Year: 2015

            If you don’t get the title reference, I’m afraid you have to leave.  It’s not my choice, you understand.  It’s the law.

            Anyway…

            I’ve run into a few folks recently talking about spoilers, usually pertaining to twists.  It’s a little bothersome how many times I’ve seen people say that knowing a twist in advance shouldn’t—and doesn’t—affect their view of a story.  And this is… well, just wrong.  That’s not a matter of opinion.  It’s just flat out wrong.

            So I thought it might be worth discussing some of the finer points of a well-executed twist.

            First, though, let’s define a few terms.

            A mystery is when the main character and the readers are aware that information has been hidden from them, and the story usually involves the search for that unknown fact. At it’s simplest, a mystery is when someone in my story asks a question and then tries to find the answer. 

            Suspense is when there’s an important piece of information my readers know and the characters don’t. The key here is that my characters don’t know that they need to know this vital fact. The woman Yakko is going upstairs with is the murderer.  There’s a bomb under the table.  Dot’s going into a meeting with a bunch of her superiors who all know what she did.  These are common suspense situations.

           A twist is when information is revealed that my characters and the audience didn’t know was being kept from them.  They don’t even suspect those facts are out there, waiting to affect the story.  When a twist appears, it comes from out of nowhere and changes a lot of perceptions for the characters and the audience.  We’ve all been told that Luke Skywalker’s father is dead, so when we learn that Darth Vader is his father, it’s a bombshell that alters our view of everything.

            Assuming we didn’t see all the advertising for the prequels…

            But that’s a different discussion…

            Notice that in most of these, the characters and the readers are in the same position.  Their view of things lines up.  The only time it doesn’t (with suspense) is when the characters are in extreme danger because of what they don’t know, which cranks up the tension for the audience.

            Going off the above definitions, one of the main components of a successful twist is that the reader (or audience) doesn’t know it’s coming.  We can’t be surprised or taken off guard by something we’re expecting, right?  So without that element… well, it’s not a twist anymore.  This moment becomes empty, poorly structured suspense, a missed beat in the structure of my story.

            Personally, this is why I’m so nuts about spoilers.  One small spoiler can rip the heart out of a great reveal and leave it flapping in the wind like an empty shirt on a clothesline.  Rather than identifying with the characters, we’re waiting for them to catch up and shaking our heads at how long it’s taking them.

            Y’see, Timmy, saying a twist should still make sense whether or not I know it’s coming is like saying a defibrillator should still work whether or not it’s got electricity running through it.  We’ve removed a vital element that it needs to function.  A working defibrillator won’t always perform the function it was made to, yeah, but it simply can’t when it’s not even plugged in.

            Now, there are two other things that can make a twist flop.  One is when the information the twist reveals isn’t actually a surprise, or it’s something the reader probably figured out on their own.  If you’re a long-time fan of The Simpsons, you may remember one time when Homer told the Nativity story in church.  And he ended his little sermon with these drama-filled words…

            “And did you know that baby Jesus grew up to be… Jesus?”

            It’s a perfect example of this point.  If I’m two or three steps ahead of the characters and the author, a “reveal” like this borders on comedy.  Which is great if I’m writing comedy, not so good if my book is a techno-thriller.  A twist that tells us something we already know, by definition, isn’t a twist, and it doesn’t matter if the author hasn’t specifically spelled it out or not in the book.  If all my readers figure out who Dr. Acula really is on page two, it’s my own fault when the big twist falls flat.

            The second thing that kills a twist is the flipside of what I just said.  It’s also not a twist if there’s absolutely no way we could’ve suspected it.  Yes, a twist depends on us not knowing something’s coming, but when it arrives it needs to fit with everything we’ve been told all along.  A reveal should mesh with what we know, not contradict, and make us look at things in a new way.  Finding out Phoebe is my long-lost cousin in the last fifty pages is a twist.  Finding out Phoebe is a third-gender alien from the year 2241 in the last fifty pages means I should…

          Wait, an alien from 2241?  Hasn’t this a period murder-mystery novel for the past two hundred pages?  What the hell…?

