Writers Supporting Writers

— Mark Paxson

I finished writing something and have pondered what to move on to next. This month started with me committed to writing a sequel to the novel I published almost a year ago. That particular story is told in first person from the perspective of several different characters.

The story I just completed is told in first person from one character’s perspective. About half way through, I decided to change it to third person and get some other character’s in the mix, to broaden the story a bit. But then I decided to keep in in first person because I wanted the story to be that character’s story and only hers. As a result, it makes for a much more minimalist of a story. We’ll see what people think.

Now I’m moving on to what’s next. I’ve decided to shelve the sequel above for another project. This morning I spent some time at a local books and music festival. I talked with a woman who has spent her life gathering historical tidbits of her ancestors and has spent the last five years putting those bits into stories. Kathy Lynne Marshall has written a handful of books in those five years. She includes information and resources about how to gather historical information about people from the past. So … I’m reading The Mystery of Margaret Booker now. About her great-great-great-great-great grandmother. Born a slave who walked to freedom 30 years later.

And an interesting thing happened when I got to the first page of the story. She tells it in first person. She is allowing Margaret to tell her own story in her voice.

That conversation and seeing the first person approach caused me to shift gears away from the sequel. I’m moving on to something that has been an objective for the last 4-5 years. A story about my grandmother, which I may have mentioned here a post or two ago. When I tried to launch the story back then, it was in third person. Which just seemed natural to me. How can I tell a story in first person from Grandma’s perspective? I can. Or at least I’m going to try.

More and more, it seems my stories are told in first person. My first novel wasn’t. Many of my short stories aren’t either. Most are told in third person, I believe. But lately, it seems like first person is the way to go. There is something about first person that I like. It’s easier to adopt a particular type of voice in first person. It’s easier to get inside a character’s head and see what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling.

But I wonder if that’s a good thing. Choosing a point of view or perspective because it makes the writing easier doesn’t necessarily make for a better story. Go back to that piece I just finishedd. I have no doubt that if I switched to third person and told the story from the perspective from multiple characters, the story would be more complex, with more layers. It’s what happened with my first novel — originally written in first person, but completely re-written in third person to allow for more details and more characters to have a place in the story. It definitely was a better story because of that change.

Occasionally, people ask how I decide POV for a story. I believe we’ve discussed it on video chats. My answer will always be … it depends. I still believe that, but I wonder what other writers think. How do you decide on the POV, or POVs, in which you’re going to tell a story? How do you decide between first person and third person? Is it a decision you can even describe? Because for me … it not only depends, it just kind of happens.

The audio book market continues to expand. I’ve read recently that while print and ebook sales rose 5% in 2021, audio books rose 18%. No doubt most self published authors have at least considered offering an audio version of their work. I must confess that I’ve never researched how to go about doing so, or how much it costs to create an audiobook, even though Smashwords offers links to audiobook narrators. Until now. Why now? Now, because the price has fallen to the point where I feel that I can afford it. Which is to say, I can convert my books to audiobooks for free.

Create audiobook versions of your ebooks for free? There must be a catch, you say. And you would be right. Several of them.

The first catch is that you have to publish your books on the Google Play Store. And the second is that this is a limited time beta program. I’ve had my books in the Google ebook store for a number of years now, and I was sent an email announcing this program. I don’t know how widely available it is, or whether or not if you put your books into the Google store now, if you would be eligible to take advantage of this beta version offer. The email implies that the program might not be a free service once it is out of beta. Still, it might be worth looking into, if you are comfortable with the big catch.

The biggest catch is, as you might suspect for the price, that the narration is being done by our AI overlords, not humans. So the question is, is it good enough? And that is one question that I am not equipped to answer, since I’ve listened only to a few parts of audio books – they are not my thing – so I’m not the person to judge whether or not the quality is acceptable or not.

Google suggests that it would be fine for non-fiction books without a lot of illustrations. But is it good enough for fiction? I think it might be, but not for the $20-$30 cost of a professionally produced audiobook. But as a low cost alternative… They might be acceptable.

You have your choice of 22 English speaking voices – 7 different American female voices, 5 American male voices, 1 female and 2 male Australian voices, 2 female and 2 male British voices, and 2 female and 3 male Indian voices of different age groups. Which gives you a good variety of narrators, though, of course, none of them are likely to match the narrator or character in your head. But that might be said for human narrators as well.

