Self-Publish Or Not

May 2, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Vana Roth, author of A Nation of Expendables, consented to be my guest blogger today. I asked her if she ever considered self-publishing, and she responded: 

“I was curious about the process so I’ve been reading up on self-publishing. I never realized there were so many options available. This really sounds like a great way to go if you’re confident and tired of waiting for a traditional publishing contract. 

“If you’re the hands on type, you can contract all the necessary services like editing, copy-edit, formatting and illustration (cover art), then turn the finished work over to a printing source. This is a perfect opportunity for an author to control every aspect of the process. There’s also the alternative of finding a self-publishing company who offers different levels of service so you don’t have to worry about contracting the other stuff yourself. As long as the company chosen is reputable and known for superior quality in the final product, this sounds like feasible option.  

“I’ve the utmost respect for those courageous enough to take on the task. However, I’m not the least bit embarrassed to say I’m a coward and self-publishing for me is out of the question. I think it was Clint Eastwood in a Dirty Harry movie who said, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’ Well, I surely know my limitations. The process is just too scary. If I screwed it up, it would be far too costly, first because of the personal financial investment and second because I know relatively little about the inner workings of the industry. I buy books, read them, occasionally write them and that’s pretty much it…lol!  

“When I wrote my book, I never gave it a second thought. I probably could’ve gotten through the sub-contracting part by researching blogs and publishing sites until I found the best editors and illustrators. The real stopper was marketing and distribution, which in my mind is too critical to leave to chance. If you’ve been in the writing business all your life, odds are you’ve probably made some great connections along the way and know all the ins and outs. Or, if you’re a big name like Bill O’Reilly with lots of money behind you, all those little details don’t matter. Someone else can be hired to take care of them for you. However, for someone like me who hasn’t any connections or previous experience, this could mean the death of my book. I have run into a number of self-published authors who’re really struggling with these two areas, particularly distribution. I’m not saying it can’t or shouldn’t be done. I just think author’s considering this option need a solid plan on how to get their books into stores. There’s all sorts of things to consider like how to become an approved supplier and formulating return policies. I for one would rather worry about writing my next book and leave these things to a paid professional. 

“So, when all’s said and done, based on my lack of experience and needed connections, I think I made the right decision in waiting for a traditional publishing contract. I was extremely fortunate to be chosen by Lachesis Publishing and am grateful not to have to worry about things I know nothing about. 

“Vana Roth – A Nation of Expendables

“For more about me and A Nation of Expendables see: http://vanaroth.com“

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Writing the Perfect Character

May 1, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I never heard of a Mary Sue character until last week, and now it seems as if everywhere I go online I run into an article about Mary Sue or her male counterpart Marty Stu. These highly idealized characters are often author wish-fulfillment, being unrealistically bright, beautiful, and able to do anything. Though the author considers the characters to be perfect, they are not. In fact, I’m not certain it’s possible to write an unflawed character, because the arrogance of perfection is a flaw in itself. Mary Sues are annoying, which is another flaw. And Mary Sues are flat. Physically, of course, they are curvaceous or muscular or both, but they are uninteresting. Which, of course, is another flaw.

To me, a purposely flawed character is just as bad, an anti-Mary Sue. If a character is well drawn, if the story is well told, the flaws will show up naturally. A character must lose occasionally. Where is the suspense if every time a character attempts to do something she succeeds? And in that loss is a shadow of the flaw, because the loss must be realistic. Did the character lose because of arrogance, assuming she knew what to do when she didn’t? Did the character lose because she wasn’t physically fit or knowledgeable enough? Did the character lose because she didn’t plan correctly, because she was unfocused, because of her inner conflicts?

Losses force a fully-realized character to change so in the end she can succeed. A Mary Sue doesn’t change. She cannot become more perfect, and if she becomes less perfect, she becomes flawed and stops being a perfect character.

Depth of character is revealed in the choices someone makes under pressure. Pressure is risk. Risk is conflict. Mary Sues, being perfect, do not feel pressure, do not truly risk since they cannot lose. Without the element of risk, without conflict, there is no real story, only a string of episodes. Just think what Superman would be like without his Krytonite — totally uninteresting and flawed in his perfection. But Kryptonite, to me, is a purposeful flaw, put there to make Superman more interesting, which makes him seem even more of a comic book character. Oh, wait. He is a comic book character!

