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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Writing Fast: To Go Where Few Of Today’s Writers Have Gone Before

If you are a writer, I’m going to save you at least a buck today. A buck might not be much, but save enough of them and you can retire.

The other day I ran across a podcast interviewing Rachel Aaron, “Miss 10K Words A Day”. After reading through the transcript of the interview I decided to check out her blog. I found the original post from 2011 in which she outlined her system for writing 10,000 words a day. After reading it, I came away singularly unimpressed. There was nothing new there. Which is so often the case with writing advice. As the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

Now my intention is not to put down Ms Aaron. After all she’s radically increased her word count per day — and tossed onto the rubbish heap the myth that fast writing is bad writing. And I say, Good for her! But what’s apparent to me is that she’s young and has little knowledge of the fact high word counts for writers used to be very much the norm. They had to be. Those writers of the pulp era wrote for a living. Every word they wrote was money in their pocket. No words on the page, no money. It was that simple.

Ms Aaron also writes for a living and she too has discovered fast writing is one of the keys to making a livable wage from the writing of fiction. But fast writing is nothing new, although I get the impression she seems to think so.

Nevertheless, she’s come up with a system, a good system by the way, and is willing to sell it to you for 99¢. Which is very generous on her part. Some writing gurus charge a whole lot more for a whole lot less.

But everything she has to say can be gotten for FREE on the Internet. Starting with her own blog post in 2011.

Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock, that prodigious writer of science fiction and fantasy, used to write novels in three days. Karen Woodward outlines how he did it in a blog post from 2014. And you can find another article at wetasphalt.com.

The Guardian, in 2010, presented Moorcock’s “Ten Rules For Writers”. Wonderful advice from a master.

The articles above are all free, just click on the links, and if you follow the advice you will increase your daily word count substantially.

Lester Dent

But Moorcock didn’t come up with his method all by himself. He got it from Lester Dent, a pulp era writer with a fantastic output. Dent was the creator of Doc Savage. If you’ve never read Doc Savage, you are missing out on a classic.

Karen Woodward has a fabulous series of blog posts on Lester Dent’s method of fast writing. The first one is “Lester Dent’s Short Story Master Formula”. The links to the other four articles are at the bottom of the initial post. And note, the formula works equally well for novels. A shorter version of Dent’s formula can be found at Dirty 30s! on paper-dragon.com. And once again, this information is all free!

Anthony Trollope

But fast writing didn’t originate during the pulp fiction era either. It began much earlier. Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870) made frequent use of assistants and collaborators to increase his production. Which is, of course, a time honored method of doing so. James Patterson does it today.

One of my favorite authors, Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882), in a writing career that spanned 37 years, produced 35 standalone novels, two 6-novel series, 42 short stories, 2 plays, 18 works of non-fiction, and 3 articles, as well as keeping up a voluminous correspondence. Without the help of assistants or collaborators. How did he do it? Quite simple, really.

For most of his writing career, Trollope worked a full-time job at the post office. Which meant he had to make the most of his time. He’d get up 2 1/2 hours before he had to leave for his day job in order to have time to write. The first half-hour he reviewed what he wrote the previous day. For the next two hours, he wrote.

He wrote by the clock. Literally. There was a clock on his desk. He wrote, by hand, with a dip pen, 250 words every 15 minutes. Or 2000 words in those two hours. He did that every day.

If during the two hours he completed the novel he was working on, he took out a fresh sheet of paper and began the next one. What that tells me is he had the story idea already in his head or written down somewhere. The key is he didn’t have to think about it. It was already there.

Trollope also kept a journal in which he recorded his daily word count. The purpose was to catch himself if he started slacking off.

Let’s summarize Trollope’s method:

  1. Have the storyline in your head, at the very least. Jot a few notes, if you need to. Moorcock and Dent did the same thing by writing in fictional universes they’d already created in detail. They didn’t have to figure out stuff on the fly.
  2. Set aside a regular time and place to write EVERY DAY. This is one of the secrets Rachel Aaron discovered and used to increase her word count.
  3. Review the previous day’s work to prime the pump and get the juices flowing. This is akin to warming up exercises before a person goes jogging.
  4. Don’t dawdle. Write quickly and get the words down. If you need notes or an outline in order to do so, then take a few minutes to jot them down. Writers often get bogged down when they have to spend time thinking about what they are going to write instead of writing it. Another secret Ms Aaron discovered.
  5. Record your progress. That way, if you find you are falling behind, you can easily pinpoint why and correct the problem. This is another one of the secrets Ms Aaron discovered, which I am passing along to you.

There you have it, Anthony Trollope’s secret to speedy writing. The granddaddy of speedy writers. You also now know Michael Moorcock’s method, Lester Dent’s method, and Rachel Aaron’s method of speedy writing. And all for FREE! You’ve just saved yourself a buck.

