Writing | CW Hawes

The Fourth Wall, aka Secondary Belief

Anyone familiar with drama knows about the Fourth Wall. It’s that invisible wall that separates the world of the play from the world of the audience. The Fourth Wall prevents the characters from knowing the audience exists, while letting the audience observe the world of the characters in the play.

In literature, this is known as Secondary Belief. The world of the story is separate from the world of the reader. And as long as the world of the story is believable — even though perhaps very different from the world of the reader — the reader will accept it and be entertained.

Magic acts, for example, work on this principle. The audience knows the woman is not cut in half, but accepts what it sees as real in order to be entertained.

In order for the Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief, to work two things must happen:

- The writer must make the fictional world believable
- The audience/reader must accept the fictional world as believable.

The Burden of the Writer

How does the writer make the fictional world believable? That is the burden of the storyteller — to create a consistent world that, because of its consistency, is believable.

The operative word here is consistent.

For example, we know there are no such things as orcs, or hobbits, or elves, or a place called Middle Earth. However, JRR Tolkien created his world so that it was consistent and therefore appears real and believable to us. And we are thus entertained by the story.

The Burden of the Audience

The audience/reader knows when he or she reads a novel, or watches a movie, that the story or movie is fiction. It is not true. That is called Primary Belief.

However, if the world comes across as realistic and consistent, and therefore believable, the audience/reader will choose to believe what is going on as though it is true. That is Secondary Belief.

If the writer fails to make the story completely believable, or consistent, the audience can choose to suspend disbelief in order to continue to be entertained.

However, once the audience can no longer suspend disbelief, the writer has completely failed.

The Storyteller’s Art

A good storyteller draws you in. Sometimes without you even fully knowing it.

Saki, in “Sredni Vashtar”, starts with a sickly boy, Conradin. Saki paints us a picture of Conradin that we find believable. Perhaps because the boy is like us. We learn of Conradin’s world and of his over protective cousin, who is also his guardian. And slowly, slowly we find ourselves on Conradin’s side in his struggle with his cousin — because it is also our struggle against authority. We believe because something similar has happened to us. The author has hooked us without our even knowing it.

But he couldn’t have done that if the world of the story wasn’t consistent and therefore believable.

A poor storyteller may hit all the plot points on the head and may pack the story with action on every page, but if the tale isn’t consistent within what we understand to be believable — we will feel the story to be artificial and not ring true. And sadly forgettable.

Some time ago, I started reading a novel where the main character was bonded with some sort of sentient cat and, even though they couldn’t stand each other, they couldn’t separate because of their bond. That was difficult to believe, but I accepted it and continued reading.

But when the cat kills several people and the townsfolk just stand around and look at the dead bodies, don’t call the authorities, and don’t do anything against the cat and main character, who are outsiders, the writer lost me. Where was the normal human reaction to murder? I found it very difficult to believe not a single one of the witnesses raised any manner of alarm.

That disbelief, coupled with wooden storytelling, made me put the book aside.

The key to telling a good story is consistency in the fictional world. There’s a reason for the old saying that fiction must be believable, whereas real life doesn’t.

We can accept the inconsistencies in real life, even though they might not make sense, because that is how real life is. But we are intolerant of those same inconsistencies when it comes to fiction. The fictional world must hang together. It must be reasonable. That is just how we are.

The advantage of traditional publishing is that the editor at the publishing house will most likely reject any manuscript that is unbelievable. We the reader are spared, for the most part, lousy stories. That isn’t always the case, but mostly.

Indie authors have no such gatekeeper — other than their readers. Even if the author uses an editor, there is nothing to make the writer incorporate the editor’s suggestions.

The biggest failing I find among a significant number of indie authors is that their storylines, characters, and the world of the story lack consistency. They simply aren’t believable. Sometimes I can suspend disbelief, but most of the time the books are just too bad to do so.

Therefore my advice to would-be authors is to make sure your characters are consistent with themselves, that there are no gaping holes in your fictional world (in other words, that your world is consistent), and that your storyline flows naturally and doesn’t appear to have been written by the numbers.

We readers want to believe. You writers, help us to believe by being consistent.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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People You Know

Good fiction is people. And people are people you know. —Theodore Sturgeon

A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention, the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals known to the world or to the author, but of created personages impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking, the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must, however, be story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort.