So, to keep your story from being comic-bookish and to keep your characters from being Mary Sues, put your characters under pressure, give them much to lose, and let them change because of their experiences. Then you will have a perfect character: someone real, someone empathetic, someone to remember.

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Why Should I Read Your Novel? Why Should You Read Mine?

April 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Why should I read your novel? Why should anyone? Only you know the answer to that, and you tell us by the story you choose to tell, the characters you choose to create, the themes you choose to develop.

We read not so much to escape our lives but to add meaning, understanding, and depth to our days. If we find nothing but the same old stories told in the same old ways, we come away from the experience intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied. If the characters don’t change in a fundamental way, if they don’t struggle with an idea bigger than they are, we don’t change either.

Too often when I finish reading a book, I wonder why I bothered. The story is stale, the characters undeveloped, the stakes trivial, the theme banal. This is particularly true of books written by prolific authors. After three or four books, they plagiarize themselves, using the same basic characters and plots they did before. Perhaps their first book was fresh, with something new to say, but that something becomes stale with each succeeding book.

Not being a published writer myself, I don’t know how to keep that from happening, especially in today’s book market where an author is expected to churn out a clone every year. And new writers are being steered into that same pattern. We’re told to write in the genre we read because obviously we like the genre and because we are familiar with its conventions. But perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps we should write in a genre we don’t read so we don’t keep perpetuating clichés. We might unwittingly rehash old stories in the unfamiliar genre, but there is greater chance of saying something new.

My current work-in-progress is developing into an allegorical apocalyptic novel, which is bizarre because I don’t read that particular type of book; I don’t even know if that is a type. What isn’t bizarre, though, is all I am learning by writing in an unfamiliar genre. I may very well be writing a clichéd story — I have no way of knowing — but at least I am coming to it from my own unique viewpoint, not the distilled vision of all the authors who have gone before. And I am learning more about writing from this novel than any of my previous ones because I have to pull what comes next out of the creative ether, not from my memory of the stories I have previously read.

Without a mystery at its core as in my previous works, I have to search for other ways of adding tension to the story such as the inner conflicts that beset my hero. How much freedom is he willing to give up for security? How much security is he willing to give up for security? How much of freedom and security are illusory? And I am becoming cognizant of theme, symbols, and other mythic elements as ways of unifying disparate parts of the story.

So why should you read my book when it’s completed? Because, if I do it right, it will be an entertaining way for you come to terms with one of the major dilemmas facing us today, and it will take you into the life of a character whose conflicts and choices will help make sense of your own life.

At least, that’s the way story is supposed to work.

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Stories, Cliches, and Finding the Truth

April 23, 2008 — Pat Bertram

We are steeped in story. From birth to death, story forms our lives. For some people — writers, quasi-hermits, employees of the publishing, movie, and television industries — story is their life. More stories are available to us in more media than ever before in history, including the stories we share with each other and ourselves. What is a daydream if not a story of the future we tell ourselves? And at night, while sleeping, our dreams tell us other stories. No wonder we have such a hard time finding a story that is not clichéd.

But they do exist. In fact, anyone can write a non-clichéd story if he or she does the work to find the truth of the story, but all too often writers with nothing to say look to books and movies for the truth and end up with rehashed forgeries.

Stories of pattern killers (serial killers by another name) became clichéd very quickly. How many times have we heard or read that same bit about the killer being a white male between the ages of . . . Never mind. You probably know it better than I do. Because so many writers borrowed their truths from previous stories about pattern killers, the only thing new they had to add was the grisly murder pattern, each one more gruesome than the last. The way to tell a non-clichéd serial killer story is to find the truth: in a bizarre sort of way, a pattern killer story is romance between the killer and the hunter. Their relationship forms the story, not the murders. And, on a deeper level, it is the story of the hunter finding the killer within himself. Thomas Harris portrayed this brilliantly in The Red Dragon, but when he wrote Hannibal, he chose grisliness over truth. You may not agree with me about the truth of the pattern killer story, but that is my truth. It is up to you to find your own truth.

