RSS

Category Archives: Short Story Collection

Getting published the traditional trade book way

11 Oct

Book cover for Beyond the Tripping Point

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

— Cicero

I’m off to another public reading for my just released collection of mystery short stories Beyond the Tripping Point (Blue Denim Press, 2012). It’s all part of the book promo and it is and has been busy, what with trying to get book reviews, nailing TV and radio appearances, etc. My publisher shares this marketing, which really helps.

But before you get into this book PR, you have to land your publisher or literary agent. And that can seem daunting. There are so many unpublished authors with talent, many more than “publishing spaces.” E-books are creating more readers (and more publishing space), but some authors are going the self-publishing route and I say more power to them. But what about those who prefer the traditional route?

You can’t just dump your novel or short story collection on an agent or publisher. They don’t have time to read the whole story unless something about it grabs their attention. Your job is to get their attention – right away.

One way is through query letters, synopses, and sample chapters. Some agents and publishers want this whole package; most prefer the query letter only and then if that gets their attention, they will ask for more.

A good query letter has to hook the agent or publisher with the first sentence. Starting with the obvious “I’m looking for an agent to represent my novel” will put the agent to sleep. Grab the agent with a wowee sentence about your book. Here’s an example. “When Abigail Cooke reunites with her birth mother, she has no idea that her new family connection will lead to buried bodies, psychosis, and the Mob.”

There are variations to the “when setup,” which focus more on the characters, the time period – whatever is most pertinent to your novel AND will grab the agent’s or publisher’s attention.

In your second paragraph you get to expand – a little. In this mini-synopsis you give the highlights of your novel’s plot and main characters. Pick the attention getters. Don’t do it resume style – it has to flow – and watch for boring summaries starting with “Abigail Cooke is a tall, slim blonde who teaches kindergarten.” Yawn. What does that have to do with your beginning sentence? The agent or publisher wants to read on from paragraph one. It also is a good idea to give the title of your book. Better would be “In Can of Worms, Abigail Cooke, a young schoolteacher who was adopted at birth, has always found something missing in her life – her birth mother. After agonizing the pros and cons, she starts searching online and finds her birth mother, Sara Tusani. The two begin an email correspondence. Despite Abigail’s apprehension about Sara, which she puts down to “just nerves,” she agrees to meet Sara in her native Rome, Italy during her summer vacation. When she’s met at Leonardo da Vinci Airport by her mother’s chauffeur, but not her mother, she ignores her gut feeling of apprehension and relishes the luxury. When she arrives at Sara’s mansion on the outskirts of Rome and meets her mother’s brother-in-law, Luigi Tusani, a philandering alcoholic and her half-brother, Giuseppe Tusani, a computer nerd who hibernates in the attic, she has second thoughts. But her mother seems normal, gracious and friendly…at first. As the day turns to dark, loud bangs and a haunting caterwauling in the mansion wake up Abigail. The next morning’s questions give her only “you must be imagining things” answers. That night when the noises come, Abigail is ready. Grabbing a hairbrush for a weapon, she leaves her room, walks along the hall and goes downstairs into the kitchen, sees the basement door open, and takes the stairs down…”

You would add a sentence or two, supplying a bit more information. Depending on your storyline you can have a summary sentence that perhaps goes back to your first paragraph’s sentence, for example, “Abigail finally realizes she should have listened to her instincts and now must lose her new family or risk losing her life.”

Paragraph three covers your background – published writing (books, stories in journals or magazines, newsletters, especially if you’ve won any writing contests or awards). Not a published author? What about your education and expertise? Is it related to your novel? For example, for Can of Worms if the author is adopted and tried to find her birth mother, is or was a school teacher, and has travelled to Rome (in order of importance to the novel – all not necessary), you can use that to establish credentials for writing the novel.

