Action Adventure Fiction

I checked out the book How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein from the library a week or so ago. As I flipped through it, I came across the chapter on dialogue. He says some things that opened (reopened?) my eyes, as well as some things that made me laugh.

For example:

Dialogue has to make us interested, curious, tense, or laugh. At its best, it has a liveliness that makes the words seem to jump from the page straight into our bloodstream, like adrenaline. Readers enjoy dialogue. I’ve never heard anyone say that they enjoyed a transcript of recorded speech. If you wander around a crowded mall these days, much of what you might overhear is idiot talk. People won’t buy a novel to hear idiot talk. They get that free from relatives, friends, and strangers.

He goes on to explain better how to make dialogue better, and not sound like idiot talk.

One of the things he stresses most is how is should virtually always express conflict, whether open or veiled.

Anyway, its given me a lot to think about in my writing, and one more thing to work on.

I finally got off my butt and added a couple more downloads to the writing resources page. They are:

Ideas For Getting Published - by Randy Ingermanson. Includes information about writing query letters, proposals, and finding an agent.

StoryWorld - by Randy Ingermanson. Create more a more engrossing world for your characters to live in. Great ideas, especially for fantasy/sci-fi writers.

As many of you know, unless something really strange happens (like a publishing contract falling from the sky) I’ll be self-publishing Oasis after I get it done and clean it up a little. Because I don’t have extra money to burn, I’m limiting my self-publishing choices to printers that do not require any setup fees. Here’s what I’ve been looking at.

You can set up a book for free at each of the following places, you just pay each time you want a copy. They’ll also sell the book for you. (as in take payment and print and send it to your customer) SO, yeah they’re all print-on-demand places.

Wordclay.com

I hadn’t heard of this one before I started googling around for print-on-demand places.

Cost: I couldn’t find this plainly listed anywhere (maybe I’m a dork), so I used their cost calculator and my mad high school algebra skilz to figure out the prices. So I figure it costs about $4.35 as a base price and $0.021 per page.

Pros: There is a nice little cover wizard. In fact, it’s a fairly painless process to set up a book altogether. There are also discounts for bulk orders (as I could figure it - 10% off for 100+, 20% for 1,000+, and 30% off for 10,000+ copies)

Cons: Requires you to upload in Word .doc format. I don’t use Word, and I make use of some stuff in OpenOffice.org that doesn’t export well to Word. I couldn’t see a way to upload custom covers. It may have one, though. Correct me if I’m wrong. Also, I tried to go back in recently to make sure I had this all correct. I forgot my user name, and when I tried to use the automatic user name recovery thing, it gave me an error, which bummed me out.

Lulu.com

Lulu is the most established and easiest to use POD (print on demand) solution I’ve found. I’ve used it a few times in my day job, and to give my dad a hardcover copy of the book he wrote several years ago, but never got published. It will take Word .doc files, Excel files, wordperfect files, pdfs, MS Works files, and rtf files. I use openoffice to generate pdfs, so I’m set.

Cost: $4.53 + $0.02 / Page

Other Fees: Their royalty is 25% of spread between printing costs and the retail price, which you set.

Pros: Good cover wizard, you can use their templates, upload your own front and back covers, or upload your own custom wraparound cover. You can upload in many formats. There are a lot of different projects you can make, and I think the interface is very friendly.

Cons: If you want your book to be available in Amazon, or through Barnes & Noble, or through really any major bookseller, you’ll need to pay the worldwide distribution fee (currently $99). And that still isn’t a guarantee you’ll be included anywhere.

CreateSpace.com

CreateSpace is owned and operated by Amazon.

POD Cost: $3.15 + $0.02 / page

Other Fees: 20% of spread between printing costs and the retail price, which you set. 30% when your book is sold through Amazon.

Pros: Automatic inclusion into Amazon.com (You have to order and approve a proof copy first). You also get a free ISBN for your book (The little 11 or 13 digit number  every “real” published book has) You can get a bulk discount, too. 10% off for 50-99 copies, and 20% off for 100+.

Cons: You need to create a print ready pdf for the interior and cover by yourself. THis isn’t too difficult If you know what you’re doing, but for non-techie users, it can be a deal-stopper. It does automatically generate a cover template for you, though, so that’s a little helpful. A cover wizard would be better. And to produce a print ready pdf with OpeOffice is easy, just click the export to pdf button and you’re done. For most versions of Word (I’m not sure about the newest one), you’ll have to install a pdf distiller (Works like a printer, except you save the printed file as a pdf, rather than pick it up off your printer.)  The full Adobe Acrobat can be pricey, but there are several free pdf distillers out there. (see PrimoPDF and CutePDF)

In Conclusion

For non-techie users, I’d definitely suggest Lulu.com over the others, it’s easy to use. If you are capable of making cover graphics and making pdfs, I’d suggest CreateSpace.

I’ll be going with CreateSpace for Oasis.

Do you ever want to write something, but you just don’t know what to write about? Here’s a small collection of story & idea generators.

