Time to Write

Beware of this "opportunity"

If you have received an email lately that start out this way:

Dear Friends,

Do you write?

We're looking for good-quality eBooks, eZines and self-published articles for our new website!

This is a FREE MARKETING TOOL for you, as we post all material absolutely free for our visitors to read. In return, you may be eligible for profit-sharing from our advertising revenue.

Beware! I'll leave it to the supremely useful Writer Beware! blog to give you the details here:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/02/spam-from-myfreereadcom.html

but suffice it to say that having read that description, I'd stay away!

Advice for the writer as businessperson (from 50 Cent)

From whom do you want some business tips? How about 50 Cent, rapper and executive, and Robert Greene, author of "The 48 Laws of Power"? They've collaborated on a new business book, "The 50th Law." In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Greene said this about his co-author:

"Something 50 talks a lot about is the importance of owning yourself. Whenever he has a business decision, he doesn't concern himself with the upfront money; he's thinking three years down the line--how he can own the material or own the company or get equity instead of being a promoter."

Greene suggests following this line of thought whenever possible, even within a company: "You're thinking, 'How can I get to a place where I actually own this project or even this information that I have learned and people have to come to me to get it.'"

As a free-lancer I've tended to opt for the potential back-end reward rather than a guaranteed upfront amount several times, but you have to be careful. It doesn't pay to do that, for instance, with a Hollywood studio in terms of profit-share because their accounting makes sure nothing ever makes a profit on paper. For me the gamble has paid off about 50% of the time, but a couple of those times it was with a very generous back-end reward, so I believe it has been the right choice.

(If you're interested in marketing yourself skillfully, there are two books you will find helpful: "Do Something Different," published by Virgin Books, and "Marketing for Entrepreneurs," published by Pearson. Both are available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

What to do when a scene refuses to come alive? (advice for the stuck -pt. 2)

Sometimes when you're stuck, the problem is that a scene just refuses to come to life. 

In that case, think about what makes a scene (or a party) more interesting:

• introduction of a new character: who could come into the scene and stir things up?
  
  
• introduction of a different emotion (of course it must be motivated, but what could set off an emotional reaction in the characters in your scene?)
  
  
• introduction of new information (that has emotional implications)
  
  
• open up a subtle conflict (what could make one of your characters resent another?)
  
  
• a subtext that goes counter to the text (we know what they're saying--but can you also hint at what they really mean?)
  
  
• a dramatic change in the environment: this could be the weather, a blackout, something breaking. Again,it should be something that relates to the rest of the scene, not random.
  
  
• a realignment of loyalties: what sparks one character to change his or her view of another?

If you've ever studied improvisation, you'll recognize many of these as the tools of the skilled improvisor. When a scenes starts to go dead, one or more of these can bring it back to life. If you'd like to find out more about improvisation, check out Keith Johnstone's wonderful book, "Impro".

(You'll find lots more tips in my book, "Your Writing Coach." If you want a free copy of my report, "Seven Things That are Stopping You From Writing and How to Overcome Them," click here.)

 

 

Inside a writing factory

The (London) Times featured an article a while back by Matthew Gooodman about a woman, Virginia Blackburn,who cranks out instant books about celebrities. It's a peek inside a writing factory.

She says her word count is up to 5000 a day--"You can't fall behind," she says. She's done books on Michael Jackson as well as the marriage of model Jordan (Katie Price) to cage fighter Alex Reid.

The time from concept to shop can be as little as six weeks.

The leader in this factory farming side of publishing is John Blake, who started this trend in the UK with a rapid-response bio of Heath Ledger when he died. The biggest outlet for these books is the supermarket chains. Sometimes they even come up with an idea and pitch it to the publisher. 

The author's fees typically are £3000 to £10,000 and maybe a share of the royalties if a book is a hit--not so bad if you're cranking out 5000 words a day. These are not long books, so that would mean turning out a manuscript in 10 to 12 days. There's a certain amount of research involved, but I suspect it's not deep or extended. Also, the books tend to feature lots of photos, which cuts down on the word count as well. 

It's not a side of writing that interests me personally, as a writer or a reader, but it's interesting to find out how it works.

