Category Archives: Business

Still Holding Hands: A Fictorians Retrospective

Business Colette Black Networking Professional Behavior Superstars Writing Seminars 1 Comment

In March of 2010 a number of aspiring writers, including myself, attended a seminar that inspired us in ways we’d never expected. I met a number of amazing people at the Superstars Writing Seminar. People whom I will consider close friends for the rest of my life. When Clancy asked if I’d like to stay in touch and handed me a piece of paper, I added my name to the list. I never imagined how that would change my life.

Every week for a solid year the Superstars Goal Group, as we called ourselves, sent emails to one another listing our accomplishments for the previous week and our goals for the following week. Kylie spearheaded the group during that time, making sure the email never skipped a beat. It was a great motivator for me, and I think it served a similar function for the rest of us. As we went along, I also noticed that when anyone had a question, with our combined resources and experience, there were always at least two or three people who had useful answers. Though most of us were unknown at that point as writers, as a group we had something to offer.

In one of those goal emails, on March 7, 2011, I posted this as an afterthought: “Has anyone ever considered putting together a blog of some kind? If everyone contributed and we only did weekly posts then it wouldn’t take up much of our time. We could do spec fiction, book reviews, or aspiring writer helps-talking about workshops, retreats, conferences, local writing groups, how we manage our various obstacles for our time… etc.” As you can surmise, the response was positive.

We invited a friend of mine, and very talented writer, Heidi Berthiaume to join our group. She didn’t stay for long, but she orchestrated much of our web design and helped us with initial formatting. As we searched for a name, a few of the more interesting suggestions were:  FlingingWords, respiringwriters, FlyingAuthorSaucer, and GeekAndYeShallFind. (P.S. Demian ran the e-vote and did the initial setup for the blog, and Rich came up with the name we eventually chose-Fictorians). Heidi set up a calendar page to keep us all on track, and Matt has always jumped up with technical assistance when those of us who don’t understand computer code need a little help.

I believe our first post, March 30, 2011, was by Nancy, “The Benefit of Holding Hands,“ and that summarizes the reason for all the name-dropping I’ve been doing for the past few paragraphs. What I love most about our Fictorian community is that we really do hold hands. We’ve critiqued one another’s work on occasion, we’ve written blog posts together, and we’ve cried and congratulated together during the most difficult and most successful points in our careers. From the blog’s inception, we’ve worked together in a way that I believe is rarely seen. And not just two or three people. Take a look at the Fictorian list, guest post bloggers, and the entire community. Even those who have been pulled away by other commitments remain guest posters.

With Evan as the moderator, the active Fictorians have had an annual conference call to supplement our email conversations and make the big decisions. In everything we’ve done, we’ve decided it together. The votes aren’t always unanimous, but they are always amicable. I feel supremely privileged to be part of this group, and look forward to another year as we strive to achieve our main goal of helping other writers.

The Devil’s Opera

Branding Craft & Skills Marketing Publishing The Writing Life The Writing Process 8 Comments

This is a combined public service announcement and post.

My first novel will be published in October by Baen Books.  The title is 1636: The Devil’s Opera, and it’s a collaboration with Eric Flint.

The cover-illustration by the great Tom Kidd-is here.

David CPre-order from Amazon here.

That concludes the public service announcement.  On to the post.

Several of my fellow Fictorians urged me to give some idea of the process by which the novel was written.  To do that I’ll first have to give you a bit of background on the 1632 series of which it is a part.

In 2000, Baen Books published a novel entitled 1632 by Eric Flint.  The elevator speech version of the plot is a cosmic space-time warp rips a small blue-collar town out of 2000 AD West Virginia and drops in it eastern Germany in the year 1631, which just happened to be in the middle of the Thirty Years War, possibly the bloodiest European war before WWI.  The resulting series is about how approximately 3,000 regular people from the future not only survive the event, but begin to change history.

This was the beginning of what has become one of the most successful alternate-history series in publishing history.  To date: over six million words; twelve novels (including the above) in hard copy; thirteen anthologies in hard copy; and forty-six  issues of an e-magazine called The Grantville Gazette.

I don’t have space here to give you the history of this phenomenon.  If you’re interested, go to http://1632.org/ and read.  The short version is that Eric did something very bold and potentially risky:  he opened the 1632 story universe up to fan writers, and offered to publish and pay for the best stories that were submitted.  That was the genesis of the e-magazine The Grantville Gazette.

