s a valid consideration. However, it accurately reflects middle class mid-20th American ones. I wonder if it is elitist to call Earth Abides elitist. Elitism isn’t so much a set of standards as a way of judging others. It’s a normal human behavior. We all engage in it to some degree. Yet, if we are reading to educate ourselves and broaden our understanding of what it means to be human, as well as to learn the classic memes of a genre of fiction, then it usually benefits us to notice the judgement, set it aside and read the book for what it is rather than what it is not.
Murphy’s Law for Editors
The Canberra Society of Editors has formulated the well known Murphy’s Law and applied it specifically to editors.
- if you write anything criticising (note: British Spelling) editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written;
- if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
- the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and
- any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.
So sad and so true.
William Safire’s Fumblerules
Image via Wikipedia
A friend sent this to me. I’ve seen it before, but always appreciate clever teaching.
- Remember to never split an infinitive.
- A preposition is something never to end a sentence with.
- The passive voice should never be used.
- Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
- Don’t use no double negatives.
- Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is
appropriate; and never where it isn’t. - Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it when its not needed.
- Do not put statements in the negative form.
- Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
- No sentence fragments.
- Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
- Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
- If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
- A writer must not shift your point of view.
- Eschew dialect, irregardless.
- And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
- Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!
- Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
- Hyphenate between sy-
llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens. - Write all adverbial forms correct.
- Don’t use contractions in formal writing.
- Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
- It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
- If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
- Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
- Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
- Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
- Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
- If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.
- Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
- Don’t string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
- Always pick on the correct idiom.
- “Avoid overuse of ‘quotation “marks.”‘”
- The adverb always follows the verb.
- Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They’re old hat; seek viable alternatives.
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Link Character and Plot Development With One Simple Idea
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Browse the writing book section of Barnes & Noble, or read Writer’s Digest book list. Shop Amazon. You’ll see titles on plotting and others on character development. Very few authors manage to tie the two concepts together into a coherent package. Yet, the two core competencies go hand in glove.
We’re used to thinking of stories in the context of a protagonist / antagonist duality. Real life seldom works that way. Think about it. Relationships develop into systems. A wife’s actions shape her husband’s reactions. His actions shape her reactions.
In psychology, this is called systems theory. The idea is straightforward. Any action taken by one person in a relationship system affects every part of the system. Sometimes the overall effect is minimal. Sometimes it’s huge.
Consider the typical marriage. When the couple first got involved, they courted. They sold themselves as worthy partners to the other. Life happens. Both people focus on aspects of their lives other than each other. They quit dressing up. They quit making the effort to be extra nice. They focus their attention on jobs, kids, community, hobbies, TV. The list goes on.
The husband thinks the wife is no longer sexy. The wife thinks the husband is no longer romantic. They’re both right. Yet, does the husband make the extra effort to be the person he was in dating? Does the wife? Is it any wonder that the relationship has become dull and lifeless? Is it any wonder that the couple argues more and more. Or, perhaps they speak less and less. The same underlying dynamic can push in either direction, or in both at the same time. The system has become dysfunctional.
The situation isn’t hopeless. If the underlying problems haven’t been left for too long, simple actions can change things for the better. Either partner can begin the process. If the husband makes an effort to inject romance into the relationship, chances are the wife will start acting more attractive to him. Either can take the first steps. It’s a system. Change one part and the whole system shifts.
The changes will probably take time to become visible. Each spouse will need time to trust that the changes are real and meaningful. Negative inertia doesn’t shift immediately. But, if the effort is maintained, if the spouse lets the process work, and keeps at it, using trial and error, constantly adjusting actions to refine the process, the relationship will change.
Does that sound a bit like character development? The wife grows as she works to save the marriage. The inevitable bumps in the road to reconciliation serve as plot points. The husband turns from an antagonist to a partner again, or vice versa.
The same process works with problem children or parents. It works with coworkers, even bosses and subordinates. It works with that problem neighbor. Now, it isn’t always effective, but it is more often than not. Even if it doesn’t, the process results in character development. The steps can certainly be placed into a narrative arc. Think relationship systems, and you have a connector between the two story components.