Some agents or publishers want a little marketing information from you, so you could either put it in a second sentence in paragraph one or write a short fourth paragraph (better). Focus on how your novel is different from what’s out there. Be specific, including naming another novel. Also state who your readers would be (thirty-somethings, seniors, adoptees, etc.).

Your final paragraph is The Thank You and the Ask. Thank the agent or publisher for their time, ask if they would like a synopsis and sample chapters and you look forward to their reply.

Your query should be only one page but with most sent by email you can cheat – but just a little – no equivalent to one and a half to three pagers. Another suggestion: check submission guidelines on the agent’s or publisher’s website and follow them to the well, query letter.

For those of you in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area, Brian Henry is running a workshop on Getting Published which includes writing a query letter and a literary agent as guest speaker. This workshop is sponsored by my East End Writers’ Group and will be held at The World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, October 13, 2012. Check for more details and how to register at http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.ca/2012/06/how-to-get-published-workshop-toronto.html

Next week we’ll go into another way of getting the attention of agents and publishers, including how I got my publisher for Beyond the Tripping Point.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 11, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Query Letters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Creating eccentric characters

23 Aug

I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don’t necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I’m working on, because they’re simply my way of getting to know the characters.

–          Norton Juster

Quirky characters appear in many novels and TV series. Think the main character in
Dexter, all of the characters in NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles and the Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot, who has crossed from books into movies and TV. Not surprising as life is filled with eccentric characters. Look around you as you go about your day. It could be that old lady wearing sandals, a winter coat and straw hat standing on the corner and yelling. It might be your dad who insists on having one white vegetable, one yellow vegetable and one green vegetable at dinner; then meticulously cuts them all into tiny pieces before spooning them into his mouth.

Or maybe it’s you.

How do you create an eccentric character for your short story or novel and what can you “borrow” from life or can you?

Most of my short stories in Beyond the Tripping Point have at least one eccentric character, although most, if not all, the characters contain a certain amount of quirkiness. My favourite is Great Aunt Doris who appears in two of the four linked stories featuring the fraternal twin PIs, Dana and Bast.

Where did Doris come from?

I did have an eccentric aunt who at one time when she was alive was the same age (70s) as Great Aunt Doris. Like Doris, my aunt was short and had a mouth on her. There any resemblance ends. My aunt was deep into Catholicism and anti-fluoridation and spoke her mind on both in a somewhat whiny voice, punctuated by a grin showing all her yellow teeth. Great Aunt Doris isn’t particularly religious, but she is conservative and has set ideas on what mothers should do and be. And she hates gays. As Dana is a mother and a PI with a son and Bast is gay, you get an idea where that could go. Doris is also the great aunt of Dana’s ex-husband, but that doesn’t stop her from showing up uninvited on Dana’s and Bast’s doorsteps. And meddling in their lives.

  1.  You can base your eccentric characters on someone you know or met but remember “base” is a four-letter word. Pick one or two traits you like about your real-life eccentric and build your character from there using your imagination.
  2. Envision how your character looks and sounds: Great Aunt Doris has an ugly face – her aging wrinkles and puffy, yet sagging cheeks, plus that ruby-red lipstick make her resemble a gargoyle, especially when she opens her mouth. And she does, in a gravelly voice, to criticize Dana’s parenting skills and insult Bast as well as poke herself into the Attic Agency’s current case. Her usual garb is a flowered housedress and flat shoes or pumps but when she’s on a case, she does a female version of Sherlock Holmes – minus the pipe. I did say she was conservative.
  3. Don’t create an eccentric character just for the sake of having one. He or she must fit into your story and interact realistically with the other characters. In other words, he or she must do the impossible – blend in as well as stand out as a distinct character. Here’s a dialogue excerpt from my short story “Saving Grace.” Dana is in the middle of tracking down a suspect when her cell rings. It is Great Aunt Doris.

“Yes, Doris,” I say.

“David…David,” deep breath, “David…is throwing a tantrum,” Aunt Doris says. “He’s…hey, little fellow, take it…gulp…easy. Dana, you’d better be a good mother and get back to the hotel…now.”

