IS YOUR PLACE SETTING REAL? TOWNS AND CITIES
Every author has to decide on a place setting. When it comes to genres such as high fantasy or science fiction, it goes without saying there are no worries about using a real town, city or country. One can make up everything from the flora and fauna, right down to the history, culture, geography and even the planet it’s all on. Things change when the genre is set in a more realistic place (I must mention urban fantasy here).
The predicament you, as a writer, are faced with, is will you choose a real town, city or country? If so, how much detail will you include? That is the real kicker.
I’m going to give you a scenario. You are humming right along, following your muse. However, your muse takes you to a place in the upper Midwest. Your story, a fill in the blank, takes place in central Illinois. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is, you’ve never been there. In fact, you live in California and can’t afford to travel to central Illinois to perform some boots on the ground research. After browsing the internet, library and your neighbor’s uncle Harry, you glean enough of the local culture and customs that you feel you can pull off your story and get away with it. However, rather than pick a real town and piss some locals off by getting a little known detail wrong you couldn’t possibly have learned from not being there (or uncle Harry is no longer cooperative), you create a fictional town for the setting. It works and more than likely, you can pull it off just fine.
Another scenario. You want to do a story about a serial killer, an uber-violent serial killer that wipes out a bunch of people in a small town in so and so. You happen to know the area because you are writing what you know. However, rather than risk a lawsuit or unnecessarily freaking out the locals, you decide to make the town fictional.
On the other hand, many authors pick on real cities, especially large cities. There is nothing wrong with that. They can be used for almost any genre, even urban fantasy. The key to making them believable is to make sure that key locations are used correctly. If certain places are used fictitiously, make sure to have a disclaimer at the beginning of the book clearly stating so. However, that should not be an excuse for blatantly ignoring major details unless there is a specific reason for it.
Some authors are afraid to use real locations for fear of being sued. You can’t be sued for using a city or town in a story! You can be sued for slandering real individuals. There is a huge difference! Also, don’t use private property as a place setting unless you have written permission, or, unless you own that property!
I thought of this article because I am in the middle of editing The Greenhouse. As many of you know, it is icky bug. It is set in the small city of Altus, Oklahoma. I decided to use the real city as a tribute to the town we lived in and around for eight years. We made a lot of friends and had a lot of great experiences there. I also have never ever heard of it being used or even mentioned in a novel. I thought it was about time someone did. The town is, of course, used fictitiously and almost destroyed in the novel, but recovers in the end. I used a lot of real place names, streets and locations. However, I completely fictionalized the Altus police department and the city utilities as well as the local college, Western Oklahoma State College.
I also made a nod to the Vernon State Hospital. There is an escape scene in the story that takes place at this mental institution that sits across the border in nearby Vernon, Texas. In this case, I completely fictionalized the hospital in everything except the name. I did some research on the real hospital. One of my college instructors worked there and gave me a lot of insight into the real place. In fact, he was the inspiration for the scene in the story. However, because of the type of people housed there, I took great care to make sure the scenes in the book were in no way like the real hospital. I would not want to give anyone the idea that they could actually escape from that place using any real features! I plan to have a disclaimer either at the beginning or the end of the book saying so.
As you write your stories, what I’ve said is just food for thought as you construct your world. If you use a real place, make sure you get the details right, or at least keep them vague enough so you don’t trip yourself up. If you make up a town or city, keep in mind where it is at and don’t forget general details!
Next time, I’ll talk a bit more about using private property as a place setting. That has caused me some personal grief.
Until then, happy writing!
NEW YEAR, NEW GOALS
Actually, that title is bull. Though this is 2012, the end of the world year (if you believe certain people), it’s just another year to me. It’s also a year where my goals haven’t changed one iota. I just thought the title sounded snappy. What the heck. Maybe it’ll attract a few more readers. False advertising, just like what I was griping about in my last post.
What are my goals? One is to get Meleena’s Adventures – Treasure of the Umbrunna published. That fantasy story will be my first ever conventionally published full-length novel. It is also the first full-length fantasy novel I’ve ever written, though I’ve written many in other genres. Along with that goal, I want to at least get a first draft of the sequel done by the end of the year. Meleena’s Adventures – Gods of the Blue Mountains is about a third of the way along at this stage. Because of some radical changes in my life this past year, my work flow has been disrupted. I hope to get my mojo back, and that sequel is one of those things that needs to be addressed.