Obviously, some antagonists will not change. Some exist outside of personal relationship. Think murderer in a mystery. Think soulless corporation, foreign power, natural disasters, and so on. All work nicely as antagonists, even outright villains. Even so, the trial and error attempts to solve the problems these antagonists create still work as plot points, and as character development steps. The hero is still trying to change a system and needs to change somehow within that system to win, that is if your story embodies character development.
Characters in series need not show much character growth. Robert Parker’s Spencer changed little over decades. Janet Evanovitch’s Stephanie Plum has grown a little over more than a dozen books, some, but not much. Miss Marple, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lynley, and Brother Cadfael changed little over the course their respective series. We didn’t expect them to.
But with stand-alone novels we do expect the character to grow. Think system and that growth works hand in hand with good story progression, narrative arc, the hero’s journey, or whatever you want to call it.
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Story Engineering, a Book Review
Story Engineering by Larry Brooks
I find myself recommending a book that annoys me. The six core competencies that Larry Brooks describes provide a wonderful model for understanding necessary story elements and skills. Those break down into four elements (concept, character, theme, structure) and two skills (scene execution and writing voice). Each competency contains longer lists of specific criteria, except theme, which was the least specific competency section in the book.
I believe Mr. Brooks’ assertion that his model does a good job of describing why successful stories are successful, both screenplays and novels. I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to craft a successful story. As I ready my novel for submission, I’ve gone over it, checking the story against the six competencies. That has been very helpful. I consider this one of the more useful volumes in my reference shelf. I also have to say that the book bugs the h*ll out of me.
The first section of the book, approximately 10 percent, reads like one of those long annoying internet sales letters. Some of the points are good, but how many times does he have to sell me on his ideas? I’ve already bought the book.
Brooks uses the term core competency or core competencies 43 times (I was annoyed enough to count them) before he gets around to defining them. Come on. He also refers to the competencies at least another couple of dozen times with other terms like, model, buckets, principles, elements, strategic options, skills, architecture, and on, and on. He relates the competencies to the skills of baseball players, chefs, and architects. Any one example would have made his point.
I very nearly didn’t wade through the first section to get to the meat of the book. A good editor would have helped.
Once he gets to describing the competencies, Brooks offers real meat. He also gets as far as the second competency before he contradicts himself. In the first competency, concept, he uses two best sellers as examples, “Raising the Titanic”, and “The Da Vinci Code”. I’m glad that he did because I never understood why they were popular. I didn’t finish either. Now I realize that the story concepts contained within them were powerful enough to drive sales. That’s terrific information.
Then, when we get to the second competency, character, Brooks states that his examples from the first competency, don’t display any appreciable character development. So much for essential competencies. There are other contradictions, but most of them are petty and not worth describing. Unfortunately, once I was sensitized to them, they intruded into my reading.
So, here’s a book with extremely useful information that’s marred by both a lack of consistency and lack of editing down to the meat. Five stars for the concepts. Three for the writing.
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Literary Agents as the New Vanity Press Publishers
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After getting frightened by Kris Rusch’s warnings about book contracts and how agents may or may not act as a writer’s advocate, I find a former book agent’s musings on how agent’s roles might change.
I can see agents filling roles that I was called to task for doing just a few years ago, such as offering editorial services. It’s also quite possible that they could take over the packager’s role, hiring authors to write on a work-for-hire basis, finishing the rest of the process then offering the completed package to publishers, both in E and in print.
While there is nothing wrong with offering editorial services, I can envision how easy it would be for an agency that did charge to look more to for-fee services than acting as an author’s advocate. Working on percentage is a great motivator. Working for fee removes much of that incentive. I have visions of some agencies turning into vanity presses.
I wonder how hiring authors to write on a work-for-hire basis differs from what some publishers do now. I know two people have written multiple books for Harlequin Romance. Both found it remunerative but artistically unsatisfying. There’s nothing wrong for writing for hire, but I doubt that most of us write just for the money.