So how do we do we find the truth for our stories, not just pattern killer stories? By going small, by knowing everything possible about our characters, the streets they walk, the way they think, the places and people that make up their world. David Morrell traveled to get the feel of his settings, and he took survival courses to find out what his characters would experience in wild, but not all of us have the time, money, or inclination to travel to distant places or to take physically taxing courses. Nor is it necessary. We can find the truth in our own neighborhoods. We can walk the streets and take note of everything we see. How do those streets differ from any other we have traveled? By being true to character and place, we find the small bits of action that tell the story’s truth. We are used to thinking of action scenes as car chases, fights, and other horrifying events, but an action scene can be as subtle as a look or a touch of a hand. That is where the truth lies, in the unexpected details.

A story, when set in a particular place with a particular character, will have a truth that no other story has. If we have the patience and skill to find the story’s truth, our truth, we can tell it without reducing it to cliché.

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On Writing: The Mythic Journey and Answering the Call to Adventure

March 28, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I have reached the point in my work-in-progress where the hero Chip has chosen not to enter the place of safety, preferring freedom to security, and he won’t be succumbing to the lure of safety until the third time it is offered. (Three is a very mythical number if mythicism can be said to have degrees.) Now that Chip is mostly alone in the world, however, I’m not quite certain what to do with him. For him to become willing to give up his freedom, he has to undergo many ordeals, and the dangers need to escalate. I know I can create these situations, but they should have an underlying feeling of cohesiveness, otherwise they will appear as a series of unrelated incidents that go nowhere. After my last blog post and the realization that my work-in-progress is starting to follow the mythic journey template, I thought I’d check the template to see if it offers a solution.

The mythic journey begins in the ordinary world, which is the way my work-in-progress begins.

The second stage in the format is the call to adventure. I suppose the ending of the world qualifies; you can’t find anything more unsettling and disturbing than that. The choice to enter the place of safety is another call to adventure, for Chip doesn’t know what will await him, but it’s also the antithesis of the call to adventure in that he is being called to safety not danger.

The third stage is the refusal of the call. The refusal is supposed to show the hero’s fear, his need to be cajoled, the riskiness of the adventure. But if the call isn’t dangerous, does Chip’s refusal to enter the safety zone qualify for the third step? He is confronting the great unknown, so perhaps his choosing freedom and danger isn’t as noble as I think it is. Perhaps he is choosing the known over the unknown. Either way, he prefers to stay where he is.

Traditionally, the hero cannot achieve his or her full potential without accepting the call and the risks that come with it. Choosing to accept the call does not guarantee the hero’s success, for the road is long and treacherous. But for Chip, refusing the call is the long and treacherous time. Still, in the mythic world, opposites often lead in the same direction, so I will presume the lessons learned are the same.

Many influences come into play to get the hero to answer the call, such as a change in circumstance and offenses against the natural order of things. These Chip will have, and they will help him redefine his objectives. Readers also like to see the hero’s reluctance overcome, and the stiffer the reluctance, the more they enjoy seeing it worn down. Perhaps that’s my answer. Maybe I need to have readers hoping Chip will opt for safety, make them an accomplice in his choice so they will have a stake during the other nine stages of the journey. To do this, I will need a character that stands in for the reader, which means Chip can’t go it alone.

This brings us to the next stage of the mythic journey: the meeting with the mentor. A mentor helps prepare the hero for the coming adventure, giving him advice and gifts. A mentor would certainly give this part the cohesiveness it lacks, and it would also give life to what would otherwise be simply a string of ordeals.

So there it is, the solution to my problem: a mentor.

A nice irony: in my mythic journey as a writer, I always hoped to find a mentor, one who would help me overcome the problems I encounter. Who would have thought I’d find this mentor in my own blog?

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On Writing: Flashing Back to Flashbacks

March 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

In my post on finding a beginning to a novel, I mentioned as an aside that if you have many flashbacks in your book, you should move the story backward in order present those scenes as they happened chronologically. It’s good advice — my advice on writing is the distillation of the hundreds of writing manuals I have read coupled with my own experience as an unpublished novelist — but reading the comments people left on my blog made me wonder where I really stand.

I do think that ideally a story should begin at the beginning and go to the end with few backtracks. Telling it chronologically gives the story impetus, making us want to read further in order to find out what is going to happen. But the ideal way of telling a story is not always the most practical way.