            I once read a book where we found out in the last twenty pages that the leader of the all-woman biker gang is actually a vampire.  And while we’d known this was an urban fantasy novel, there’d been no clue whatsoever that vampires exist.  It was a first person story and the main character had never even told us that vampires were a thing, even though we learned in those final pages that this is the vampire she knew had killed her husband.  The reveal clashed with what I knew about the world and the character, and that clash jarred me out of the book at a point when the author really needed me to be sucked into it.

            And that’s the real killer. When my twist falls flat, for any reason, it breaks the flow of the story.  And since big twists tend to come toward the end of a story, it means I’m giving my readers a reason to stop when I want them to be checking the clock to see how late it is and if they can finish the book tonight.

            A twist is a powerful device, the five-point-palm technique of storytelling.  It needs to be done a certain way, but if I can master it I’ll be unstoppable. And if I do it wrong…  I’m just going to piss off my target.

            Next time, I think we need to discuss paying dues.  Especially those of you who’ve been here for a while.

            Until then, go write.

            The more forced and regimented a page seems, the less people will enjoy it.  Facebook is all about casual connections and interactions, and people aren’t going to be impressed by the hard sell.  Try to sound more honest and sincere and less “fact-checked and approved by the legal team.”  I’m not saying ignore the legal team or common sense, just try to sound like you could.  No one likes the hard sell on Facebook.

            I’d guess at least half the posts on my fan page have nothing to do with my books or me as an author.  Maybe as little as a third. They’re just about other stuff I honestly find interesting and like talking about.  Other books, movies, television, LEGOS, etc.  A tiny bit of politics, but not much and nothing too divisive…

            May seem kind of obvious, but…  Considering that Facebook’s algorithms already affect the number of people who see each post, only posting two or three times a week doesn’t improve my odds.  Sunday’s pretty much the only day I take off (not for religious reasons—I’m just a lazy person at heart who likes having time off). 

            I also try to be careful when I post during the day.  Most people are using their computers right before or right after work (sit down, turn on computer, check Facebook before diving in—wrap stuff up at the office a little early, kill time on Facebook before leaving), so I try to time posts accordingly so they’ll be near the top of people’s home/ newsfeeds.  I tend to aim for EST or PST.

            Don’t have anything to post?  Well, there’s a chance to talk about other stuff, like I mentioned above.

            I keep it at two and do three sparingly (maybe once a week).  Going for more than this on Facebook becomes spammy in people’s newsfeeds and they’ll block or ignore you.  Neither does any good.  No one likes the hard sell.  It’s not what Facebook’s about.

            This goes for Notes and Links, too.  Just don’t put up more than three things per day.  More posts also means it’s less likely people will like or comment on said post, so more posts actually means less chance of getting the posts seen (see below).

            This is the big one.  The more likes/comments/shares on something, the more it shows up in people’s newsfeeds.  The more newsfeeds it shows up in, the more people find their way to the site, which makes it show up in more newsfeeds (and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and…).  This is one of Facebook’s little hidden algorithms (quality of posts over quantity of posts). 

            In this algorithm, it goes Likes < Comments < Shares.  So anything you post, make a point of liking it yourself.  If you’ve got extra information, add it as a comment rather than an extra-long post.  If you have two pages to post it on—or a page and a business profile (for example “Bob Smith” and “Bob Smith’s Author Page”)—post it to the main one and share it to the other.

            The same holds for links<posts<pictures.  For example, if I just want to say something today, post a semi-relevant picture and make your post the caption.  A picture with lots of shares is the most visible thing on Facebook.

            Worth noting that Facebook’s recently (as I write this) tweaked things to really push down the visibility of Amazon links and other “buy this” posts.  Really of links in general. So keep that in mind.

            Anyway, this leads nicely into two connected tips…

            Asking prompts people to answer questions, which means I’m getting likes/ comments (see above).  If you check out my fan page, I “crowdsource” answers about geeky things a lot.  A while back I asked everyone on the page a Transformers toy question.  Dozens of people leaped forward to answer, and their answers spawned more comments and likes.  Every Saturday morning I ask a “What’s your favorite…” question about something that’s crossed my mind and it always gets a hundred or so responses.  This is also a great way to post things on the occasional week when you’ve got no relevant material to post about.

