Month: May 2012 (page 4 of 5)

May 9, 2012 / 50 Comments

Thinking About Stories

As writers and storytellers, we spend a great deal of time in our own heads. We’re like tigers pacing the inside of our cages, or madmen pinballing between the walls of our padded room. We do so much work in our own mental head-caves, trying to create light and meaning out of the darkness, and nobody really talks about that. A lot of people online talk about writing — myself among them, of course — but it’s not very often I see talk devoted toward all the goddamn thinking we do.

It occurs to me now that it’s a damn worthy topic.

Shit, long before you start banging out an outline or a treatment, long before you start barfing up ink on the page or the screen, you sit and… well, you let the story tumble around inside your head. Characters. Plot. Odd ideas that don’t play together (yet). Metaphors that live in the space between sizzling spark plug synapses. The storyteller’s internal psychic life is the life is a little kid, right? It’s like your brain is a child. Bringing toys together, seeing which ones play well together, seeing which ones literally fit together. LEGO and GI Joe and some Silly Putty and a cheap plastic unicorn and Mommy’s hairbrush and Daddy’s Browning Buck Mark .22. target pistol and a roll of duct tape and so on and so forth.

But nobody really tells you how to do that.

Now, the easy argument — and this is true to a point — is that nobody can tell you how to think. You already know how to do that. And you can never really know how anybody else thinks because you’ll never really be inside their head (unless you have some bizarre-o psychic ability, which is why I wear a tinfoil top hat just in case ha ha ha foiled you, get it, foiled you? shut up). Just the same, I think it’s worth talking about what goes on upstairs. How you do it. How you can do it better, or at least differently.

So, I’m going to start a series of short(er) blog posts here at Ye Olde Websyte, thinking about thinking, talking about thinking, and thinking about talking about thinking. Or something. I just got a nosebleed.

Let’s start today about how you prime yourself for all that thinkery-doo.

I mean, the great thing about being a storyteller is you carry around atop your shoulders a space that is equal parts bookstore and theater and video game console and evolving drug trip on exotic hallucinogens. Right? It’s why we’re never really bored. Because whether we’re sitting at the DMV or waiting in line at the bank or sitting on Death Row for our inevitable execution, we have a big story-machine betwixt our ears.

But just the same, you can, I think, foster and encourage your brain to do what it needs to do.

The easiest thing is to perform tasks — Think-Time Tasks — where you find your mind more easily wanders afield. Right? Ideally such tasks are places that bring with them a sense of rote maneuvering, of routine, offering something almost like sensory deprivation. Mowing the lawn. Taking a walk. Taking a shower. Methodically dismembering a corpse you stole from the graveyard. Activities that allow you to… zone out, to retreat comfortably into your own head. The bank line, the DMV, those are less comfortable retreats because, well, they’re shitty. The DMV is a Sisyphean hell-mountain. The bank is dull droll doldroms (say that 5,782 times fast). But actions you choose, actions in which you find comfort, those open the doors to perception without you having to jimmy the lock.

You also have as an option certain… chemical enhancements. Caffeine does wonders for getting the old synapses to fire. Maybe a little chocolate here and there. And, of course, there’s the idea that a little bit of alcohol can help foment your creativity (from this article: “Sudden, intuitive insights into tricky word-association problems occurred more frequently when men were intoxicated but not legally drunk…” and “A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas…”). You could also quaff some hallucinogenic potion and battle the Monkey King for supremacy over his golden pile of dung, but that might be taking it a mile too far.

Also: you can set your brain like a slow-cooker. No, really. Throw in some ideas and questions — like so many chopped onions and carrots and hunks of raw meat — and then go to bed. Don’t try to think about it. Do something else. Let your brain wander elsewhere. In the morning, you might be surprised to find the simmering pot that is your brainpan now contains a delicious umami broth of insight and possibility where before you had only the raw ingredients.

So, the question for this first “thinking about stories” post is — how do you foster and encourage your brain to do the weird mental loop-de-loops necessary to noodle on stories?

What’s your secret?

