Give Readers Something More

Are you making happy readers?

Most writers are learning that they must also become marketing experts, and the key rule in marketing is to know your target audience.

Most readers have other interests and a good writer can tap into those. A lot of cosy mysteries are aimed at niche markets that are also interested in crafts and cooking. These clever writers have worked out their market - mostly women who like sew, cook, scrapbook or just like the idea of trying those activities.

I'd never tried one of these mysteries so I downloaded Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke:

What I found was initially exactly what you expect from a cosy-mystery: 

• Friendly village/small town
• Amateur detective with unusual skills (cookie baking)
• Low levels of violence (even with a murder)

But also weaved through the story were several ultra-yummy sounding recipes! I'm pretty keen to try some of these with my kids. 

On the narrative side, I did find it a bit slow to start, it went way over the 10% mark before any of the 'mystery' started. This goes agains Michael Hauge's formula for fiction (you can see my earlier post Writing Novels - Formulas and Structure). The only other problem I had with the novel was some of the town's people were just 'super-nice' and the main character felt the need to over-explain their niceness. I'd rather nasty or pathetic characters, they're more fun. Other than that, it was an enjoyable read and I loved getting the recipes.

My kid's mystery, Dog Show Detective will hopefully eventuate into a series of mysteries surrounding pets and dog shows. I try to weave through my story, interesting facts for kids about dog showing or breeds of dogs.

If you'd like to find out more about this style of mystery you could visit:

Mystery Lover's Kitchen

Laura Childs' website

Mystery Writing is Murder

If you have a favourite cosy/craft mystery, please share the title or perhaps you've seen another site or blog we can visit on this topic?

12 Tips to Writing Well

Time for lessons on writing well.

This week I downloaded more sample chapters from Amazon for Kindle:

The Book on Writing - The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well by Paula LaRocque. I've enjoyed reading the sample and I'll be buying this one. To give you an idea of what the book covers, each chapter heading could be a helpful hint in itself:

A Dozen Guidelines to Good Writing:

1. Keep Sentences Short, and Keep to One Main Idea Per Sentence
2. Avoid Pretensions, Gobbledygook, and Euphemisms
3. Change Long and Difficult Words to Short and Simple Words
4. Be Wary of Jargon, Fad and Cliche
5. Use the Right Word
6. Avoid Beginning With Long Dependent Phrases
7. Prefer Active Verbs and the Active Voice
8. Cut Wordiness
9. Avoid Vague Qualifiers
10. Prune Prepositions
11. Limit Number and Symbol
12. Get Right to the Point and Stay There.

That would be enough content to keep me interested, but on top of that LaRocque has chapters covering mastering metaphors, weaving backstory, archetypes as characters, writing quickly to edit later and, well, more.

LaRocque writes the way she suggests, her language is clear and instructive.

I've also been busy as a relief (substitute) teacher. I'd made the decision to substitute for a year so I can sample different classroom dynamics and various subjects before moving into the role of a high school English Teacher. So far, I've taught Art and History, and if any other substitute teachers know the secret to controlling an 8th grade class for last lesson of the day, feel free to set me straight. I might need a crankier teacher's-hat.

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Badge Craze

I remember going through a badge phase as a kid and I would cover my beanies, denim jacket and school bag in bright coloured buttons and souvenir badges. The craze has returned!

I've notice many other clever bloggers have a badge for their blogs, so I googled for some advice on making one and now I have:

So, of course, once the girls saw my badge, they wanted their own, and after a few more experiments:

Want a badge, but don't know how?

I found my instructions through this site:

But I had a few problems with my html - I got the mysterious question mark in place of my picture.

After I created my badge, by choosing my picture (I used my header pic so it matched my blog) and adding text in Adobe Photoshop (you could also do this in Microsoft Publisher, Paint or any other graphic program), I saved the image as a jpeg (more techie people will probably know if there is a better format).

Then I uploaded it to my flickr account (you could also use Photobucket, these are online sites where you can upload your pictures and  have them stored there). Whichever site you've chosen, click on your badge pic and on then choose the "Share This" link or "direct url". You'll need the "Grab the HTML" code (but not just yet).

If you have a blogger blog, choose to customise and "add a gadget", pick the one that lets you add a HTML code.