“Aunt Doris, calm down. I’ll be—”

A vehicle’s coming down the road, slowing down.

“Just a minute, Aunt Doris.” Without disconnecting the cell, I jump off the veranda and scurry behind a nearby bush.

“What is the matter with you, Dana? Your little boy is having a fit and you run off….”

“Shh, Aunt Doris.”

“Don’t you shush me young lady. Your son—”

(Excerpted from “Saving Grace,” from Beyond the Tripping Point, Copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford, Blue Denim Press, due out fall 2012).

There is also Detective Sergeant Fielding who gets migraines and sometimes stutters. But that’s another story…or is it? He appears in many of the Dana and Bast stories and shares one trait with Great Aunt Doris. He doesn’t like Bast, but not because Bast is gay. So your eccentric doesn’t have to be a pariah. Remember the eccentric must fit into your story.

When you get an idea for an eccentric character, do a detailed character sketch. Don’t forget the feelings, including how you feel about him or her. What is the character’s purpose in the story? And make sure the eccentric isn’t someone from your real life. This is fiction, not memoir.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
1 Comment

Posted by on August 23, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Turning incidents into stories

09 Aug

“I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.”

– John Steinbeck

In last week’s post I listed an incident that is not a story under baddies for fiction plotting. Today I’m going to give some tips on turning an incident into a short story using the beginning of  “Saving Grace,” from my short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point.

Grace Milhop, age eight, disappeared just after two this afternoon from the backyard of her east end Toronto home. Her mother, Terry Milhop, went into the house to answer the phone and when she came back out 10 minutes later, her daughter was gone…. Milhop is estranged from her husband—

I drop the laundry basket and charge into the living room.

…police are asking anyone with any information to call—

It’s not the picture of a child with short red curls and freckles staring at me from the TV screen that stops me cold. Neither does the photo of a 35-ish man with thick black hair and matching moustache. My concern is the seven-year-old boy standing at the end of the coffee table, remote in his hand, staring at the TV.

“No, David.” I scramble over to him. “You don’t need to see this. Give me the remote.” I hold out my hand.

My son jumps back and shakes his head. When I lean forward and try to grab his hand, he butts his head into my stomach.

“No, David.”

Foot stomping.

“David.”

He stiffens; the remote clatters to the floor and he begins to whimper.

(Excerpted from “Saving Grace,” from Beyond the Tripping Point, Copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford, Blue Denim Press, due out fall 2012).

This could very well be an incident about a boy having a temper tantrum over whether he should be watching something on TV. As far as that goes, my late journalist teacher, Paul Nowak would say “So what?”

But more is going on here and I make it so. How?

1.Think beyond the incident itself – go for the big picture. Is this TV on/off battle only one in a long line of temper tantrums the mother is trying to deal with? Is the son acting out in other ways, maybe even bullying others at school or being bullied himself?

2. Figure out what the conflict could be in your story. Continuing with the above, does the mother constantly fight with her son? Maybe this is something new and she wants to find out why and fix it.

3. Build your incident and conflict into a plotline. For example, maybe the mother is a single mom trying to juggle a demanding job; maybe her daycare is threatening to quit, maybe she’s getting notes from the school about her son’s behaviour and she is dreading the appointment she has with the school principal. You can add in a few bad behaviours on her son’s part (use your imagination). Use dialogue and action to show the reader the escalating conflict. Build it up to a climax and then some sort of resolution – not necessarily the son becomes a good boy again.