(For help writing your book, see mine: "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

The writing secrets of James Ellroy

James Ellroy writes novels about the darker side of life ("L.A. Confidential," "Blood's a Rover") and an interview in Shortlist magazine revealed some surprising information about how he does it:

First, what accounts for the fast pace and caffeinated prose of his novels? He says, "I've suffered from insomnia; I know what it's like to be in a state of mental agitation. My books are often written in [this] state, which is why they are so assiduously plotted in outline and diagram--because I fear mental chaos. I make every conscious effort to slow down the pace of the book and it's still quite a piece of work to read."

How assiduously plotted? The article says "Blood's a Rover" had a 400 page outline. 

He also uses a mix of elements to give the books a sense of historical accuracy, including transcripts of phone calls, articles from gossip magazines, and memos between secret government departments. And his cast of characters frequently includes real people such as J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Castro, and the Kennedys.

Ellroy had a wild life himself, involving drugs, alcohol, obsession, and loss of control, but he cautions aspiring young novelists, "Don't think that because I did it, it's necessary."

(For tips on healthy ways to write your novel, see "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers--you'll find more information at www.yourwritingcoach.com)

The secret of creating a good villain

SFX magazine asked Adam Green, director of "Hatchet," the secret of making a good slasher movie. I think what he said applies to creating any kind of villain:

"You need to be able to sum up where they came from in a few lines and it needs to be quick and easy to explain and also tragic. It's no good just saying, 'Ah, he was born evil, so he grew up and killed people.' That's boring. There needs to be a sympathetic reason for why you have a killer: Jason drowned as a little boy and Hatchet's Victor Crowley was killed by his father. So there's a sadness there. That's what gets people invested in a good slasher movie."

Of course as you move away from melodrama into drama, these reasons become more subtle and they don't necessarily drive someone to murder, but perhaps to emotional violence. And the farther you go along that spectrum, the less difference there is between your protagonist and your antagonist in terms of what drives them. I always find books and movies in which that difference is slight to be the most interesting--and realistic.

(What's the missing step that's going to get you writing what only you can write? Perhaps it's my online mentoring program. To find out more and get my free "Seven Things That are Stopping You From Writing and How to Overcome Them" report, go here: http://goo.gl/bWjb.

An agent confesses-and the lessons we can learn from it

SFX magazine asked literary agent John Jarrold (who also is a an editor and publisher) what is the secret of sifting the talent from the "slush pile" of submitted manuscripts. His answer, in part:

"All you can do is trust a mixture of personal reaction and gut instinct... I've taken on successful authors other editors had turned down--and they all did the same with books I'd turned down."

"We turn down 90% of our submissions in the first ten pages because the writing just isn't special enough...being "good" isn't enough."

"The wonderful, frustrating thing about publishing is that you can't second-guess the public--until it's out there and you discover whether or not it gets the ultimate accolade: word of mouth."

So let's see what we can take away from these comments. 

1. Rejection (or acceptance) is subjective. If you get turned down by one person, move on to the next. You need only one person who believes in you and your work to start the ball rolling.

2. You'd better have a great first ten pages. When I was starting out in Hollywood I was a script reader and we had to read the entire scripts that were submitted. Once in a while I'd find one that took too long to get going, with a slow or boring opening but then a cracking story. These days everybody is under pressure to judge things quickly and you can't count on them reading the entire script or manuscript. If your first ten pages aren't terrific, you're in trouble. Try a test: give a friend only the first ten pages, then ask them not only whether they want to read more, but also WHY. What are they curious about, that you've planted in those first ten pages? If there isn't much, you'd better rework that opening.

3. Ultimately, it's the reading public that will judge your work. If the traditional means of getting your work to them don't work, consider self-publishing and self-marketing. But don't self-publish unless you are ready to self-market as well. Otherwise you'll have hired the hall but nobody will show up for the party. 

(If you want help and support in writing your book or screenplay, consider signing up for my online mentoring program. You can get details and a free report on "Seven Things Stopping You from Writing and how to Overcome Them here:  http://goo.gl/bWjb)

How to get started as a writer

SFX magazine asked Eoin Colfer (the Artemis Fowler novels) the secret of getting started as a writer. He said, "Like an profession, you gotta keep doing it. You're not gonna be a writer if you write just two pages a year. You'll know people who are saying 'Oh yeah, I'm writing a book!" And they're basically talking about writing a book."

He adds, "Try to bring something of yourself to the book rather than take everything from your favorite author...A good way to do that is in every story you write tell yourself, 'Now I'm gonna put one thing in this that I've never heard anywhere before.' 