Copy the code suggested on the Parajunkee Design blog (linked to the badge above) and follow those instruction... BUT... Once you've inserted your blog http address and the HTML code from flickr, you'll need to play with it to get the size right. Flicker insert code to make it a specific height and width. SO... where it says:

width="500" height="169" alt="PaperDollsBadge"

Replace that with:

border="0" width="90%" alt="PaperDollsBadge"

This means, wherever your badge is posted, it will fit.

I also found I ended up with an extra  / >" but I found the little culprit and deleted him. Perhaps if you know an easier way or a source of better instructions you could share the link in the comments :-) 

My only other hint? Say on the badge what type of blog you have, you're more likely to get interested people come visit!

Writing Novels - Formulas and Structures

Igor! I've created the formula to bring a dead narrative ALIVE!

Formula can be a dirty word in creative writing circles. Where's the burning passion and imagination? Will we create computer programs that write the story for us? Will all books become generic boring tales?

Every writer wants their work to be different. And it should be, to a degree. Storytelling is a human tradition and it evokes expectations from the audience (reader). Styles change as civilisation progresses. Children's stories were once more didactic with moral warnings like: 'be good or you will die and rot in hell'. Today we can introduce ethical problems into young people's stories, but it must be subtle. Why? Marketing. Kids have their own money and they get to decide what books to buy. 

Sometimes the structure of telling a story comes instinctively, but when we struggle we turn to structures as a guide.

I love writing workshops and I've been coming across many writers' workshops in audiobook form (from iTunes or Amazon). This week I've been studying under Michael Hauge in his workshop:

This audiobook is a recording of an actual workshop that took place over three days, it's about 3hrs and appears to be based on the book:

I don't write screenplays, but once I'd heard Hauge talk in the audiobook Hero's 2 Journey with Christopher Volger, I couldn't wait to hear more. I'm glad I did, everything that Hauge says about screenwriting can be applied to writing novels.

It's tempting with audiobooks to just listen to them while you do other things (driving, dishes, walking the dog...), but then you won't be getting the maximum benefit from the workshop. Have a pen and paper ready (or open a Word document) and record all of the key points that resonate with you and make notes about how this can apply to your novel.

There is too much covered in Michael Hauge's workshop to possibly cover it all here, but just a taste of what he includes is:

Whatever genre you write, your main objective with every narrative is to elicit emotion from the reader.

There are stages to creating a narrative and Hauge goes into more detail about how to address them:

• Story Concept - premise sentence of your novel, 'a ______ who wants to _______' (you fill in the blanks). For more on premise visit my previous post: My Take on Premise. This structure of sentence is because your story needs a visible goal. Where do you get ideas? Headlines, fairytales, myths, your own life, science etc etc etc. Hauge also insists that you need about two dozen story ideas before trying to write one.
• Characters - your story must posses a Hero with a visible physical goal (outer motivation) that has a clear end point (catch a killer, win a race, get a girl). The reader must be able to identify with the hero, you can do this by placing them in jeopardy, make them the victim of an undeserved misfortune or simply make them likeable/funny. There should also be a 2nd Primary Character (the Nemesis) who has an outer motivation that comes to crossroads with the hero's outer motivation. Other characters that help the narrative are the Reflector (sidekick or mentor) and the Romancer (love interest).
• Plot structure - what happens and when. The right things happen at the right time to elicit maximum emotion. The plot structure will have an outer journey that affects the character's inner journey (self-discovery, emotional growth, etc). Hauge goes into minute detail about plot structure, including the exact moment when the story should change and progress. See the image further down to see the six stages of any plot.
• Individual Scenes - Hauge provides practical advice for tackling the writing of scenes. There must be a scene where the Hero must risk everything to overcome the conflict, every story needs courage. Each scene must also show conflict (see my previous post: Get a Little Conflict in Your Scene).

Here is the link to the PDF file that you can print:

http://moviejive.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/hauge6stageplot.pdf

Hauge tells you to choose a story idea with commercial potential. One aspect of this is to include familiarity and originality. That is to have some elements that readers have come to expect (structure?), but also find ways to surprise them.