Another goal is to get my first icky bug novel, The Greenhouse published in e-format. I had a pretty lofty goal last summer thinking I could get it on Amazon Kindle by this past December. Well, here it is January 2012 and I still have no cover, it is on another final draft, and I still have to write a cover synopsis and do some other housekeeping things. At this point, I don’t even want to suggest a target date, but will anyway. How about sometime before the end of the world, whichever date this year the Mayans or Nostradamus think is the correct one?
My next goal is to finish reading The Factory to my writers group. It’s been over a year, so far. I’m sure they’re getting sick of the colorful metaphors as well as the gore and my twisted humor, especially with some of the downright serious subjects some of the other readers present. I sometimes feel like a standup comedian at a funeral when I read. Don’t worry though, I’m not wracked with guilt about it!
I submitted a short story to our writer’s group anthology. I’m crossing my fingers the judges they submitted it to won’t hate it with a passion like the last story I submitted two years ago. I never quite knew why they hated the other one so bad, but maybe this one will strike a different chord with them.
I would love to get more readers to this site. There are a ton of ways I can market myself better. Yeah, I know… I’m just not sure or maybe willing to take some of the plunges being suggested or offered by those supposedly in the know. I’m taking things slow. Maybe too slow, but I want to do this right and at my own pace.
Finally, I want to thank all of you who have stuck with me since I started this thing. This site hasn’t just been about my books, after all. As some of you may know from randomly clicking around in here, I also have interests in astronomy, woodworking and stories from my childhood. What I haven’t addressed yet, which I might one day, is music. I deliberately left off the page titled music for the time being because I didn’t want to neuter the stories there. My goal for this web site was to keep it PG so my work would appeal to a much wider audience. I want to keep it that way. However, to tell my music stories honestly and to keep them the way I want, there is no way I’m going to censor them for the sake of this web site. That is why I won’t post any of my horror short stories here either. Horror (icky bug) is the only genre I write where I don’t hold anything back. The way I figure it, there isn’t that huge of a market to begin with, so language isn’t really going to hurt the bottom line.
Anyway… it’s off to the races, folks. Have you set your goals before the end of the world yet? If not, you need to, before it’s too late!
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Okay, folks, it’s time to honor Andy Rooney and do a bitch. My bitch is on something that has been bugging me for a long time. It’s called the book synopsis. How many of you know how they are created? Do you think some marketing wiz at the publisher dreams them up, or the editor, or maybe the head publisher? Maybe back in the day that might have happened for some books, but in this modern day and age, more than likely, the author is stuck with that job. Yes, you will be responsible for coming up with your own synopsis.
For those of you new to this publishing game, what in the world is a book synopsis? The synopsis is a summary of the book that you will find either on the back cover or on the inside of the jacket (if it’s a hardback). It is supposed to give you an idea of what the book is about. It’s a quick-and-dirty marketing took designed to draw the reader, into buying your book.
The synopsis can be one of the most difficult things to write. It’s usually one to two paragraphs, yet it can be absolute torture for the author. After writing a 100,000 word novel, editing forever, rewriting, editing some more, condensing the story down to 80,000 words, rewriting again, expanding… one would think a measly two paragraphs would be a piece of cake. However, those one or two paragraphs, if not done right, could make or break the rest of your effort, no matter how good it is.
Now that I’ve thoroughly discouraged you, let me switch to those that have succeeded in bringing their books to the masses. The bookstore (I have to make that singular now, unfortunately) is full of novels, most with a synopsis. They were likely all written by the author unless they’re older reprints. Each of these synopses were probably gone over with a fine-toothed comb by their editor and maybe even a marketing manager, but the gist of them left intact. The marketing manager may have wanted to spice them up a bit to make the story sound more sexy (the editor might be guilty of this too). What these editors and marketing people never did though, was actually read the book. A different set of editors would do that, depending on the size of the publisher. That brings me to my big complaint, truth in advertising.
