I'm Just Wild About Scrivener

First of all, I must mention that the version of Scrivener I'm running is version 2.6, and I'm running it on a Mac, whose operating system is OS X, version 10.9.5. If you have a PC, it may be that some of the features I find so enthralling are not available to you. Or maybe they are. I have no way of knowing.

Scrivener is available for download at the Literature and Latte site. You can try it out for thirty days and see whether you like it. If you do, it can be yours forever (or until your computer is obsolete; make that six months) for only $45.00.

I don't even know three-quarters of the bells and whistles on this product. The tutorial that comes with it is very good, but to tell you the truth I didn't go through it all the way. Instead I jumped on and began to write my historical spy thriller. I found it to be wonderful for that, because you can keep notes on each character—with pictures—in the sidebar that runs down the left hand side, along with notes on all the locations you're using, timelines, and links to anything you might want to link to for quick reference. You can enter a date when you'd like to be finished, and the number of words long you'd like your work to be, and it shows you how many words you have to write every day, with a thermometer that turns green when you're nearly there.

All this is beyond swell. But the feature I just discovered—dictation!—is the swellest of all.

Did you ever see one of those forties movies with a famous writer as a main character? Do you remember how he was not only rich (he was always a man) but how he had a cute young stenographer taking down his deathless prose while he loafed and invited his muse with his feet up on the desk, chewing the end of a pencil for effect? No carpal tunnel syndrome for that boy. He had a servant. And now I do too. I could even put my feet on the dining room table here and balance the laptop on my lap, dictating into the built-in microphone, if I weren't afraid of dropping the laptop, and even more afraid of disgracing myself by putting my feet on the dining room table. My word, what my grandmother would have had to say about that.

For me the practical effect of being able to dictate the work straight into the computer is to double my productivity in terms of word count. I can talk two or three times as fast as I can type. You can say "period" and "comma," too, and it puts in periods and commas. You have to watch the words as they appear on the screen, of course, and make sure they are the words you meant to go there. My bad guy is named "Ratz," for instance, and Scrivener wanted to say "rats" the first couple of times. But the third time Scrivener got it right. So it follows what you do, and the corrections you make, and adjusts to your style.

You do have to remember to turn off the dictation function if you have to answer the phone. Yesterday I got a call from one of my sons. We chatted happily for awhile, and when I returned to work there was a long passage in the middle of the manuscript, which went something like this:

Sure Thursday Ashley well… Give yourself so but will let you today to do some sort of deal was okay Melissa yeah I got that yes okay no that's okay cause she was the mortgage Time is usually easily around dinnertime subclasses and his friends want to do something the middle of the night off I'm sure over here for dinner so I hope you come pick you up and you're out there soon see you tomorrow coming to some extent we have to go to choir practice right at quarter quarter something also six we can eat we will disburse all just you okay okay Wilfong
Tediously noticed right so so chocolate
Great if that's okay anyway I will hurry because they're pretty well trichinosis
Hey Neil would've been very bad okay good night okay okay see them yes yes good good great okey-dokey see you then bye-bye okay

…so you probably don't want to use Scrivener's dictation function to write the minutes of your next meeting, or for much of anything else unless you have your eye on the screen at all times and your fingers on the keyboard ready to make occasional corrections. ("Tediously noticed right so so chocolate?" What was that about?)

© 2015 Kate Gallison

Serials, Continued

The serial, with its attendant cliff-hanger ending, is as old as Sheherazade. You will recall the story of the sultan's bride, who told him a tale with a cliffhanger every night to keep him from chopping her head off in the morning. In the nineteenth century, and well up into the twentieth, magazines published serial fiction, paying the writers by the column inch (in case you ever wondered why the works of Dickens were so long).

When I was little, serial dramas were acted out on the radio, not only the housewives' soap operas but comic-book style stories for kids, Little Orphan Annie, Sky King, Tennessee Jed, or Jack Armstrong (the All-American Boy). The episodes were fifteen minutes long. Can you imagine? Nowadays it takes fifteen minutes for a TV show to get through the commercials. We would sit transfixed in the big chair in front of the radio, spoiling our supper with handfuls of cookies, waiting to see whether Sky King had rescued Penny and Clipper.

Serials featuring plucky damsels in distress, such as the Perils of Pauline, pulled in many an eager moviegoer in the silent era. Later movie serials appealed to boys. The grim-jawed heroes often served in the armed forces, sometimes flying airplanes, struggling with the customary mad fiend bent on world domination, if not Hitler then Doctor Destruction. Each episode ended with the hero going over the cliff in a car, or falling out of his airplane, or being crushed in a mine explosion. The following episode would begin, "after Captain Bruce Bammer was rescued from the mine, he…"

So the technique is there to be used. Make your audience root for the hero. Involve them deeply in his life. Then do something terrible to him at the end of every episode.

Modern audiences like their serial dramas in bigger chunks than fifteen minutes; an hour or an hour and a half works well on television. And they will wait all summer for the next season of, say, Downton Abbey. But how does this translate into print media? How long should a serial episode be? How many episodes make a story? These questions are still up in the air. Some writers are capable of spinning off an infinite number of episodes of, for example, a sci-fi thriller, and others want to wind it up while the readers are still young. It seems to depend on what the traffic will bear.