How do you feel about using a structure? Do you think it's the element that give a meandering tale form so the narrative can come to life? Or do you resist formulas? Lets hope they are used for good and not evil :-)

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Lousy Characters Rule

Are Your Characters Wearing This Badge?

More often than I expect, I read stories with characters that are good at everything. If watching Australian Idol auditions taught me anything, it's that people should be aware of their shortcomings. By knowing what you are hopeless at (for me anything that requires balance or talking to strangers), then you can focus on the areas you excel, and those traits will endear a character to the reader.

Charismatic, clever and brave James Bond had his weaknesses - alcohol and girls. A femme-fatale carrying a martini (shaken, not stirred)? Then forget it, he's a goner. In Devil May Care (Sebastian Faulks), the narrator comments that James is excellent at knowing who to trust. Really? It seems to me that in every mission he ends up getting mixed up with women who try to kill him, or accepts a drink from a villain only to find he's been drugged.

Choose flaws for your character. Make sure that shortcomings cause them problems on their journey through the story. Perhaps it's something that's necessary to achieve their goal, solve the murder or escape death? You could make them face it (Indiana Jones and his snake phobia) or give them a sidekick that can pick up the slack.

They could be clever, talented and attractive, but... not a very nice person. Lots of great characters have personality flaws, Sherlock Holmes wasn't very pleasant to people, he was only interested in the mystery. This character has been recreated today as Dr Gregory House (in the TV series House). When the occasion requires sympathy and emotional understanding, that's where their sidekick, Watson/Wilson, steps up.

Sam Spade got the job done, but when he wasn't on the clock he was drinking himself into a stupor or bonking his partner's wife. Even sweet old Miss Marple had her moments: in Towards Zero, while on a boat, Miss Marple accuses a suspect of swimming from his hotel to the victim's house. His defence is that he can't swim and everybody knows it. Sly Miss Marple gives him a little push into the ocean but it turns out he was telling the truth.

I'm reading Too Many Murders by Colleen McCullough, featuring chief of detectives, Carmine Delmonico. The plot is great, it's set in 1967 and one April day 12 separate murders are committed, but the detective suspects a link. I find myself skimming parts about Delmonico's private life because it seems too perfect. Great job, well liked, talented, beautiful home, beautiful wife, gorgeous daughter (also extremely talented) and a beautiful bouncing baby boy. *Yawn*

Your character can think they're perfect, as long as it's obvious they're not.

We want characters to be really bad at some things because it provides conflict for the story and makes the character accessible to the reader. What do your characters really suck at?

Some links on Characters and Flaws:

Wagging Tales - Creating Character Flaws

About.com - Ten Ugliest Character Flaws

Fiction Factor - Seven Common Character Types

The Glass Menagerie - The Characters' Weaknesses and Strengths

Men With Pens - Creating Character Flaws

Dark World - Character Flaws List

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Sharing the Writerly Love

Location, location, location

In my world of Kindle:

There are titles published in Australia I can't access for Kindle from Amazon, not because they don't have Kindle format (they do), but because I'm located in Australia??? 

From what gossip I could gather, I take it publishers are worried that allowing Australians to buy Australian books on Kindle will affect Australian book sales (i.e. you won't go to the book shop and buy the paperback). They're right. It does affect sales. If I can't purchase it for my Kindle, even though the format is there, then I just won't purchase it. I had this trouble with Tim Winton's Cloud Street (I already have a paperback copy, but I wanted the Kindle version as well) and Dan Wells' I am Not a Serial Killer. That tactic should be about as successful as musicians choosing not to sell their songs on iTunes because it might affect CD sales. Sigh.

But the good news. Kindle sample pages have boosted sales (well, from me anyway). I've finished Hooked by Les Edgerton (and I will keep hassling you about it until you read it). The book does not just explain how to open your novel with a hook, it tells you how to introduce characters, subplots, inciting incidents and more. It also helped me to understand the power of writing by scenes. 

Kindle Samples I will now buy:

Seize the Story: A Handbook for Teens Who Like to Write by Victoria Hanley - this will be great inspiration for modelling my creative writing classes for my high school students.

Creating Characters and Plots: Secrets of a Jungian Toolbox to Guide Inspiration by Roger Burt - I'm very interested in the Jung applications to writing (you can see my post on Jung here).

