Writing a tie-in

ByJohn Brown

I read this article today, laughed, and then thought a while. Don’t know if tie-ins will ever be in my future. I would hope to do it just once for a series or film I love. In the meantime, it’s great fun reading about someone else’s experience.

‘Burn Notice’: The Novel
Does a real writer accept a gig doing books spun off from films or TV shows? A real writer found the answer to his own question.
By Tod Goldberg, Special to The Times
August 24, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-tie-ins24-2008aug24,0,1463672.story 

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  • Authors love women

    ByJohn Brown

    Two fascinating articles on who drives books sales. Would love to see original reports.

    September, 2010
    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2012801171_litlife06.html

    I arrived back at work, along with 2,000 e-mails and about that many incoming books, I got a report from Bowker, a global firm that tracks people’s book-buying habits. Here are some of the more interesting bits from 2009:More than 40 percent of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book; the average age of the American book buyer is 42.

    Women make 64 percent of all book purchases, even among detective stories and thrillers, where they buy more than 60 percent of that genre. [see, they act all touchy feeling, but most women like to see someone kick hiney. Except I suspect a lot of that 60% is driven by mysteries; or are there a lot of women that like, say, Lee Child?]

    Thirty two percent of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $32,000 annually. A fifth of those sales were for children’s books.

    The biggest nonfiction genre is biography and autobiography.

    Whoa. Go gals.

    June, 2011
    http://tomorrowsbook.com/format-wars/features/who-is-buying-ebooks-women-reading-fiction.html

    Surprise, surprise: the hardcore power users in the eBook world are the same demographics as the hardcore power users in the physical-book word, as a report called Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) indicates both hardcore groups are dominated by women buying fiction.

    No surprise, really. The BISG says most eBook power buyers — that is, someone buying an eBook at least once a week — are by and large women (some 66 percent), who mostly buy fiction. Out of the entire eBook market, power buyers make just 18 percent of all buyers, but they buy 61 percent of the eBooks. [Holy crap! 18% are driving the sales–who are these people?! Of course, this is just the old 80/20 rule showing its face again.]

    In terms of exactly what is selling: literary fiction, science fiction and romance lead the way, each with over 20 percent of the market. [Go SFF!! and those are not the normal breakdowns, SFF is usually under 10%] Overall, eBooks comprise 11 percent of the total book market, with 13 percent of print book buyers also downloading eBooks.

    That evolution of the market isn’t surprising: early gadget adopters tend to be men, but as eReaders become more mainstreams, its userbase logically would look like the book market as a whole. And that’s exactly what happened: If women buy 64 percent of all books, it’s no surprise they’re buying 66 percent of all eBooks. [Except I think you got your math wrong; they’re 66% of power buyers. You didn’t say what report said of total sales]

    Whoa. GO LADIES!

    Seems women have been driving entertainment in a lot of ways for a long time. Watch a few minutes of this interview with Hitchcock back in 1964.

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  • Plot Basics

    ByJohn Brown

    In the comments to this week’s writing excuses on the 3 act structure, a writer asked if the try/fail cycle would really work with her chase story because her folks do not “fail to solve the problem” every time so much as “escape by the skin of their teeth”.

    I thought this was a great question because we ARE often led to believe that the characters need to fail in each attempt. But if we look at a number of stories we’ll see that this isn’t the case. The hero is NOT always failing in his scene or sequence goal. In fact, much of the time he succeeds. So how does plot really work? Here’s my post.

    [edited for clarity]

    Jen, fwiw:

    A few things finally opened up acts and plot to me. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you. I say this because a chase would work the same as anything else. I’ll just start at the beginning, although I’m sure you know a lot of this.

    1) Story is about someone solving a problem. The problem is one of happiness (danger or lack on some level–physical, social, freedom, etc.) or mystery.

    2) The reason why we tell stories about problems is because the solving of problems, if done a certain way, evokes suspense, surprise, and curiosity in the reader, and then a release of emotional tension. Why we humans like that ride, I don’t know. But we must keep this in mind when dealing with #1 because these effects are the main effects the bulk of people go to story for.