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Facing Agents and Publishers
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Is doing research a plus or a minus? As I polish my novel, I’ve been doing my due diligence and taking classes, searching the internet, and reading books that cover the publishing process. I’m terrified.
What terrifies me is not facing the inevitable rejection letters. I’ve gotten those before and long ago learned that rejection is part of the business. Rejections still hurt, but, in most cases, it isn’t adversarial. Agents and publishers make bets on which properties will make them money. That’s business. As long as things are done in good faith, I can handle that part of the business.
So, it’s not rejection but what comes after someone shows interest that has me wondering if I’d be better off self-publishing. This morning, I read a post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the sneaky practices that both publishers and agents are more and more frequently engaged in.
Her point is that agents and publishers are getting sneakier and sneakier with their contracts and that the author needs to read every line of every contract. She also has reached a point from which she can no longer recommend agents, that enough agents have become predators or, more likely, advocates for their agencies, not for writers.
I don’t know what percentage of people in the business attempt to take advantage of writers, especially unpublished ones. I do know that bigger the business the more likely it is to be run by marketers, accountants and lawyers, who don’t give a damn about the little guy. So want to enter into relationships holding the assumption that they will be adversarial?
Okay, practicing due diligence and hiring an attorney to look over any contract is just part of doing business. Doing so isn’t necessarily adversarial. It’s just being careful. But, from what I’m reading, the publishing industry is becoming more and more cutthroat, more inclined to grab book rights and hold onto them. It’s finding more and more ways to keep from paying royalties. That makes going indie more and more appealing.
Self-publishing requires hard work, marketing, multiple titles and more marketing. Yet, that’s just work. It isn’t battle against the very people who are supposed to be allies.
P.S.
I don’t mean to imply that most agents are anything other than honest, hard-working people who do their jobs because they love the work. I’m just thinking out loud about the industry and my next steps. Publishing is changing. How will those changes impact authors and agents?
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Markdown and Kindle Formatting, Part 2
Image by Patrick Haney via Flickr
To understand Markdown, it’s first helpful to get a handle on the coding language it produces, HTML. HTML stands for hypertext markup language. That sounds a bit scary. It isn’t. HTML is just a longhand form of text markup, or word processing. The concept is simple and the code HTML needs is straightforward. I’ll give a couple of examples to demonstrate.
A Quick introduction to HTML
If you want to italicize a word, wrap it in a pair of tags. The word <em>italics</em> is surrounded by tags that describe it’s function. The em is short for emphasis. Italicizing a word emphasizes it, hence the em. When the document is read by an ebook reader or regular web browser you will see italics instead. If you want a section of text to be in boldface, then you want strong text and use the <strong> tag. It looks like this ##strong##.
Notice the angle brackets around the em. Start with a left angle bracket, which in math is the less than symbol, lt. Add the tag. Then close it with the right angle bracket, or the greater than sign, of you prefer mathematical terms. The ending tag has a / to indicate that you want to terminate that particular command. It works like this:
<h1>, <h2>, and <h3> give you 3 successive levels of headings. You can use up to 6 levels, but 3 usually suffice. All tags for the form of HTML that ebooks use are container tags. That means that you need to end the tags with the appropriate closing tags, just like we did with the <em> tag.
<h1>Heading 1</h1>
<h2>Heading</2>
<h3>Heading 3</h3>
<p>Paragraph tags work the same way.</p>
That’s pretty easy, if a bit awkward and slow. For fiction, that’s really all you need, except for the occasional extended quote. As you might guess, the tag for that makes sense, too. It’s the <blockquote> tag. Here’s an example:
<blockquote>Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him. -Cicero#</blockquote>
That’s all the formatting you would use in most fiction, short stories or novels. Nonfiction often requires lists and images. Poetry needs the ability to vary indentation and force non-paragraph line breaks. Tags for those elements are as simple. I won’t go into those now as this isn’t really an HTML tutorial.