The secret to fast writing is no secret. Writers have been writing quickly for many, many decades. As Dean Wesley Smith has pointed out, it is the traditional publishing world and academia that has made us think fast writing equals hack writing. I am very glad Rachel Aaron has discovered the secret to fast writing and is popularizing it. But it has never been a secret. It’s just been demonized by those who didn’t and don’t write for a living.

So get out your pencil, pen, or keyboard and start writing. You’ve nothing to lose but those doggone low word counts.

As always, comments are welcome. Until next time, happy reading! And happy fast writing!

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The Wonderful Machine Age: The Daring Young Men in Their Flying Machines #3

The time period between World War I and World War II was the heyday of the rigid airship. Those two decades were filled with the exploits of what the great airships did and the dreams of what the future might hold for air travel.

1919 was an auspicious year. The war to end all wars was over. The airplane had developed in technological leaps and bounds. The airship as well had been refined. And whereas the airplane was mostly still a toy or of use for short distance flights, the airship was viewed as a machine of great commercial and military value.

On the 6th of March 1919, the British rigid airship, R33, took its first flight. Eight days later, her sister ship, R34, made it’s inaugural flight. Both airships were based on the design of German zeppelins in 1916. It is interesting to note, these were the most successful of any British rigid airship. The R33’s career lasted for nine years before she was scrapped in 1928 due to severe metal fatigue in her frame.

The R33 near her hanger:

Airship_R33

The R34 made the first east to west crossing of the Atlantic by air (the more difficult crossing due to the prevailing westerly winds) in July 1919, flying from England to Canada. Hot meals were even served on board, courtesy of a hotplate welded to an engine exhaust manifold. On the 13th of July 1919, the R34 returned to England; completing the first ever round trip across the Atlantic by air.

The flight of the R34 in 1919 fueled speculation of the possibilities for commercial airship flights across the Atlantic on a grand scale.

August 20, 1919 saw the first flight of the LZ-120, Bodensee, the Zeppelin company’s new commercial airship for the DELAG airline. She flew over 100 flights, carrying 2,322 passengers over 31,000 miles (50,000 km). Unfortunately, the Allied powers forced the Germans to turn over the Bodensee to the Italian government as a war reparations in July 1921. As the Esperia, she made flights for the Italian government, including a 1,500 mile long distance flight, before being scrapped in July 1928.

The Bodensee:

Airship_Bodensee,_Oct._1919

The LZ-121, Nordstern, never served the DELAG and was turned over to France on 13 July 1921 as war reparations. The French Government never made much use of the ship and she was scrapped in 1926.

A substantial book could be written chronicling just the airships of the interwar period. To exemplify The Wonderful Machine Age, I’ll focus on the triumphs and the dreams.

The short two year life of the R100 was a dream come true. The world’s first luxury commercial airship. Her first flight was on 16 December 1929. She and her sister ship, the R101, were, at the time, the largest airships ever built. She was meant to carry 100 passengers in elegance for an envisioned transatlantic passenger service. In 1930, she flew from England to Canada and back again; repeating the R34’s flight and proving once again the feasibility of such a transatlantic service. Below are pictures of the R100:

R100 at St Hubert

Below the lounge on the R100:

R100-Interior-Lounge

The Grand Staircase in the R100:

R100stir

Unfortunately, with the crash and subsequent fire which destroyed the R101 on 5 October 1930, the R100 was grounded and then scrapped the following year. The British were no longer interested in rigid airships.

This left but three rigid airships flying: the German-built USS Los Angeles, the newly launched USS Akron, built by Goodyear-Zeppelin for the US Navy, and the Zeppelin Company’s LZ-127, Graf Zeppelin.

The USS Los Angeles was the US Navy’s most successful airship. She was a sturdy vessel, logging 4398 hours of flight time and flying 172,400 nautical miles (319,300 km) with no major incidents. She was a testimony to the superior engineering and craftsmanship of the Zeppelin Company. She was decommissioned in 1932, returned to service briefly after the crash of the USS Akron in 1933, and then once again mothballed. She was scrapped in 1940.

The USS Los Angeles over Washington Blvd in Detroit, 1926:

USS Los Angeles over Washington Blvd, Detroit, 1926

The greatest airship of all was the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin. She was an experimental ship. To avoid valving off lift gas to compensate for fuel usage, the Graf’s engines burned Blau gas, which weighed about the same as air. This successfully innovative feature was not duplicated in any other airship.

The Graf was small compared to the R100 and R101. She only had room for 20 passengers. And while accommodations were pleasant, they were not sumptuous.

The Graf Zeppelin:

7840653478_a0c7f2435b_o

The combination lounge/dining room on the Graf:

lz127-dining-room

A cabin on the Graf:

GrafZeppelin 007

The Graf Zeppelin‘s career from 1928 to 1932 primarily involved experimental and demonstration flights displaying the airship’s capabilities. These flights included a round trip across the Atlantic in 1928, the round the world flight in 1929, the Europe-Pan American flight of 1930 (Germany to South America to North America and back to Germany), the 1931 polar expedition, two round trips to the Middle East, and a variety of other European flights.