Here is a link to sample the various voices for English, as well as Spanish: https://support.google.com/books/partner/table/10957334?p=narrator_library

From the sample that I have listened to, the AI voice is aware of the context of what it is reading. And while it will not match the narration of a good voice actor, it is far from the robotic voices of some years ago. I have been expecting this – AI generated audio books – to happen for some time, and I am sure the process will only get better over time. So while the voice sounds quite human, the biggest downside I see – or rather hear – is that the AI narrates the story in a single voice. I believe that good narrators will narrate characters in different voices, so that you have a better sense of who is saying what. Without that change in voice, it can be sometimes hard to follow who is speaking. Though that will depend, in part, on how you use dialog tags and your writing style.

But when you consider the current price – and the fact that you can download the files and sell them on platforms other than Google – as long as you continue to sell them on Google – it seems like a pretty good deal. A deal that I found that I could not pass up, if only to see what type of sales and feedback I get with them. They can always be unpublished, should I find a strong negative reaction to them. Still, the way I see it is that these would, at the very least, be a way of getting my foot into the audio book door. And, since I can publish them at the cost of my ebooks – which is to say, free – I believe that my customers will get their money’s worth, no matter what.

If you are curious to hear how they sound, you can download one of my free books to sample by going to the Google App Store Book, Audio Books and search for C. Litka.

— Mark Paxson

… write creative non-fiction?

Anybody out there do this? I’d love your thoughts on how you approach stories that are based on real life and real people.

I write mostly fiction. Almost entirely fiction. I’ve written a few short pieces that were “grabbed from the headlines” so they have a basis in reality, but were at the end of the day fictional.

One morning, I got to work to learn that the body of a man had been discovered to the east of our building. I went home that night and wrote his obituary, without knowing a thing about him. Around the same time, I also wrote a short story about a man trying to survive in Aleppo, Syria, as his country was torn apart by civil war. Completely fictional, but I’d like to think there were some elements of truth in what I wrote.

I currently have a barely started short story that is similar to Aleppo in that is based on one man’s efforts to survive in Ukraine as his country is torn apart by a foreign invader. I haven’t got that far because I want to make sure it is different than Aleppo and I’m still pondering that.

That’s about it, I think. I blog a lot about things going on in my life, but they aren’t really “stories.” But … I have a couple of real-life-based stories I want to write and I struggle with the “how” of writing a real-life story.

The biggest one, the most important one, is a story I want to write about my maternal grandmother. I have an opening scene that is based on a lot of facts I remember about her, facts I’ve uncovered on-line (like the manifest for the ship she came to America on when she was 18), and things my mom has told me. But once I get past that scene, I have no idea how to approach the rest of the story.

One more example. I had an assistant in my day job for more than ten years. She lived a fascinating life in her younger years — involving guns and gangs and casinos and well, all sorts of stuff. She kept insisting that I should write her story. To which I kept responding, “I have no idea how to write a real story.”

Part of the problem is that I’m a pantser, not a plotter. Creative non-fiction, or a true biography, likely requires more plotting than pantsing. If it’s based on real-life events, the story is right there before you. As a pantser, that’s just not how I write and typically, when I have figured out the “rest of the story” is when my block settles in.

Another problem, particularly with my grandmother’s story is that there is a lot I don’t know. A lot. As a result, I’d have to make up quite a bit about her life and that scares me. I want it to be as true to her and who she was as it can be, but how can I be sure of that if I have to make up so much of it.

I know that the solution to this, at least with respect to my grandmother’s story, is to use the facts that I have where I can and then be comfortable with fictionalizing the rest, while trying to be as true as I can to her. But … I haven’t figured out how to get over that hump yet.

My question for you then, if there are any CNF, memoir, or biography writers out there, is how do you approach writing a story that is real-life, based on real-life, or loosely reality-based. I know there are classes and programs out there that promise to teach a person how to do this, but I’m not much of a classroom-learner. I just need some ideas, some methods, some concept of how to approach this and then I can go from there.