How much closure do you need at the end of an episode? That's another question. Some folks are unhappy that the episodes end with cliff-hangers, and to them I say, go read a short story. It's a different form.

It may be that reader input will come to direct the way some of the serial stories will go. There are folks who are horrified by this idea. I'm not one of them. I'll consider suggestions from my friends, so why not from strangers on social media? This is the twenty-first century, after all. How many of us are solitary geniuses cranking out inviolable works of brilliance? As I always say, we'll see how it goes.

Oh, right. I almost forgot to put in a plug for BUCKER DUDLEY.

Kate Gallison

Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends

I'm starting another story.

Yes, folks, in the very teeth of a storm of public indifference I'm taking keyboard in hand to create yet another fictional world, yet another collection of somehow complimentary characters, yet another set of astounding circumstances that will throw them all into conflict, keeping the reader in nail-biting suspense right up to the ultimate, satisfying conclusion.

Not useful

Maybe it will be a novel. Maybe it will be a short story, which I can shop around without the help of my agent, who takes so long, so very long to read my work. Maybe it will be another historical. Maybe it will take place in the twenty-first century, an era I have no particular fondness for. (How could I have dared to bring a child into this world? But I digress.)

The point of this fevered screed—quite literally fevered; I'm having trouble shaking a bronchial infection—the point of it is that I have a new system. Beverly Graves Meyers invented it. She described it in a blog post last week for (The Poisoned Pen Press). It's quite a bit more useful, and I think more successful as far as encouraging output goes, than those formulas I used to pass on for torturing your plot into general acceptability, such as Save the Cat. I've broken her system down into bullet points, herewith:

• A three-hole punch
• For each novel, a three-ring binder (an old used one from college will do)
• As many sets of dividers as necessary
• Three-ring punched plastic pockets with zippers

Useful

…And, of course, your computer and printer. Then, everything you find in your research or the bubblings of your imagination goes in the binder, labeled, on the outside, Marvelous New Novel or whatever your working title might be.


Just inside the front cover:

• A calendar for the novel's time line (Google "perpetual calendar" and pillage at will)
• Master list of characters
• Master list of settings, if helpful

After that, the dividers, labeled appropriately:

• Characters (with sub-dividers, one for each character)
• Settings
• Background on main plot points
• Clues (sometimes)

For each character:

• A summary of the character's physical characteristics and life events, worked up last, but put right behind the divider
• A photo or painting approximating the character
• Your notes on this person's history and personality
• Printed articles on the character's profession or hobbies
• Any little squibs and bits you might want to put in one of your plastic pockets

For each setting, your own notes, similarly, plus anything useful you found while doing research. The plastic pockets are good for maps.

Behind the Plot Point divider, whatever you might find helpful. The contents of the pockets include, but are not limited to, those notes you made on the cocktail napkin at Bouchercon.

So there you have it. I'm off to write The Next Big Thing. You may do the same. May the best man keep his desk in order. Oh, yes, and find a publisher.

Kate Gallison

Humor – The Secret Weapon

When I was newly married and struggling to learn how to write publishable fiction (my ambition from the age of ten), I placed some humorous articles in a local magazine called COUNTY TIMES. I only remember one of the topics – how to get rid of a pile of bricks – but I do remember the pieces were odd and silly and I was thoroughly delighted that an editor put them in print.

Unfortunately, one reader most certainly was not. He sent me hate mail telling me so and in the process taught me this: Comedy is without a doubt the most subjective sort of communication, so count on it at your own risk.

Not crazy about the odds of success, I haven’t written a purely humorous anything since. Instead, I write mysteries around a character who has a lighter way of looking at things. If readers think she’s fun – terrific! But if my jokes go over like another pile of bricks, there’s always that dastardly murder to solve.

Old influences were Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, Gregory MacDonald’s Fletch books (not the movies) and the film Charade starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Another special favorite was Hopscotch starring the late Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. All of them old enough to have whiskers, I know, but they still hold up beautifully.

Which brings me to some of the curiosities I’ve run across regarding humor.

Asked when he planned to do some more serious work, Walter Matthau replied, “Humor is my serious work.” He claimed it was more difficult than “noncomedic or tragic or whatever you want to call it."

Comedian and motivational speaker, David Naster, concurs. “Humor is intellectual… It’s an idea you make funny… [s]ome more complicated than others.”

Street thugs take note: Making someone laugh gives you a certain power over them. Think about it. You’re causing another person to do something they didn’t expect, or perhaps even intend, to do, and usually they’ll thank you for it.

Historians credit the British sense of humor for helping the UK endure two horrific world wars. Our own Bob Hope, and others, did much the same for us. Yet if a funny movie – or book – were to be put up for a prestigious award, most likely it would be laughed off the docket. That subjective problem again.

My first agent may have said it best. “Nobody takes humor seriously.”