    3) Plot is simply the actions the characters take, the results of their action, and what they decide to do next. Except this can’t be any old action and result. It has to be action and result that builds the anxiety of suspense, surprise, and the mystery or puzzle.

    4) There are four possible answers to the question of “did the hero’s action solve the problem?”: yes, no, yes but, no furthermore.

    For example. Yes, you killed the monster. No, you didn’t. Yes, you killed the monster, but it bit you and now you have the virus that’s going to turn YOU into a monster. No, you didn’t kill the monster furthermore you woke up its mumma.

    Of those four possiblities, only the last two build suspense and curiosity. The first removes it totally. So it’s out. And a no answer leaves suspense unchanged. All you’re doing is delaying things with that. What you want to do is ratchet it up.

    So if you want to build suspense then when a character takes an action, that action has to make things worse. They may escape by the skin of their teeth, but now the federal police know where they are (yes-but). Or not only did they not escape the police, but now the mafia, the real bad guys, know where they are (no-furthermore). These escalations and complications to the plot/problem continue until the hero’s plan is in total shambles and it appears he really is done for. That’s when they get one last shot at it.

    If someone is trying to escape you don’t need a different plot structure. Their actions simply need to make it harder and harder and harder. Their plan needs to start to come apart. Things go wrong. Things they didn’t plan for make it worse. Someone double-crosses them or goes AWOL. We need to see them walking into dangers they didn’t plan for. If you go back and look at Prison Break season 1, you’ll see this all over the place in the last two episodes.

    5) Acts are just a nifty way of breaking up the problem solving process into parts. In act 1 (the beginning), as stated, you introduce the problem and show that the character won’t or can’t walk away. Often a big reversal or reveal (a big yes-but or no-furthermore) marks the end of that act. But the key thing is that the hero MUST act. The stakes or too high or they simply can’t get away.

    Now in act 2 (the middle) the hero says, aha, this is the real problem. Let’s try to solve it. Act 2 is a breeze to write IF you think about escalations and complications and nasty surprises–yes-buts and no-furthermores. He takes an intelligent action. BAM. It gets worse. And as these complications pile up we see that the hero comes to a point where his plans are in a shambles and the problem looks almost certain to squash him for good. In Star Wars, sure they saved the princess, but they led the empire to the secret base and the death star is going to blow them away (a grand yes-but).

    In the last act, the hero straps on his guns and trys one more thing. Sometimes it helps to think of acts 1 and 2 as the hero reacting and act 3 as the hero finally getting the inititative, although it appears to be almost too late, and strapping on his guns. In Star Wars they do this. They’re running, running, running, and then they attack the death star. But the odds are slim. And they only have one little chance.

    Remember: the odds are slim at this point and things get worse not because this is how problems are solved. Many get solved on the first try in real life. But because solving a problem in this way produces maximum suspense, surprise, and curiosity–the chief effects readers go to stories for. Any time you see a new plot structure or theory, you need to ask yourself what effect it has on the reader. If you can’t see any, junk it.

    So you might have three acts, four, five, seven (all variations I’ve seen). It doesn’t matter. An act usually ends with a huge change in the nature of the problem. See Robert McKee’s STORY. But the number of acts isn’t the issue. It’s the effect on the reader. The acts are just means to an end. If we don’t keep the end in mind we’re likely to misuse the techniques. 

    6) The key for moving through the acts is to ask myself about actions, obstacles, and results. Here are some questions I’ve found productive.

    Action. What are some intelligent actions the hero might take in this situation? What would I do? What are some logical steps that the reader might not think of?

    Obstacles. What happens? What are some compelling obstacles the hero will face in this attempt? Are there points of conflict with himself, someone else on his side, the antagonist or his henchmen, someone in the background, with the setting? What does the antagonist do to foil the hero? What is a logical but maybe an unexpected and surprising obstacle to both the reader and hero? How does the hero’s plan begin to come apart?