This one will give you a one-sentence summary of a story. Example: A demigod blows up the car of an accident-prone steelworker.
http://www.lifeformz.com/cgi-bin/idea/idea.cgi

This one gives you an idea in several parts. Example:The theme of this story: romantic relationship. The main characters: opportunistic marine and naive cab driver. The major event of the story: accident.
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=quickstory

This one has a list of dramatic situations, and it will automatically choose one for you. Example: Your situation: 1. Supplication (To Humbly Peition) (Elements: a persecutor, a humble petitioner, and a power in authority whose decision is doubtful)
http://www.sff.net/people/julia.west/CALLIHOO/ideagen2.htm

This one is kind of a worksheet to generate writing prompts. Click the buttons.
http://www.gkbledsoe.com/articles/process/writing_prompt_generator.html

This one gives you three random words.
http://www.tdbspecialprojects.com/

There, now you never have to have writer’s block ever again.

I picked up a copy of Rules Of Thumb - 73 authors reveal their fiction writing fixations from the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble a little while ago.

I was hoping that I’d find some long-forgotten, super-useful tips that would launch my writing from obscurity to worldwide popularity, but no such luck. It was, however, amusing at times.

The book is 73 essays from different authors about their personal “rules of thumb.”

Here’s some of my favorite advice:

• “You must eat broccoli before you begin… because it confers an almost supernatural clarity of thought and engagement with the senses. …Drusus, son of Roman emperor Tiberius, abjured all other foods and ate only broccoli for a year. His urine became bright green.” -Apparently broccoli is really good for you, and will help you write better.
• “Eschew the exclamation point! If your prose is not exciting all on its own, a screamer (as it has been called in some circles, though not mine) is hardly going to help.” -I just liked this, that’s all.
• The following story contained in the book in the essay “Susan Neville’s Secret Rule” is quite possibly the best true(?) short short story I have ever read, in a disturbing sort of way.“I was reading a volume of Pliny the Younger’s letters on a terrazza overlooking Lake Como when I found, in letter LXVII to his friend Macer, the anecdote of a woman of Como whose husband had been afflicted for some time with an ulcer ‘in those parts that modesty conceals.’ The woman finally convinced her husband to let her see the sore, after which she gave him her honest opinion that it was, in fact, incurable. She then advised him that he should put an end to his life, for what good is a man with a chancre on his masculinity? She was, however, famous for her devotion, and seeing that her husband hesitated in doing what needed to be done, she tied herself to him and plunged first into the lake, dragging him with her.”
• “Never write a fiction with a character running around in a gorilla suit, not anything with a character suffering from bulimia, anorexia, gastric reflux, diarrhea, or hemorrhoids.” -‘Nuff said.
  
• “Obsessed First-Person Narrators Are the Best First-Person Narrators”
• “We can’t care about sand mutants; if you do, or think you do, kill yourself.” -Reading this totally ruined the epic five book series I had planned.

There was, of course, some actual good advice too, as well as a whole lot of rambling in the book.

Ebay has some cheap copies, if you are interested. Rules Of Thumb on Ebay

Its been a while, so I thought it was about time I put up something else about writing. I went and assembled another report from a series of articles in Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing e-zine. This one is called “Creating Characters.”

He gives some great ideas on how to make you characters not only seem more real, but be more interesting.

The report is 18 pages long and is in pdf format. It weighs in at a hefty 150 kb.

Just for future reference, I’m also putting this one on the resources page.

Download: Creating Characters

Recently I started looking around for podcasts geared toward writers and writing. Here’s a few:

Creative Writing Podcast @ American Writers - Some great audio essays on topics important to fiction writers.
Holly Lisle On Writing - She’s got some great ideas, but unfortunately she seems to have stopped doing these. However, there are five up for your listening enjoyment.

I Should Be Writing -  A podcast by a wanna-be writer for wanna-be writers.

The Writing Show - “Where writing is always the show.”

I’ll go ahead and add these to the resources page, too.

This is the second of the three books I recently bought on writing. The third got here today, and I’ll be certain to read it in the next little while.

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

This is Stephen King’s memoir/writing book, and it’s really good. The memoir portion is chock full of interesting and amusing tidbit’s from King’s life. The writing part gives some excellent and practical advice.

The main point he makes is that you shouldn’t let anything get in the way of the story. Don’t bog your work down in useless information. One of my favorite lines in the book is, “first draft - 10% = second draft.”

It’s a great book and I highly recommend it.

I recently bought a few books on writing in the hopes that they would magically transform me into a fantastic novelist. The first one that showed up at my house was this, “How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy,” by Orson Scott Card.

Even though it says “& Fantasy,” it really concentrates on the Sci-Fi portion of things. The only part where it deals with a fantasy specific topic is when Card talks about setting up a system for magic that makes sense.

One part that I really enjoyed was the discussion on tailoring your work to be a specific “story type.”

He stresses lots of reading and not being afraid to experiment upon common themes.

All in all, it’s worth a read, but I didn’t find this book to be as useful as his book on Characters and Viewpoint.

I just added a number of link and things to the writing resources page for everybody like me who wants to be a novelist.