Author Archives: Guy Anthony De Marco

Like most of the authors I know, I’m not a naturally organized person. Sometimes it’s a struggle to force myself to get the major plot points or non-fiction chapters mapped out before I start on a new project. After installing a giant electronic whiteboard I picked up on CraigsList, I was able to see the value of the visual cues and mind-mapping when hashing out a new project.

When it comes to my writing laptop, appropriately named “Novel Factory”, I tended to start writing and just dump everything into the My Documents folder. When I set a project aside for a while, I sometimes have a problem locating where I put the documents, notes, and/or pictures. That’s why I created an organized area for projects.

The first step was to create a home for my projects. This is a set of nested folders so I know where things are located. In My Documents (I use Windows for this example), I have a folder called !Master Project Files. I place an exclamation point at the beginning of this folder name to make sure it appears at the top of the listing.

I have enough projects where I had to add in a layer between the Master folder and the project names.

Here is my main overall folder structure:

!Master Project Files
- Fiction
  - Science Fiction
  - Cyberpunk
  - Fantasy
  - Horror
  - Western
  - Graphic Novels
- Non-Fiction
  - Cookbooks
  - Author’s Handbook Series
  - One-Offs
- Poetry
  - !Poem Superstore
  - Chapbooks
- Collections
  - !Short Story Superstore
- Anthologies
  - Original (Add in Submissions and Contracts folders to each Project)
  - For Other Publishers (Add in Submissions and Contracts folders to each Project)

The “Superstores” are short stories and poems that have been published elsewhere or are original unpublished works that are available to put into a new collection or chapbook. When I complete a short work or poem, I make sure to put a copy in the Superstores.

For each project, I copy the below generic project folder structure and rename it to the title of my new project. Inside some of these folders are appropriate files. For example, in the Word folder, I have a generic Word document set up with my preferences (font, margins, etc.), whereas in the Research folders I have a simple text document ready to accept notes and URLs. In the Final folders, I have documents that have my set publishing templates for interiors and covers. Note that I have a folder called Graveyard. I never throw away (delete) anything. If I cut something, such as a scene or a whole story arc out of a book, I paste it to text documents and place them in the graveyard. I can use these later on to develop short stories, to generate ideas for a series, or to use the words for marketing. Sometimes I file off the serial numbers and reuse them in other books.

Here’s my individual project folder structure:

Project Name (Rename Me)
- Manuscript
  - Word
  - Text
  - Scrivener
- Images
  - Cover Ideas
  - Characters
  - Places
  - Objects
- Research
  - Concepts
  - Scientific
- Characters
- Tropes
- Marketing
  - Ideas
  - Ads
  - SWOT
- Final
  - Print
    - Interior
    - Cover
  - eBook
    - Interior
    - Cover
  - Audio
    - Notes
    - Script
- Graveyard

When I have a new project, I copy the “Project Name” folder and its contents and place it in the appropriate genre master folder. Then I rename it to the book title. Now I can find all of my information for any project in one location (three, if you count the backup on my server and the copy linked and auto-uploaded to my commercial Dropbox account.)

Hopefully this will inspire you to create a better organized virtual home for your darlings. Have a happy, prosperous, and productive 2017!

About the Author:

Guy Anthony De Marco is a disabled US Navy veteran speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award^®nominee; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, third-party D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.

A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Writing Ideas for 2017

January 2, 2017

Guy Anthony De Marco

First Drafts Guy Anthony De Marco Ideas & Plotting Rewriting No Comments

Welcome to 2017! Hopefully it will be a much better one than 2016.

The start of a new year brings up plenty of resolutions that normally last a few weeks. This is useful for folks who want to pick up discounted exercise equipment on Craigslist, but it’s not as good for authors. If only one could pick up dozens of first drafts for a few cents a pound!

For 2017, let’s see what we can do to kickstart your writing goals.

Finish Your NaNoWriMo Novel

Instead of ignoring that disjointed first draft hidden away on your hard drive, why not go through the manuscript and map out what is needed to make it a can’t-put-it-down book. Add in plenty of notes [I like to use square brackets] to help give you some direction. Because I write using Notepad++ so I don’t get distracted by formatting, I like to pull out chunks of my prose and place it in Scrivener. This helps me to organize it, especially if I’m using a template that has either beats or outline recommendations.

