Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
Today, two simple questions for you, the ever-glorious terribleminds audience.
Number One:
What are some good love stories? Books, film, games, real-life, what-have-you.
Number Two:
What, then, makes for a good love story?
Go.
(Happy Almost Valentine’s Day, all y’all.)
It’s Valentine’s Day weekend.
It’s also the one-month anniversary (“monthiversary?”) of the release of IRREGULAR CREATURES, my collection of nine short stories which features (but is not limited to): a family household that serves as ground zero for a battle of good versus evil fought by flying cats; a Bangkok dancer whose ahem nether regions are so spectacular that they surely do not belong to a mere human; a working man who learns the true cost of fighting zombies; and a boy who gets lost in an otherworldly auction where a mermaid’s innocence is put on the chopping block.
To celebrate, I’ve decided to drop the price on the collection down to the so-low-I-just-pooped-my-pants price of ninety-nine cents ($0.99)!
(This is true only for the Kindle release.)
The price will hold true until cough-cough at some point on Monday or Tuesday. Sorry — it’s hard to predict with Amazon. I’d so love it if I could change product descriptions and prices on the fly, but I can’t — Amazon puts even the teeny-tiniest of changes (“I just added a comma to my product description!”) through a review process, which takes 24-48 hours.
So —
Go now and procure the collection for the wild-and-wacky-bargain-basement-how-will-I-be-able-to-afford-my-heart-pills-and-by-heart-pills-I-mean-Pez-and-tequila price.
Tell your friends. Hell, tell your enemies. Gift them a copy if you so desire.
Then leave a review on Amazon.
I mentioned this sale yesterday on the Twitter-Tubes and received a handful of comments (all welcome) that asked why I was doing this, or suggested that maybe it wasn’t an ideal solution, or (the nicest of them all) noting that the collection was worth more than that. Seems then like a good idea to peel back the layer a little bit. Like an onion. Or a sunburn. Or a rejected skin graft.
I am not a fan of the ninety-nine cent price point. I am especially not a fan of it as the end-all be-all price of something. I’m not knocking any author who chooses that path — I just think that a novel or collection is worth more than a song on iTunes (but maybe less than an album on iTunes). I want authors to value their content and, further, I want readers to value the content, too. Is a race to the bottom really the way to go?
Further, if you go the bottom-bitch pricing at Amazon, Amazon takes a more robust cut. One assumes that this is because they’re trying to train authors to keep their prices a little higher. Which is good for Amazon and good for the author and ultimately, I agree.
I sell the collection at $2.99, I get about two bucks. I sell it at $0.99, I get thirty cents.
And yet, other authors report surging numbers at the lower price. Some of that makes sense — you look at app-pricing, well, some apps are far lower than what I would consider to be their value. After having played Angry Birds, I’d tell you that the game is worth ten bucks, easy. But by pricing low, they got me to commit without thinking twice — and, given the humongous sales numbers, were able to hook millions of others accordingly. Price point isn’t the only factor there, but I suspect it’s a big one.
Lower your price on Amazon, you might convince uncertain buyers to take a risk because, shit, a buck is cheap. That’s “taco truck” cheap. If enough buyers bite to put the product in the higher sales rankings, then the product becomes more discoverable. Then, if the price goes back up, it does so ideally while amongst those higher rankings. One assumes that some degree of psychology is at work here. I know it’s true for me that when I check out paid apps on iTunes, I look to see what’s in the Top 10 (or at least Top 50) first — I assume, however incorrectly, that the top rankings are likelier home to a greater percentage of quality apps. So too with Amazon. I find myself skimming the top rankings periodically just to see what’s there. Getting into that echelon is not without value.
The big thing is, it will at least reveal the value — or the lack of value — in making such a move. If it doesn’t yield significant results, I’m not likely to do it again. I view this collection as something of a canary in a coal mine — I want to see how the bird behaves when I throw it into a mine tunnel filled with different gases. It’s not a perfect test, but it’ll yield me some data. And at this stage, data is just as valuable as cold hard cash.
I recognize that this isn’t purely scientific, but being a writer without a significant math brain, I don’t see any great way of turning this into an officially official experiment. I don’t have a control product. I can’t account for an unholy host of uncontrollable (or indiscernible) elements. But one thing I have at my disposal is price — by changing it, I’m throwing a pebble in the water and watching the ripples.