—Anthony Trollope, Autobiography, chapter 7

It seems to me, everything a writer needs to know about writing good characters, life-like characters, is in these two quotes. For they are saying the same thing: Fiction is all about people.

Trollope states and Sturgeon implies, the plot of a story is merely the carrier. It is, in fact, the least important part of the book. Without living, breathing characters, the plot is merely a bunch of sticks.

People turn the plot into a story; and people make the story come alive.

Events in our own lives happen because people set them in motion. All fiction is every day, ordinary life presented at large. No matter the genre. And then, just like our own lives, something comes along and turns the world upside down.

So how do we create characters readers will love? According to Sturgeon, our characters are people we know. That is, they are drawn from real life. Or as Trollope wrote, “created personages impregnated with traits of character which are known.”

Justinia Wright is a created personage. And while a tad over the top (not unlike Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe), she exhibits all the personality traits and quirks of people we all know.

Tina smokes and drinks. She is emotionally reserved, yet very much wants love. She’s secretive and manipulative, yet devoted to her brother, Harry, and his wife, Bea.

I simply took traits from people I know, and put them together to create a unique person.

Bill Arthur, the narrator and hero of The Rocheport Saga, was created the same way. He’s a regular Joe. He worked as a low-level bureaucrat before That Day brought the world as we knew it to an end. His interests are what enable him to survive: guns and target shooting, and alternative and old technology.

He was also a low-level prepper before the catastrophe. He knew the importance of being prepared for any sort of emergency.

His knowledge is what sets him apart, yet everything about him I drew from people I know. I just put all of the varied traits into one person.

Pierce Mostyn, the monster hunting agent of the OUP (Office of Unidentified Phenomena), exemplifies G-man gravitas. Cool, calm, distant, reserved. Yet, he loves two women. He yearns for a normal life. Enjoys a good cup of coffee. And loves his antique car. Again, all things I mined from real people. And in Mostyn’s case, even a fictional one: Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle of the TV series Foyle’s War.

To create a character, simply think about all the people you know. Pick a trait from one, a different trait from another, and so on, until you have a rough sketch of your character.

It’s best to leave your character in an unfinished state, so he or she has room to grow in your book and series — room to develop his or her own personality.

I’m constantly surprised by all the little things I learn about my characters — even the minor ones — as the series develops.

Now I know some of you have a need to know everything about the fictional world you’ve created. You want to know everything about the people you’ve put in that world. I urge you to resist that temptation.

Fill in the border of the puzzle, but leave the middle empty. As each story and book is written, your characters and their world will grow. Readers will grow right along with them. It is how things work in real life. We don’t know everything about a person when we first meet him or her. We learn as the relationship develops.

You see, my characters are real people to me. With each book and story the relationship between us deepens as trust grows and we learn more about each other.

I think writers make a mistake when they view their characters as simply elements of a story. If your characters aren’t real people to you, the writer, they will never be real people to the reader.

Yes, I know that comes across as somewhat mystical, or even a bit wacky. But, the one thing that I’ve gathered from reviews and comments about my books is that readers love the characters.

If your characters are real to you, they’ll be real to your readers.

And the process starts by assembling traits from people you know, putting them together, and then breathing life into them.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy creating!

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Good Fiction Is People

Fiction is all about people. At least good fiction is. That’s why good fiction stays with us. Why it’s memorable.

Theodore Sturgeon once said, “Good fiction is people. And people are people you know.” Which is probably the point of the old writing adage: write what you know.

It’s all fine and dandy for the writer to show off his or her knowledge about cars, or cooking, or stamp collecting, or orchids — but if those things don’t touch people, so what?

A few months ago, I was watching Colombo. It was a trip down memory lane, as I watched the show when it first appeared on TV.

The lieutenant is a wonderfully drawn character, and certainly went a long way to contribute to the show’s popularity. What I find of even more interest, is that Colombo knows people. He knows what makes them tick. What is likely and unlikely behavior. He’s a shrink masquerading as a police officer in a rumpled raincoat.

Columbo is all about people: their greed, their habits. And how it is that in the end, who they are is what ultimately trips up their attempts to get away with murder.