But the ones I'll pass, thank you:

How to Write a Novel: 52 Tips for Developing Your First Book by Patricia Gilliam - the sample was just an introduction which didn't really tell me or promise anything special.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - I'm sorry, but the sample section made it seem so ambiguous and boring.

Also this week:

I came across these book giveaway contests:
Book Junkie is celebrating 500 followers (wow).
Dreaming in Text is giving away a signed copy of Nathaniel Wolfe and the Bodysnatchers (great title).

I recently took part in an online writer's workshop through:
The Muse Online Writer's Conference

The one day workshop was for writing children's stories and we got to workshop our first 200 words and complete some exercises. I received some useful feedback and good e-books to help me through it. I recommend you check out what workshops they have available.

Thinking About Writing

Some days it seems impossible to make something out of nothing.

When we get stuck in those foggy moments, there's a few ways we can attack the emptiness.

1. Write anyway. Most of the time the hardest part is getting yourself to sit down and do it. Anything, free-writing (riff-writing), brainstorm from a single idea or word (clustering) or do some character building.
2. Research. Pick your narrative's date, location or any significant element and start searching. You may be surprised at what inspirational background story or new plot ideas you can come up with (researching for inspiration).
3. Read. Read what you write and analyse the way the author has used opening hooks, descriptive passages, twists, etc. You can read books on the craft of writing (I've just finished Hooked by Les Edgerton - LOVED IT), or read from a completely different genre from the one you write, you may find some style that will fit within your narrative (post on reading for writing).
4. Put the pen down and refill your imagination with beauty, art, history. Anything. But keep a notebook handy incase your muse suddenly wakes up!

In this clip, Kseniya Simonova creates a rich narrative out of nothing more than sand. This is so much more than just creating pretty pictures, this artist had a story filled with emotion and history to relay and she knew how to reach her audience. Take some inspiration here (this clip is over 8 minutes, but well worth it):

You can also get crafty with something else, art, sewing, baking, macrame? My family made Mother's Day a day for me to potter about sewing - and they kept the cups of tea coming :-). I made a bag to protect my beloved Kindle:

Do you have days where it seems like the hardest thing in the world would be to sit down and write?

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Encouragement and Awards.

I find inspiration from my fellow bloggers. I have some awards to acknowledge and share:

From Wool N Nuts

From One Significant Moment at a Time

From Book Dreaming

Because I love themes, I'm going to pass these awards onto my newest followers - thanks for joining!:

Miss Lemon's Mysteries

The Quintessential Questionable Query Experiment

Paul & Karen from MuseItUp Publishing

Spunk on a Stick

Glynis Smy

Benedictions

Head in the Clouds

Just Jemi

Paper Dolls

I'm going to work on making an award too. I'd like to do one up for young bloggers. There's a lot of great blogs out there by kids!

Speaking of encouraging young bloggers, Paper Dolls posted a review of the book Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestly, and the author left a comment on their blog. You'd have thought Elvis had stopped by, the way Miss 12 jumped up and down with excitement. She has since told all her friends and is singlehandedly working the sales for Priestly's books in our country town here in Australia. It's great to see marketing work on a personal level and not just at the masses :-). So, in return I suggest a visit to the author's blog: http://chrispriestley.blogspot.com/ (his new book cover design is awesome!).

Word Play

Miss 12 tackled Adobe Photoshop and InDesign the other day to create a Japanese postcard for a school project. I've taken some graphic design courses, and I still struggle (and sometimes swear) when I use these programs. Kids have a great system for learning new things - it's called play. 

Play seems to come natural to the young of species. Puppies tackle each other and tug on ears to learn how to fight one day. Kittens pounce on balls of string to learn how to catch food. Kids play by pressing buttons (especially if it's shiny red and says DON'T TOUCH).

Kids play to learn, we need to learn to play.

When kids read, they want to play in the story. If we want to create that environment for them, then we need to play too.

There are so many fun ways we can play with our writing. Yesterday I finished editing Chapter One of Dog Show Detective. Completely finished. This is the second draft and it's the final draft. That's because the editing course I took How To Revise Your Novel, taught me how to plan the edit thoroughly so you only do it once. I was so excited, it was time to play!