    Results. What happens? What are some possible results that pose a yes-but or no-furthermore? What would be unexpected, surprising to both the hero and the reader? How does the character’s action make it worse? How does the result reveal the problem is much worse than the hero and reader first thought?  I’m thinking of complications and escalations–things that make the problem harder to solve or more important because more’s at stake.

    In all of these, I choose the options that gives me the most zing and run with them. If they peter out, I try another (take 2, take 3, take 4), until I have one that works. Then I repeat it all over again and again until the hero is looking the gun in the face.

    7) The “hero’s journey” is nothing more than a bunch of mystical names for common elements in this specific type of problem solving structure. Why does the hero have to leave home? Not because of some mystical archetype mumbo jumbo. No, because this forces them out into unfamiliar territory–adventure, risk. Things go wrong. The hero has to face the problem.

    Why does the hero go to “the cave”? Again, not because of some mystical archetype mumbo jumbo. No, because turning and facing the monster, going onto ITS turf, poses the MOST RISK and hence most danger and hence most suspense for the reader.

    Always keep the purpose of the story in mind. Suspense and curiosity DRIVE the structure of most stories. Yes, there are other effects we go to story for. But the reason stories are structured the way they are is because of those two reader effects. And all the rest of those Joseph Campbell terms are useless to writers unless they make the connection and see how they play into suspense and curiosity.

    And even then I’ve found it’s wrong-headed to bind yourself to to a form just because. Or to think you need to slavishly follow it. The decision has to feel right for the story. It has to build anxiety and curiosity. And whatever does that well is right, regardless of whether it follows some formula. Although, I will say that certain story structures are used again and again because they deliver the goods to the reader better than other structures. Like biological evolution, they survive because of natural selection by readers.

    So that ended up longer than I intended. Hopefully the ideas were as helpful to you as they were to me.

    This writer’s question arises because of the common way of explaining the try/fail cycle sets us up to think there is only a no or no-furthermore option to each attempt by the hero. However, if we just look at a handful of stories, we’ll see the yes-but option is used all the time. What we want to avoid is the yes option, because that just stops the story. It stops the story because story is about solving a problem. And once the problem is solved, the story is over.  

    Other writers talk of formulas, however “pattern” has always been a more helpful way of looking at it than “formula.” I know, that’s semantic quibbling. But “formula” suggests to me THE way while “pattern” suggests to me something not so strict, something with some give to it and perhaps a great number of variations. Either way, pattern or formula, I found that unless I can understand the why of a part of the pattern, the effect it has on the reader’s experience, it’s not much use to me. It all comes down to plunging our hero into trouble or mystery, and then making the trouble or mystery worse SO THAT the reader feels increasing anxiety, curiosity, and surprise.

    BTW, here’s a good explanation of the 3 act structure with some tips from Stephen J. Cannell, an old pro. I really like his tips on act 2 issues and complications. Because if we make the antagonist an active force, he or she will provide many wonderful yes-but and no-furthermore options.

    You’ll find other excellent explanations of plot in TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER by Dwight V. Swain, HOW TO WRITE BEST SELLING FICTION by Dean Koontz, and THE SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING by William C. Martell.

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  • Can you make a living writing short stories?

    ByJohn Brown

    We already know that many people break into the novel market WITHOUT writing short stories. So they’re not necessary for starting a writing career, although they might have helped some folks. See this page http://johndbrown.com/writers/writing-business-facts-figures/ for links that will show you how people break in. But some people just love short stories, so the question is can you make a living writing them?

    The answer is yes, you CAN do it–you go into television and get hired to write scripts for TV series (grin).

    But what about doing it in print? Well, let’s try some conservative math.

    1) How much would you need to sell?

    TARGET: a conservative $30,000 gross per year.