The tip I would add is take it step by step, day by day. At the start, the size of your dream dwarfs the tiny bit you can do to move toward it today. But if you keep going and keep adding those pages, eventually the reality will be as big as the dream. Along with that, don't be hard on yourself when what you write doesn't live up to what you'd hoped to write. It never does, but there's time later for rewriting so that it will at least get closer.

(You need support and you need to manage your time well if you want to get started as a writer. My online mentoring program can help. To get information about it, as well as my free report on "Seven Things that Are Stopping You From Writing--and How to Overcome Them" go here: http://goo.gl/bWjb.

How to write a great ghost story (part 2) _Neil Gaiman says...

SFX magazine asked Neil Gaiman about the secret of scaring children (in literature, presumably...). He said, "The secret of scaring children is remembering what it was like to be a kid yourself. You need to try to remember what it was you were scared of as a seven or ten-year-old, and how much you enjoyed being scared too."

Hmm, I guess I enjoyed being scared by monster movies, but there were other fears that were no fun at all. I remember one episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in which someone gets entombed in a drain pipe and nobody realizes it has happened. I had nightmares for weeks after that about being trapped somewhere and suffocated. That one wasn't very enjoyable!

In a lot of Young Adult fiction, scary things like imagining the death of a parent, or the fear of humiliation are also used to good effect. 

This goes beyond writing chillers for children--if you look closely at how Stephen King's books work, you'll see that actually what scares as as adults isn't all that different from what scared us as kids.

How to write a great ghost story (part 1)

In a recent issue of SFX magazine they asked writers and others to reveal some of their creative secrets. Joe Hill, writer of "Heart Shaped Box" and "Horns," was asked the secret of writing a ghost story. His tips:

1. Know the genre. Read 50 of the best ghost stories--he suggests starting with M R James' "A Warning to the Curious."

2. "Build your story around a character who is already haunted...even before he or she meets the ghost. Ghost stories are, inevitably, always about the way the past keeps spilling loose to stain the present." So make your protagonist a troubled soul.

3. Keep in mind you don't need the cliches of a haunted house or graveyard--hauntings take place in the mind.

4. To write a good ghost, keep in mind "ghosts are primal expressions of need. They keep flashing into existence because there's something they want, and they aren't going away until they get it." In that sense, they're not very different from a good living protagonist.

5. A good story is a good story--the same rules apply to ghost stories as to any other genre.

6. "Don't wait too long to start rattling the chains." In other words, hook the reader quickly with a scary event or at least the foreshadowing of one.

(Stuck in your writing? Get my free report, "Seven Things that Stop You From Writing--and How to Overcome Them" --here: http://goo.gl/bWjb.)

Take action on your writing projects: 3 tips

I've been reading a good book called "Making Things Happen" (Scott Belsky). The key point of the book is that everything relies on action. Belsky's Action Method is geared toward making things happen in companies, but the same basic ideas apply to individuals--for instance, to getting your project written. Here are three of his tips and how they could help writers:

1. "Hire the Killjoys." It's likely you have too many ideas and want to implement all of them at the same time, especially since starting a new project usually is more fun than working on an existing one. You need to have the killjoy part of yourself set and stick to priorities. You can do all your projects, but not all at the same time.

2. "Work with a bias toward action." Don't wait for the right time. It's never the right time. Otherwise you'll go through life saying, "I'll do it when...the kids are older...the kids have left home...when I retire..." And one day it'll be too late. Start now, even if you can spare only a few minutes a day.

3. "Change your vocabulary." As well as talking about your big dream, talk about the exact things you are going to do today, tomorrow, and this week, even if you are talking only to yourself. 

(for a total strategy for getting more done, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done" from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline bookseller.)

 

 

About those celebrity novels...

On the Huffington Post, writer Rebecca Serle held forth about ghost-written books that have celebrities’ names slapped on them. She writes:

“Let me get something straight: I have no problem with ghostwriting as a thing unto itself. What bothers me is the way it's shrouded in secrecy, ignored to the point of straight-up lying. Why not be honest? What is the problem with saying, "Hey, I'm a movie star. I'm super busy. And while I'm totally into the idea of putting out a book, I'm not going to sit at my computer six hours a day for a year and a half, so I need a little help here." I'd respect that, because just slapping Hilary Duff's name on the cover, having her show up for signings and readings, going on morning talk shows and interviewing with David Letterman does not make her an author. It also (and this is more to my point) does not make her a writer.”

