How to write a satisfying story

AuthorAppleton on August 6, 2018

Recently I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card for the first time. Truly it is a fantastic read. Deep characters that stick with you from page to page, interactions that keep you hooked, and concepts that are epic on a galactic scale. But other than thoroughly enjoying the story, I recognized something about the writing that was instructional for me as an author. Orson Scott Card crafted such a complex set of characters and events that it would have been easy for him to leave some story threads hanging… instead he managed to satisfy all threads, leaving me fully sated and eager to pick up his other books.

Many editors and writers refer to loose story threads as cliff hangers. It is the tendency of fresh out-of-the-gate writers to use cliff hangers at the end of every chapter, sometimes almost every scene. I’ve even heard that recommendation made on stage by professionals, and I’ve read it in some well-meaning books and on some blogs.

Don’t get me wrong! Cliff hangers are a powerful story tool. However, it is taxing on the reader’s brain to leave a million story threads unfinished. The trick is to leave enough threads hanging that it sucks the reader deeper into the story when you are writing a series of novels, while also wrapping up enough threads to satisfy them.

My recommendation is to treat the story as a mixture of completed threads and of loose ones. This way the reader is pulled in, finishes the first couple of chapters, feels satisfied and intrigued, and is able to go to sleep without that frustration of, “But why did this part of the story happen? It was the middle of a scene! Shucks, now I can’t sleep.”

Have you noticed that television series of today rely on serialized storytelling instead of the older Twilight Zone type of stand-alone episodes? Television is (many often forget) written before it is produced, making it worthwhile to compare not only books but also television and movies. While it is wonderful that series like Stranger Things can develop such well-written stories that leave you on the edge of your seat, I personally find it exhausting. I want to know the end, so I have often binged on the series I enjoy. But the result is this lasting angst that it took that many hours of my time to understand all of the threads in the story.

If you ever watched Star Trek: The Next Generation you will understand the power of episodes that contain a satisfying story arc. They still carried you on to the next episode, but they did not require a cliff-hanger to do it. Instead they relied on great characters whose lives you wanted to follow. They didn’t force incomplete stories on the audience because they were confident of the mood, message, and concepts.

Q: Which books, movies, or television series leave you feeling uplifted and most satisfied?

The Importance of Professional Fiction Editing

AuthorAppleton on July 2, 2018

You know how they say “Good things come to he who waits”? This is true of so many, many things. And it is a guide to trust when embarking on your writing journey.

Whether you are just starting out, or you already have published writing under your belt, here is something to always remember. Learning is a never-ending process, no less with writing than with other things in life.

I have heard so many stories, and seen so many examples, of new writers who are so eager to get their first book published that they release it to the market before it is ready. There is a reason that professional vetting works.

When I submitted my first manuscript to a professional editor she tore it up! Not literally of course, but in the digital sense, yes. Nearly every paragraph had two paragraph’s worth of editorial suggestions and corrections. She pointed out so many weaknesses in my syntax that I felt like giving up. The age-old self-pity. “I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough. What does she mean by this and that?” When I finished licking my wounds and studied the points that she had made, I tried applying the changes she had suggested and using it as a formula to improve my entire manuscript. The difference was astounding. Suddenly I understood that some of my writing studies had meant things differently than I had interpreted them.

Suddenly I knew that with patience, humility, and sweat the story could come out better than I had realized it could be.

There are no shortcuts in publishing success. Take the long road if you wish to succeed. Your first work is your first impression on readers.

With thousands of books to choose from, readers will feel no qualms if they ignore your next books in favor of books that impressed their imagination.

In fantasy writing it is essential to Show more and Tell less. Be concise where possible. Choose pointed descriptions. And bring your characters to life through engaging Scenes. My first book went through four editors. Yep, painful! Yes, oh so beneficial.

I have recommended this book before but I am going to do so again. If you want to strengthen your manuscript read Self-editing for Fiction Writers and then hire a professional to give you an editorial review, or a full line-edit. Taking the time to do the right things before publishing your book feels painful, but in the long run you will be grateful you did. If you are interested then check out Path to Publication. I’ve had the honor of helping several now-established authors take their manuscripts to the next level.