            Again, though, don’t go crazy.  I’ve seen pages that phrase every single post as a question

            I cannot stress how important this is.  Because of Facebook’s casual nature (much like the whole internet), people expect answers.  Nothing aggravates them more than to feel like comments or questions are going down a black hole.  That lack of response is what builds anger and resentment, which lead to the dark side.

            Note that I don’t need to know the answer to do this.  Just acknowledge the question and tell whoever it is that I’ll try to find an answer for them.  You’d be amazed how much goodwill can build just off that.  Look over my fan page and see how many people became happy just because I said “I’ll look into that for you” or something along those lines.  And, yes, you’ll be biting your tongue on a few of them to keep giving the answers they deserve.

            And, again, answers and responses are all more comments, which push posts higher in the newsfeed.

            This refers to language and contoversial topics, but also to the page itself.  Don’t let lots of other people clutter your page with their unwanted/inappropriate posts and spam.  Don’t be scared to delete stuff, but make sure it’s delete-worthy.  Leaving up negative comments makes you look big and able to handle criticism.  Addressing said comments (see above), makes you look even better.  And—again—makes you show up on more newsfeeds.

            Facebook is more like a high school cafeteria. The unpopular girl can say something twenty times and no one hears her. The head cheerleader can say something once and everyone in the room knows what she said. It really is a popularity contest.
            Facebook ads are doing the cheerleader’s math homework in exchange for sitting at the popular table. I’ll be on top for half an hour and then everyone will forget me again.

            Worse yet—it’s been pretty much proven that, when I pay for likes/ads, almost all the responses I get are from clickfarms in developing countries (yes, even when I pay Facebook for it).  And these “fake” likes will actually mess up the algorithms on my page and cause me to become less visible. Seriously. It’s because they don’t interact with my posts (they’re just clickfarms) so they cause that branching effect (point #4, above) to collapse.  The more fake likes on the page, the less my stuff is actually seen.

            And that’s it.  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s an easy formula for boosting your page’s visibility, which then leads to more likes, which leads to more visibility.  My fan page averages about four or five new fans a day, my average post is seen by about half my fans (usually 2500+ people) and I haven’t paid Facebook a cent to boost posts or any of that.  It takes time, but it builds a much more solid following.

            Okay, first off, I’m afraid I need to have a shameful self-promotional moment. The Ex-Heroes series is Amazon’s Kindle deal of the month.  You can pick up digital copies of all four books for less than ten dollars.  So… there’s that.

            And now, moving on to our actual topic of the week…

            Last week I gave some more-or-less quick answers to a couple questions and requests folks had left here on the ranty blog.  This week I wanted to address one in particular that was worth a little more space.

            So… here we go.

            I’d love to hear your thoughts on plotting and pacing. I’m struggling with knowing when to do what plot elements so things don’t drag and so they seem natural, and don’t feel like the story is on rails.
            Okay, this is another tough one because every story is going to have its own specific pace. 

            One of the reasons a lot of folks end up worrying about this, in my opinion, is because of an often misunderstood writing rule that gets thrown at them all the time—start with action!  There’s a bunch of problems with this statement, many of which I’ve talked about before, but one key one is that it gives people a very skewed view of pacing.  If my story starts cranked up to eleven, it’s hard to make anything feel urgent after that point.  And if it doesn’t start at eleven, well, why is anyone going to keep reading, right?

            Part of this is about dramatic structure, knowing where things should happen in my story for maximum impact.  It’s also about compressing time so things don’t sprawl.  Yeah, maybe four hours passed while Wakko was pulling his turn standing watch, but do I really need eight pages of him standing around doing… well, nothing?

            I think that’s one of the biggest problems when people have “pacing issues.”  It’s not whether or not my chapter is slow or fast, if it’s filled with action or dialogue or inner monologues. It’s about whether or not anything’s actually happening.  When my story come to a grinding halt, it’s not because I’ve got characters doing research instead of kung-fu… it’s because the story’s come to a grinding halt.  It’s stopped moving forward. 