From Scrivener, I saved the chapter as a text file and transferred it to my Kindle. I wanted my family to read the first copy as if it were an actual downloaded book. It was so cool to see my book and my name in the menu amongst all the other books! I even listened to my book by using the voice narration on Kindle (by now I was jumping up and down like a kid high on jellybeans).

Then I visited Wordle. Here is Chapter One - The Find from Dog Show Detective in art form!

What fun apps or games have you come across for writing or inspiring? Wanna play?

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FREE!!!

Sceptical about freebies?

My grandmother had a saying, 'if you can't be free, at least be cheap'. Sigh. I've come to appreciate free a little more recently.

In my last post I talked about Les Edgerton's book, Hooked, on writing perfect openings. Did you know Amazon offer samples of the first chapters for most of their Kindle books? You can download the sample chapters to your PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry or Kindle via the free program on Amazon's site.

I'm downloading free samples of first chapters from novels in a similar genre to the one I'm writing. This gives me plenty of examples of openings, introducing characters and setting up inciting incidents (the chain of events that lead to the story-worthy problem as detailed in Hooked). You can study as many first chapters as you want to get a feel for the type of opening that would suit your story.

I'm writing a novel set in rural Australia in 1939 with a 13yr. old protagonist that discovers a body (The Warracknabeal Kids). The type of books I'm reading for first chapters are mysteries, Australian outback tales and teen boy stories.

If you would like to try the Kindle books application for any device click on the link below for instructions:

Free Kindle Reading Apps

Sometimes one chapter is not enough. I just finished reading Spade and Archer by Joe Gore. This book has been written as a prequel to the famous mystery by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. Gore captured Samuel Spade's character perfectly and the book slips easily into place telling the detective's tales and adventures before he stumbled onto the mystery of The Maltese Falcon. I could actually picture Humphrey Bogart in the role. If you love traditional, gritty mysteries, then this is for you. I liked it a lot, but did find myself skimming occasionally and think I belong more to the cosy mystery club that includes Agatha Christie tales (and young girls entering dog shows while solving mysteries).

I know one particular Bogart fan that is going to flip for this book. So, I'm posting it up to Brisbane so my dear ol' dad can read it :-)

Debriefing and Hooks

Time to debrief

Phew! That A-Z blog challenge for April was hard work! But I learned a lot from different bloggers on the craft of writing and picked up a few blogging tips. How's everyone's blogging muscles - tired? 

I found blogging everyday is possible, but seriously eats into my blog reading time. Also, shorter posts get the most comments, when we read online we are constantly moving through virtual information linking to more data. Time is our currency and we don't want to waste it. 

It's interesting to see where one piece of information will lead to another, last night hubby and our 12yr. old were looking up fish for a school project, but this quickly moved onto viewing numerous Youtube clips on two headed kittens.

I've also been reading every spare second I get and the love affair with my new Kindle is still passionate. This week, I've returned to reading:

I first came across this book on Shannon's Book Dreaming, and I know she has good taste, so I thought I'd check it out. Edgerton lets you know exactly where your novel should start. It seems to be natural for us to write the events that led up to the change in the protagonist's life, but more and more I'm finding this is wrong (yes, I'm a slow learner). Holly Lisle makes similar comments in her editing course How to Revise Your Novel, she tells us if there was anything important in a prologue, it'd be called Chapter One.

In Hooked, Edgerton explains the 'inciting incident', the event that triggered a change in the world of the protagonist that leads to the 'story worthy' conflict. 

I've read before that we should start with the action, right in the middle of it. But this confused me, if you start with the main action - where do you go from there? What happens to the ol' story arc? This is why I am really enjoying Hooked, it managed to make it clear, even to a dill like me, that the inciting incident and the main conflict are different. Edgerton provides plenty of examples and explanations.

You can also check out Les Edgerton's blog, he does have lengthy posts, but they're chockablock full  (as we say down under) with advice and instructions on all aspects of writing. Each post is like a full lesson. Allocate some reading time and head over:

http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/

If you'd like to see a previous post I did on openings and hooks, you'll find it here:

 http://clancytales.blogspot.com/2009/11/opening-lines-and-hooks.html

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