Q: Have you considered the benefits of a professional critique, review, or full edit to your manuscript?

How to Avoid Publishing Scams

AuthorAppleton on June 4, 2018

If you have a personal cell phone, you have probably dealt with your share of telemarketers and or scammers. But as a writer engaging on the web you become potential prey to a unique predator: the publishing services scam artist.

I don’t know where these people (or companies) obtain our private cell phone numbers, yet somehow they do. Over the past month I have fielded half-a-dozen calls from a number in California. A lot of them will not leave a message, but the more clever ones leave a friendly and enticing invitation.

The last one that I received started off something like this, “Hi my name is Farqua from Readers Magnet, I am calling in reference to your book The Phantom’s Blade. Our review department has highlighted your book for its imaginative and fascinating story and I’d very much like to discuss it with you. Please call me back at (xxx)xxx-xxxx I’m available Monday through Friday 8 to 5pm. I am very much looking forward to speaking with you.”

For many years now I have watched aspiring writers get their hopes and dreams dashed because they succumb to the “shortcut” instead of following the path of sweat. In the book publishing industry we call such services vanity presses.  They promise, that in exchange for a certain sum of money, they will put your book on Amazon, publish it on Kindle, and market it to hundreds of thousands of readers around the world .

The problem? They don’t have your best interest at heart and they certainly don’t care about the book that you wrote. They are out to make a quick buck at your expense. They utilize already free services to scam you out of your hard-earned money.

Book publishing can be an expensive proposition for the publisher. So any legitimate publisher looks at a writer’s work as a financial investment that could potentially lose them money.  And profitability is key! For that reason they are very selective in which books they publish. The process to get them to place their investment in you can last for a couple of years or more. Then, when they have finally published your book they have to help you sell it, otherwise their money goes out the window.

Publishing service companies don’t care about that risk for the simple fact that they are making their money off of you, the author. They are not taking any risk!

Imagine for a moment that you own a publishing service company. If you charge $500 to 100 writers to publish their books on Amazon, formatting them with freeware progrms, you’ve met your legal obligations to them and made $50,000 for your time.

At this point it doesn’t matter to you if those authors’ books sell or bomb. Your venture was a success.

It sounds crazy, but it happens every day.

When I called back Readers Magnet it quickly became apparent they had not researched my content. He made assumptions that The Phantom’s Blade was my first published novel, then corrected himself as he looked at Amazon’s website. (Yes, he was actually live-time figuring out my content using the website!)

“Sir, oh yes, ” for he was most polite to not scare me off. “Oh yes, I do see that this is your third book.” Well, actually, no he had made another mistake as I have seven books, but I moved past that…

“Are you guys a marketing company, a publishing services company, or a magazine?” I asked him.

He mumbled something about my sales rank for a title, then tried to divert me with, “Yes, yes I see that this book is not yet in Kindle. That is something we can do for you.”

I laughed lightly at that offer. After all, publishing to the Kindle store is free. Then I reintroduced the question and he finally admitted that they were a publishing services company.

Not long afterward he became flustered when he found out that my first titles were traditionally published. He was reaching a dead end and he could sense it.

“Sir, I see that The Phantom’s Blade is not available on Kindle .”

“All of my books are available on Kindle,” I replied.

“Sir, I’m on amazon.com and it is only showing paperback.”

At this point I couldn’t help myself. “Are you arguing with me that my book isn’t on Kindle? I am also looking at Amazon and it shows paperback, kindle unlimited and kindle–”

“Okay, Sir, have a good day.”

And that ended his sales pitch.

My point in sharing this is to point you away from the vanity press and other scams. They are more clever than other scams out there. Instead, put in the blood, sweat, and tears… and hundreds of pages of edits to your manuscript. This is your baby. Don’t give it away.

You remember in Ephesians we are instructed to put on the whole armor of God. Think the same of your writing and publishing journey. Arm yourself with knowledge, humility, and perseverance, and protect yourself with patience. If you do these things, the mistakes you make will not break your career.

Q: Which publishing scams have you come across?

No note too small!

AuthorAppleton on May 11, 2018

During a recent conversation  with another fantasy enthusiast and writer I was reminded of the importance of note-taking. Even if you have a partial idea for a story or a character, or even a scene, or sometimes a setting… Jot it down immediately.