May 8, 2012 / 24 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Know About Creating Mystery

1. Your Story Must Be An Incomplete Equation

A complete equation is 4 + 5 = 9. It’s simple. Clean. And it’s already resolved. Stories are not simple. They are not clean. And we most certainly don’t want to read stories that have already been resolved. We read stories that evolve and evade as we read them. Their uncertainty feels present — though we know the story will finish by its end, a good story lets us — or demands that we — forget that. A good story traps us in the moment and compels us by its incompleteness. The equation then becomes X + 5 = 9, and we are driven to solve for X. It is the X that haunts us. It is the emptiness of that variable we hope to fill.

2. Every Story Is A Mystery Story

This isn’t a list about murder mysteries. This is a list about every story out there. All stories need unanswered questions. All stories demand mysteries to engage our desperate need to know. We flip the little obsessive dipswitches in the circuit boards of our reader’s mind by presenting enigmas and perplexities. Why is our lead character so damaged? What’s in the strange mirrored box? How will they escape the den of ninja grizzlies? Storytelling is in many ways the act of positing questions and then exploring the permutations of that question before finally giving in and providing an answer.

3. Your Story Is The Opposite Of The News

A news story is upfront. Tells the facts. “Woman wins the Moon Lottery.” “Man sodomized by a zoo tapir.” “New Jersey smells like musty tampons, says mayor.” (Musty Tampons was my nickname in an old Steve Winwood cover band.) A journalist is tasked to answer the cardinal questions (the five W’s and the one H): who, what, where, when, why, and how. But your job as a storyteller is to make the audience ask these questions and then bark a sinister laugh as you choose not to answer them all. Oh, you answer some of them. But one or two remain open, empty. Unanswered variables. Incomplete equations.

4. Leaving Out The Egg

Put differently, have you heard the one about Betty Crocker and the Egg? Well, run quick and edu-ma-cate yourselves. The point is, the audience wants to do work. Needs to do work. They want to bring part of themselves to the table. They want to help you fill in the blanks because that is human nature. Maybe it’s ego and selfishness, or maybe it’s a kind of selflessness. Doesn’t matter where it comes from, it only matters that when you leave pieces out of the story, the audience will try to bring those things in. And once you do that you drop the cage on ’em and now you’ve got ~~dinner~~ an engaged member of the audience.

5. The Characters Are Your Coal Mine Canary

Not every mystery is a worthy one. Not every question deserves to be answered. How do you know? Well. You never really know, but a good test is finding out what mysteries engage your characters — if it’s a mystery the characters care about, and the audience cares about the characters, by proxy they will care about the mystery at hand, as well. This is why arbitrary mysteries — mysteries that exist for their own sake and no other — fail. Mysteries are anchored to character motivation. They affect the stakes on the table. But not the steaks on the table. Because those are mine. I bought those. LAY OFF MY MEAT, BEEF-THIEF.

6. The Power Of “What The Fuck?!” Compels Us

A good ol’ big-ass mystery is a meteor that punches a hole in that once-complete equation we were talking about. Many stories thrive on One Big Question (think: What Is The Matrix, or, Why Are These Transformers So Racist?), and that’s okay, because sometimes that’s a hole the audience wants to fall into. But know that such a mystery is not enough. You still need a cogent plot, strong characters, and a unifying theme to serve as a throughline. An epic HOLY CRAP WTF mystery can feel hollow and without substance should those other elements not exist. Mystery by itself is not enough.

7. A Warm Quilt Of Small Mysteries

Instead of one big mystery, consider instead (or in addition) a series of smaller mysteries: little mini-arcs that rise on the question mark and fall toward the answer. A character needs her keys but cannot find them (where are they, and what will she do if she cannot find them?). Someone has been vandalizing the shops around town (who, and why?). The mayor claims New Jersey smells like musty tampons (why does it smell and what does the mayor hope to gain and how does he know what musty tampons smell like?).

8. Sometimes Not A Question But An Incorrect Answer

A tiny point, but one worth mentioning: sometimes creating mystery is not an act of asking a question but the deed of providing a clearly incorrect answer. Let the audience seek the truth by showing them a lie.