I think it was Jeff Tidball who noted that Gameplaywright doesn’t drop the price on their books or offer sales because it burns the early adopters. Which is true, to a point, and if anybody feels burned here — well, you have my uttermost apologies. My assumption, however, is that we as consumers are not that sensitive. I bought World of Goo for fifteen bucks on the PC, then it came onto the iPad for ten bucks. I waited, and it dropped to five bucks on a sale, and I picked it up. This weekend, it’s ninety-nine cents. I’m not pissed. Hell, I bought it twice because I loved it and was happy to support the creators of the game.
The television I bought was more expensive the week before I bought it, and cheaper the month after I bought it. As a consumer, price wobbles like that occur. Sales or discounts are common. Still, if anybody feels stung over it, you have my apologies, and the next time I see you, I’ll buy you a beer. Or give you a hug. Or hire a hobo to caress your junk with tickling calluses.
Sales continue to be slow and steady. Three to five sales a day, with 280 sales after a month of being “out there.” About 65% of my sales are through Amazon, and 35% of my sales are through here, via PDF/ePub.
Not bad, ultimately. We’ll see what happens from here.
The flimsy self-publishing experiment continues.
Contain your mirth; this is a new carpet.
If you read the collection and liked it, definitely leave a review on Amazon. Further, please tell others — word of mouth is the best vector any author has of getting readership.
Otherwise, you just keep doing what you do best. Sit there, looking pretty, you handsome blog audience, you. With your lovely eyelashes and your lashing whip-like tail.
Finished Mockingjay.
Loved Mockingjay.
But wondering: why all the middling reactions toward Mockingjay? I wouldn’t call it “hate,” exactly — but I was warned repeatedly that the third book was essentially a big disappointment from the high of the previous two. Lots of “ehh,” “mehhh,” “pbbbt” reactions.
To which my jaw drops, my eyes launch out on springs, my tongue rolls, and the floor drops out from under me. Dang, I did not find that to be the case.
Your job, then, is to explain your disappointment (if you desire) in the comments.
I will not fling aspersions toward your general character. The question is not subject to any wrong answers. I mean, sure, I’ll throw flaming bags of poo at your head. I kid! I kid. They won’t be on fire. Sheesh.
My thoughts (and this will contain some very light spoilers):
The book was unflinching. Unflinching. This is not a shiny happy book. It is a book about children and war. It is a book where lots of characters you care about die. It is a book that again puzzles me and haunts me with the question: “How the hell are they going to make this into a PG-13 movie?” Seriously. Blood. Gore. Children dying. Nightmarish images. Murder. War. It’s not splatterpunk, but it’s not Harry Potter, either. Any effort to water this down to an acceptable family-friendly rating potentially does harm to the story’s message, a message carried on purpose by such grim, unceasing nastiness.
The book felt to me as the natural conclusion to the series — it carries the “game” motif back into play, this time on the battlefield. It pays off on things to which it was building. Nothing out of left field. For the most part the characters we care about are… concluded properly, I suppose you could say. Only one sticks out (Finnick) as feeling narratively inconclusive (and actually a little strange).
And yet, the book remained surprising, too. At no point did it feel rote.
The ending was pitch perfect, for me: like a shot of espresso, the book was super dark with a very bittersweet finish. I’ll say it again: not a happy book. And it does exactly what I was exhorting the other day — the storyteller is an emotional manipulator and the best and most memorable stories are the ones that truly made us feel something. Collins doesn’t fuck around. She’s constantly kicking you in the spleen, punching you in the kidneys, wrapping her hands around your throat. The woman knows how to hurt her audience. And the ending doesn’t do much to salve the wounds — a little. But not much.
So, chime in.
You read it?
You like it?
You find it disappointing?
Color me curious (which is actually a robin’s egg blue!).
True fact: the writer’s life is an unglamorous one. It’s the furthest thing from sexy. It’s not so much action-packed as it is a wisdom tooth socket packed with septic cotton. In case you didn’t realize it, no, seriously, I’m not fucking around, you really don’t want to be a writer.
Don’t believe me?
Anthony Neil Smith knows the score, and he’d like to prove it to you.
A Day In The Life Of Anthony Neil Smith, ladies and gents (the entirely-accurate ether binge happens just after the two-minute mark — so, y’know, there’s that).
