Category Archives: Genres

The Internet is filled with blogs, discussion forums, and clever tweets about writing. Though my writing friends and I do our best to keep up with the latest news and tricks, it feels like trying to drink from a fire hose. Go Google “writing advice” and you’ll find nearly half a million results!

Clearly, there is no shortage of people willing to talk to young authors about writing. So thank you for choosing to spend some of your time with us, sharing the Fictorians with your friends, and reading our thoughts and words. We appreciate your patronage and hope you find us helpful in your own writing journey!

Though we writers want to learn from the successes and failures of others, it is essential to remember that what worked for a New York Times best seller may not be effective for me, and that’s perfectly okay. Ultimately, any piece of advice should be judged based on its efficacy for the end user, not the prestige of the source.

As an example, I once read that the “best” way to be a prolific writer while also working a day job is to get up three hours early each day and spend the time writing. Not only will there be no distractions in the early hours of the morning, but your mind is freshest right after waking up, right? Okay, I gave it a try… and failed miserably. I am a morning person, but I am NOT a getting out of bed person. It’s mostly a matter of inertia. I have an alarm clock I keep across my bedroom in addition to my phone on my bedside table and set, on average, six to eight alarms a day. However, once I’m vertical and have some momentum, I’m good to go. Unsurprising to anyone, getting out of bed three hours earlier than I absolutely needed to be never happened. That piece of advice, though effective for others, failed me miserably. Oh well! Moving on.

But what if it wasn’t when I write, but rather HOW I write that was slowing me down? Kevin J Anderson swears by his dictation method for first drafts, and he’s by far the most productive author I know. He is able to hike up 14,000 ft mountains while spinning a yearn, send off the recording for transcription, and then edit the resulting manuscript into a best seller. This technique has resulted in over 23 MILLION books in print. I do a lot of driving, biking, and hiking, so why not double dip that time? Furthermore, physical activity works wonders to get my creative mind juices flowing, so I took a risk. I bought a recorder, a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking, and spent the better part of a year practicing dictating my stories and blogs. Though I can do it, the technique just doesn’t work as well for me as it does for Kevin. Instead of a steady stream of consciousness, I stutter and stumble, resulting in a file that DNS has a rough time converting into comprehensible prose. I then spend hours cutting, reworking, and revising that mess into a finished product. In the end I spend as much total time as if I were to sit down and use manual entry from the beginning. So, for most circumstances, I have stopped using the recorder.

Beyond the basic act of producing prose, there is the fundamental question of what to write in the first place. While the basic dramatic structure has been thoroughly explored, every book or blog on story I read seems to tout a system of “rules” that are absolutely, positively, 100% mission critical to ensure success, fame, and fortune. You must always have a shot clock, must always allow time for thoughtful sequels, must always have a love triangle, and must always do this and that and whatever or you are doomed to failure, remaindered books, and discount book bins. While all these elements can work wonders to spruce up your fiction, not every technique translates well across genre boundaries.

For example, I have read advice from a big name romance writer that insisted that all stories need a happy ending. That’s a great guideline if you are writing for a romance audience. Their main emotional interest is the vicarious experience of falling in love. However, a story of romance and seduction isn’t the only payoff, else they’d be reading erotica. A romance book is a story in which two lovers are able to overcome the factors that stand in the way of their happily ever after. The relationship is as important as the sex.

However, other audiences aren’t so picky. Look at the success of the Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones) books. There aren’t very many happy endings, but the story is plenty thrilling and surprising. The grimdark audience is looking to fulfill a very different set of emotional needs. Different audiences, different stories, different rules. Consider what every genre has to give, but do what works best for your readers and story.

Over the years, I have read thousands of pages of writing advice and have found that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The best advice comes from people with whom you resonate. Look for those who have had success in similar genres, the writers you liked to read growing up, and industry professionals who are involved with authors who write like you. Find those who have overcome struggles similar to what you deal with and figure out how they did it. Read as much material as you can get your hands on, but don’t feel bound to listen to any of it. Ultimately, your writing tricks and habits should be organic, always growing towards the goal of increased productivity. Steal what works for you and leave the rest eating your dust.

My Brief Career as a Ghostwriter

November 6, 2015

Evan Braun

Business Evan Braun First Drafts Interacting With Professionals Non-fiction writing Professional Behavior Publishing Starting a Career The Writing Process No Comments

Getting to where I am today has been a long and winding road… and it definitely wended through some unexpected territory. I started writing at the ripe-old age of six, in 1989. My first-ever story—titled The Magic Christmas Tree—won a CBC radio contest here in my Canadian homeland and the complete text was read live on the air during the morning drive to about a million people. Hilariously, that probably represents my greatest marketing reach so far. It’s been all downhill from there, folks!

But I kid.