9. Sue Spence And The Mystery Squad

To create suspense and invoke tension, offer the audience a mystery. An unanswered question, a lingering puzzle, a nagging cipher — the longer it goes unanswered, the greater that bezoar of tension grows.

10. It Kills The Vampire Or It Gets The Hose Again

A mystery must have stakes — we must know why it exists, and what it means for it to go unanswered. Tying in conditions of consequence to unsolved mysteries is critical — if the character doesn’t find her keys, she can’t get to the hospital, if she can’t get to the hospital, she won’t learn the identity of the man who saved her from that busload of pterodactyls, if she can’t uncover his identity, she won’t learn why she’s being hunted by that busload of pterodactyls. The audience must feel that the mystery has weight and meaning and pterodactyls. Okay, maybe not so much with the pterodactyls.

11. Colonel Exposition Did It, In The Foyer, With A Heavy Lead Pipe

Exposition is the mystery-killer. Exposition is an explanation. Sometimes it’s necessary, and this isn’t a screed against exposition so much as it is a plea for you to understand that exposition shines a light in dark spaces and, sometimes, it’s best to leave those spaces dark. Well-lit clearly-defined spaces become dull for the audience. The audience must not be left comfortable. They should be forced to stare at those dark corners for as long as they can stand it. The light of exposition expels the shadows of mystery.

12. Be Like Tantric Fuckmaster, Sting

Tantric sex is reportedly about withholding “the Big O” (or if you like your orgasm references more Elizabethan, “the little death”) as long as possible in order to maximize the tsunami power of your lusty eruptions. Masturbate and “arrive” on your computer monitor after 45 seconds, you feel a crushing sense of wasted potential, then shamefully wander downstairs to eat half a sleeve of refrigerated cookie dough. Ah! But if you take seven hours to pop your cork, it feels like you accomplished something. Apply this to your story. By withholding information about the plot or the characters, you create a deeper satisfaction upon finally answering the mystery. For the record, I will now refer to ejaculation as “answering the mystery.” At the point of sexual climax I will proclaim loudly: “I AM ANSWERING YOUR MYSTERY.”

13. The Longer The Mystery Persists, The More Satisfying The Answer Must Be

All that being said, you shouldn’t drag out mysteries if their resolution isn’t satisfying. You can’t spend 300 pages or two hours just to get to, OMG THE KEYS WERE IN HER SHOE THE WHOLE TIME. *crash of thunder* The longer you let a mystery hang out there, the more satisfying the mystery — and its resolution — must be. How to gauge this? Hey, you just gotta go with your guttyworks.

14. Plot And Character: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Mysteries are often tied to plot or character. (What is the Matrix? is a plot-driven question, for instance.) Ideally, though, mysteries are wound through both. Plot, after all, is like Soylent Green — it’s made of people. A murder mystery operates best when the death is tied to the characters at hand (and nothing is less satisfying than the murderer revealed to be some random jerkoff we’ve never met — “It was the Census taker! Oh noes! …wait, the fucking Census guy did it? Goddamnit.”).

15. The Quantum Entanglement Between Question And Conflict

Conflict and mystery go hand in hand. The very nature of conflict offers a situation whose outcome is in flux — we do not know what will happen and so conflict is emblazoned by a big ol’ question mark. Conflicts that are easily resolved are like mysteries that are easily resolved: major poop noise. PPPPBT.

16. Narrative Rejiggering

You can create mystery by breaking the traditional narrative flow and pulling apart the pieces, then rearranging them in whatever order gives you maximum mystery and maximum payoff. If we see part of the ending at the beginning, we glimpse changed circumstances and seek to unravel the complex knot you just dropped in our lap. If we come in toward the middle we want to know what got us here and where we’re going. Part of storytelling is the tension and recoil release of question versus answer, and changing the flow of the narrative can do a great deal toward tightening the questions and super-charging the revelation of the answers. (Homework assignment: go watch the film 21 Grams for a good example of this.)