People have a lot to say about pickup lines, which is to say, first lines, but the purpose is the same – to engage the interest of someone. In the case of a story’s first lines, it’s the reader. So what do they say? Here’s just a tiny sample:

“Beginning a novel starts with crafting its very first sentence, which should grab your reader’s attention and lead them right into your story.” – MasterClass https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-great-first-line-for-your-novel

“Great first lines have that power, the power to entice your reader enough that it would be unthinkable to set the book down.” – The Write Practice https://thewritepractice.com/first-line/

“The first line of a story should create a sense of character, conflict, setting, mood, theme, or style — or any combination thereof. Most importantly, it should make the reader ask questions.” Diane Callahan How to Write a Good First Line https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-a-good-first-line-9bfef4399b9d

“No matter what genre you write, your first sentence is a seduction. It can be in the form of an invitation. A declaration. A tease. A promise. A jolt. A shock.

You must be shameless and your first sentence must be irresistible. It must induce curiosity and promise the answer to an urgent question.” Ruth Harris in Anne R Allen’s Blog https://annerallen.com/2018/04/how-to-write-a-great-first-sentence/

When the reader opens the book to that first line, it’s as if they’re opening up a line of credit with the author. But the tricky thing about that credit is that it has no substance right from the start. The reader could just give you one line and, if they don’t like it, they can close the book and move on to something else to read. Hence why writing a first line is so important.” The power of first lines in fiction by Josh Sippie https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/the-power-of-first-lines-in-fiction/

And so it goes. Anyone who knows about writing will tell you just how important the first line of your story or novel is.

And many of them will offer you from seven to a dozen different ways to craft a first line. To pick some random ones: begin by stating your theme, or with a strange detail. You can establish your character’s voice, convey the stakes, or set the scene.

Bridge McNulty at Now Novel https://www.nownovel.com/blog/great-first-lines-of-novels/ sets out five types of novel openings: The Teaser, The Autobiographer, The Talker, The Announcer, and The Scene Setter. In short, there is a ton of advice on how to write your first lines that is readily available to every new and old author.

Now, take off your writer’s hat and put on your reader’s cap. How many books have you put down after reading the first line? How many first lines do you recall? I am rather curious because for me, after six decades of reading, I don’t think a first line ever meant anything to me. And I’m a ruthless reader – if a book doesn’t engage my interest in the first couple of pages, or chapters, I have no problem putting it down. I’ve got better things to do with my life than spend it reading a book I am not enjoying. But even so, I’ll give a book more than a line or two to engage me.

I suspect that the perceived importance of first lines in a story is a writer’s thing. A kind of a writer’s in-game to see who can come up with the most perfect first line. And I guess, I’m not immune from that game myself. I must admit that I do spend some time on my first lines – though I do not obsess over them. In fact, I put more time into crafting my closing lines, as I think they might be more important than the opening lines. They are the “landing” that you need to stick, if a book is to work. I often have them set along with my first lines before I start writing the story, serving as my target ending.

What got me to thinking about first lines was a blog post from Mark Lawrence where he listed the first lines from his novels and short stories. You can find that blog post here. I found a number that I thought were very clever (but I like clever writing.) I’ve posted my first lines on my blog from my published and from some of unpublished scraps here. Looking over my first lines, I find that they can be divided into three categories: boring scene setting ones, “The Scene Setter”, ones that open with dialog, “The Talker”, and the ones where I make some attempt at cleverness and foreshadowing, the “The Teaser.”

There are many memorable, pithy, clever, or shocking first lines in literature. So, as a bonus, here are several lists of famous first lines:

http://review.gawker.com/the-50-best-first-sentences-in-fiction-1665532271

https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-books-first-lines/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/books/compelling-opening-lines-books/

So, how important are first lines to you, as both a writer, and as a reader? And as a writer, why not post some of your first lines in the comment section. Or post a link to your collection of first lines. As I suggested, it’s something of a game, dare to play?

— Mark Paxson

I just spent four days in Death Valley — one of the most desolate, isolated places in the continental United States. I take my camera on trips like this and take a lot of pictures of things.

Twice I stopped for pictures that had my wife questioning me. Both times I said the same thing. There’s a story there.

So, here’s your chance. Provide the story.

The first picture is of a car abandoned about 75-100 feet off the road in a place where I have absolutely no idea how it got there. I don’t recall seeing any tire tracks and the surface is pitted and bumpy enough I’m not sure how it could have got there. This is on the road from Furnace Creek to Badwater (the lowest piece of dry land on earth).