Good fiction is about people, because without people there is no story. How can a story exist without people? Sure, we can substitute animals for people, but that’s just a camouflage. The story is still about people, and still tells us something about the human condition.

It is as Ray Bradbury noted: create your characters (the people), let them do their thing — and there is the story.

There are writers who get hung up on plot. They have to detail each little action in the story. Too often, what gets lost along the way are the people in the story. And the reader knows it. The characters are flat, lifeless paper dolls.

Now some readers don’t care. They devour the story and move on to the next one. Those readers are kind of like junkies just looking for a reading fix.

Other writers get hung up on world building. They have to know every little detail about the world their story is set in before they can even write a word. I think what these writers are forgetting is that it isn’t the world, it’s the people in the world that make the story memorable.

And while there are readers who are not very discriminating in what they demand from the writer, I believe most readers want a quality reading experience. They want to read about people like themselves, or about people they would like to become, doing wonderful and amazing things. They want to be moved, to live vicariously.

Tarzan is memorable because he personifies the best in us and is ultimately someone who we’d like to be.

I believe Jack Reacher is popular because he beats up bullies. And who of us hasn’t been bullied? We get our vicarious revenge through Reacher’s exploits.

Rex Stout gave us the sedentary eccentric genius, Nero Wolfe, and the wisecracking man of action, Archie Goodwin. I find myself drawn to both of them, but particularly to Wolfe. Why? Because I would like to be the master of that brownstone. Good food, good books, the big globe, beautiful orchids. I’d just sub tea for the beer.

I can’t recall a single story that I remember solely because of the plot. Why? Because the plot is usually meaningless unless it’s peopled with memorable people. The plot is just a string of events, which generally have no meaning apart from the people in the story.

I do, though, remember many stories because of the characters. Bilbo Baggins. Hercule Poirot. Sherlock Holmes. Carnacki. Jules de Grandin. Rona Dean (from RH Hale’s Church Mouse). Tony Price and Chris Allard (from Richard Schwindt’s two mystery series). Tatsuya (from Crispian Thurlborn’s 01134). Roland Sand, the Quiet Assassin (from Caleb Pirtle III’s Lonely Night to Die). And more. So many more.

Fiction is all about people. Fiction is us.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Fiction Formula Roadmap

There are many ways to write a novel or a short story. And most of those methods don’t work for most writers. In other words, writers are unique and will find their way to write their stories.

In the end, the method doesn’t much matter as long as the writer produces a good story.

Nevertheless, some writers struggle with how to write fiction. So, for what it’s worth, here is my method.

Before I begin, I want to give credit where it’s due. My writing method has been heavily influenced by Lester Dent’s Fiction Formula and James Scott Bell’s “Look in the Mirror” Moment.

Let me explain each of these influences.

Lester Dent’s Fiction Formula

Lester Dent was a pulp-fiction writer and the creator of Doc Savage. He once wrote that he’d never failed to sell a story that followed his fiction formula, which is pretty simple. In fact, it’s so simple it’s been ripped off by the unscrupulous and sold to wannabe writers for big bucks. Which is quite sad, as the formula is all over the internet for free.

Karen Woodward has an in-depth series on it on her blog.

The formula begins with the writer making four decisions:

1. A different murder method for the villain to use
2. A different thing for the villain to be seeking
3. A different locale
4. A menace which is to hang like a cloud over the hero

Now you don’t need all 4 different things. One is sufficient — but the more, the merrier, as they say. The point being to come up with something that hasn’t been done to death.

Just remember: make it different, but not too bizarre. Fiction has to be believable. Real life doesn’t.

Now divide your story into four quarters. Dent applied his formula to 6000 word short stories. However, I’ve found it works for any length of fiction.

In Part 1,

- You introduce all the characters
- The hero accepts the case, the challenge, whatever
- Near the end of part one, the hero gets into physical conflict
- Throw a twist into the story at the end

In Part 2,

- Pile more grief onto the hero
- Have the hero struggle
- Put in another physical conflict
- And another twist to the story

The menace should be growing like a fast-moving storm front.