17. Those Cagey Fuckers

Characters can be cagey fuckers, and that — thankfully, blessedly — creates mystery for readers. Characters do not make the right decisions all the time. Nor should they. A character fails to tell others the truth about what’s going on? A character who obfuscates or lies? A character who tries to cover something up? All this goes a long way toward creating mystery in the audience. Which is a total win, if you ask me. You know what else is a win? Cupcakes. Please send me some cupcakes or I’ll blow up your house. Kay, thanks, bye.

18. The Labyrinth At The Core Of The Human Heart

The greatest mysteries lurk at the center of human experience, inside the emotional tangle where the Minotaur of our worst inclinations lives. (Whoa. I need to stop with the peyote buttons.) Seriously, though, a character’s motivations and fears (and you as the author guarding those elements or at least withholding some components of them) provide the most profound payoff in terms of offering and then answering mysteries. Each character should be a mystery — not a cipher, not an endless unsolvable puzzle — but rather a question to be answered. Don’t tell us everything. Hold back. Ease off the stick, Stroker Ace.

19. Creating Mystery In The Edit

Uh oh, spaghetti-o. Maybe your first draft doesn’t have enough gooshy mysterious plasm for you and the readers? Easy-peasy stung-by-beesy! Think of your edit like a Jenga tower. Reach in. Grab a block. Yank it out. If the whole thing still stands — you’re good to go. Keep doing this. Pull pieces out. Withhold. Retreat. Release and reveal as late as you can. The edit is a great place to massage mystery and create whole new moist vaginal pockets of uncertainty in your tale.

20. One Answer Can Create More Questions

Mysteries can be like The Hydra — chop off one head, nine more sprout in its place. This is a good thing… mmnnnyeah, to a point. Eventually, there comes a moment when you end up letting more snakes out of the bag than you can properly kill. (Example: the TV show Lost.) We have to get a sense that this isn’t some explosive Pandora’s puzzle box, some infinitely-replicating Rube Goldberg mystery machine that produces ten new questions for every one answer offered. You have to know when to stop releasing snakes and just start killing those slithery sumbitches. Er, not literally. Put down the machete, psycho.

21. You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here

Mysteries and endings. A tricky subject. My essential advice: answer all mysteries by the ending. Every last one of ’em. The audience wants those answers. The introduction of a mystery is an unofficial promise to answer that question. But. But! Sometimes, that’s just not in the cards. (See: Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid, which is a story as much about the subject of mystery as it is about the mysteries present in the story.) Sometimes it’s good to leave folks hanging on things. Because when you do that it’s like the book is still open. The story is ongoing. They remain a part of it — entrenched and unable to escape. MOO HOO HA HA HA. (But only savvy storytellers need apply!)

22. The Dangers Of The MacGuffin

Hitchcock rocked the MacGuffin — the MacGuffin being the mysterious-and-frankly-not-all-that-important-by-itself-item that drives the plot and urges the characters forward. The MacGuffin is a mystery potentially never answered and, if turned about in the hands of a clumsy muffinhead of a storyteller, it feels like what it ultimately is: artifice. Best way to think of a MacGuffin is not as a plot driver but rather as a focus point for the mysteries and conflicts and worst inclinations of the characters who seek it. It’s like a magnet for bad juju.

23. It’s The Reason Jaws Worked

A late-in-the-list sidenote: mystery is why Jaws worked. That robot shark was acting up, being an asshole, and they couldn’t use him like they wanted to. As such, the script called for a greater deal of mystery in the first and second acts — what the shark was, how big, what it could do, why it wanted to do it. Spielberg had to pull away which in turn left us with questions which in turn made us feel like scared little ninnies who suddenly became afraid to drop a flip-flop in a fucking puddle from that point forward. Mystery — unintentional as it was — made that movie.

24. “Guess What?”

That’s how the stories we tell to friends and loved ones and co-workers often begin, isn’t it? “Guess what?” We begin with a question. We lead with that — because that’s the fishhook in the cheek of the audience. And the way we tell the story is like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs — not whole loaves, just crumbs — for the listener to follow. We say things to get attention, to lead the audience in with us — “Man, Jenkins fucked up bad today!” — and the listener is all like “WHOA WHAT’D THAT ASSHOLE JENKINS DO NOW?” As Admiral Ackbar would say: “It’s a trap!” Oh, but what a wonderful trap storytelling is.