A pile of sketches and notepads filled with incomplete but promising story ideas are the  foundational materials for The Sword of the Dragon series. I believe that with every writer that pile continues to grow at a rate faster than it is creatively possible to keep up with. In other words, you will always have more story ideas then you have the time to write them.  And this is as it should be.

The creative process, at its core,  requires the mind to be free to explore all story possibilities. Without this freedom the writer becomes trapped in the expectations  they perceive from either their editor, their publisher, or even their reading public.

Keep it fun! Don’t forget that you are a writer because it’s in your blood and you love it.

Very few people want to read material from a gloomy person.  And writing should be a gateway to leading people on fantastical journeys that inspire them to be better individuals than they are.

What some people refer to as writer’s block can often be overcome by referencing your old notes and sketches. These bring the stories you are trying to create to life in your own mind, reigniting your creativity.

Q: How do you use notes and sketches in your creative process?

 

Make your characters hurt

AuthorAppleton on April 2, 2018

Most writers have a little difficulty building their characters into third dimensional creations. Eventually as the story progresses they fall in love with at least the majority of their characters. Without this creative transformation the story feels flat, but most writers struggle with the next essential phase of creative story development:  making their characters hurt.

When I was writing my first novel,  Swords of the Six, I received my first editorial critique. I remember feeling disappointed because the editor had been unable to make a strong  emotional connection to the characters.  But she adeptly noted that the connection could be made if my characters did not continue to come unscathed out of every battle.

This  was a  revelation to me as I proceeded with the story. I had a scene that I was working on and after a vicious battle with sea serpents my hero did emerged unscathed. So I went back and rewrote it,  leaving the hero with scars for life. The result was eye-opening. As the character recovered from his wounds, I found myself creating interactions, with  other characters for him, on a whole new level.  Suddenly this was not a legend without reason, he had become a hero truly by blood sweat and tears.

Inflicting pain on the story’s hero made me fear for his safety in a way that I had not realized I could. Prior to this the story was fascinating, one could say it was enthralling, but it hadn’t felt real before. Not in the sense that it could be part of the real world that we live in. Now, I could imagine my own terror, my own dread of the consequences of the battles he was facing.

Hurting my characters became an essential element to every story that I wrote. In my primary series this has served me over and over again. In “The Sword of the Dragon: Offspring” I was afforded another opportunity when the heroine emerged out of a battle that completely disfigured her. I had written it out so that the dragon prophet healed her of her wounds, but when an author friend commented on it I realized there was a much better angle to take to that. When the dragon healed her of her wounds I changed it so that he received her scars on his own body. The result was sensational! Suddenly what he had done for her did not seem so light a gift. Suddenly the gift was a test  and demonstration of his true love for her.

Make your fiction characters hurt and make the consequences permanent. Little speaks to their moral fiber as much as showing how they respond to tough circumstances or limitations. These are the fires in which the writing gold is refined.

Q: Do your characters hurt?

The Sea Lord is available now!

AuthorAppleton on March 18, 2018

You’ve heard me talk about this book before, so I won’t go over all the details again. But you need to check out The Sea Lord Francis Drake now available in Paperback and on Kindle from Flaming Pen Press! Fact is often stranger than fiction, so goes the saying….

I must agree, because factual tales are the inspiration behind all of my fictional endeavors. The Sea Lord Francis Drake was one of my favorite books that I read as a teenager, but because the publisher and the author let its copyright expire this book has been all but lost to the public. It has been my joy to apply minor edits to this book, restore the old illustrations, and get a snazzy entirely new cover designed as well, for this, one of my favorite reads. To read more about this book and its unique features please refer to the Flaming Pen Press blog.

Paperback is $14.99 and Kindle edition is $2.99

Share with your friends!

Now writing: In Search of Dragons

AuthorAppleton on March 5, 2018

Recently I was commenting to my wife how I feel scatterbrained and have undertaken too many writing and publishing tasks. (That wasn’t the way I worded it, but you get the gist). I told her I was thinking about narrowing my focus to just my publishing company’s website because my efforts are split between Flaming Pen Press and my personal writing projects. She wisely responded something along the lines of, “But you are your brand. People want more from your books and that’s what you should focus on.” Again, I’m paraphrasing, yet the point is that she was right.