            A good way to check pacing is to go through my story and ask myself this—what purpose does this element/ scene/ chapter have in the overall story?  Is it forwarding the plot?  Is it forwarding a character’s story?  If it doesn’t do either of these things… why am I spending time on it?  As William Goldman said in The Princess Bride, “What with one thing and another, three years passed.”

            Speaking of famous screenwriters, Shane Black once made a great observation about what he called “shoe leather” scenes in scripts.  If I have a scene where two guys are having a conversation and anotherscene where there’s a key news story on the television… why aren’t they the samescene?  A good part of storytelling is trying to accomplish two things at once rather than spreading things so thin they’re see-through.  It’s great to have a character scene, sure, but maybe those character moments could also advance the plot somehow.  I really want to use a lot of this research material, but could it advance someone’s story?

            Y’see, Timmy, if I’m lucky and somewhat skilled, my audience might let me have one scene that doesn’t really do anything.  Maybe two.  But pushing it to a third means my story is dragging, and four is going to get eyerolls.

            Now, all that being said (yep, there’s always a however), there is still one thing to keep in mind for pacing.  Every story is going to start slow and pick up speed, yes.  And all those stories are going to be moving at their own pace. I need to be careful, though, when I try to slow things down, for whatever reason.  If you’ve ever driven a car with a manual transmission (or know of such things), you’ve probably heard the term downshifting.  It’s when I shift into a lower gear to help with slowing down (you’ve probably seen James Bond do it a few times).  It’s one thing to go from fifth gear to fourth, it’s something else entirely to go from fifth down to second.  Odds are that’ll going to leave parts of my transmission  (read—story) scattered behind me, possibly on fire.

            So if my story involves a lot of zero-to-sixty-to-ten-to ninety-to-fifteen pacing—yes, even though it’s still technically moving forward—I may want to rethink a few things.  And if it doesn’t involve any forward motion…

            Well, I may need to rethink a lot of things.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about how Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker’s father.

            Spectacular spectacular!

            What I’m going to do this week is run through a few questions and requests that have shown up here this summer.  A few of them I can do a full post on, but some of them are things I’ve touched on before (or, at least, I think I have) so I think I can answer them with a few paragraphs and links.

            So… let’s get to it.

            Tricky question that’s going to be a little different for every writer and for every project.  For me, once I get a pretty solid draft, it’s really rare for things to change that much.  It happens sometimes, but not often.  I think once the plot and story are solid, for most writers, there won’t be any real changes to them.

            Please note, though, that I didn’t say no changes.  Every draft is going to be a little different as I tweak and cut and make other adjustments.  But all of these adjustments serve the plot and the characters.  Things are just getting tighter and clearer.  Maybe it means omitting a few story beats or changing someone’s second language from French to Spanish.  But these changes aren’t changing the bigger picture, they’re enhancing it.

           It’s probably worth mentioning that if I’m making changes that do radically alter my plot or characters, what it really means is that I don’t have a solid draft yet.  Yeah, even if I’ve done six drafts before this.  If I suddenly realize Yakko should be my main character while Dot’s the supporting character who dies in the second act… that’s a big change.  That’s a lot of changes.  It means different interactions between different characters, new motivations, possibly a whole new linear structure.  And it also means I’m kind of going back to square one.  Now I need to tweak and cut and make adjustments to this plot and story.

            Do you have any thoughts on working on multiple projects at once? Like editing one, drafting another, plotting a third? Is that something you do?

            Yeah, I do this, but in a bit more limited sense.  When I’m working on a first draft of something, I focus pretty much exclusively on that.  Once I’m out of that, though, and into the editing, I’m always jotting down character ideas, lines, beats—all sorts of elements—for whatever I’m going to be working on next.  So while I’m doing drafts on one I’m setting all the groundwork for another.  I’ve also  found this helps me as far as any kind of block goes—being able to dip my toes into something else helps keep my brain from getting stuck on a project.

            Overall, though, this is one of those things that’s definitely more advice than rules, because it’s all going to come down to the individual.  Am I someone who can split their attention or not?  And to what extent?  Some folks can do it (to different degrees), some folks can’t.  Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to try it once or thrice.  I’m comfortable at the level I just described.  You might be able to do two or three  things side by side.  Someone else might need to focus on one thing at a time.   