If I have any reservations about my novel More Deaths Than One, they come from its five long flashbacks. Two flashbacks are told as stories. Scheherazade-like, the hero seduces the heroine with the stories so, as in all elements of a good novel, they do double duty. Two other flashbacks introduce the hero when he was younger and introduce a friend who is murdered. The fifth, I’m embarrassed to admit, is there simply because I like the story it told, though it did introduce a minor character. (And the heroine asked for a story. What can I say? She was insatiable.)

Originally I wrote the book in three parts: present, past, then present again. That didn’t work — the past was so boring it slowed the pace, even though much of it was important. Then I tried using a prologue. That didn’t work either; it seemed as if it were there merely as a hook and not an integral part of the story. So I began the novel in the present and added flashbacks as needed. I don’t know if it works, but right now it’s the only way I know to tell the story.

In my other books, I let the characters tell each other their life stories. It’s a cheat, really, a means of making the past seem more immediate, but at least the characters get to know each other at the same time the reader does. The flashbacks in my work-in-progress are true flashbacks, momentary musings by the hero. I do not plan to write any scenes in the past. I want this one to have as much forward movement as possible to mask its real character — an allegory. (I mean, really, an allegory? Who reads allegories?)

As a reader, I prefer anything that keeps my attention. Often, flashbacks disturb the flow of the story, making me aware of the construct. In the minutes it takes for me to get into the flow of the back-story, I lose interest. But I admit, I have become something of a philistine and no longer admire writing solely for its artistic and intellectual achievements.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

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On Writing: Embracing Playfulness

March 18, 2008 — Pat Bertram

My goal as a writer is to learn all I can and to be so accomplished and confident that I can write whatever and however I wish and be able to stand by it. Too many new writers think they don’t need to follow the rules, that they can set their own style, which is true up to a point, and that point is readability. What I want is confidence coupled with readability. Following the style others have set is not my way, but so far I haven’t found a distinct voice.

One way I am trying to find that voice is by embracing playfulness. When I’m trying to figure out where to go with a story or a scene, I brainstorm, stringing incongruities and absurdities together, the more ridiculous the better. Not only does it get my mental juices flowing, sometimes those ridiculous ideas are the perfect answer to the problem of what comes next.

Silliness has added some interesting twists to my books. My novel, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, is about a disease that wipes out most of the population of Colorado. About half way through the writing, I hit a wall. I tried brainstorming with a friend, and he had no interest whatsoever in my plight, so being silly, he said I should forget the book and write about zombies. I laughed at the suggestion, but the idea took hold. Since the disease was a rapidly mutating one, I had the disease go through a short spurt where the victims turned into zombies. Gave the book an interesting twist, mostly because even though the idea started out being silly, it ended up being spooky. Odd, that.

One thing I have not been able to silly my way out of is my habit of using too many pronouns. He did this. He did that. He went here. He went there. It’s the mark of an amateur, but more than that, I don’t like it. I should be able to come up with a better way of telling the story. And maybe someday I will.

Until then, all I can do is write, perfect the craft, and embrace playfulness.

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Filling the Needs of the Story

March 11, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Almost all novels tell the same basic story: a character wants something and someone or something prevents that character from achieving his goal. While telling the story, many authors throw in incident after incident to fill out the book. After a while, these incidents seem incidental, as if they are simply filling space and not filling the needs of the story.

Writing instructors and how-to-get-published books remind authors to hook readers with a great beginning. The hook should be captivating, but that’s not the end of it; the rest of the book needs to be rewarding, too. If the author fills the book with insignificant incidents, readers feel as if they are wasting their time.

I am concerned that my current work in progress is becoming a series of incidents that go nowhere. My hero keeps reacting to the world changing around him, but he isn’t proactive. He wants to be left alone, to be free, but that is a passive goal. I keep thinking he should be acting, planning, taking charge, but what can he do when each day, each hour the world is different?

Eventually, of course, he will take charge of his destiny when he escapes the human zoo, but first I have to get him there. His world needs to become so threatening that he will give up freedom for safety, but it hasn’t reached that point yet. And the only way I know to reach that point is for him to continue reacting to the changes around him. And to do that, I need to keep adding incidents. Round and round it goes.