    The median household income in the USA is $50,000. But you can find a place (rural Ohio or Indiana or North Dakota etc.) where housing is relatively cheap and live on $30k. I think this is a reasonable target. So let’s make some assumptions about the stories. We’ll assume each short averages around 4,000 words and that you get paid seven cents per word. To earn your target amount you’d have to sell:

    • TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 428,571
    • TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 107 (words divided by average story length)
    • TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 2 sales per week (weeks in year divided by number of stories)

    At 10 cents a word:

    • TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 300,000
    • TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 75
    • TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 1.4 sales per week

    No, this doesn’t count reprints, movie deals, gaming contracts, etc. But reprints usually don’t pay well and movie deals, while they pay well, can’t be counted on. Besides, we’re being conservative. 

    2) Is this a feasible production rate?

    Again, a little math.

    TARGET: 2 stories, 8,000 words average per week

    If we assume you write five days per week for six hours per day at a rate of 500 words per hour, which may be very aggressive if you try to include thinking and revising time in that, then you’ll produce 15,000 words per week.

    So, yes, this is a feasible, if aggressive, production rate–on paper. But I don’t know anyone finishing this many stories per week. Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely you will sell 100% of what you send out. So you need to actually produce MORE than two stories per week. You might have to end up writing three or four. Week after week after week. That’s one story every day or two.

    Theoretically, yes, that rate of production still fits in the 15,000 word capacity. But I’m going to say it’s doubtful anyone can do this because I haven’t seen anyone do it. Have you? 

    But even if you were the Lizard King of writing and could pull this off every week of the year, the question is can you sell all those stories?

    3) Is it feasible to sell two stories per week?

    According to http://duotrope.com/index.aspx there are about 200 venues for short fiction paying pro rates, which for them is 5 cents or more. No,  anthologies are not represented there. But I’m not sure it will change the equations that much. So you have to sell 107 stories to these 200 markets. I don’t know how many slots are open in these places. Some of these venues publish one story per year, some publish twelve, some more. Some are published semi-annually, quarterly, bi-monthly. Let’s say there are 2,000 slots. Of course, we might need to count total wordage up for hire at these venues instead, but we’re just doing this on the back of a napkin. So 107 stories out of 2,000 slots means you’d have to make up 5% of the market. You sell five of every 100 stories these folks buy.

    FIVE PERCENT OF THE WHOLE MARKET!

    Nobody makes up 5% of the whole short fiction market. NOBODY. Okay, let’s say there are 4,000 slots. Each venue averaging twenty stories per year. So you have to make up 2.5% of the market. Nobody does that either. What about 1%? Anyone? One out of every 100 stories? No.

    Is this because writers are lazy? Could it be done? You might be the first?

    That’s lotto thinking. What you want is demonstrated income, i.e. people have DEMONSTRATED it can be done. Nobody has demonstrated this can be done in the current market. So it’s not reasonable to expect you’ll do something nobody else is doing.

    So the answer is that even if you produce three to four short stories per week, you’ll never be able to sell enough to make a living. Now, I know of a few authors who can make a few thousand dollars per year writing short stories. I’ve heard of one guy who made $10,000 a year for a few years. But can you live on that? Even if you move to a place where housing is very, very cheap? Besides, we’re trying to avoid lotto thinking here. We’re trying to be practical and conservative. This is one guy. Do you yourself know anyone who has done this? I wouldn’t want to base my future on what one guy did.

    CONCLUSION: there’s no evidence that strongly suggests it’s feasible to sell at the necessary rate to make $10,000 per year let alone $30,000.

    4) Re-purpose the wordage to Novels!

    Go back up and look at the annual output of words. If you can write 300,000 to 450,000 words per year, you could write four to six young adult novels (averaging 70,000 words per book) or two to three adult novels (averaging 120,000 words per) in that same time.

    Why not build a career in novels?

    Yes, you may start at $5,000 – $6,000 advance per book. But if you sell well, that goes up. Plus, if it does sell well, you get royalties. Plus you can sell foreign novel rights. Plus you get an advance to help with some expenses. More importantly, we have thousands and thousands of folks DEMONSTRATING they can make a living writing at that pace.

    So write short stories if you love them, but don’t expect to make a living at it.