            I do think it’s worth noting that “another project” can easily be a distraction, too.  Sort of like eating when you’re bored.  I’ve also seen some folks use multiple projects (consciously or not) as an excuse to never finish anything. Sooooo… something to keep in mind.

I’m still struggling with how writers develop an interesting narrative voice – character voice I think I’m getting the hang of, but the narrative bits still sound like me reading a grocery list. 

            Narrative voice can be tough.  Part of it depends on how much I want to insert myself as the author. Some folks do this extremely well, others… not so much.

            As far developing a narrative voice goes, think of it like a narrator. Who’s actually telling this story to the reader?  I’m not saying my book or short story has to be in first person, or that a narrator even has to exist, but in my perfect world, who’s reading this aloud?  Christopher Lee?  Felicia Day?  Doug, the guy down at the garage?  Ms. Phoebe, my college English professor?  Knowing the narrator tells me how they talk and what kind of words my narrative voice will use. 

            So, from a certain point of view, the narrative voice is another character. Even if it’s me, it’s the version of me I’m choosing to project through my writing (a friendly me who wants you to enjoy the story and is going to tell it in fun, simple terms, and who also has much better abs…).  So narrative voice is a lot like character voice, which is something I mentioned here just a few months back.  Well, okay, a year and a half ago…

            It’s probably worth mentioning that if there isn’t some kind of narrative voice in my head to start with, that might be a sign of a bigger problem.  If I have no sense of how my story should be told—how my audience should be hearing the words in their heads—I may need to stop and think about things some more.   Maybe the plot or the story aren’t as solid as I thought, and if they’re not clicking with me, there’s a good chance they won’t click with anyone else.

            Do you feel  an author should stick to one genre for the most part?  I want to go write something as far from my current genre as possible. Will that throw my fans for a loop?  I notice that you and most other authors pretty much stick to one thing.

            Well, I’d argue not much of my work falls in the same genre, unless we’re talking in broad, sweeping terms.  I’ve got a superheroes vs. zombies series (sci-fi fantasy with some soft horror), a suspense-mystery-horror novel, a sci-fi thriller, a classic mash-up where I share credit with Daniel Defoe, and I just started work on a historical time-travel road trip story.  I’ve also got some short stories out there that are straight horror, some that are straight sci-fi, and even a pulp action war story.

            And I’m not alone.  The majority of writers work in a bunch of genres.  They may be known for one thing, but they’ve usually got a lot of other stuff past that.  Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Craig DiLouie, Eloise Knapp, Timothy Long—and these are just the ones I know personally. All of them have written in at least two or three genres.

            Heck, look at Stephen King.  He’s known as a horror writer, but Firestarter and The Dead Zone, two of his earliest works, are pretty much straight sci-fi when you really look at them (there’s a post in that alone).  Under the Domeand 11/22/63 are both pretty solidly sci-fi, too.  The Dark Tower series is an epic fantasy.  Eyes of the Dragon is a young adult novel.  And then there’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” a  prison drama/character study that was adapted into a wildly popular film by Frank Darabont.

            So, no.  I don’t think an author needs to stick to one genre.  Yeah, there are some fans who might get upset I’ve moved away from their particular interest, but there’ll be just as many who’ll be intrigued to see how I deal with something else, and new ones who’ll come to me because of that something else.  And it’s my opinion that flexing those other muscles, so to speak, usually makes someone a better writer overall.

            I will say, though (there’s a “however…” on almost all of these, isn’t there?), that I don’t recommend chasing the popular trend.  It’s tempting to jump on the nymphomaniac-android-biker-school-romance bandwagon, I know.  But it rarely works out well in the long run.
           

            And I think that’s everything for now, yes?  Okay, I went over three or four paragraphs for some of them, but if you’re going to complain about that… Also, if I misread your question somehow, or if my answer just wasn’t complete enough, please say so down in the comments and I’ll try to answer there.  Or maybe bump it up to a full post.

            Next time, I’m going to answer one of those larger questions I mentioned up at the top. 

            Until then… go write.