As you can see, writing HTML is straightforward. It is also awkward. What Markdown does is offer an easy, and unobtrusive way to write that creates a product that is simple transform into the HTML that ebook creation services love. Remember, HTML is the native language of ebooks and translation services for Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Smashwords will take the HTML and spin it faultlessly into their special formats.
A Quick introduction to Markdown
So how does Markdown work? It offers an unobtrusive shorthand for HTML. In many cases you won’t even notice it. Paragraph formatting is automatic. Two returns between blocks of text create paragraph tags. For section or chapter headings add a simple hash mark #. One hash mark gives a level one, or large heading. Two hash marks translate into a level two heading and so forth. You can get a full listing of Markdown syntax at Daring Fireball.
#A Level One Heading
##A Level Two Heading
Surround a word or phrased with single hash marks and it gets italicized. Underscores also work. Surround it with two hash marks and you make the text bold. Use a single right angle bracket (greater than sign and the following text turns into a blockquote.
So here’s my first chapter written in Markdown, may the author’s from whom I’ve borrowed these lines not turn over in their graves:
#Chapter 1
>I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. -Albert Einstein
It was a dark and stormy night. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Call me Ishmael. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
As you can see, writing with Markdown is easy. Here’s the resulting HTML:
<h1>Chapter 1</h1>
<blockquote>I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. -Albert Einstein</blockquote>
<p>It was a dark and stormy night. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Call me Ishmael. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.</p>
<p>If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.</p>
<p>Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.</p>
<p>The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.</p>
For next time:
That’s enough for now. There are a few more details to get a handle on, but that’s what installments are for.
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Markdown and Kindle Formatting, Part 1
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I’ve been reading quite a bit about submitting a manuscript for conversion by Amazon’s Kindle service. Amazon has done a good job of making the process work with Word documents, even PDFs. But, the Kindle is basically a web page reader. Kindle documents use the same formatting markup languages as normal websites. That means that the core of a Kindle page is written in a version of HTML, (hypertext markup language). That also means that documents submitted in any format other than HTML need to be coverted by Amazon.
While, those conversions keep most of your document’s formatting close to the original’s, the process is not perfect. That’s why Amazon recommends HTML as their document type of choice.
Now, Word will convert a document to HTML with two clicks. That’s where the good news ends. Unfortunately, the HTML that Word writes is incredibly verbose, and includ a staggering number of superfluous styling instructions, and HTML cruft that should be stripped from the document before Kindle conversion. That’s an adequate approach if you want to convert documents for your personal use. If you’re publishing, the conversion comes up a bit short of the perfect a high quality book deserves.
The funny part is that Word isn’t necessarily the best application for crafting fiction. The program has a gazillion features that make it a great business tool. Does a fiction writer need the same custom formatting as the creator of business documents? Most don’t.
In fact there are some programs written specifically for writers that come without all of Word’s formatting options. The makers of Ulysses advertise that very lack of rulers, page sizing, and other formatting features as major selling points. There’s a lot to be said for taking that approach. It’s so easy to get distracted when writing, at least for me. A program that handles the needs of writers as opposed to word processors can facilitate the craft and creativity we need for composition. I wrote this piece on TextWrangler, a free text editor for Macs.
So what about HTML, Amazon’s preferred Kindle submission format? There is actually a very simple and elegant way to turn plain text into HTML. It requires minimal HTML knowledge. It is easy to learn, especially for the limited formatting required in fiction writing. It also can be had for free. Okay, enough with the leadin. The solution is to use Markdown, a program for turning text into HTML.
The idea is straightforward. Add some minimal formatting to plain text, then run the text through Markdown and have it converted into HTML. For example, put two carriage returns between paragraphs and Markdown automatically takes the text and adds HTML paragraph tags. Add asterisks around a word and Markdown turns that into an HTML italicized word. Lists, either bulleted or numbered are just as easy, as are headings. There are more formatting options, that are just as easy, but that type of formatting is really more than the normal story requires.
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