GG, as we call it for short, will publish anything that is a well-told story that fits within the guidelines Eric has laid down for stories in the universe.  Current payment rates are 5¢/word, which is professional standard rate by SFWA guidelines.  (See http://1632.org/ again if you’re interested.)

I started writing stories in the universe in 2004.  Within a couple of years I was part of what Eric considered to be a core group that consistently turned out good stories for GG on a pretty regular basis.  (My fifteen published solo works total over 200,000 words and range from a 2,000 word short short to a 52,000 word short novel that was serialized.)  Nonetheless, I was astonished when Eric approached me via email one day and said we should do a book together.

You have to understand that Eric is always on the lookout for writers he can help develop and help get a foot in the door in the publishing industry. Of the twelve novels published to date, I believe ten of them were produced in collaboration with seven different authors, plus I know there is another one close to completion with an eighth partner.

This is not a writing factory scam where someone else does all the work and Eric slaps his name on it at the end and collects all the money.  In one partnership, I know that Eric worked with another professional writer and they divided the work.  In the rest, Eric was senior author and the other partners were junior.  I believe those all followed essentially the same model Eric used with me, so from this point on I’m just going to talk about my experience.

After the idea was broached, there was a certain amount of discussion as to what the book should be:  a combination of stories from both of us, or a novel.  Eric settled on a novel pretty quickly.  So then we talked about what the novel should be about.  I have two different series of stories going in GG with different but intersecting character groups in the same city.  Eric said we should use one or both of the character groups in the novel in order to tap into the fan base that already existed for them.  I had just finished a 27,000 word novella with one of the character sets, so I sent it to Eric.  He agreed we would use that as the center pole for the novel.

The next step was to build the outline.  That ended up taking a fair amount of time, because what worked best for me was to sit in the same room with Eric and talk everything out, ask a lot of questions, and make notes, and it took some work to get our schedules to intersect.

I wrote the first draft.  That is Eric’s standard practice with junior authors, for them to write all or most of the first draft.

Eric read the first draft, decided what changes needed to be made. He fixed some things himself, which produced the second draft.  Then he assigned some changes to me, and I produced the third draft.  Then he did the final polish, producing a fourth draft (approximately 169,000 words), which he then submitted to Toni Weisskopf, the publisher at Baen Books.  And as announced above, Baen will have it on the shelves on October 1.

Someone asked me what Eric got out of the deal.  Two things:  he got to pay forward to a friend, and he got a good novel in his series with his name on it with much less demand on his time.

What did I get out of it?  A novel in a good series with my name on it.  🙂  And by working with and under Eric, I learned things about outlining, plot development, mystery novel memes and tropes, chapter size and arrangement, proper levels of descriptive language and dialog, and on and on.

I also got to demonstrate to one of the best publishers in the business that I can write quality work and deliver a finished product without going through the slush process.  Priceless.

http://davidcarricofiction.com/

http://baen.com/

http://www.grantvillegazette.com/

http://1632.org/

Literary vs. Genre Fiction – What’s All the Fuss About?

Author's Perspective Genres Leigh Galbreath Marketing Publishing The Writing Life 5 Comments

Once upon a time, there was literature. That was it. Everything was just literature. At some point, stories became so varied that they branched into distinctive categories. Whether this was something brought on by readers gravitating to certain types of stories or publishers categorizing said stories to make it easier for readers to find, or some other reason all together, I don’t know. But, over the last hundred years, fiction split into the convenient labels we know today.

This split isn’t without its controversy, though, and has created a very real divide between what’s referred to as literary fiction and genre fiction. When most people think of the difference between the two, many think of overly-serious literary writers looking down at genre writers as hacks, while genre writers run off with all the money. Tempers can run high when it’s discussed. Stephen King famously almost got into a fist fight over the very idea that genre fiction was somehow of less value than literary fiction.

But, what’s the big deal, really? What are the actual differences between the two?

When I was in college I took a creative writing class, where the teacher asked us that very question. One of my fellow students, who was a literary writer, said that literary fiction was character driven, while genre fiction was plot driven. Now, anyone who reads Joe Abercrombie knows that’s a false assumption. Actually, that student was keying to something very real, he just didn’t recognize it for what it was. It has little to do with character and plot, really, and all to do with structure. Genre fiction is built on structure. Literary fiction isn’t.