A.N. Smith — aka @DocNoir on Twitter, which is my way of suggesting you follow the man — is the dude responsible for writing the entirely brilliant CHOKE ON YOUR LIES. (Or, if you want it on your Nook…) Which, by the way, is at the crazy-low price of $2.99. Book like this, book of this quality, should be ten bucks, easy. I’d pay ten bucks. I’d tell you to pay ten bucks. But fuck, it’s not even three bucks. That’s like — *does some quick math, dicks around with an abacus for an hour* — a 157% discount. That’s amazing. Plus: Octavia. You will come to love Octavia. You will whisper her name into your pillow.
You support smart self-publishing? Buy it.
You support kick-ass crime fiction? Buy it.
You support authors who are the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the monkey’s tits? Buy it.
Don’t make me drag out my sales pitch, goddamnit.
Bold proclamation time:
The most critical thing that a story must do —
the tippity-top of the narrative mountain!
— is make the audience feel something.
The key verb there is “make.” As in, to force, to manipulate, to induce, compel, impel, coerce. As in, to turn the audience into your wide-eyed butt-puppets and demand that those suckers dance.
You are an emotional manipulator. You are a callous puppetmaster.
Think about it. The best stories — the ones you remember, the ones you tell again and again, the ones you keep coming back to — are the ones that made you feel something. You feel fear during a campfire tale. You feel shock and betrayal when Vader reveals his heritage and lops off his son’s hand quick as thumbing the bloom off a daisy. You weep during Brian’s Song. You masturbate vigorously during Career Opportunities starring Jennifer Connelly. What? Just me?
Uhhh. Then I was clearly just kidding. Ha ha! Ha. Heh. Shut up.
Point is, the real skill of a gifted storyteller is the ability to twist the emotions of the audience. To conjure feeling for — and please observe just how absurd this is — completely imaginary people.
“Here is a person that does not — and will never — exist,” you say. “Now I will make you care for them more than you care for your own mother, at least for two hours or 300 pages or a handful of comic book panels. P.S., you are my butt-puppet. Or, if you’d prefer, rectal poppet. That is the one choice I will give you.”
To achieve this, I suspect you must be:
An excellent liar.
Someone who is at least mildly disturbed.
Capable of thinking of profound evils and delirious virtues in equal measure.
Willing to commit acts of overwhelming cruelty to invisible, non-existent people.
Someone who had lots of imaginary friends as a child. And possibly as an adult.
The core of every good story is a character for whom we care — and not just care a little, but care deeply. This alone is no easy task: Such a character must be likable, but not annoying. He must have virtues but remain imperfect. She must possess the potential for sacrifice, for selflessness, for selfishness, for evil. He may be funny, but not only that. She may be serious, but not only that. He comprises many dimensions but not so many that he seems unreal or unpindownable.
How do we foster love? How do we ask the audience to care for her (and by “ask” I mean, “twist up their emotions like a pair of frilly panties”)?
I don’t know that any one way exists, but I suspect it helps if you go in knowing why the audience is going to connect with a given character. Are they going to respect his honesty in the face of criminal tendencies? Will his warm heart buried beneath a crusty exoskeleton of calcified snark be their undoing? Is it her unexpected toughness, her motherly instincts, her witty sardonicism, her laser-shooting uterus?
Best figure that out. Identify it going in. Easy tip: pick three traits that will make the character lovable. “Irascible scamp,” “charitable to a fault,” and “photon ovaries.”
Character magic, complete.
First comes love, yes.
But after that? Sweet, sweet betrayal.
Hey! That handsome John McClane, he’s going through some rough times — oh! Oh, he’s trying out that toe thing. On the carpet. And then oh snap, terrorists and OH GOD HE’S RUNNING ACROSS BROKEN GLASS AND THERE’S FIRE AND A GUN GLUED TO HIS BACK WITH TAPE AND BLOOD EW.
That Buffy sure is a sassy little vampire slayer, isn’t she? She’s cute and snarky and has such great friends and HOLY CRAP SHE JUST HAD TO KILL HER VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND OH GOD NO.
Oh, that Elizabeth Bennett! Trapped in a stuffy society where status matters, the poor woman just wants to marry for love and YE GODS AND FISHES SHE’S BEING EATEN BY A KOMODO DRAGON.