The round the world flight set a world record. The Graf completed the circumnavigation in 21 days and could have made an even faster flight, except part of the purpose was a goodwill tour which involved spending extra time in Japan.

You can read more about her polar flight at airships.net.

Beginning in 1932 until she was retired in 1937 after the Hindenburg tragedy, the Graf provided regular passenger, mail, and freight service between Germany and Brazil. Below is my favorite picture of the Graf Zeppelin coming flying into Rio de Janeiro.

Zeppelin,Baia_de_Guanabara,25-5-1930

The Graf Zeppelin was the first aircraft to fly over 1,000,000 miles (1,056,000). She made 590 flights, 144 transoceanic crossings, carried 13,110 passengers, and logged 17,177 hours of flying time. She did this without a single injury to passenger or crew. Keep in mind, her lift gas was hydrogen. Which I think proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, with the proper precautions, hydrogen is safe. She was scrapped in 1940.

The Hindenburg is well known and I won’t cover her story here. Her sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin (II) took her first flight on 14 September 1938. Like the Hindenburg, she was designed to fly using helium as her lift gas. However, the US government reneged on its promise to deliver helium to the Germans and the Graf Zeppelin II was inflated with hydrogen. She never entered commercial service and made but 30 flights. On 20 August 1939 she made her last flight. When she landed at 9:38 PM, the era of rigid airship flight came to an end.

The LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin (II):

lz-130-219-web

More pictures of the LZ-130 can be seen at blimp info.Dining Room of LZ130

The rigid airships were the largest aircraft to fly. The success of the R33 and R34, the Graf Zeppelin, the USS Los Angeles, and the R100 excited the depression beleaguered public that good things were coming. Science and technology would make life better.

Lester Dent’s Zeppelin Tales and the fictional Doc Savage’s use of an airship were exciting fantasies reflective of this new hope that better times were coming.

The May 1930 issue of Modern Mechanics featured an airship with pontoons (to help cut hangar costs) and the July 1929 issue of Modern Mechanix, featuring an airship with wings and boat hull (to combine the best features of airships and seaplanes), were further examples of the possibilities that airships provided to improve intercontinental transportation.

zeppelin with wings Modern-Mechanics-May-1930-cover

There were even thoughts of an airship tuberculosis hospital. See airships.net for the article.

tuberculosis-airship-clinic-web

The airship has and continues to excite our imaginations as no other flying machine. Is it any wonder our retro-futurist fiction continues to make our dreams reality, even if only within the realities of our imaginations.

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The Zeppelin Tale!

I love airships! That comes as no surprise to those who know me. This past week, I picked up a copy of the book Lester Dent’s Zeppelin Tales, published by Heliograph.

Lester Dents Zeppelin Tales

The publishers have put out a marvelous book. The stories have been restored from their published version to how Dent actually wrote them. (Editors, you see, often make changes in stories that have nothing to do with improving the story and everything to do with editorial policy designed to sell more advertising, or merely the editor’s fickle whim.) There is also additional material on Dent himself.

What I discovered is in the ‘30s there was an entire subgenre known as “the Zeppelin Tale”. The Hindenburg tragedy and World War II put an end to it, but for about a decade there were Zeppelins filling the skies of the popular fiction of the day. And even in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.

Lester Dent, originally from Missouri, loved zeppelins and the five raucous action/adventure stories are his love-gift to us. Even his superhero, Doc Savage, had an airship. Well, until the Hindenburg crash and the jet airplane appeared. Then Doc’s fantastic airship quietly faded away, just like the hopes of those who thought the airship would one day really rule the skies.

Republication of these stories gives us a look into real dieselpunk fiction from The Machine Age itself. It’s no different than reading Victorian speculative fiction to see how they imagined the future. The fiction of the Victorian era and The Machine Age gives us steampunkers and dieselpunkers a chance to color our own fiction with the fantastically imaginative devices our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers thought were just around the corner.

My discovery of an entire subgenre devoted to the zeppelin is, well, akin to what? Winning the lottery? Being given free reign at the Cadbury chocolate factory? Being given five hundred pounds of tea, my choice, by my favorite tea shop? Maybe all of these?

The stories have definitely inspired me. I can see how original “dieselpunk” was written. How Dent took the “future” and incorporated it into a story set in NOW.

I enjoy steampunk and dieselpunk. They are exceedingly fun subgenres to read and write in. The popularity of dramas such as “Downton Abbey” demonstrates our love for the time period steampunk and dieselpunk operate in. By reading the fiction of the era, we can temper our own stories so they stay true to form and don’t stray far afield.

If you love pulp era fiction, or airships, or dieselpunk and the action/adventure story, pick up a copy of Lester Dent’s Zeppelin Tales. I got mine new from a vendor on Alibris for $10 + shipping. A lot cheaper than Amazon.

The Zeppelin story! Now if I can somehow get my modern private eye, Justinia Wright, on one of those new Zeppelin NTs…

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