There is nothing I hate worse that reading a synopsis, getting a completely wrong impression of what the book is about, then being pissed off at the end of the story. Unfortunately, it happens more often than it should. The blurb says one thing, but the story turns out to be something else entirely. For example, the book I’m reading now is about a natural disaster. It seemed to be a thriller from the synopsis and title, but I am already halfway through it and there is almost no thriller or natural disaster. It is a soap opera about this cop and his disjointed family. That is not what I paid big bucks for a hardback to read! I really hate when authors mislead their readers that way.
Part of this problem may be the editing and marketing people at big publishers. If your book is big enough, you may have little control over it, even though you wrote the original text. However, most of you will most likely start out at smaller publishers and will have the final say of your own synopsis. The publisher should guide you, but not to the point of rewriting it or changing it into something it’s not. My plea to you is that I know writing a synopsis is going to be one of the hardest things you will have to do. Please make it about the book! Don’t mislead your readers to try and sell more books. Keep a bit of integrity and make your synopsis plain so your readers know exactly where you are coming from. In the long run you’ll be better for it.
Truth in advertising!
AN INBETWEEN INBETWEEN
Tomorrow is my regular post day and it is upcoming, right on schedule. However, I wanted to ask you all a favor.
The other day, I was posting updates to some of my pages and one of them was to my Adventure/Thriller page. When I finished the update, I ran spell checker. Just out of habit, I scrolled to the top of the page and to my horror, I found a whole bunch of typos. I am not that sloppy! Well, I am when I do a draft, but I always clean it up before I post, which I had done when I went live with it.
In this case, instead of typing it all in Word, cleaning it up and pasting it into the page from there, I typed it in freehand, saved it (actually posted it) and came back and made a few tweaks before I made the site live. When I did, I spell checked it and fixed those errors. A few weeks later, maybe a month, I was running through the pages maybe for an update and noticed the errors were back again. I ran the spell checker, found the errors, updated it, closed the page, went back into it again and made sure they took. I assumed they were fixed. Now, here it is several months later and I find they are back and people have been visiting that page and seeing what a rank amateur I am! Aaagh! None of my other pages are having that same issue.
I fixed the typos once again, saved them, went out and back into the page to make sure they took. I don’t trust that page!
As my readers, if any of you spot a typo in one of my pages or on my posts, please let me know so I can fix it. I’d sure appreciate it and I won’t get upset. Sometimes a word might be deliberately spelled wrong for effect, but tell me anyway so I can either fix it or explain why it is spelled that way.
Thanks!
COMING UP WITH A PLOT
For those of you that have been following my articles for a while, you know my reference to the Polkadot Sewer. I was thinking today about some of the writer’s workshops and how they get fiction writer’s together to come up with plots for stories and it kind of bugged me.
It is a well-known fact (or should be) that there are only so many basic plots available. An occasional workshop occurs where writers are asked to mix these plot elements to create their “unique” plot so they can go off and create their story. Okay… I suppose that’s fine, in a way. My problem with that is if the author has to use a tool (or session) like that to come up with their plot, the well must be dry. Am I wrong here?
Every plot I’ve come up with has been an inspiration, not from some seminar. They’ve all just popped into my head. I’ve known a starting and ending point. Everything else in the middle is a total surprise. You’ve all heard those words from me many times before. Do I come up with a plot that’s been used before? Of course! Then again, if there are only a finite number of plots out there anyway, it’s an inevitable fact. So, why worry about it? I can’t really knock where people get their ideas, but it just seems to me that the best creativity comes from the heart, not from some seminar.
I think it’s much better to come up with the plot on my own and not worry if it’s been done before. I know it’s been done before, but you know what? I don’t care! So, if you are all hung up on that while you’re trying to come up with a story, I think you’re chasing the impossible dream. It’s all in the telling, not the plot. It’s your unique voice.
Look at all the vampire novels out there right now. I am so sick of vampire stories I want to scream. Are any of them that different? Mystery genre? How many ways can you murder someone? Westerns? How many ways can you head them off at the pass?
My question to you is, wouldn’t it be better for you to come up with a plot all on your own that have to manufacture it from some formula or instruction book? Don’t bury yourself in angst worrying about if it’s been done before. Trust me, it has! It’s how you tell it and how you build your world around it that makes it different.
Drawing your world is how you make your story unique. Harry Potter? The plot’s been done a hundred times if not more. It’s the world MS Rowling drew that makes it unique, not the plot. Twilight? Kissy-face teen angst love story plot. Okay, I’m not a big fan. However, MS Meyer knew how to push the right buttons with women in the world she drew. That, my friends, is how you make your story different, not the plot.
