I’ve made no secret of the fact that I sometimes go back to earlier, already-published works and rework them. Reworking the early Wren books to be more in line with the genre and reader expectation was what led to my sales breakthrough in 2021. I’ve talked about all the things I changed several times here, here, here and probably other places too. In summary, I: I did lots more things too, including new covers, titles and blurbs, not all of which I remember. All these changes transformed the uptake of book 1 as well as the readthrough to book 2. …
Sell the sizzle not the steak in book blurbs – Writing Update 2019 Week 42
When I launched the Soul Jacker box set last week, I also took a hard look at the blurb I was using for Soul Jacker book 1. This blurb was only a few months old. It’s a book I’ve re-blurbed multiple times. But somehow, this time around I could see how little of the ‘sizzle’ was coming through. It was all steak. Descriptive. Interesting. Not exciting. David Gluckman Case Study Maybe it was doing a mentoring session with David Gluckman, inventor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a few weeks back that helped me see this. In advance of our session I …
Why am I not a millionnaire author yet?
This question popped in my head the other day, and hasn’t been far from my thoughts since – begging to be turned into a full-bore navel-gazing blogalysis (blog analysis) of all my past books in summary and why they didn’t go large. I’ve done this before, in bits. For instance, I’ve blogalyzed in detail all the book covers I’ve ever had – and come up with the unsurprising conclusion that they were always bad. So chalk that one up: Bad book covers The Saint Ignifer covers were illustrated and weird for the epic fantasy genre. The Ruin books were just …
Story Craft #21 Research!!
As a science fiction and fantasy author – which is all I ever wanted to be until recently – I never once thought about going out into the world to do primary research. Other sf/fantasy authors don’t talk about it. You don’t have George R.R. Martin explaining how he went to mental asylums and wrote letters to psychopaths in order to better write Ramsay Bolton. Tolkien’s research was entirely his own enormous invention. That approach always appealed to me enormously. You just make it up. Yes, I would get inspiration from an interest in science, history and politics – but …
Story Craft #20 Action, not World
I’ve now written 1 and 3/4 thrillers, after writing 12 sci-fi novels, 2 epic fantasy and mostly only ever reading sci-fi and fantasy, and it has taught me 1 major lesson that is already helping me write better in all genres: Action, not world In a thriller, it’s about original action, not about an original world. World-building is far less of an issue. The world itself is not the draw – because to a large degree, it’s the same world we all know. So you can’t hook with fascinating stuff about the world. Yet I have always focused on world …
story craft #19 Weight in a Name
You’ve probably heard of the callback, a technique comedians use to get fresh mileage out of an old joke, often with exponentially uproarious results. Here’s a callback in Seinfeld: Seinfeld did these a lot, in this case it was a callback and a kind of catch phrase linking back to a previous episode, that when repeated multiple times, only gets more power. Master of my domain. I use these sometimes just hanging out with people- something gets mentioned early on, you see a chance to mention it again later, tangentially related to what they’re saying, boom, everybody laughs. Everybody uses …
story craft #18 Steeping (or China Mieville’s Teapot Brain)
I have figured out how China Mieville writes. I did this by watching several interviews he was in, and noticing one thing- China Mieville uses the word ‘steep’ quite a lot. In this video interview he used it, and in this article, and this one, and this one. In this single word lies what I believe to be the secret to being China Mieville. In a word, it is preparation. In another word, it is teabags. Ever since I read Mieville’s book The Scar 10 years ago I was kind of awed by the world he put together, the way …
story craft #17 Thin vs. Fat Stories
What is the right balance of thin vs. fat in a fantasy or sf story? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I’ve had a few story sales to the pro and semi-pro markets now (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Ideomancer, etc..), plus dozens of rejections, and been trying to deconstruct the patterns that work. I think I’ve found the/a winning pattern, and it’s all about thin vs. fat. First off, what do I mean thin vs. fat? Thin is plot, conflict, movement, Dan Brown style writing. There’s very little time spent establishing character or setting, so very little sense …
story craft #16 Flash-forward Openings
What do you think about stories that open with flash-forwards? Consider the movie Fight Club. Ed Norton brandishes a gun and conducts a bizarre conversation with Brad Pitt. They are in a dimly lit skyscraper looking out over a city’s night skyline. We are totally engaged and intrigued. What the F is going on? Who are these guys, and why are they talking like this? Smash cut- and we’re yanked back to the beginning. If we want answers to our questions, we’ll have to watch the whole movie. push / pull Let’s call this a pull opening, because it pulls …
story craft #15 Acts of Invention
26. That’s how many acts of invention a story needs. We can look at any story, any story that is a story, at least, and reel them off. Without fail, they’ll be there. They are all discreet. They all require a new idea, or the development of an old idea into a new idea. They are the ingredients in the cake, mixed and baked according to recipe, flavored with the writer’s voice, that build a living breathing story out of a bunch of bits and stuff. 26. Why is this interesting? Why should we sit up and take notice? Well, …