In Part 3,

- Pile more grief onto the hero
- But now the hero begins to make progress towards solving the problem
- Have another physical conflict
- Add a surprise twist that makes things look bad for the hero

In Part 4,

- More grief is piled onto the hero
- Things are beginning to look impossible for the hero
- However, the hero by his own brains, skill, and brawn is able to get out of the difficulties
- The hero wraps up all the problems
- Try to have one final twist to the story

As you can see, the writer is to pile all kinds of trouble onto the hero and in the end the hero solves all the problems by himself.

James Scott Bell’s “Look in the Mirror” Moment

Bell made a study of movies and novels. What he found was that in the middle of the story there was a moment that pulled together the entire tale. He calls that moment the “Look in the Mirror” moment.

It is the point in the story where the main character, our hero, looks at himself and asks what kind of a person he is (character-driven story) or can he turn the odds to his favor and overcome the seemingly overwhelming odds against him (plot-driven story)?

Of course, both aspects may be involved. The point, though, is that the character — at the midpoint — is so low he needs to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with himself in order to go on.

Putting Them Together

Dent and Bell have been influential in how I approach writing a story. They’ve taken the “mystery” out of putting a story together.

I start with Dent’s Formula. It is my working guide. Now, being a pantser, I write very little if anything down. Like H. Bedford-Jones, the King of the Pulps, I just start writing. But in the back of my mind is Dent’s Formula.

Between Acts II and III of the four act drama, I put the Look In The Mirror Moment.

I beat up the main character in Acts I and II, slowly bring him back in Act III, with the final battle and triumph taking place in Act IV.

Following Dent and Bell has made my writing life easy-peasy.

And perhaps they’ll simplify storytelling for you, too. And I didn’t charge you one red cent for this advice. 🙂

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading and writing!

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What to Write?

Most writers have a story to tell and tell it. And in the opinion of Anthony Trollope, a writer should never do otherwise.

There are, however, indie authors who ask their readers what they should write. Personally, I’ve never seen much sense in that. It’s akin to a comedian asking his audience what jokes he should tell.

So how does a writer decide what to write? I think most of us have all manner of stories inside our heads just waiting to be told. That being said, how the story gets told is what differentiates one author from another.

Caleb Pirtle III is writing a superb historical novel series called The Boom Town Saga. It’s the story of con artist Doc Bannister, who falls in love with Eudora, a woman with a past as mysterious as his own. The books are part historical drama, part love story, part mystery — and all fabulous.

Caleb’s books are set in 1930s East Texas. But what if we took that same story and set it on a planet in the Delta Omicron system, a backwater in the crumbling Muratorian Inter-Planetary Republic?

Or what if we changed the oil that Doc Bannister is supposedly trying to find for Magic — something everyone wants and no one has in an alternate universe version of East Texas? Now, that historical novel becomes urban fantasy.

We could take Caleb’s con man, put him in 21st century Dallas, selling bogus bonds that suddenly are worth something, and play up the romance aspect in order to get a romance novel.

Same story + different setting = different story

Sometimes, we do find ourselves in the situation where we have to tell a story. Maybe we’ve been asked to contribute to an anthology in a genre that we normally don’t write. The problem is easily solved.

All we have to do is take an old story and recycle it. James Scott Bell, in his book Write Your Novel From The Middle, suggests that very approach when one has run out of ideas and is looking for one. And it does work.

The ideas for what to write are all around us. No writer worth his salt need ask anyone for ideas. But if he runs short, he can always take that old book from 100 years ago, that no one reads anymore, and turn it into gold. How many times, I wonder, have Shakespeare’s plays been retold?

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading (those old forgotten books)!

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The Business of Being Indie — Part 3

Some Things I’ve Learned

I published my first 4 books in November 2014 and followed up with 2 more in December 2014.

Quite honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. And I shamefacedly admit that I believed in the magic wand. That just by putting my books up on Amazon I would make piles of money, and in a couple years could buy my Rolls-Royce.

Then reality hit a couple, three months later when the sales fell off to nothing.

The School Of Hard Knocks taught me once again there isn’t a magic wand. TANSTAAFL. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. For a moment there, I forgot and believed in free lunches.

But not anymore. Reality is a Harsh Mistress, to paraphrase Heinlein.

Today I’m sharing with you some things I’ve learned over the years. I’m naturally skeptical. But I, too, have been suckered by those promising me that their snake oil works where all the others have failed.

So here is a list, in no particular order, of things I’ve learned.