There is something to be said for workshops that teach you how to construct basic plots so that you understand what a plot is and how to make it clear and not too complicated or not too muddled. Basic plotting is a good thing to learn if you don’t come onto it naturally. However, creating plots in a seminar is what I’m talking about. Fretting over whether it’s been done before? That is what I’m talking about.
Your world is unique, your story is unique, not the plot.
WATCH HOW YOU SAY IT
I’d just finished my 625th review on Amazon last Saturday (December 10th). As I was editing it before pushing the “publish” button, I caught a word that the spell checker wouldn’t recognize as wrong. The sentence in question referred to the author using a co-author and said that though he let this co-author do the heavy lifting, he still had a firm hand on the reigns. What I meant to say is he had a firm hand on the reins. Since the first word was spelled correctly, spell checker wouldn’t have known it was the wrong usage of the word. A good grammar checker might have caught it, but more than likely, even grammar checker would have skipped it over in favor of something more blatant.
The chances are, the average reader wouldn’t notice, but more aware readers might call you on it. Sure, a good editor is paid to catch stuff like that, but you, as a writer, should know better. Of course, none of us are perfect, but the better we are at catching our mistakes, the less chance we have of making ourselves an easy target.
Years ago, my buddy Doug Lubahn caught me in a doozy when in an e-mail to him I told him I was waiting with baited breath for something or other. What I meant to say was bated breath. He never let me hear the end of it!
The point is that when you choose to use words like that with double meanings or words with similar pronunciations but different spellings, step carefully! Those little errors can make for some embarrassing gaffes that give ammunition to your detractors. It’s bad enough when they don’t like your story. So what? That’s a given. However, when they have an easy target like the quality of your writing, you’re giving them an opening they don’t deserve.
Two of the technical terms I’m talking about are homophones and homonyms. An example of a homophone would be “I received some mail from a male friend.” Homophones are two words that are pronounced the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings, as in my reins example above.
On the other hand, a homonym is a word that is spelled the same but is pronounced two different ways and has two different meanings such as “I wound up the clock.” On the other hand, it could be used as “Justin dressed the wound on his arm.”
As a writer, you shouldn’t have a problem with homonyms. However, the homophones are the ones that can give you grief. Be aware of them and always double check them. Don’t depend on your editor to catch them all. Save yourself some embarrassment!
Oh, and don’t forget to clothes the door on the way out!
WRITE WRITE WRITE
We are here because we love to write, right? That rhymes… But no, I’m not a poet or a lyricist. Though I’ve written a few song lyrics, I’m not one for listening to lyrics in music (I like the “articulated vocal noises”) or reading poems so why should I write them? On the other hand, I write just about everything else. Writing is part of my life. Not only do I write my novels, I write short stories, Amazon reviews (624 so far), the Observer’s Challenge for the Las Vegas Astronomical Society, the odd article for other astronomical publications, technical articles, all kinds of entries on the Absolute Write Water Cooler (a writers forum) and Cloudy Nights (an amateur astronomy forum). I also just got elected as the secretary (or as I like to call it, the “sekkiterry”) of the Las Vegas Astronomical Society, where I’ll be writing the meeting minutes as well as who-knows-what.
Folks, “I be doing” a lot of writing! Why do I do it? Because I like to. I wouldn’t have put myself through 17 years of torture, disappointment and failure if my goal was simply to get published. My first and primary goal has always been to write.
Why are you here? Am I sounding like a broken record? I have to bring this up because over and over again, I hear people asking themselves and others why they can’t get published and why they should’ve picked an easier hobby. Huh?
I’ve never considered this a hobby. In a way, maybe it is, except I’ve never spent outrageous amounts of money on gear I didn’t need. Sure, I’ve forked out a few bucks here and there on books I didn’t really need, spent plenty on postage for agent queries, but that isn’t the same thing. My primary goal was to write, and not just novels. I enjoy everything I write, where most people dread it. They consider writing a letter, an article, an essay as a chore or a punishment. If any of that applies to you, you should probably rethink why you’re here.