    5) But what about Amazon and self-publishing?

    Could you make a living selling your shorts out there?

    Only if your shorts were once worn by Brittany Spears.

    For more on e-book sales, let me recommend you read a few posts by J. A. Konrath. I’ll let you decide. But please note that he’s selling NOVELS. And as always, you want to be realistic about this and make sure you see many people DEMONSTRATING it can be done. Do you think Konrath presents such evidence? You tell me.

    Postscript

    Read these two posts by Dean Wesley Smith where he busts some big myths about not being able to make a living writing:

    Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Only 300 Writers Make a Living

    Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Can’t Make Money in Fiction

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  • Generating Story 4: The Story Setup

    ByJohn Brown

    Okay, I lied. I was going to get into idea generation techniques, but decided to do one more short post on development objectives. Actually, I suppose this is a technique.

    In the last post, I said one of the main objectives of your initial story development is to have the story to come to life in your mind. I explained that the best method I’ve come across up to this point for making that happen was to focus on developing the 6 core parts. Then I explained in general what I’m shooting for when developing those parts at the outset of a new project.

    You can use a number of different types of documents to capture your thoughts on those 6 core parts. You might end up with a rough two-page sketch of the story. You might write brief character bios of some sort. You might bullet the general steps of the plot. Maybe you create a map. There are a lot of types of documents you can use to capture what you’ve developed. And often the creation of those documents not only captures what you’ve developed, but helps you develop the parts in the first place.

    I want to suggest a “document” that will help you capture and develop the essence of your story setup.

    This is ONE tool.  It is not THE tool. There are many ways to capture the essence of your story. There are many tools that can help you clarify your thinking. But I think this is a good one because it forces you to get right to the core of your story and clarify it in a compact manner.

    An idea that’s core and compact has great power because it focuses the mind.

    There are so many things to juggle when writing a story that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds.  I’ve found I become so much more productive when I know the core situation that’s driving the story.

    There are a lot of things that drive reader and author interest. There might be a thematic question, fascinating characters, genre stuff (chase scenes, romantic scenes, scare the soup out of you scenes), humor. One of the main things that rivet readers to the page are the hopes and fears they have for our characters.

    A reader’s hopes and fears are driven by presenting:

    • An event that causes
    • An interesting and likeable character to
    • Face a compelling and concrete problem—a threat/danger, lack/hardship, opportunity, or mystery.
    • The character decides he must try to solve the problem (which results in the character goal the story revolves around)
    • And struggles against significant opposition.

    That’s the core of the story setup. As David Howard puts it: “there is one basic dramatic circumstance: somebody wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it.”

    Of course, stories provide a lot of delights that require you to do more than define the person and the thing they want. But the setup is at the heart of a lot of what readers go to story for. Part of the initial development of a story should focus on helping you clarify this central dramatic situation.

    So here’s a tool to help you do that. I read about it years ago in Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, which was written in 1965. Swain calls it the “Starting Line-up.” I read about another version of the same thing more recently in Dan Decker’s Anatomy of a Screenplay written in 1998. He calls it the “Story Line.” The hugely published romance writer Leigh Michaels calls it a “Framework” in her On Writing Romance: how to craft a novel that sells. The agent Donald Maass calls it the “premise of a novel” in an interview published in Agents, Editors, and You by Michelle Howry.  Jim Butcher calls it a “Story Skeleton.” Let’s look at each of these variations.

    Swain’s “Starting Line-up”

    Swain asks you to include five elements:

    1. Focal character
    2. Situation
    3. Objective
    4. Opponent
    5. Threatening Disaster

     These are to be cast into two sentences.

    • Sentence 1 is a statement that establishes character, situation, and objective.
    • Sentence 2 is a question that includes the opponent and disaster and can always be answered in a clear yes or no

     Here are his examples.

     John Storm

    Sentence One

    • When humans suddenly begin to grow to twelve-foot height [situation],
    • John Storm [character]
    • tries to find out why [objective].