Yes, your inner editor will be screaming in horror, but now is the time to let her loose to sort out that manuscript. There’s no rush! Focus on what is missing and what you have. With any luck, you’re halfway towards a viable novel. Don’t waste your efforts from pounding the keyboard all through November.

Dig Out Your Trunk Manuscripts

You know those short stories, novellas, and even novels that are sitting in a (possibly virtual) box, gathering bits of dust? Why not go through them and see if you can spot why they didn’t sell. After all, you have plenty of experience under your belt from 2016, so you’re further along in your writing development. Try either tweaking them or, if needed, doing a complete rewrite if the foundational ideas were solid. You already put a lot of work into it, so try to make that time count for something.

Learn To Play the “What If?” Game

One of the most-asked questions I get when I’m on panels at conventions is “How do you come up with ideas for a story?” The answer I give is to play the “What If?” game.

If you’re watching the news, wasting your time on Facebook, or even driving down the street, you can find plenty of ideas for stories. All you have to do is to ask some questions about what you’re observing. Most of my short stories come from playing this game. For example, I saw a school bus in front of me with a bunch of rowdy kids. I asked “What if…the driver was a homicidal maniac who has had enough of these brats?” The answer was my flash fiction story, Steaks, which has been published and reprinted six times.

Another example is a short story I co-wrote with Kevin J. Anderson, which was published in the Unidentified Funny Objects 3 anthology. My “what if?” question came about because I was looking through some classic literature on Project Gutenberg’s website. I asked, “What if all of the recognized classics were written by one person?” After some further thought, that person would have to be immortal, so I went with Dracula as the story concept. After discussing it with Kevin, we came up with the story outline and wrote the project together. “The Fate Worse than Death” was picked as a notable short story in Tangent Online’s 2014 Recommended Reading List.

It Still Comes Down to BICHOK

I’ve given you three possible ideas to start something new (even if it’s on the bones of some earlier work), but it still requires you to focus on BICHOK — Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard. No matter what, you’re going to have to write (or dictate, which I’m switching to.) If you decide to write just 200 words, which is less than a quarter of this Fictorians post, at the end of 2017 you’ll have a full-sized novel. You are the one that has to decide how you want 2017 to end…either wishing you wrote a novel, or working on editing and publishing your new book.

I hope it’s the latter.

About the Author:

Stop Writing!

December 23, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

Author's Perspective Guy Anthony De Marco The Writing Life Your Writing Career Your Writing Environment No Comments

My goodness, that’s an interesting title to find on a website devoted to helping writers improve their craft. It’s an easy thing to tell someone to just sit down and do your best to get as many words on the digital paper, and for most folks that’s the secret they’ve been trying to avoid.

For others, sometimes it’s important to know when you should focus on other things.

Medical Issues

This one caught up with me in a big way for the past year. It’s important to take care of yourself when you’re younger. The older you get, the tougher it is to fix the old chassis. In some extreme cases you may find you have to have defective parts removed, such as an appendix. In other extreme cases, one may require spare parts to be installed, such as a new kidney or a sense of humor.

My issues include heart problems that put me in the hospital twice in the last thirty days, plus the slow deterioration of other important things like kidneys and joints. I now usually walk with a cane, which is not what I was expecting.

If you can, go to those doctor appointments even if you think you’re feeling fit as a fiddle. Sometimes a fiddle string can be on the verge of snapping, and it takes a practiced eye to spot it.

If you have persistent aches and pains, go find out what is causing them. It may be something as simple as bad posture or something that a chiropractor can adjust. It may be something more sinister lurking under your skin.

Ibuprofin, Tylenol, and Naproxen Sodium are not cures for pains. They mask the symptoms. Finding out the cause is the best method for long-term relief.

If it hurts your arms, wrists, hands, or fingers to write or type, stop doing it. You can take a break to let your appendages recover. I have repetitive motion issues, particularly in my left arm and wrist. I am in the process of switching over to dictation as my writing method. It takes a while to get used to it and to train the software.