The second picture is of an old mine. I think it was probably a borax mine at one point. But I don’t think it’s operational anymore. You see things like this in places like Death Valley. Just random, in the middle-of-nowhere, factories or homes or buildings of one sort or other, that once thrived but now seem to be more ghost-like than real.

So … if you feel up to it and one of these (or both together) inspire a spark, write it and share it here. Put a link to it in comments if you post it to a blog, or email it to me and I’ll share it here. (mpaxson55@gmail.com)

In the meantime … hope you’re all writing. I’ve got more pictures to sort through.

—Berthold Gambrel

Below is the video of our latest chat, in which we answer questions from Priscilla Bettis and Anonymole. Thank you for the questions! We’ll be recording more chats to answer more questions soon.

How close to the edge do you write? How far ahead in your story could you put into words and sentences, if you could type like Superman, before you’d have to stop and figure out what to do next?

Maybe we should think of a story in the process of being written as having two sections. The first section is the part of the story where you can – and must – find the concrete words and sentences to draw your ideas out and onto the glowing screen or the sheet of paper on your desk. The second section is further out. It’s the part of the story that you know you’re heading towards, but do not know enough yet to put it into concrete sentences.

How wide this first section is probably varies by the type of writer you are. Planners who have outlined, bullet pointed, and profiled their characters down to the minutiae could, if they were Superman, type the whole book without pausing. Pantsers, on the other hand, Superman or not, might only know enough about their story to speed type to the next paragraph, or the end of the chapter. I suppose most of us fall somewhere between these two extremes. I know I do – I do all my story outlining and choreographing of the scenes in my head, save for timelines which I put on paper to better keep track of those important details.

Anyway, while writing this week, I got to thinking about the concept of having scenes and dialog fixed so clearly in your head that you could hammer them out as fast as you can type. There were a number of days this week that I typed two to three thousand plus words in the course of four or five hours of writing. I could do this only because I had spent two months thinking about those scenes over and over again. My original plan was to hold off writing the story until I had the whole of it in my head like that, but I came to fear that, three or four months down the road, many of these early story details would have been forgotten by then. So I set them down now, and the words flowed. However, having done so, I now have to stop writing to dream up a similar set of details for what comes next. (I’ll edit what I’ve written while I do that dreaming.)

So, how do you write? How much do you know when you start writing, and how much is still vague or even unknown?

— Mark Paxson

Below is the video for our latest video chat, in which we begin to respond to the questions/suggested topics from our post at the beginning of the year. Thank you to those who offered suggestions. We really appreciate it.

The last question we address in this chat is a question related to the “rules” of marketing. I wanted to take a moment to provide a fuller answer than I did in the chat.

As I say in the video, I’m not sure what the “rules” of marketing are for writers. So, I struggle with that from the outset, but as I think about it more, I can come up with a few.

Establish a social media presence. I know of a writer who got a publishing contract with a small publisher. They published two of his books — cozy mysteries. But then passed on anything else from him because he didn’t have a sufficient social media presence for them.

This need for a social media presence is something that has been in the background ever since I started my publishing journey. You gotta have a blog! So, I got a blog. And then you have to have Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And now, you better be on TikTok. Or the world is going to pass you by.

I’m on all of those things. Except TikTok. I just refuse to go there. But, social media has been both a blessing and a curse for me. The biggest problem is that I likely don’t use them the way I should to fully promote my written works. I don’t tweet regularly about my books. I tweet when there is something new to say about what I’m doing. Same with my blog.

Plus, my blog and my tweets are all over the place. They are not focused on my creative endeavors. I write and tweet about politics and food and photography and music and life in general. Which, to be honest, I think is a better way to develop an audience than the artificiality of never-ending marketing and promotion. I am who I am, both in real life and on social media. But the world doesn’t seem to work that way.

I’ve never established a huge following on social media. I’ve never approached viral status. And I’m okay with that. I’d rather develop a following naturally, through interaction with followers, than because of one single post or tweet that thousands see and decide to follow me … and then never interact with me again.

I gnash my teeth at times over the limits of what social media has offered me. But … here is the blessing social media has provided. Without it, my readership would be even smaller than it is now. Through social media, I have met and befriended so many other writers and readers and many of them buy my books when I publish something new. More than anybody else in my life, they are the ones who feed me and encourage me and support me in these endeavors.