1. The Self-Publishing world of today is very much like the pulp fiction magazine world of yesteryear. Study the writers and publishers from back then, apply what you learn, and the study will pay dividends. There is nothing new under the sun.

2. Fiction readers, for the most part, want entertainment. Scare them. Make them cry. Make them feel good. Give them an exciting adventure. If you can do that, you’ll have an audience.

3. Your story doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough. The vast majority of readers aren’t looking for The Great American Novel, they merely want to be entertained. They just want to have fun.

4. If you want fast money from your pen or keyboard, write non-fiction. Something in the self-help area. Non-fiction is the second largest book market after romance.

5. If you want fast money writing fiction, write only in the most popular genres. Right now these are romance, thrillers, and urban fantasy.

6. Start your mailing list before you publish your first book.

7. Pick one or two social media platforms and build a following before you publish your first book. And that goes for setting up your website, too.

8. Your book cover is advertising copy. (And foolish me thought it was about the book!) It must tell the potential reader what genre your book is in. So don’t be original. Be a copycat.

9. Your book’s blurb is advertising copy. Don’t tell the potential reader what the book is about. Tell them how they’ll feel reading it.

10. The one indie rule for success that has not changed is write lots (and fast), and publish often.

11. Publish a novel, or at the very least a story or novella, at least every three months. More frequently is better.

12. Write in series. Standalones, with rare exception, don’t work well in self-publishing. There are lots of ways to structure a series. Here are four:

1. 1. The multi-volume novel. Think trilogy. Think Lord of the Rings. Think the Kurtherian Gambit. One main story arc stretched over 3 or more novels.
  2. The Series Character. Think Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. Or Lazarus Long and Jules de Grandin. Or Columbo and Star Trek on TV. Each episode is a standalone, but they all tie together.
  3. The Same World/Universe. Standalones work better if they are all set in a single world, and perhaps have recurring characters show up.Trollope’s Barchester series started this approach. Lindsay Buroker (writing as Ruby Lionsdrake) used it for her SF Romance novels. And there are others.
  4. The idea or object series. This was a favorite of H. Bedford-Jones. He’d write standalone stories and what tied them together was a theme or an object that appeared in each story. One series chronicled the fictional history of a famous emerald. Another the history of ships. And another famous heroes.

13. Don’t waste money on an editor. They are after all only human. I’ve seen too many professionally edited books rife with errors. Today’s AI can proofread and line edit with ruthless efficiency. I’ve become a convert after using ProWritingAid.

14. And if you are having trouble with the overall concept of your book, have a couple fans read it over and tell you what doesn’t work. After all, they buy your books. An editor probably doesn’t.

15. Beware the “expert”. Why? Because most aren’t. They follow the very old saying: read three books on any subject and you are an expert. Which means you might as well read those 3 books yourself. After all, the books are probably cheaper than the course the “expert” is selling.

Fifteen things I’ve learned. And I’m sure lots more learning is on the way.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time — happy reading and writing!

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Who’s Telling Your Story?

We writers get all wrapped up in point of view, but often forget the more important part of narration: the narrator himself.

The Narrator

Literature is the written form of storytelling, and as such needs a storyteller — or in literary speak, a narrator.

Who is the person who is telling the reader your story? Point of view is only part of the picture.

It seems to me, writers mostly unconsciously decide who the narrator is while focusing on point of view and voice.

Instead the writer should first ask himself, or herself, the question: who is telling this story? The answer to that question will help to decide voice and point of view.

The Rocheport Saga

In my post-apocalyptic series, The Rocheport Saga, the narrator is one of the characters in the story: Bill Arthur. He records in his diary what he thinks is important for us, the reader, to know.

At the outset of writing this series, I made the decision that this would be the story of a man and that he would tell his story himself. Right from the beginning I made the decision as to who the narrator was for my series. After that, I decided on point of view and voice.

The Justinia Wright Mysteries

The Justinia Wright Mysteries are also told by one of the characters: Harry Wright.

Much like John Watson and Archie Goodwin, Harry tells us the story from what he sees, hears, and discovers.

However, he can’t tell us what his sister Tina (Justinia) doesn’t tell him.

Which is a handy way mystery writers can muddle the clues for the reader and make the guessing game a bit more difficult. Because of this, I decided from the outset that the narrator of these mysteries would be the detective’s Watson.