Mental Issues

Personal mental health problems are tough to deal with, especially when one goes from twenty eight years of marriage to two years of living alone. Depression is a tough foe to battle. Find a therapist you can afford when you need one. I’m still waiting to see one from the Veterans Administration, but I’ll get to see one eventually. Hopefully they’ll be competent, but sometimes it is hit and miss with the VA.

Don’t get sidelined by the stigma of talking to a professional. Sometimes just talking is enough to get you through some of the tougher spots in life. Get it taken care of now instead of when it’s a life-threatening emergency.

Family

It’s easy to get sidetracked with writing deadlines (or your occupation in general) and forget to do things with your family. This will come around and bite you in your later years. Go play catch with your daughter or kick the soccer ball around. Take some time off to go to the beach or some other inexpensive day trip. The kids won’t remember how much you spent on them, but they will remember the time you were there. This is particularly tough if you happen to be in the military, but do the best you can when you’re not deployed.

Work on issues with your spouse when the problems are small. They will grow with age, just like a mutant troll who feeds on your trash and lives in your basement. If you don’t solve the issues when they’re relatively minor, you’ll be waging a war later on — or even sitting alone in a quiet house writing up posts for a website during Christmas week.

♦ ♦ ♦

This is a bit of a depressing blog post, but it is an important one for writers to hear and understand. Think of me as your Ghost of Christmas Past, pointing out the error of my ways in order that you don’t get bound by the same rattling chains I forged and attached to myself. Think about your future, since your life and your family are important pieces of your writing life.

Self-Promotion Time: I’ve been heading up a project called ConDB (http://www.condb.com), which is a convention database listing website geared towards authors, artists, and creative professionals. Stop by and check it out.

About the Author:

International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW)

November 8, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

Guy Anthony De Marco Making Progress as a Writer The Writing Process Your Writing Career No Comments

Since the theme of the month for the Fictorians concerns adaptions, I thought I would introduce our website visitors to the professional organization for media tie-in works. While not as well-known as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), the Horror Writers Association (HWA), or Mystery Writers of America (MWA), the IAMTW is filled with many recognizable names who are members of those other organizations.

Media tie-in writing has been around for ages. Within the past 35 years, it has expanded beyond adapting movies and plays to include games (both desktop RPGs and video games) and expanding the original universes of movies.

At one time several decades ago, if an author accepted a contract to adapt an original movie to book format, it was looked upon by many professionals in the field as an unrecoverable mistake. Once an author wrote a tie-in work, they were considered hacks and looked down upon.

These days, there is a more welcoming aura when media tie-in writers are concerned. Some of the old guard may still have issues, but with the way the writing industry is flailing around, a solid book contract is a positive thing. Movies, books, games, and even music albums are being converted to other forms of entertainment. A good example is the drummer of the band Rush, Neil Peart. He wrote the lyrics for the Clockwork Angels album and collaborated with science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson to write a book based on the concepts.

Writing media tie-in works is tougher than writing a novel from scratch. If one writes a book beyond a movie adaption, such as Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, one has to take a lot of restrictions into account before plotting and writing the work. Those restrictions may include making sure the established characters act properly and that your story line does not impact upcoming installments of future movies. Keeping the expanded universe straight is a tough gig, especially after years of multiple authors writing novels. If you make a mistake, the otaku-type fans will be the first to let you know.

Eventually, there were enough professionals writing tie-in works that authors Lee Goldberg and Max Allan Collins founded IAMTW. The organization consists of writing pros who have been contracted to write licensed tie-in works for a professional rate. Fan fiction does not count towards membership.

Benefits of membership include articles and contact information of interest to authors looking to write more tie-in works. IAMTW also hosts the Scribe Awards, which acknowledge and celebrate excellence in licensed tie-in writing—novels based on TV shows, movies, and games. Award categories include best original novel, best speculative fiction novel, best adaption, best audio play, best short fiction, and best YA novel. The awards are determined by a juried committee and anyone can submit their work.

For more information about IAMTW, visit their website at http://iamtw.org.