    Sentence Two

    • But can he defeat the traitors in high places [opposition]
    • who want to kill him [threatening disaster] in order to make the change appear to be the result of an extraterrestrial plot?

     Irene Boone

    Sentence One

    • Lonely, frustrated, and tired of living in a home where she’s treated as an unpaid servant [situation],
    • widowed Irene Boone [character]
    • wants to marry widower Frank Dawes [objective].

    Sentence Two

    • Will she lose this chance for happiness [threatening disaster]
    • because her selfish sanctimonious daughter, Connie [opponent] accuses her of immorality?

    Dale Boulton

    Sentence One

    • Sick of the conformity and hypocrisy that go with his highpaid job, and with a modest life income assured [situation],
    • Dale Boulton [character]
    • decides to retire ten years early, to go live on a shanty-boat and poke through crumbling river ghost-towns, in fulfillment of a boyhood dream [objective]. 

    Sentence Two

    • Can he make the break successfully, when his hostile wife, Sandra [opponent],
    • fights him all the way and, finally, threatens to have him declared incompetent [threatening disaster]? 

    Decker’s “Story Line”

    Decker requires three components:

    1. The main character described by an adjective
    2. The inciting event or decision that propels the character into the story
    3. The main character’s objective, stated in concrete terms

    You can add other components—other characters described by an adjective or other important events or decisions. He prefers you start with a “when.”

    Here’s an example.

    When a booksmart savings and loan bailout accountant takes over the business he is assigned, he discovers it is a bordello and teams up with the Madame using his business skills to fend off a hostile take over and save the business.

     Another.

    When a blood thirsty killer and his gang are coming to kill him, a strong-willed, decent cop must fight them over the objections of his pacifist bride who will leave him if he does.

     Another.

    When he is given a factory full of doomed Jewish workers, a greedy, opportunistic Nazi deceives his taskmasters to save them.

     Another.

    After a tornado carries her off to a strange land, a spunky teenaged girl must face a series of challenges to get home.

     More.

    When his blundering uncle throws their building and loan company into insolvency, a despairing small town banker with low self-esteem has to find a way to save the bank.

    Leigh Michael’s “Framework”

    Michaels suggests four elements in her framework, although she doesn’t stipulate a specific form.

     This definition summarizes the four crucial basics that make up a romance novel:

    1. A hero and heroine to fall in love
    2. A problem that creates conflict and tension between them and threatens to keep them apart
    3. A developing love that is so special it comes about only once in a lifetime
    4. A resolution in which the problem is solved and the couple is united

     She then lists a number of questions to help an author think about those four elements. The document that could capture this is a summary of the answers to those questions.

    Donald Maass’ “Story Premise”

    Donald Maass was asked what he looks for in a query or pitch. Like Michaels, he doesn’t specify a form, but does include some basic elements.

     I’ll tell you exactly what I need, and I can get this information after just a few questions.

    First of all: What type of novel are we dealing with here? Mystery? Mainstream? Young adult?

    Second thing: Where and when is it set? Contemporary? Historical? Magical place? A real place?

    Third: Who is the main character?

    And lastly: What is the basic problem that the character faces?

    Those things wrapped up together are the premise of a novel, and I know right away if it’s the kind of work I handle, if the idea sounds original, if the main character is sympathetic, and whether I care about the problem. That’s all i need. If all those things are a go, then I want to read the work. It’s as simple as that.

    Most authors might perceive this as additional pressure. It’s exactly the opposite. What is means is that their job is much, much easier than they think.

     If you think about a query, this is something that should be contained in a few short paragraphs.

    Jim Butcher’s “Story Skeleton”

    A reader drew my attention to a short essay Jim Butcher wrote on this subject. I thought it was excellent. Here’s Butcher:

    The story skeleton is a description of the main plot of your book, broken down into its simplest elements. . . The story skeleton (also called a story question) consists of a simple format:

    *WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS*, *YOUR PROTAGONIST* *PURSUES A GOAL*. But will he succeed when *ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION*?