I’ll compare this all to something I’ve seen in my other passion, astronomy. There’s a creature called the equipment freak. These guys throw themselves into astronomy with a passion. Unfortunately, this passion is for spending money. They’ll spend a small fortune on the latest doodads and end up with a super-expensive telescope they can’t even operate. We finally get a dark night somewhere. They’ll arrive, set this monstrosity up and sit in a chair next to the scope just waiting for people to come around and admire it. They’ll barely look through the eyepiece. If they do, they don’t see the Hubble Telescope-like images they were expecting, and get bored with it. Of course, if you challenge them on their choice of equipment, they’ll almost come to blows over their choice of perfection and specifications, yet they cannot find an object in the sky without the computer control. Soon they move on to ATV’s or something else.
To bring this into our world of writing, are you the guy or gal that has plunged into writing, wrote and self-published a garage full of books you can’t sell? Have you spent a huge amount of money and come out with a poor or mediocre product because you wanted bang for your buck, but didn’t slow down enough to learn what you were doing first? Did you get impatient and take the easy route? Is that what your writing is going to be? That, my friends, is a big red flag telling you that you are in the wrong interest. Let any kind of writing be fun for you.
EDITING
I’ve talked about this before, but I think the subject of editing deserves going into with a bit more detail. I’d like discuss some different ways to approach your own editing process.
There may still be a few of you who are writing manually. Do you put pen to paper? Do you still have an old typewriter? Or, might you be a real against-the-grain type person and have a Dictaphone? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Since you are reading this, more than likely, like me, you use a computer to do your writing. In doing so, when you get something completed, you also edit it on the computer screen. Am I right?
If you have taken my advice, sought out a writer’s group and brought materials to read, you would have had to print those materials. However, how many of you have actually printed a preliminary copy and read it first? I have a confession to make. I never used to do that. I would do all of my editing on the computer until it was “perfect.” Then I would print copies, bring them to a meeting blind, then pass out my beautiful masterpiece only to have everyone “dash my hopes and dreams, show me what an amateur I really am!” Of course, I exaggerate, but you get my point.
A little editing trick I’ve known for years, but don’t practice nearly enough, is to always print out your work first and read it! I’m not kidding. Seeing it on a computer screen is a lot different than seeing it in print. You will sometimes be shocked at the simple and sometimes not so simple mistakes that will slap you in the face when you read it in a different format. It really works.
I just finished editing Chapter 52 of The Factory for our Monday evening meeting. I went through my usual editing on screen and thought I’d caught everything. This time I decided to print it out. Wow! I was amazed at how many things I caught just by looking at it in print. It made a world of difference.
Another editing trick that really works is to read it aloud. Many times as I’m reading my stuff to the group, I’ll notice flaws. I’ll stumble over words, phrases, or notice something that just doesn’t work. It looked good when I wrote it, but as I read it, it doesn’t fly. You don’t have to read it to anyone else, just read it to the wall, your dawg, the cat. You may be surprised at what you’ll find.
A funny thing. After printing, reading and editing my Chapter 52, I reprinted it and the copies, took it to the meeting. When I read it aloud, to my chagrin (now there’s a fancy word), I discovered that when I’d edited the mistakes I found on the last print, I created new mistakes! I never read a copy of the “edited” version, I just trusted that I did it right. In one instance, I left off the end of a sentence. Geez! Until next time…
KEEPING IT REAL (AHEM)
Since I write icky bug, the question always comes up about why would my character do this or that when there is a monster lurking nearby. Why open the door when you know the monster is on the other side? Why go to work at the factory when you know a monster has taken it over? Would any normal person do that in real life? Would you?
Okay, folks. Let’s look at real life. First off, is icky bug real life? Of course not! Duh! Is fantasy real life? Of course not! Are vampires real? Are werewolves real? Here’s a good one for you. Is fiction real? If it was, it wouldn’t be called fiction!
The idea of keeping it real is to make your fictional story seem believable. Then again, as with any fictional story, the reader has to suspend their disbelief to a certain extent for the sake of the story. When it comes to the more reality-based genres, such as mystery, romance, some thrillers, westerns and such, that suspension of disbelief isn’t such a stretch. However, with genres such as high-concept thrillers, horror (especially icky bug), steampunk, science fiction and fantasy, that word reality has to be stretched a bit more.