25. Bondage & Discipline

Being a storyteller like BDSM: you need to find a partner — in this case, the audience — who is willing to trust you with (and stick with me here) a complete lack of trust. They’re willing to say: “I trust that I can’t trust you,” and then they let you perform whatever deviant manipulations you care to visit upon body, heart and mind. Same thing with creating mystery in your story: mystery is one way you show the audience that they can’t trust you but, at the same time, that they trust in this implicit lack of trust. They know the questions you pose will be troubling. They know that the answers will have consequences they did not imagine. But they trust in you to answer these mysteries, to manipulate without making them feel manipulated, to not leave them hanging upside-down with a ball-gag in their mouth and a My Little Pony-branded buttplug up their… well, no need to be redundant. You and the audience have a contract (though no safe-word): they trust that you cannot be trusted. Mystery is one of the sexy tools on your sexy Bondage Batman tool-belt. What? You don’t have a sexy Bondage Batman tool-belt? Amateur.

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May 7, 2012 / 39 Comments

Four Books I Want You To Read

Real quick post — here’s four books I think you should go find. And buy. And read. And rub on your body in slow, concentric circles. And then film it and put it on YouTube.

(For the record, I have Amazon links here because I’m lazy, but please search these books out at the venue of your choice — indie bookstore, library, B&N, whatever and wherever.)

(Also for the record, these are authors I know and/or have met — while you’re free to take my opinions with a grain of salt, please believe me I wouldn’t pimp the work unless I was a super-fan.)

So You Created A Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide To Time Travel

Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch. Buy at Amazon.

Met these two gents at the LA Book Fest. I hadn’t heard of their book at the time, but they were kind enough to ensure I got a copy — here’s the thing, I didn’t actually intend to chew through this book like a squirrel chewing through attic insulation, but fuck it, too bad, too late. This book — in the vein of the The Zombie Survival Guide — is fuuuu-huuu-cking funny. (“In a hand-to-hand skirmish, a Viking will overpower you. Know any off-color jokes? Now’s the time, as a Viking’s sense of humor is one of his major weaknesses. They are also vulnerable to dynamite, if you happen to have any.”) I got it yesterday and sat here at my desk just mowing through it. The do’s and do not’s of time travel laid bare in a hilarious (and often insane) dissection. Not just for time travel fans but a fun examination of sci-fi tropes across the board.

Lucky Bastard

S. G. Browne. Buy at Amazon.

I confess that I’m only halfway through this book but again it’s a story I did not expect to gulp down so fast — see, I’m a slow reader. It’s just the way I am, I don’t fly through books so much as creep my way page by page like a stalker in your shrubbery. But here, Browne’s not-so-hard-boiled (“over-easy”) luck poaching (yes, he poaches luck) detective makes for charming and hilarious reading. There’s a Christopher Moore-y vibe going here if Moore wrote crime fiction. (Speakawhich, I need to read Moore’s newest. I also need to mow the lawn and clean the kitchen but I think I’d rather read books. DON’T JUDGE ME.)

All The Young Warriors

Anthony Neil Smith. Buy at Amazon.

Okay, listen. I like Smith. I like his work. But his work isn’t for everybody — Octavia from Choke On Your Lies is not an easy character to like (though I found her easy to love). But this book? This book is for everybody. This book is fucking incredible. This is Smith’s breakout work, featuring a pair of Somali-Americans who kill a cop’s pregnant girlfriend and then head to Somalia to fight in “the war,” leaving the cop behind. The cop, Bleeker, pairs up with one of the boys’ fathers in an unlikely pact of alliance and revenge — a journey which takes them through the underbelly of the Twin Cities and, eventually, to Somalia. It’s a brutal book, but funny, too, and like with all my favorite books beneath the scabs and the the rings of calcified bone you’ll find a core of heart and sorrow at the center of it, gooey and sweet and sad all at the same time. Smith’s prose is direct and potent as a fist to the throat, but he knows too when to give the story the oxygen it needs. Go grabby. (Note: only available as an e-book, which is itself a crime. This should be a goddamn bestseller, this book.)