Internal Narrator and the Author

In both of the above series, the narrator tells the story in the first person. They are telling us, the reader, the story directly.

However, that doesn’t of necessity mean the author and the narrator are the same person.

In The Rocheport Saga, Bill Arthur is largely my alter ego. However, in the Justinia Wright Mysteries, I, the author, am not Harry Wright. Who I am is sometimes seen in Harry, and sometimes in Tina.

The External Narrator

When I set about writing the Pierce Mostyn series, I decided the narrator would be more or less outside the narrative, yet tell the story largely from Mostyn’s perspective.

By making the narrator external to the narrative, I feel it imparts some distance between the reader and the story — and hopefully that distance suffuses an element of the mysterious to the tales.

Most writers, it seems, pick an anonymous narrator — whether by design or by default. Others, like Melville, in Moby Dick, tell you upfront who the narrator is. Ishmael is an internal narrator, who is present in the story, but whose real function is to tell us about Captain Ahab and his obsession. In doing so, Melville made the choice between an unreliable narrator, Ahab, vis-a-vis the much more reliable observer, Ishmael.

Summary

By first deciding who is narrating this story and then deciding the point of view, you, the writer, exercise greater control over your narrative and can thereby, hopefully, tell a better story.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading — and writing!

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To Build a World

Worldbuilding, while often thought of as something only fantasy and science fiction writers need to do, is actually something all authors engage in.

The New York of Nero Wolfe isn’t exactly the New York that actually exists. It is a carefully constructed version that suits the storytelling of Rex Stout.

My Justinia Wright series is set in Minneapolis. But it is not quite the same Minneapolis that currently exists. The Minneapolis of Justinia Wright is a fictionalized version that suits the needs of the story.

The Pierce Mostyn series, although set in the present day, is a fictionalized version of today. The world building is much more subtle, than say Neverland, or Oz, or Barsoom, or Pellucidar, or any of the Star Trek worlds, but it is still worldbuilding.

This is because fiction is, well, to be honest, a lie. Stories are not reality. They’re entertainment. And to be successful entertainment they need to be lifelike, but not real life.

Take “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The setting is small-town America of the 1940s (the story was published in 1948). But it is no small town that actually existed then. What small town annually stoned to death one of its citizens? Jackson created a world that was mostly normal, save for that little part that wasn’t. Superbly horrific worldbuilding.

For Pierce Mostyn, while there is much that is “normal”, there is much that is not. There is much that is made up or borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Kathy Edens, in World-Building 101: How to construct an unforgettable universe for your fantasy or sci-fi story (published by ProWritingAid), gives us three rules of worldbuilding:

1. 1. Creating a new world goes way beyond mere setting
  2. Use other author’s worlds to inspire your own
  3. Don’t make new world your story’s focus

In Pierce Mostyn, the setting is the contemporary world. However, it doesn’t stop there. Monsters exist. Weapons and devices exist in Mostyn’s world that don’t exist in ours. Geography is manipulated to suit the needs of the story. Pierce Mostyn’s world is one where monsters and terrifying aliens are alive and bent on our destruction, unbeknownst to the population at large.

To build Pierce Mostyn’s world, I borrowed from The X-Files and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos — and then added stuff from my imagination. The world may look a lot like our own, but it is as fantastical as Oz.

And while Mostyn and his team hunt monsters to save us from annihilation or enslavement, the stories ultimately deal with people and the larger issues of life. Cthulhu is as important as our reaction to him.

There are now 7 books in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, with an 8th in the works, and a 9th on the drawing board.

I hope you enjoy reading about Mostyn and his world as much as I enjoy writing about them.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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I’m Editing

I’ve gotten Van Dyne’s Zuvembies back from the beta readers, and made corrections based on their suggestions. Now I am beginning the final editing process.

Rather than pay $450 or more for a professional (whatever that means) editor, I bought ProWritingAid for a lifetime fee of $300. I made the purchase to up my game, so to speak.

We writers fall into habits. And those habits are what often result in sloppy writing.

Using the best editing software I can buy, I get all of the services a professional editor can provide at a tiny fraction of the cost. Technology is a sound business investment, because any businessman will tell you that the single most expensive part of doing business is personnel.