Your story shouldn’t stretch credibility to the breaking point, of course, unless it’s comedy or satire (for instance), but come on now, whatever happens isn’t exactly going to keep Carl Sagan or Einstein from turning in their graves.
The other evening, I was reading a chapter from my latest icky bug, The Factory. Once again, someone questioned why my characters would do such and such, instead of running for the hills because of all the things happening at said factory. Well, my answer is that if that were to happen, first off, there wouldn’t be a story. Second, they are not suspending their disbelief. They don’t understand the genre. They have obviously never watched any icky bug movies on SyFy channel or seen them anywhere else. My story doesn’t stretch disbelief any more than those b-movie classics. I know my genre. On the other hand, this person did catch an incident with a phone that was unrealistic, as I had written it. That was a good call and I changed that particular incident. However, I did not, and will not change the entire story.
These are things you, as a writer, need to watch out for. Keep it real to your genre. You don’t have to necessarily keep it real to the laws of physics 101 or psychology 101, but if you don’t, you must be able to suspend the reader’s disbelief without pushing them over the edge. Keep in mind that when you read in front of a diverse group like a writer’s group, not everyone reads or understands that genre and will see it with different eyes. You have to take that into account. In my case, my plot is still sound for the genre regardless of her feelings, but that listener caught an incident that would have been a gotcha. I’m glad she caught it.
To keep things real for your genre, I can’t recommend highly enough outside eyes and ears. That outside perspective can catch stuff an insider might miss.
FOLLOW YOUR MUSE
Okay, so this isn’t exactly a new subject here at the Worlds Of Fred Rayworth, but it’s one I’d like to address again. Early Saturday morning, I was at the dawg park chatting with my friend, Ed. Somehow we got to talking about writing. He’s known for the several years that I’ve been hanging with him that I’m a writer. He broached the subject that he was toying with the idea of giving it a try. However, he has another friend that had been agonizing over where to place a comma within a sentence for days, maybe even weeks. Ed wondered if he could handle writing if it was that much trouble.
Alarm bells went off in my head as soon as those words came out of his mouth. What have I mentioned, probably more than once in several of my blogs? Before I get back to that I need to bring up another friend, David. He used to be a member of our writers group. He no longer lives in Las Vegas but we’ve kept in touch over the years. He tried to write an autobiography but gave up in frustration. Not long ago, he decided to try writing a fictional story. However, he struggled so much with it during the editing, he wondered if it was worth it. After a few e-mails back and forth, I finally asked him why he was writing it in the first place. He came to the conclusion that he was doing it for the wrong reasons. Instead of writing for pleasure, he realized the writing was more like torture. I told him that was not the reason to do it. The last I heard from him, he decided to quit writing and pursue other interests.
In the case of Ed, I know he can write, technically at least, whether good or bad because of the type of work he has done. I’m pretty sure he can put sentences together, keeping in mind that I’ve never seen any of his writing. I told him that if he wants to write, he needs to forget about all that bull, all the mechanics, all the right and wrong. Yeah, my friends, all the stuff I talk to you about in this blog. “Just write. Follow your muse.”
His eyes opened up when I said that.
“Ed, you will eventually have to learn all of this stuff as you become a more experienced writer, but when you’ve start out, just write. Follow your muse. Get it down first, then worry about cleaning it up later.”
I went on to explain that if he were to get hung up on details right off, he’d never get anywhere.
Sound familiar? I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m practicing what I’m preaching, folks.
I explained that he’d never get his ideas down and he’d never get anything completed. Finish an idea first then go back and fix the flaws. The more he writes, the more he’ll learn, the better he’ll get at catching those things. The more sense this very advice I give here on my blog will make.
I went on to explain how I started with almost no rules at all and how I completed The Cave in just a few months. I had a full-length novel completed and under my belt. Of course, it was nowhere near good enough to get published, but it got my juices flowing, it honed my chops, it sparked my creativity. I also told him how much editing goes into a manuscript, such as The Greenhouse which is currently on edit #29, by the way.
I recommended he show up to one of our writer’s group meetings. I don’t know if he will or not, but he kept repeating “Follow my muse” over and over again. He thanked my profusely. I left him feeling like I might have accomplished something. Time will tell.
To cop a tired cliché (but I don’t really care since this is my blog), “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!” Follow your muse!
The Worlds Of Fred Rayworth 