    For instance, look at Storm Front. (Yes, I’ll use my own books as examples, because I’m just that way. 😉 Also, I’m more familiar with them than I am with almost any other writer.) Storm Front’s story question:

    ****************************
    When a series of grisly supernatural murders tears through Chicago, wizard Harry Dresden sets out to find the killer. But will he succeed when he finds himself pitted against a dark wizard, a Warden of the White Council, a vicious gang war, and the Chicago Police Department?
    ****************************

    See! It’s oh-so-simple! Almost to the point of looking ridiculous–and I have no doubt that some of the people reading this article will think that it *is* ridiculous. They’re wrong. 🙂 This is a fundamental description of the core conflict in your tale–and stories are all about conflict.

    Go read his whole essay.

    My Version: “The Story Setup”

    Did you notice any similarities in the examples above? Character, inciting event, problem, goal, opposition. Let’s go back to the core of story I listed.

    1. An event causes
    2. An interesting and likeable character to
    3. Face a compelling and concrete problem—a threat/danger, lack/hardship, opportunity, or mystery.
    4. The character decides he must solve the problem (which results in the character goal the story revolves around)
    5. And struggles against significant opposition.

     Written even more succinctly:

    1. Character
    2. Inciting event
    3. Problem
    4. Goal
    5. Opposition

    I like the idea from Swain and Butcher of projecting us forward using a question. I like the idea from Decker and Butcher to use “when” to state the inciting incident. I also like adding in the character adjectives. I like Michael’s and Maass’ focus on problem. But I also like flexibility. My version uses key elements of the others as guidelines, keeping it simple and core by limiting the statement to 90 words.

     Here’s one for The Incredibles.

    Bob is a frustrated retired superhero, living a boring life as an insurance claim processor. When he gets an offer to do illegal superhero work on the sly, he decides to take it and pursue a double life, even though he’s forced to lie to his wife about it. But his dream job employer is actually trying to settle and old score and kill him.  Will he lose his family when he’s drawn into a showdown with a super villain that has him outmatched?

    In many longer works there are often more than one story running. Sometimes the main character has an external conflict and an internal one. Or maybe a related subplot. Sometimes other characters have related B, C, D, and E story lines. In Curse of a Dark God, for example, I have at least eight story lines that I have to braid into each other. To keep them all straight, I found it very helpful to list out the five elements for each. The goal isn’t to make these into slick marketing tools: they’re to help me focus my efforts. However, I find that when they include all the elements, they have great power to pique my interest.

     Here’s one of the “inner” conflicts of Curse.

    Talen has escaped the clutches of the Mother, but something is growing inside of him. When he begins to hunger after the Fire and soul of those around him, he realizes he’s not all human. Will he be able to resist the growing and overpowering desires, or will he become the very thing he’s fighting against?

    Here’s one of the related “outer” conflicts.

    The Mother of Mokad wants Talen—to make him into a thrall or devour him. He escapes the first attempt to capture him, but will he be able to shake the Mother’s powerful hunter and his dreadmen now that he and his sister are on their own?

     Here’s a third story line in the book, the big external plot.

    Argoth is trying to build up an army of sleth that can free mankind. But the Mother of Mokad sends her Guardian to exterminate every last one of them. Will Argoth be able to defeat Mokad’s vastly superior army, especially when the Guardian has infiltrated his ranks?

     But Argoth has another plot line for the reader to worry about.

    Argoth damaged his son. Nettle’s condition is growing worse. A foreign Divine offers to heal Nettle in exchange for Argoth’s allegiance. Will Argoth betray those around him and save Nettle? Or will he let his son die and lose him to the perils in the world of the dead?

    Here’s one of Sugar’s.

    When Sugar sneaks behind enemy lines to retrieve some items her mother left for her, she’s given the opportunity to learn a powerful lore and use it to scout for Argoth’s army in the world of the dead. But each time she uses it, she comes closer and closer to death herself. Will she be able to survive as she’s asked to serve in more and more dangerous situations?