Okay, I maybe made that last part up. But I dare any of you to claim that Jane Austen’s novels would not be a smidgen more entertaining with the introduction of various ravenous reptiles.
Point is, that character you just made the audience love? Now you have to hurt that character. As badly as you can stomach, I suspect.You have earned the audience’s love and trust. Now you betray it.
Trick is, audiences are both really stupid and damnably clever. They’re stupid because, duh, they keep coming back for more. They keep walking back into bookstores and movie theaters all year ’round, expecting that something will be different, expecting for once that their love and trust will be rewarded.
(It won’t.)
On the other hand, they’re smart because they’ve wised up. They can see your machinations laid bare. They know you’re not likely to kill the protagonist. They know you’re not likely to irreversibly destroy some precious plot point. That forces you to either a) get creative or b) throw caution to the wind and do the exact thing that they think you can never do.
Getting creative suggests that you find secret in-roads that lead to a character’s pain — sure, you can’t kill the character, but you can kill their spirit! (Or appear to, at least.) Harm their loved ones! Take away everything they hold dear! Hobble their efforts at every turn!
It should become increasingly clear that the character is a voodoo doll representing the audience. You stab the character with pins — but the character is an imaginary proxy. The one who feels the sting of the prick (stop sniggering) is the audience. In fact, what you’re doing to the audience — give them love, then stab the love with pointy evil — is the same thing that you’re doing to the character, isn’t it?
It’s an endless cycle of love and pain.
That simplest of equations (create love, betray love) is only the first and most direct way of instigating emotion in the reader. But the most accomplished storyteller has an unholy cabinet of torture tools and cruel curiosities. You can make the audience feel hatred. You can make them feel disgust. You can drag them into the depths of terror while elevating them to the heights of ecstatic relief.
What about the power of a loathsome villain?
The wrenching uncertainty of a love triangle?
The sting of defeat, the reverie of triumph?
A puppet might have a half-a-dozen strings, but the strings that lead from your story to that story’s audience are nearly infinite. And in the next couple weeks, we’ll be taking a look at more of those ways to tweak, twist, fold, spindle, mutilate, maul, and molest the tender emotions of your unwitting audience.
Stay tuned, story-slingers.
(Credit to Angela Perry who kicked my ass into this line of thinking with this comment.)
You may note that, in my bio, I sometimes refer to myself as a “screenwriter” in addition to “novelist,” or “game designer” or “freelance penmonkey.” (Also in addition to: “bee wrangler,” “canary in the coal mine,” and “fluffer.”) At this point I no longer consider the identifier a matter of wishful thinking: for years I’ve worked on scripts that remain unproduced, but by this point my writing partner and I have worked on scripts that have, in fact, seen the light of day: Collapsus and Pandemic, just to name two. Plus, we have a feature film in development and a television show up for pilot consideration.
And yet, you may notice that I don’t talk much about it.
Screenwriting, I mean, not the bee-wrangling or porn fluffing.
Reason being: I’ve only been doing this a few years. I can talk about being a fiction writer or game designer or the life of the slack-jawed freelancer because I’ve been living those roles for a long time. I’m no expert, but I can at least wade into such swampy waters without fear of being sucked under.
Still, I get a lot of requests to talk about screenwriting.
People say to me, “Talk about screenwriting! Do it now!”
And I try to reply to them and explain… but it’s difficult what with the dirty panties duct-taped into my mouth. I mostly just want to go back to the grocery store from whence I was abducted.
Good news is, I’ve managed to bite through my panty-gag, and now I will regale you with my ahem-cough-cough “rules” of screenwriting, which are really just “guidelines with all the firmness of gravy-soaked bread.” Again, I am no expert. Read this not with a grain of salt but rather an entire salt lick.
Ready? Let’s roll.
The screenplay is a bucking horse, a rammy stallion — the first time it sees the barn door open, that fucker is going to be off like a shot. Before you know what’s happening, you have a 300 page script in your hands. And, given that one page is equivalent to a minute of screen time, that’s bad juju.
So, you have to make a concerted effort to rein that beast in, always aiming for that sweet spot between 90 and 120 pages. This requires an almost religious devotion to brevity.
Conversations shouldn’t go on too long. Descriptions should be terse; this isn’t a novel. You’re not Lovecraft. Do not spend two pages discussing the insane non-Euclidean geometry of a lamp. Find and report on only those most critical of details. You’re not art directing the thing. Scenes shouldn’t go more than three, four, maaaaybe five pages. Keep it tight. Fast. Loose.