My story doesn’t exactly follow those lines. “Saving Grace” is the second in four linked stories in this Beyond the Tripping Point story collection. For one thing, Dana and her fraternal twin, Bast, run a private investigative agency. The previous year David himself was kidnapped and it traumatized him so much that he couldn’t speak. Dana and David attend therapy consisting of talk and art therapy. As part of the process David harbours a lot of anger, and because he’s not speaking and he’s still scared, he reverts to the terrible twos and throws temper tantrums, including a lot of foot stomping. The plot itself has David trying to sort through his difficulty by honing in on other children being kidnapped. So, when Dana, David and eccentric Great Aunt Doris take a holiday to Goderich, Ontario, and they see a little girl who resembles the missing Grace, David literally tries to shove his mother into finding Grace. Dana is torn between doing so and leaving it to the police. It doesn’t help that Great Aunt Doris (who locks horns with Dana on a regular basis) tries to stop both Dana and David from becoming involved. She even calls Dana a “bad mother.”  The story continues…but I’m not going to reveal the climax but you can get the idea. I use plenty of action, dialogue and feelings.

So, if you have only an incident, don’t trash it. See if you can develop it into a real story.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on August 9, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Plotting your way through your story

02 Aug

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., science fiction writer

Vonnegut describes the fiction writer perched at the computer. The writer is ready to roll with the plot. Sometimes he soars, but sometimes his wings get clipped.

In my short story, “For the Love of Wills,” two of my main characters are literally “up there.” The story begins:

“Clara, I’m going to fall.”

“Pipe down, Mother. Do you want them to hear us?”

“I can’t move. I’m stuck. See.” She tried tapping her toes against the stone rock wall, but to no avail.

“Well, whose idea was this anyway?” I whispered.

“Yours.”

“Mine?  Now, listen here…”

“Shush. Do you want Will and that blonde Bimbo to hear us?”

That blonde Bimbo is what got Heidi Anastasia Clarke started. Bad enough that on her 62nd birthday, her husband of 40 years, William Everett Clarke, decided to toss her out of their old-money mansion in Toronto’s Rosedale. All this for a post-mid-life crisis which brought his oh-so-much younger secretary in and sent my mother packing. (Excerpted from Beyond the Tripping Point, copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford. Book available fall 2012).

These two characters, Clara and Heidi, are definitely “ready to roll with the plot,” if they don’t fall first.

Now, let’s look at some baddies in fiction plotting.

A literary magazine editor once scrawled on one of my short stories, “This is not a short story. This is an incident.”

A novel that I evaluated contained quirky characters. However, they solved everything too easily and their relationships, including the love relationship, had no problems.

In another novel, the author had created a certain atmosphere from the setting and characters. Unfortunately, the plot resembled those 500-piece jigsaw puzzles that you finally toss out in a garage sale.

Kurt Vonnegut  Jr. describes plot as:

I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away — even if it’s only a glass of water. … When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are. … And you can put him to sleep by never having characters confront each other.

The characteristics of a good plot are:

  1. A protagonist or main character with a conflict to resolve. The characters drive the plot. Let them struggle to get there. Life may be a bowl of cherries, but the characters need to experience the pits.
  2. The plot moves forward, usually chronologically, although some flashbacks can work. If you get lost, use Doug Lawson’s rule, i.e., figuring out where the characters would rather not go.
  3. Events must be connected, not random and they must link from one event to another with some purpose.
  4. The plot must be believable, whether commercial or literary fiction. Your story line may seem unbelievable, but you make it believable by suspending the reader’s disbelief. Think “Once Upon a Time.”
  5. Their must be a climax, whether it’s a moral one in the protagonist’s mind or the opposite extreme, such as a sword fight.
  6. The plot must have some resolution in the end.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on August 2, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

What comes first? Character or Plot?

26 Jul

When your short story or novel idea first comes to light in your mind, what started it? A character? Plot? Or a combination of the two? Or something else?