Donna Huston Murray

The Art of Extrapolation

Some writers can’t write about anything unless they have experienced it first-hand.

If they write about climbing Mt. Everest, they must climb Mt. Everest; if they write about escaping from killer sharks, they must swim with killer sharks; if they write about being stranded in the desert, they must become stranded in the desert, and so on and on. I am not one of these writers. And I’m sure I’m not alone. But take heart fellow cowardly writers, for there is an alternative. It’s called extrapolation. As defined by Webster, to extrapolate is “to project, extend or expand known data or experience into an area not known or experienced.” Or, as my grandfather put it less elegantly, but more simply, “You don’t have to stick your head in the garbage can to know it stinks.” Wise old grandpa.

For example, most moms have experienced losing sight of their child in a crowded airport, train station or department store. The panic, the rush of adrenalin, the icy fear. And they have also felt the dizzy relief, the joy mixed with anger, when the tot shows up, peeking out from a rack of clothing. It is not too hard to extrapolate those feelings into what a mother feels when her child is kidnapped, and later returned.

We have all experienced death in some form, either of a pet or a wild animal—bird or squirrel—in the woods. Some of us have even had the misfortunes of witnessing the death of a relative or friend. The point is, we don’t have to visit a morgue and look at rows of corpses, to know what death is.

Recently, in the novel I’m currently working on, I was trying to describe the claustrophobic feelings of a young man on a submarine. I remembered playing hide and seek as a child when some smart-aleck kid locked me in the closet where I was hiding. Presto! That panicky, trapped feeling came back in a rush and I was able to give those feelings to my character. While working on another novel, I had to describe what it’s like to ride a motorcycle. A kind friend let me sit on his Harley, parked on a busy highway and that was enough. I could imagine the rest—the throb of the motor, the wind in my hair, and narrowly missing an eighteen-wheeler.

So—relax. You don’t have to risk your life to write. Extrapolate. That’s what we have imaginations for.

Robin Hathaway

Writing Advice

I'm not going to give you writing advice. Instead I'm going to talk about other people's advice to you.

I'm not going to give you advice on surviving criticism, either. People in your writing group, your friends, or one of the dwindling ranks of professional reviewers, most of these folks will have something negative to say about your work sooner or later. All that means is that it's not what they want right now. If you throw up your hands and say, "Well, I'm no good," after that, you're not a writer. Nothing wrong with not being a writer. Being a writer is not the highest calling in life. I mean, think about it. Was Gandhi a writer? Was Escoffier? Heifitz?

But if you are a writer, and you feel that your craft needs honing, either because someone has told you so, or you have noticed your own deficiencies, or your self-confidence is faltering, or you're very young, you may find yourself turning to books on writing advice. This is not a bad thing, but you have to be selective. Many of these books will not give you what you want right now, which is useful advice and encouragement. Many of them are there to lead you up the garden path, waste your time and separate you from your money.

My personal criterion for a book on writing advice is this: Can I imagine writers I respect reading this and paying any attention to it? Having passed this initial sniff test, good books of writing advice fall into four categories:

1. Living the writing Life
2. Structuring your book and completing a first draft
3. Editing and polishing your book
4. Selling and promoting your book

The first category is the most fun to read. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, is my very favorite of these. Steven King's On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft is not to be missed. Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner is also a treat.

The second category is for me the most interesting, because plotting and structure are not skills that come naturally to me. When I get hold of a good one I study it ardently. My favorites are Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron and Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. There's another one I truly love but I've lost my copy and forgotten the title. Writers Digest published it. It had a blue cover. It talked about Aristotelian poetics.

Don't read books in the third category while you are still working on the first draft. You will get all bogged down in grammar and the minutiae of elegant self-expression when you should be figuring out who did what to whom and when. When you are ready to edit, a different process from writing, you can't do better than Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne and Dave King, and Don't Murder your Mystery by Chris Reorden.

I don't have a good book on selling and promotion. Things in the industry are changing so fast that a book might not be the way to go. You might be better off online, following things like Publisher's Marketplace, Mediabistro.com and the Query Shark's blog.

Kate Gallison

Dialogue vs. Description

Recently I was on a panel and someone in the audience asked, “How much of a novel should be dialogue and how much description?” The question sparked a heated discussion.

The male, thriller/noir writers believed strongly that description should be kept to a minimum. The traditional and historical mystery writers, primarily female, claimed description was an essential part of their books. “Sometimes the setting itself becomes a character,” one female author said.

Both sets of writers have their point. An atmospheric suspense or historical novel needs more sense of place than an action-packed adventure story. It’s a matter of emphasis, I guess. But speaking generally, the modern novel has less description and more dialogue than, say, the Victorian novel. The reader has less patience today and too many solid pages of prose can put off the most avid reader.

Movies have influenced how we write, too. We are now accustomed to jumping from scene to scene without transitions, the way it is done in films. In the old days the author led the reader by the hand from one scene to the next, describing everything along the way.

What do you think? Do you like more or less description? More or less dialogue? Or, don’t you care, as long as it’s a good story?

Robin Hathaway