City of the Lost

Stephen Blackmoore. Buy at Amazon.

Like the work of Harry Connolly? Or Jim Butcher? Richard Kadrey? Dude. Dude. Get in on a little Stephen Blackmoore action. Uhh, hello, zombies? Los Angeles? Bad magic? Vampires? Witches? Nazis? I’m going to go out on a limb here and do myself a favor by comparing myself to Blackmoore — which is, to reiterate, a favor to me (and probably an insult to him, but shhh), but you’ve got a complicated protagonist, lots of bloody violence, some very potty-mouthed language. This is a book I was destined to love and, I think if you dig my work, you’ll dig this. It’s “urban fantasy,” except it’s equally noir or “noirror” (noir/horror), too.

Now?

YOUR TURN.

Recommend a book. Not your own. Someone else’s.

Go.

May 4, 2012 / 51 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Must Love Dinosaurs

Last week’s challenge: “Random Title Generation.”

Didja see? Didja see?

DINOCALYPSE NOW is ready to be downloaded into your eye-pads and Kindlemaschines and Nookies or whatever the hell you use in this crazy e-reader future. (And you can pre-order print!)

But, hey, I’d like to give a copy away. An e-copy, to be clear.

To get it, you gotta dance for your dinner. Or, rather, your dinosaurs.

This week’s flash fiction challenge?

Whatever you write must feature dinosaurs.

You have 1000-words.

You have one week. Due by noon EST on May 11th.

I’ll pick my favorite a week or so after the deadline and I’ll announce here at this post.

Again:

Must.

Feature.

Dinosaur(s).

RAAAAAAR.

Now go write.

EDIT:

DELIGHTFULLY NERDED by these stories. So much love.

I have chosen a winner.

Hostile Crayon’s RAWR THE PLUSH VELOCIRAPTOR.

http://hostilecrayon.dreamwidth.org/150863.html

Contact me! terribleminds at gmail dot com.

May 3, 2012 / 12 Comments

Seeking Interviewees For The Thursday Interviewpalooza

I’ve got a few more interviews coming up — the guys behind So You Created A Wormhole, Ann LeMay, comedian Dylan Brody, plus all the questions you crazy kids sent in to me — but just the same, it’s time again that I start fishing for new torture ~~interview~~ subjects.

As you may know, I use this spot to interview storytellers. That can be anybody, really — authors, filmmakers, songwriters, comedians, comic book creators, editors, game and experience designers, etc.

This has two components — as a reader, feel free in the comments below to recommend some folks you want me to interview. I can’t promise it’ll work out, but hey, drop some names.

The second component is if you are a storyteller who’d like to be interviewed in this very space.

Now, let me put my Warning, Cranky Shithead hat on for one teeny-weenie moment:

First, this isn’t a marketing tool. Ideally, yes, the interview will spread word about your books and games and whatever else you’re doing, and I’m happy if that coincides nicely with some release of yours. Just the same, this has to be an entertaining interview for the readers of this blog. They’re the reason this thing exists. So, ask yourself: “Do I make good interview material?” Do you have interesting ideas? A compelling journey? Thoughts on the subject of writing and storytelling (as this blog is focused on those things)?

Second, I want accomplished storytellers — I’m open to interviewing self-published authors (as I am one myself), but here’s the thing: given self-publishing’s incredibly low (read: non-existent) bar to entry, I tend to get a lot of self-published authors who want in but don’t really seem to have much worth talking about. Again that question: “Do I make good interview material?” If you find me prejudiced against self-published writers, that’s because self-published writers have made me prejudiced against self-published writers.

So! All that being said —

Want in on an interview slot? Hit me up at:

terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Make sure “INTERVIEW” is in the subject of your email, yeah?

Now, I tend to get a flood of these emails, so I will try to work my way through and answer you. Forgive any delay on my part there, but as Miriam Black says, “It is what it is.”