We’ve mentioned using scriptwriting as a basis for writing novels more than once. Pyr editor, Lou Anders, talks about the Hollywood formula all the time. Why? Because the Hollywood structure works. Certain beats happen at certain moments, and the story resonates better for the audience. It works. Readers like the structure, and every genre has its own. Romance, for instance, is famous for its very strict story structure — and it’s the highest grossing genre of them all.

Literary fiction, on the other hand, has a more organic approach. It lacks the structure that makes genre fiction so easily digestible for readers. Funnily, my aforementioned writing instructor confessed that she was halfway through a story when she realized she didn’t have a story arch. That’s a problem few genre writers will ever have. But, one of the things this allows for literary fiction is experimentation. You get weird little stories that are all dialogue or written in stream of consciousness or told backwards. Playing with technique and form is much easier when you don’t have to worry about story beats hitting at a certain moment. For more adventurous readers, this is great, but, like I said before, people like structure, and this may be one of the big reasons genre fiction is more lucrative.

The other real difference between the two, has to do with subject matter. Literary fiction tends to be rooted in real life far more than genre fiction. Sometimes, a little too much. I’ve heard more than one person disparage literary fiction as depressing and oppressive. At the same time, it explores life in a way that genre structure won’t allow. The killer is usually found out in the end of a mystery. The hero usually beats the evil sorcerer in an epic fantasy. The boy usually gets the girl at the end of a romance. Literary fiction doesn’t flinch from the reality that life doesn’t always end well for the good guys, if there even are goods guys involved.

Genre fiction, on the other hand, is often thought of as escapist because it deals with situations that you won’t find in everyday life. Me, I think that’s an over simplification. In truth, all fiction is escapist, even if there are no spaceships or serial killers involved. Even if you read only literary fiction, you’re not reading your own life, so it’s still an escape. If it weren’t, it would be non-fiction.

So, are you one of those writer’s who stresses over the decision to write literary or genre fiction? The differences above are, of course, generalizations. There are lines blurred everywhere. There are plenty of experimental genre stories that look at real life, especially in Science Fiction. There’s plenty of fantastic elements in literary fiction, too. And anyone saying that genre fiction makes more money really needs to look at how much genre fiction there is out there to see how easily that wealth is swallowed by the sheer magnitude of product. Even if there are more readers, it’s no easier to make it big. Besides, literary fiction has Oprah Winfrey on its side. Neither path is a surefire path to financial freedom, but neither is a surefire path to destitution either.

To me, choosing between literary and genre fiction is like choosing between landscape and abstract painting. They both have their detractors and their supporters, but their creators are also both artists who follow a craft they love. Our art chooses us just as much as we choose it. We write what we write because that’s what we feel the need to do.

So, really, in the end, it doesn’t matter which side makes more money, does it? If you feel the need to write literary fiction, you won’t find any happiness writing techno-thrillers, and your readers won’t enjoy reading them, either. Stick with your passion, even if it means you’re still stuck at a day job. You’ll never go wrong.

In Conclusion…

Business Colette Black Conventions Networking 5 Comments

Hey all,calendar_25

We’ve had a great time talking about conventions, conferences, workshops, and seminars throughout the month. We hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I wanted to take a minute and summarize our posts for the month as well as mention a couple of venues that didn’t quite fit into our schedule:

Some local conventions:

The big babies:

Workshops and seminars:

  • Superstars Writing Seminar (mention fictorians when you sign up and receive a free, autographed copy of one of Kevin J. Anderson’s books)-Colorado in May
  • Caravel Writing Workshop (6-day cruise with David Farland, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, and Grammar-girl Mignon Fogarty; from Vancouver B.C. to San Diego)-October
  • David Farland’s Writing Workshops (mention fictorians when you sign up and get $20 discount or dinner with Dave)-throughout the year, most in Utah, but not all
  • Dean Wesley Smith Workshops (online also available)-Oregon, varying dates

These aren’t all the workshops and conferences in existence. There are many more. But these are the ones fictorians members have either attended or heard good things about. As you plan your year, and plan your goals for the year, we hope this list can help.

Stay tuned next month as we talk about romance in writing: levels of heat, as a main plat and a sub-plot, where to get information and instruction, writing different types of relationships, relationship conflicts…. It’s going to be a good month.