    Here’s her inner conflict. I wanted to develop a moment of dilemma for her just as I did Argoth.

    Sugar wants to keep her brother Legs safe. But as Mokad’s army arrives, it becomes apparent Argoth doesn’t have a chance. She and her brother might not survive. Sugar’s been learning the lore with a handsome and battle-hardy loremaster who saves lore users who have become true sleth. When he asks her to sail with him and his crew before it’s too late, Sugar has to decide if she will flee and abandon her friends or stay and fight and risk losing everything in this world and the next.

    Now you see why it’s virtually impossible to write such a book with so many story lines in the normal 100,000 words. And why I question my sanity in trying to write it.

    Anyway, there’s much more to writing a fascinating and compelling story than capturing a story setup, but I’ve found that working on stating the simple core of the story clarifies many things for me and makes me much more productive. I developed a short statement of all my story setups early on in the writing.

    There are a number of ways to capture the story setup. Let me suggest you give one a try. And if you aren’t to the point where you have enough material to capture a story setup yet, that’s fine. That’s what development is for.

    One last note. If you want to read an expanded description of how one writer develops story ideas, read Write Away by New York Times Bestselling author Elizabeth George. I loved the book.

    Bonus: Miss Snark Happy Hooker Examples

    Miss Snark was the pseudonym of an agent who I believe was Janet Reid of the JetReid Literary Agency.  When she was incognito, Snark had a blog. On her blog she’d often invite people to submit their story statements used in queries to hook editors and agents to ask for more.  These entries were called “Happy Hookers.”  Snark would rate them on her crap-o-meter, sometimes giving comments and suggestions.  Let me suggest you read 50 or 100 of those hooks.

    As you’re reading, look at Mrs. Snark’s comments. But more importantly, note the hooks that excite you and the ones that don’t. Because, frankly, Snark is just one person with one person’s tastes. In this exercise, you’re not trying to figure out what she likes. You’re trying to see what story elements work for you. So don’t be dissuaded by her tastes. Identify the hooks that interest you and the ones that don’t. Ask yourself where they were unclear, unbelievable, or boring. After you’ve done a few, you’ll start to see story patterns and ways to capture your own story setup that will be useful to you. 

    For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas

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  • Indie Thoughts: Lessons from Marie Force

    ByJohn Brown

    Some promo tips from mega-seller Marie Force.

    I just changed the cover of a book (Maid for Love, book 1 in my McCarthys of Gansett Island Series) that’s been on sale for three years and free for two as a loss leader for a series that has 11.5 books (as of today–release day for book 11). I changed the cover (of books 2 and 3 as well) just ahead of a BookBub ad for Maid for Love. This book has been on BookBub quite a few times since it’s been free and lately, I could expect about 25,000 or so downloads across the platforms after a BookBub ad. This time, the number was closer to 70,000 downloads with a huge conversion to books 2 and beyond. Another thing we did before the BookBub ad was drop the prices on books 2-3 from $4.99 to $2.99 and books 4-6 from $4.99 to $3.99, leaving the front list at $4.99. I realized with 11 books and a novella in the series, it would cost a new reader more than $50 to buy the full series, thus the price break on the earlier books. Both the new cover for Maid for Love and the new pricing for books 2-6 yielded very impressive results. The series has sold more than 1.3 million ebooks since it debuted in 2011 and the last three have been top 10 NYT bestsellers. I was hoping to gain many more new readers from these strategies, and so far, it seems to be working just as I’d hoped it would. I love being able to try these things as an indie author!

    Another poster congratulated her and said he’d gone and purchased the book. It was free; why not give it a shot?

    Thanks, Bill. Hope you enjoy Maid for Love, and thanks for the congrats. The 1.3 million sales is especially thrilling when you consider that Maid for Love was rejected all over the place. Except by the readers. 🙂

    Find more at The Passive Voice.

    What’s Marie using? A series with a number of titles in it, competitive pricing, loss-leader sampling that sometimes includes a free book, and BookBub.

    More about Marie and her books on her website.

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