These incidents serve the needs of the theme, they serve the needs of the story, and they serve my needs as a writer by allowing me to stretch my imagination, but I don’t know if they are significant enough to offset the hero’s lack of resolve to do something. I would hate to have future readers finish the book simply because they don’t want to waste the time they invested.

In the end, I suppose, I need to concentrate on the flow. If the story flows smoothly, then everything else will fall into place, seeming as right and as inexorable as the sun rising in the east. And if by chance an incident disrupts the flow, I can edit it out later. Or perhaps I can have the sun rising in the west. Hmm. Could be interesting. I wonder how my hero would react to that?

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Words Yipping at My Heels

March 9, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I just finished taking a look at two thrillers, both big, slick, well-touted works. Although they had interesting plots, there were so many point-of-view characters and so many incidents that the stories never seemed to go anywhere. I finally got tired of the words yip-yip-yipping at me and closed the books.

Ahh. Silence.

Three-hundred-page manuscripts used to be common, but the size of books grew along with the influence of corporate booksellers. Not only did large books make people think they were getting more for their money, they were well suited for mass displays. As with other merchandise, perception of worth apparently supersedes true value.

Big books are divided into short chapters and those chapters divided into smaller and smaller segments that make the book easy to put down and pick up at odd intervals for attention-challenged readers, but those small segments make it hard for a reader who wishes to identify with a character and be pulled into another reality.

Some books don’t lose anything by being big and thick. Although toward the end I did get a trifle tired of Stephen King’s Duma Key, he managed to keep my attention all the way through. No mean feat. But most big books today can do with some serious editing to better focus the plot and give some depth to the characters and stop that incessant yipping.

One of the more enjoyable books I read recently was a mere two hundred and sixty pages, but it didn’t seem like a short book. The character’s plight engaged my interest, and I didn’t keep flipping pages in an effort to finish the book quickly.

I used to feel guilty that my own books were only about three hundred pages long; obviously something is wrong with me if other writers can churn out words by the hundreds of thousands. But I want my words to signify something, to be worth the time it takes to dig them out of my psyche. And I want my characters to be more than mere types. I don’t know if I will ever become the writer I wish to be, but I know one thing: I won’t be creating overblown, yippy works; the words come too hard. Besides, I would rather readers complain that my books are too short than slam them shut to get a bit of silence.

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How Do I Write? Let Me Count the Ways.

March 7, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Okay, I admit it: I am a closet pencilphile. Seems silly, I know, in this electronic age, but I write in pencil on loose-leaf paper. There. I’ve outed myself. I feel so much better now.

I am not being contrary. I do have reasons. I have a better mind/writing connection using pencil and paper than I have with a keyboard; a mechanical pencil is easier on my fingers than pen, and paper is easier on my eyes than a computer screen.

For me, fiction writing is largely a matter of thinking, of trying to see the situation, of figuring out the right word or phrase that puts me where I need to be so the words can flow. I can do this better in bed, clipboard propped against my knees or on a pillow than sitting at a desk. If, as Mel Gibson said, “A movie is like public dreaming,” then novels are like shared dreaming, and where better to dream than in a comfortable bed?

I don’t know the entire story before I writing, but I do know the beginning, the end, and some of the middle. That way I can have it both ways: planning the book and making room for surprises.

I need to know a bit about the hero, but most of the time I get to know the characters the same way a reader would — by the way the characters act. In my work-in-progress, I thought I had a mother who was manipulative, but a reader pointed out that if that’s what I wanted, I needed to show it better. I reread the sections with the mother and decided not to impose my will on her. Although she drove her son crazy, I saw her in the rereading as sad, as if she were trying to find a way to fit in the world or make it fit her, and that was much better for purposes of the story.

I need to write the story in the order it happens — it’s more satisfying for my logical mind and easier to keep track of — but if I get to a place where I know something happens without knowing what, I will skip it and go back later when I know what is missing.

So, there you have it. That’s how I write.

What about you? How do you write? Do you have a favorite place or a place that puts you in the proper frame of mind? Do you write from start to finish, or like Margaret Mitchell, do you start with the last chapter and work forward? Do you have to search for the words?

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