I remember back in 2009 when I self-published my first novel Swords of the Six. That thrill of accomplishment and the response from readers gave me energy to power through the first several years of traveling and writing. Now there is a boatload of experience under my publishing belt and yet, with each new writing project I still feel an initial inadequacy. These fantasy novels are like parts of my soul and with each one writing it is difficult, painful, and a joy.

It is time to delve into my next The Sword of the Dragon novel. In Search of Dragons picks up where The Phantom’s Blade left off. One of the most fun aspects to this project is that I get to pull from my old source material, a manuscript for the entire series which I wrote thirteen years ago. It’s hard to believe it has been that long. I am keen on writing these characters and their stories with the same fascination that I wrote them back then. Sometimes the pressure of knowing that many readers are already eagerly waiting for me to finish the book can put a damper on my story focus, but ultimately everything is an exercise in discipline. And I can never have enough discipline in my life!

This will be the seventh novel I have written in The Sword of the Dragon world, and the fifth for the primary series. Wow! It’s hard to believe the journey has come this far. The original manuscript was 130,000-words divided into chapters that are now the building blocks for The Sword of the Dragon world. So far we’re over 500,000-words into the novels and there’s lots more to cover!

Returning characters for In Search of Dragons include Ilfedo, Oganna, Ombre, Honer, Ganning, Vectra, Escentra, and the creature Ulion. Introduced will be (at long last) the dragon Venom-fier, who was first mentioned in Albino’s prophesy at the end of Swords of the Six.

“Dragon great, dragon fool
One wise, the other cruel
Venom-fier, to man a friend
The other may be his end.”

Q: Which character are you most excited to see again when In Search of Dragons is published?

How tragedy strengthens romance in fantasy

AuthorAppleton on February 5, 2018

Tragedy grabs our attention more certainly than most any other writing device. Think of it! You fall in love with a character, follow their journey of romance, but then something insurmountable is revealed and the romance can never culminate. In fact, it must come to an end and the characters will never see each other again. They will be left alone in their grief, each desiring the companionship that can never be. Such stories are potent because they grab at our desire for companionship and romantic fulfilment. Some of the best books I’ve read are fraught with tragedy, and romantic tragedies are among the most memorable.

While most people know Star Wars as a film franchise, most do not know that this franchise has been built on the pages of literally hundreds of books. Some of them are among the best fantasy novels that I have ever read. Following the original movies (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) a group of writers were handpicked to craft great stories to expand the Star Wars universe. One of those books was Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly.

The story’s premise is this: Luke Skywalker, haunted by ominous dreams and guided by a force he cannot identify, journeys to a remote asteroid field. There he discovers the automated Dreadnaught Eye of Palpatine–from the days of all-out war. Taken aboard the ship, Luke is counseled by the spirit of Callista, a Jedi Knight who gave her life to stop the ship once before. Together they must figure out how to stop the ship from destroying a world.

The premise doesn’t do this book justice. Through the Force, Luke and Callista grow to love each other. Their desires for each other will be forever unfulfilled. Their destinies will separate them irrevocably.

I love this story because it illustrates what a story can be. How it can play at our heartstrings. Maybe you’re not a romantic like me, but still you can appreciate the potency of the emotions romantic tragedy plays in fantasy fiction. As I read this book I found myself asking how I would have remembered the story differently if it had had a happy ending to the romance. It would have changed the mood of the book entirely. In fact, it would have weakened the story. Callista’s self-sacrifice makes you love her. Luke’s heartbreak makes you resonate with his sorrow but at the same time admire his steady path as a jedi master. Emotional entanglements are left aside when they interfere with the greater good of bringing peace to the galaxy.

The impression this story had on me ended up influencing the writing of my fantasy novels. I am not afraid to kill a romance, nor to introduce tragedy, because each of these strengthen the reader’s empathy with the characters. The next time you read a novel that grabs your heartstrings, try asking yourself what it was in that story that made it stand out to you and impact your thinking.

Q: Do you appreciate a romantic tragedy?