That is why people are constantly being replaced by technology. That is why raising the minimum wage is a fallacy: those workers, who would benefit, will be replaced by machines — because in the long run machines are cheaper.

Today, even though I buy a First Class airline ticket, I no longer get First Class service and have to check-in my own luggage. Why? It’s because the airline can then employ less personnel.

So, rather than pay a human editor to edit each book I write, I paid a one time fee — and I get all the same advice and recommendations. And probably more, because the human eye is fallible. The machine is not.

I have a list of editors that I will never use because the books they supposedly edited are rife with errors. Humans are fallible.

I can read a text three or four times. Yet when I have the computer read it to me, I still find errors. The human brain will try to make sense of the sentence, and so I read things that aren’t there. On the other hand, the computer reads exactly what’s there. It misses nothing.

ProWritingAid is a very useful tool. Is it the best? I don’t know. Several authors I know like it and recommended it. I tried the software, saw the potential to improve my books, and bought it. And that’s a simple unsolicited observation.

Because May was a personally tumultuous month, I’m behind on my publishing schedule. But I’m catching up. Van Dyne’s Zuvembies will come out next month and after that I have a Justinia Wright novel and novelette to follow.

Now it is back to editing for me.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy editing!

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Why the Novella?

Novels are long works of fiction. How long depends on who you ask. Today, novels tend to be quite long on average. After all, publishers need to make a buck. As a reader, though, I find them bloated, ungainly, and filled with lots of boring stuff I usually skip over. Elmore Leonard’s rule about not putting in your novel the stuff readers skip over is routinely ignored in today’s publishing world.

However, that was not always the case. There was a time when novels topped out at 60,000-70,000 words. And most where in the 40,000 word range. For me, as a reader, that’s the length I like. Anything longer has to be super doggone good or I stop reading. Life is too short for boring.

I love short stories. They’re concise and provide bite size entertainment. Some of the most powerful pieces of fiction I’ve read are short stories. Such gems as “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” by Conrad Aiken; “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki; “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway; “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe; and “The Spotted Dog” by Anthony Trollope, to name a few.

Nothing can beat the impact of a well-written short story.

On the other hand, within the last couple years I’ve come to very much appreciate those middle length forms: the novelette, and the novella.

Longer than a short story, the novelette and novella allow for more expensive treatment of the story, deeper treatment of the characters. And I find novelettes and novellas give me a more satisfying read than novels because there is no padding, no boring parts, no filler material to satisfy a publisher’s or editor’s length requirements.

As a writer, I find the novelette, running roughly between 7,000 and 20,000 words, and the novella, at 20,000 to 50,000 words, give me enough space to tell the story, flesh out the characters, and omit the parts I as a reader would probably skip over.

Certain genres, such as horror and perhaps mystery, are at their best in the novella and novelette length.

When reading a horror novel, too often I find the author incapable of maintaining the atmosphere and the suspense. The result is a roller coaster of increasing and decreasing tension, rather than slowly building suspense, tension, and terror which culminate in the climax of the story.

Mystery novels often have unnecessary filler to pad out the length. The sleuth runs here, runs there, often getting nowhere. He or she spends time navel gazing, or baking, or knitting, or we might be treated to an extended tourist guide view of the locale.

In my own writing, I’ve been gradually moving from the novel to the novella and novelette. The Justinia Wright novels are the last hold outs. Although they are relatively short novels for mysteries. They average between 49,000 and 51,000 words, with the longest being 54,000.

Nevertheless, in the future I see more novelette and novella length Justinia Wright mysteries, such as Vampire House, Genome, the novelettes comprising Trio in Death-Sharp Minor, and the forthcoming The Nine Deadly Dolls.

From the beginning, the Pierce Mostyn series has been in novella length and I have no plans to change. The novella gives me plenty of space to tell the story with satisfying pacing, tension, and atmosphere; and to give the reader good character development.

Given how busy our lives are these days, it seems to me fiction that can provide a satisfying virtual experience in one sitting, say, on the bus or train commuting to work, or listening in the car during the daily commute, or in the evening after work, or on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, such a read would be ideal. A visit to another world taking just about an hour, perhaps two. Sounds perfect to me.

The novella and the novelette: not too big and not too small. They are just right.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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