I’ve had all four occur. The origin of my four linked stories in Beyond the Tripping Point – “Gone Missing,” “Saving Grace,” “Digging Up the Dirt” and “Road Raging” was definitely the female private investigator Dana Bowman. Her initial name was “Sheila” but I soon changed that because it was close to my first name, “Sharon.” Dana popped into my head before all these short stories, for a novel (now in a rewrite; it’s a prequel to these short stories). When that happens you have to find your plot. I like to take something that is going on in the world and use that as part of the plot. These stories occur in 1999 (the novel is set in 1998) so it has to be something pertinent to then. For example, there were no Blackberrys, iPhones, or Facebook, but there was the Internet (albeit mostly dial-up) and cell phones. The idea is to connect the “world situation” to the character and develop your plot. And bring in more characters.

If the plot idea occurs first, like it did in my story “No Breaks,” you need to develop the right characters to work your plot. The situation here is what would happen if you are driving along the highway and your brakes fail? And no “breaks” in the title isn’t a misnomer – it has to do with the main character I developed.

As you can see, plot and character are closely connected – the character and his or her traits drive the plot, but the plot also drives the character. What if the character and plot surface at the same time? Then you are truly blessed. However, if you are busy doing something else then, make sure you write the idea down (pen and paper, iPad, etc.) so the plot and character don’t disappear into the nether areas of your mind.

The “something else” is an extension of plot and character coming at you simultaneously. The difference here is you are actually sitting down to write – on paper or at your computer. It is called freefall writing where you start with a word, a phrase, a sentence, a vision, an emotion, a situation (or the start of one) and just sit and write whatever flows from your brain to your hands. You do not stop writing to make changes. This always happens to me when I attend a Brian Henry writing workshop (see http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.ca/). Brian gives us a few words, a situation, and gets us writing – then and in our lunch hour. In the afternoon we critique each other’s work. From there we take our story home, finish writing it and revise it. Some of my stories in Beyond the Tripping Point – “For the Love of Wills,” “The Body in the Trunk,” and “Missing in Action” started this way, although I suspect something to do with each was hidden in my brain somewhere. Try it; you might be surprised at the results.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on July 26, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Fiction Characters, Freefall Writing, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Making your fiction characters credible

22 Jul

I’m reading through the proofs of my short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point before Blue Denim Press sends it to print. This time I’m only looking for typos – spelling errors, spacing problems, punctuation snafus, and the like. I’ve done several rewrites at the publisher’s request. Hopefully the characters and their plots in life are consistent and make sense – bearing in mind that these characters often do the unthinkable –murder, sexual assault, cause explosions, perform an indignity to a dead body, even fall in love. But like all characters in fiction or real life, what they do has some meaning and motivation – even if only clear in their minds.

So, how can you make your characters credible?  In a nutshell:

Make your characters three dimensional. There is more to a character than his or her looks and dialogue. A character has feelings, likes, dislikes, idiosyncrasies, flaws, strengths, baggage, etc. Your reader must connect to your characters – not necessarily like them. Superficial characters won’t come across as credible people. In my story, “Saving Grace,” (Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, due out fall 2012), the main character Dana Bowman is a private investigator. But she is also divorced and the mother of a seven-year-old son, David who was kidnapped the previous year. Dana has to deal with the repercussions of the kidnapping, including a David who won’t talk but throws tantrums, her own guilt about the kidnapping and not “saving David” from the aftermath. She is also stubborn and can get sarcastic. All this she brings to any missing person she has to find – in this case the eight-year old Grace. So she won’t “do everything right.”

Your characters’ dialogue and actions must be believable within the story’s context and genre. For example, in science fiction or fantasy, what the characters say and do will be based on the story line (think space trips for science fiction or dragons for fantasy).

Their dialogue and actions must be believable based on who they are – what their traits are. For example, a shy character isn’t going to suddenly speak up unless he or she has to change for a reason. A shy mother finally works up the courage to speak up for her child who is autistic and isn’t receiving the necessary support at school. There has to be a trigger point – some event – that forces the mother to overcome her shyness and speak up because she loves her child. Love of her child plus the event will motivate the mother to speak up.

You need to make what could be seen as unbelievable, credible. That means good character development and plot development.

I’ll be covering those in future postings.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on July 22, 2012 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Newer posts →