It’s like bad sex — get in, see the sights, pop your cookies, get out.
Don’t be married to the material. A novel is the end of the road. What you write is what ends up on the shelves (after edits, of course). Screenplays don’t work like that. The work is always in flux. It’s in flux up until the final director’s edit (at which point you’ve long been out of the equation). You are writing more a story blueprint than a story. It’s an architectural map. It’s not yet a constructed building.
By the same token, it still has to read like a kick-ass compelling story. Characters must leap off the page. Descriptions must be vivid. Dialogue should be sharp, pointed, purposeful. And you must do so with that aforementioned devotion to brevity. Which, yes, is like saying, “I need you to spit liquid gold into this thimble,” but fuck it, that’s your job.
I write my scripts in accordance to screenwriting rules, but I also try to make them interesting. I want them to read a little bit like novels or short stories without conforming to those particular conventions. (Oh, and for the record, I do not believe that novel = screenplay. I believe short story or novella = screenplay. Anybody who tries to adapt a novel into a screenplay will find the challenging task of determining what massive cuts the novel will require. Just my two cents.)
Write so it will be read at the same time you write so it will be filmed.
I read blogs or screenwriting advice and you hear a lot of, “Adhering to the three-act structure is a myth, blah blah blah, don’t do it.” Except very rarely do they cite films that don’t adhere to this classic filmic structure. Most classic films do. Most modern films do. Seriously, you can check your watch during a film and predict the act turns.
For better or for worse, it is the accepted and expected structure in film-making. You can do differently, but you may be challenged. Just lie back and think of England, love.
Structure is a beautiful thing. The challenge — really, the art — is how you subvert structure, how you brainwash it to make it your own. That is, at least, how I see it.
You’re a writer, not a director, so unless it’s demanded of you, leave all the camera voodoo out of there. That also gums up a clean and compelling read. So. Uh. Don’t do it.
The nigh-universality of it sucks, but in television, we don’t like our characters to change. Yes, you can point to characters that have changed, but it’s not common. In film, however, we are granted the opportunity to see change in our characters, and in my ego-fed megalomaniac humble opinion, you don’t want to waste that opportunity.
Novels offer the writer and reader a luxury that a script does not. In a novel, we are often treated to a sense of history, of thought, of internal monologues, of peeling away layers.
In scripts, you still have to think about all that stuff. But it just doesn’t end up on the page. Characters with rich character histories will not find those rich histories on display like in a museum.
Screenplays are about shit happening. I don’t mean “action” in the sense of “constant karate kicks and exploding F-14 Tomcats,” I just mean, things must be in perpetual motion.
You don’t have time to stop and wax poetic. That’s not to say pacing fails to matter or that you don’t get those same peaks and valleys — it’s just that pacing does not account for 10 pages of talking about your fantasy kingdom’s oh-so-fascinating history or five pages of a character’s internal process.
Shove it all beneath a layer of wordsmithy and bury it there. Text must become subtext.
Be ready to rewrite.
I enjoy it. I love rewriting scripts way more than I do rewriting novels. I guess it’s because rewriting novels is like hauling stone. Editing a script is fast, light, loose — the tool is far more “scalpel” than “dumptruck.”
It’s critical to read your novel aloud.
It’s also critical for someone else — preferably lots of someone elses — to read your script aloud. We’ve had table reads for all our feature scripts and it is incredibly valuable. Your ear will pick up things: inadequacies, inadvertent alliterations, repetitions, linguistic quirks, muddy phrasing. The actors will do things with your words that you never expected, both for the awesome and for the unpleasant.
You do not merely want this. You need this.
I adore screenwriting. It’s like I’ve opened a gnome door, and all these little fun goblins are in there having a party, and I’m inviting them into my brain. Where they make a nest and drink goblin beer and have giddy goblin babies. I have a blast doing it, and in reading scripts, I can tell when fun (or excitement or engagement) is in the recipe. This is true of novels, too, but because a script is so spare, so bare, I personally think that it comes out more… distinctly?
So, rock out and have fun, will you?
And that’s it. That’s all she wrote.
But I want to hear from you. Anybody tinkering with scripts out there? Got any “golden rules” you care to share? Don’t make me get the dirty panty-gag.