It raises some interesting questions. First, does the general public believe that the celebrities write these books themselves? My guess is that the majority do. I say this as somebody who has encountered plenty of otherwise intelligent people who think that when I write a script, I just come up with the story and the actors make up the dialogue themselves. 

Secondly, would they be less willing to read a book that was labeled, say, “written by Sam Smith, from a vague idea by Hilary Duff”? (By the way, just in case Ms. Duff’s lawyers happen to read this post, I don’t know the extent to which she played a role in writing her book, I’m making a general point.) My guess is the public would be less likely to buy that product. 

I’ve seen interviews with a couple of celebrities who admitted they had help. Usually they say something like, “It was my ideas and I had somebody write them down,” as though it’s pretty similar to having an assistant jot down your grocery list.

I guess it’s all about the money and its naïve to think otherwise. I’d probably even take on that kind of assignment myself for a heavy fee. As long as they were willing to bill it as “written by Jurgen Wolff from a vague idea by…” I don’t expect any requests for my services anytime soon.

(Want to actually write your own book? Get a copy of “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline bookseller. And for my free report, "Seven Things that Stop You From Writing and How to Overcome Them," click here: http://goo.gl/bWjb)

 

How to find time to write

When you're juggling a day job and family responsibilities it can be easy to get overwhelmed and find yourself with no time left over for writing or your other creative endeavors. Peter Bregman, who writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review, recently came up with a plan for what to do when you are overwhelmed. Here's the gist of it:

1. Make a handwritten list of everything you need to do. He claims writing tasks down on paper and then crossing them off creates momentum. (It's also a method I use.)

2. Spend exactly 15 minutes doing the easiest and fastest one. Use a timer. Don't worry that these are not necessarily the highest priority tasks.

3. After that 15 minutes, isolate yourself--no phone, no open windows on your desktop, etc. Find the highest priority task and work on it for 35 minutes without interruption. Again, use a timer.

 4. Take a ten minute break, then repeat steps 2 and 3.

Sounds good to me--I'm a convert to using a timer to keep track of time and maintain focus. 

(You'll find lots more time management tips in my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." And to get my free report, "Seven Things that Stop You From Writing and How to Overcome Them," click here: http://goo.gl/bWjb)

 

 

Writing or children - Lemony's advice

In an interview, Daniel Handler, whose alter ego is Lemony Snicket of the popular "A Series of Unfortunate Events" children's books, talked about why kids recognize the truth in his stories:

"I think that as you grow up you begin to look critically at the world and you note the disparity between what people are saying and how it goes. The way the books run is contrary to what everyone says all the time. In many children's books good people are rewarded and bad people are punished, and you see when you are very young that the world just doesn't go that way. I think that's something akin to irony, though it's not a textbook definition of irony. The idea that bad behavior is always punished will begin to ring false if you're actually in a schoolyard."

Of course he serves up the bad news with a huge dollop of humor, which helps, but it's a crucial point.

Today's kids are more tuned in than previous generations to the fact that life isn't one big happy story.

I've heard children's book publishers say that one of the main reasons they reject manuscripts especially for kids older than ten is that too many authors are still trying to portray life in an overly-rosy way.

(for my free report, "Seven Things that Stop You From Writing and How to Overcome Them," click here: http://goo.gl/bWjb)

 

Writing a first novel? Three tips for the journey

It took comedy-mystery writer Sandra Balzo six years to get her first novel published. In an interview at About.com she was asked how she kept faith in herself during that time.

"I'm not sure I DID still have faith in myself as a writer -- at least during part of that time. Happily, though, other people did," she said.

She formed a writers group and got their input for rewriting the novel and wrote a short story that won an award and eventually got an offer for her novel, "Uncommon Grounds."

She says, "When the book came out, it got great reviews, and my publisher went back to press three times. An agent I knew from the mystery circle congratulated me and took me on as a client. We've been together ever since."

She also revealed that every time she got a comment from an editor or agent she would change the manuscript, until it got to the point where it didn't even feel like hers anymore. Then she went back to trusting her own instincts and rewrote it again the way she wanted to. That was the version that sold.

The take-aways:

* Be patient.

* Have friends who believe in you. If you can't find any locally, find them online.

* Get feedback--but listen to your own intuition and don't make changes that don't feel right.

(To get my free report, "Seven Things that Stop You From Writing and How to Overcome Them," click here: http://goo.gl/bWjb)