Overall, at least for me, as frustrating as social media can be, I’d consider establishing a social media presence to be an overall positive. But I encourage you to make your presence what you want it to be. Be you and let your following grow organically. I think it’s far more rewarding than to develop a following that you never interact with. This, of course, gets to what your objectives may be — maximize sales or establish connections.

I’m not sure what other rules there are to publishing. We could discuss the querying process, the publishing process, and various promotional ideas. One of the things I’ve discovered with my last novel is that the on-line promo sites simply aren’t as effective and beneficial as they where when I started this journey ten years ago. It’s a fundamental reality of this business that there are ever more writers publishing ever more books, which makes it ever harder for writers to get noticed and to get readers to purchase their books.

One of the things I see is that you need to have a newsletter and an email list. And I just think … why? This is the type of thing that would just end up sitting in my email in-box, never being read, drowned by all of the other emails I get. 99% of which are spam and junk. I just don’t see how newsletters help. Somebody who has one and who has found success with it, please share that experience in the comments.

Whatever the rules of publishing were ten years ago, they’ve changed now because of how swamped the marketplace is. In some respects, I think the rules of marketing now are … do what you can. Try to find some niches where you can find readers and pursue them. But don’t expect much, because you are just one small fish in a very large sea. Set your objectives and dreams accordingly. Unless, of course, you are one of those rare writers who actually enjoys the promotion side of things. And good luck!

We have been known to offer unsolicited advice on this site. In this case, it’s advice on writing fiction for fame and fortune.

Don’t.

Yah, I realize that you’re not going to take this advice. Didn’t expect you to. I mention it only so that you don’t blame me if fame and fortune eludes you. The credit if you do make money writing fiction is entirely yours.

Still, there are thousands of authors making a significant amount of money from writing fiction, so it’s not an impossible dream. The thing is that there are tens of thousands who aren’t, not to mention thousands who are spending a significant amount of money in indie publishing chasing that dream and not making the money back. The odds of finding fame and fortune in writing fiction have never been good, and they’re no better today, no matter what path you take.

There may’ve been a time, early in the ebook revolution, when a writer had a better chance of making significant money in indie publishing than in traditional publishing, but those days are long gone. Self publishing has its own gatekeepers now – Amazon’s algorithms that reward the best sellers with visibility, and the best selling authors who protect their turf by spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, promoting their books to potential readers on Amazon and Facebook. You have to be able and willing to pay to play in indie publishing these days for even the chance to make money writing.

The long and short of writing is that you have two equally daunting paths to fame and fortune. This suggests that the path you choose might be best chosen by determining the type of writer you are. Are you a novelist, or a pulpster?

Indie publishing is the pulp market of the 21^st century. To be financially successful in indie publishing, you need to be a pulp writer. You need to be a very prolific writer, someone with more story ideas than you’ve time to write them down. And you need to be able to turn those story ideas into stories at 2,000 words, or more, a day, in order to produce three or more novels a year. You will also need to be an entrepreneur. You’ll need to spend money to hire cover artists and editors before your book ever has a chance to earn any of it back. You’ll need to learn the arcane art of efficiently promoting your books and be willing to spend folding money to do so. If you’re good enough, you can find fortune in indie publishing, though probably not fame.

If you’re not a pulp writer and/or an entrepreneur, if you need a year or more to write a novel, then you might be wise to pursue a career in traditional publishing – along with ten thousand other aspiring authors. Traditional publishing has its own arcane knowledge that you’ll need to master – how to do an elevator pitch, write a query letter, and compose a concise synopsis. You need to research agents, and maybe enter pitch contests and the like. Plus, it may well take several novels, hundreds of rejections or no replies, and a decade or more of your life in querying hell to sell a novel, if you’re lucky. On the upside, you don’t have to spend money on postage these days to send out your letters and manuscripts, though you can spend money on coaches and seminars, if you choose to. Both fame and fortune await your success. And there’s always indie publishing if all else fails.

Writing fiction has never been a smart way of making money, though that hasn’t stopped writers from trying their hand at it. And it probably won’t stop you either. But I believe that odds of financial success are pretty even between traditional and indie publishing these days, so that you can confidently pursue the publishing path you’re most comfortable with without looking back over your shoulder at the path not taken.