Feel free to tell me in the email why you’d make a good interview subject. Also, if I don’t know you at all, I may ask to see something of yours — say, your book — so I know who you are and what you do. You can either email me said “thing” or I can provide you with a mailing address if need be.

And that’s all she wrote.

May 2, 2012 / 119 Comments

Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing

I yammered about this on Twitter the other day, and it felt like the subject needed some more oxygen, and thus I’m staplegunning it to the blog post. *kachunk kachunk*

Feel free to comment. And agree. Or object. Or send me doodles of your pets as characters from various science-fiction and fantasy novels. Whatever makes your grapefruit squirt.

Okay.

E-books.

I’ve seen some pushback — generally very smart pushback — about why publisher e-books cost so much. The answer, in short, is that producing e-books costs more than you think. You’re paying for editors and cover design and, of course, for the book itself, and the mechanics of putting those things into a container are not the bulk of a book’s cost. Hence, e-books are always going to be close to their physical counterparts in cost. After all, you’re buying a story, and the container is largely incidental. The experience is slightly different from format to format, but over all my Kindle version of THE STAND is no different from the hardback version, except I can use the hardback to bludgeon a hippo to death should I so choose.

It’s a good point.

And probably true.

And it really doesn’t matter.

Here’s the thing: the “what should e-books cost?” question often takes into cost the actual cost of producing the e-book when, in reality, it needs to look at perceived value, instead.

Now, caution — I’m not an ecomonom… economonist… mathemeconom… whatever. I’m not great with money or numbers, so bear with me. (I’m also not great with elevators, escalators, tiny rodents, sporks, chopsticks, ferrets, or fingerless gloves. Just in case you’re making a list.)

An e-book is a digital good. Ephemeral and intangible. Sometimes we don’t even have access to the e-book itself in the form of a file — in the case of Amazon, we’re just “renting” the e-book the same way you rent Taco Bell food. You bought it. It’s inside your device. But if Amazon decides you don’t need it anymore, one snap of the wizard’s fingers and the e-books are poof, gone, siphoned from your reader like gas from a gas-tank. E-books have no supply — if I buy one, it doesn’t reduce how many remain, because theoretically infinite copies remain. No cost to reprint. No cost to remake. It just… sits out there, attempting to be the very embodiment of the Long Tail.

This is what the audience sees and believes.

It matters little what the e-book actually costs.

It only matters what the audience thinks they should cost.

Now, the audience won’t agree on an actual number (they’re cagey, those fuckers), but what they do seem to roughly agree on is, e-books should be cheaper than their print counterparts. What the e-book actually costs is irrelevant. What matters is the expected value loss by going with an ephemeral digital item — and, further, added into that is the expectation of, “I bought a device to read this, which cost me money already.”

Further cognitive dissonance is born of the fact that smaller producers (smaller publishers or individual authors) can produce a digital version of a book far more cheaply and easily than they can a hardcopy.

Publishers have themselves helped to confuse this issue by creating the expected release structure of books — from hardback to a trade paperback and then maybe to a mass market paperback. The e-book interrupts this chain because you can’t put out a book without an e-book counterpart, and so e-books don’t fit into that progression. The others are tiered and timed, but e-books don’t really fit into a tier or a timeframe.

To price e-books, there then exists a fight against some rational concerns and some very irrational behavior on the part of this active audience. But that’s normal — the freaknomics of the audience is always irrational. You can’t fight the flood; you can only try to swim in it. Certainly if enough big-ass epic motherfucker authors (think Stephen King-sized) made it a point to focus this meme or if Amazon enforced a higher price on e-books, the perception might shift. But neither’s likely to happen anytime soon.

One hopes and assumes that as publishers get better at making e-books, their costs will go down. Further, we must remember that e-books are in the “formative technology” phase right now. They’re VCRs and tape-decks. We won’t see CDs and DVDs for a little while down the line, and when we do, price will need to change (up or down, I can’t say). Also: infinite supply is a key component, here.

So. What to do, what to do? What’s the appropriate range of e-book prices you hope to see? Throw some thoughts into the ring, let ’em fight it out all scrappy-like.