Monthly Archives: August 2009

Story Structure

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In this article, Larry Brooks discusses writing from an outline vs. writing from the seat of your pants. His argument is that both are feasible, providing you have your story architecture in mind. Unfortunately, although the article was good, he didn’t explain what he means by story architecture or how to develop one.

Which got me to wondering, what exactly does he mean by “story architecture,” and how does a writer know she has one?

I did some digging on his site and found this page, where he does a ten part series on story structure. Here are the 4 parts he uses, but I’ll leave it to you to head over to his site to read through the whole series.

  1. Set up: Establish the stakes
  2. Response: React to the problem
  3. Attack: Main character begins to fix things
  4. Resolution

Channel 101 also has an interesting article about story structure. If you’re familiar with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, then some of Dan Harmon’s stuff will sound familiar to you. Dan says there are eight steps you need to cover. I like this description best because his descriptions are great, yet succinct. Definitely head over and read these now; I’ll wait.

  1. You
  2. Need
  3. Go
  4. Search
  5. Find
  6. Take
  7. Return
  8. Change

You might be more comfortable with the three act structure, described here.

  1. Setup
  2. Confrontation
  3. Resolution

I’m sure you’re picking up on the theme here. Whether you know the whole layout before you start writing, or if you write it and then rework it later, your story will probably follow this basic pattern.

  1. Setup: Introduce the character and setup the situation
  2. Conflict: The character has a problem, tries to fix things, often makes matters worse, and eventually gets it right. Or not.
  3. Resolution: Wrap up loose ends, answer lingering questions, etc.

Of course, if you’re writing something that’s non-traditional, then your story might not follow this, and that’s cool too. Write what you want. As long as it works, do it, I say.

9 Tips for attracting Twitter followers

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If you’re using twitter, particularly if you want to promote your blog or website with it, you’ll need followers. How can you attract twitter followers without making an annoyance of yourself or coming off as a spammer?

  1. Say something useful. Or funny. Or at least mildly entertaining. Don’t spam, and don’t make every post about driving people to your site, getting them to join your affiliate network, buy your e-book, etc. Twitter users can spot spam a mile away, and they’ll drop you right away if you come off like that.
  2. Follow others. In general, you won’t get many followers if you’re not willing to follow people. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, but I do to start. If you turn out to be a spammer, or worse, I have no problems un-following you though. Be careful, following hundreds (or thousands) of people hoping some will reciprocate is a great way to get labeled a spammer.
  3. Make it easy to follow you. Provide a link to your twitter profile in your post, on your sidebar, somewhere.
  4. Ask! Ask people to follow you. That may seem obvious, but I often have success posting something like “I need X more followers to hit YYY. Please follow me.”
  5. Ask for retweets. When you post a particularly useful tweet, ask your followers to retweet it. This will get you more exposure.
  6. Give retweets. If you posts of people you follow that you think YOUR followers would like. Your followers get good information, and the person you retweeted is more likely to follow you and retweet your material too.
  7. Use the hash (#) tag. If you write a lot about basketball, then you’ll want to use #basketball in your tweets. Think keywords, and preface each with #. This will help people find you when they search for those topics on twitter.
  8. List yourself in twitter directories.
  9. Be patient. It takes time to build a twitter following. Take your time, enjoy posting and getting to know your followers, and the followers will come.

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Unlimited Ideas

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If you’re a blogger, creating content weekly or even daily can be a challenge. If you’re writing articles for a living, then you’re probably facing similar problems. How do you find topics to write about?

One of my favorite ways is the list post. Everyone has written them. Let’s take a recent one of mine for example.

50 Ways to Improve Your Health

If you’re looking for article topics or more post topics, then try expanding an entry into a post or article. Again, let’s take “meditate” from the article and work on that. Here are some samples to get you started.

  1. Learn to meditate
  2. Types of meditation
  3. Benefits of meditation
  4. Meditation and spirituality
  5. Meditation and relaxation
  6. Advanced meditation techniques

You get the point, I’m sure.

One benefit is that you can do research on one topic, meditation in this case, and then use that research in multiple posts or articles. If you’re only making $10 or $20 per article, then it’s to your advantage to write more articles from the same amount of background research.

If you’re a blogger, then turn the posts into a series on your site.

What, you don’t have any list posts of your own to mine? Use others’ posts for inspiration, but be a good internet citizen and give credit for your inspiration.

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Remember, this is a do-follow blog, so you get link credit for your comments.

I’m always looking to expand my twitter and stumbleupon network. Follow and friend me — I’ll reciprocate.

Publishing your short fiction

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You may have a great short story already written, or the seed of one wriggling around somewhere, and you’d like to know where and how to publish it.

Ralan.com is a good place for speculative, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. He keeps the site up-to-date, and there are hundreds of listings there, divided up by pay amount, so it’s easy to find something in the level you’re looking for. Ralan is free to use.

Duotrope is another free online market database. It includes most genres, not just speculative. It has a good search feature so you don’t have to go digging.

Writers Market is another one I use. It’s not free (about $40/year). It has searchable market listings, although the search features here aren’t as good as those on duotrope! One nice feature is the ability to input your submissions and track when you sent them out, to whom, and when you should expect to get a response. I think that’s worth the $40/year price, not including the market listings. They do offer a monthly payment plan if you don’t want to commit right away.

Which comes first, market or story?

O.K. you have an idea and a few markets, what’s next? Do you write the story and then search for a market to fit the length, genre, and other specifics? Or, do you find a market and tailor the story to fit?

If your primary goal is getting published, then tailoring to the market is easier in my experience. Some markets have very off-the-wall requirements, so you’re better off working that into the story from the beginning if possible. I know purists will turn up their noses at that, but I said if your goal is being published, writing to the market is easier. If your goal is art, then by all means, write first and market later.

I’ve done both successfully, and for me it just depends on the story. If I have something more or less fully worked out, I write that and try to find a market that it will fit. And, honestly, that can be tough. Often I’ve found a great market for it just to realize that it’s too long, too short, should have taken place in Maine or on a pirate ship, etc. Having a great story and nowhere suitable to send it is frustrating, to say the least, and one reason that I tend to make sure I have a market in mind before I put in too much work.

Submissions

You have a story, you have a market, you’re all set. Right?

Not quite. Not yet at least.

First off, put the story away for a week or two. You need time away from it to do a good job editing and proofreading. Here are a few other tips I use for editing my work before it goes out.

  • Read it out loud. Nothing will help you pick up on awkward construction like hearing it.
  • Get someone else to read it. This person should be someone who can help you proofread and edit.
  • Make sure characters’ names are different enough that they’re not easily confused.
  • Read each characters’ dialogue to make sure everyone doesn’t sound alike. No, the forty year old mom should not sound just like her seventeen year old teenage son.

Next, you need to look at the submission guidelines for the market you’ve chosen, and follow them. Follow them to the letter. You want your work to stand out because it’s good, not because you ignored what the editors asked for. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot!

If you don’t know how to format your manuscript, then this search for “manuscript submission format” will help. Sometimes markets will have their own guidelines that conflict with these, if so, do what the market says.

Last step, send it out. It’s all too easy to get carried away editing and preparing and never get anything submitted. It’s something I think most writers struggle with, so set yourself a deadline and get the story out. Even if it’s rejected, you’ll feel better about yourself for trying.