Writing, not surprisingly, does not (yet) pay the bills, which brings me to my day job as a book editor. I got my start when a friend of a friend, who operated a small press, was looking for a contract proof-reader. I thought I was eminently qualified, and it would make for a great book-related part-time gig. A decade later, that gig is now extremely full-time. And not only do I edit books, but I now also edit a newspaper—the perfect encapsulation of how freelance careers constantly evolve and change over time.

For a brief moment in time from 2007–2008, however, I added another line to my résumé: ghostwriter. The combination of my journalism degree, editing, and writing skills made this seem like a perfect fit. In that single experimental year, I wrote a total of three books on contract—one of which was published traditionally, another which was self-published by the author, and a third whose fate remains a frustrating mystery.

The first book I worked on is actually the mysterious one. I was contracted by a publisher to conduct extensive interviews with the author, then fashion that raw material into a 75,000-word memoir—or at least, the first draft. I was hired for nothing beyond that. The project lasted two months, from start to finish, and indeed I wrote a first draft just shy of 75,000 words. That’s the fastest I had ever written, but I was driven to meet the tight deadline. I haven’t read this manuscript since I proofed it, and frankly I’m a bit scared to. The publisher was very pleased with the result, and so was I at the time, but nothing came of the project. While I continued working extensively with that publisher for another year, I never heard back from the author, despite many attempts to reach out—which has always puzzled and frustrated me. I would sure love some closure, but I think it’s unlikely at this point. My strong suspicion is that the author’s relationship with the publisher deteriorated significantly, and the radio silence had nothing to do with me. Anyway, like I said, I haven’t reviewed the manuscript since, but the author’s story was a very dramatic one. It’s too bad nothing came of this. With some additional collaboration and polish, I feel this could have been a phenomenal book.

The second ghostwriting project came along about six months later, through that same publisher. In this case, I was working with two authors—a brother and a sister—on a memoir with dual narratives. Just like the last one, it was a hugely dramatic story and I was excited to be a part of it. This book proceeded similarly, and in a comparable timeframe, but the manuscript was only half as long. It was a very challenging memoir full of child neglect and intense abuse—physical, sexual, and emotional. This was a rollercoaster. The final, edited manuscript ended up just shy of 40,000 words and was duly published. This one I have read since, and I remain proud of it. I also have a great relationship to this day with one of the two authors, and it has since led to a number of great professional opportunities—one of which, in a really roundabout way, was attending the first Superstars Writing Seminar in Pasadena. Overall, a challenging but satisfying experience.

I performed many other editing projects for that publisher, but no further ghostwriting opportunities came up in the months that followed. We amicably parted ways a short time later.

Around this time, a close friend of mine hired me to help him write a book, and this is the one that ended up being self-published. I worked closely for several months with him and his wife, producing a great, short manuscript of about 30,000 words that carried a lot of punch. It was based on the author’s messy divorce and subsequent relationship woes. Instead of being a full ghostwrite, this was more of a collaboration, with the author and his wife contributing about half of the material. I then edited all that and grafted it into the larger manuscript I’d been working on. In fact, I believe this book ended up winning an award or two. I still have copies of this book kicking around my house, and I’m quite fond of it. The authors continue to be among my most cherished friends.

Even though I ended up not pursuing a ghostwriting career, my experiences were largely positive. The only reason I didn’t continue is because I decided not to market myself; starting in 2008, I took on a huge glut of very profitable editing work that took priority, and I haven’t had occasion to look back. I don’t regret leaving ghostwriting behind, but I also can’t say with any certainty that I won’t try it again someday. I can honestly say that it was intensely challenging and enjoyable. I grew by leaps and bounds that year, producing my best writing output before or since.

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, whose third volume, The Law of Radiance, was released earlier this year. In addition to specializing in both hard and soft science fiction, he is the managing editor of The Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.

Fiction and Technical Writing – What’s the Difference?

November 4, 2015

fictorians

Craft & Skills Non-fiction writing 1 Comment

Guest Post by Adria Laycraft

Writing is writing … right? All you do is put one word after another on the page. This fact doesn’t change, no matter if you use a pencil scratching paper or fingers tapping at a computer keyboard. It also doesn’t change whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction.

You’re all rolling your eyes at this over-simplification, aren’t you? We all know there’s so much more to it than that. As any writer can tell you, it’s a simple process, but it is not easy.

So what are the differences between the writing processes of fiction versus non-fiction? If you’re like me, working by day as a copywriter and by night as a storyteller, you probably have some interesting ways to mentally shift gears when moving from one style to the other.

I learned early on that I experience better results bouncing between freelance contracts and fiction projects if I kept them separate in obvious ways, changing not only my mental ‘headspace’ but also my physical setting. I work on tech writing at my desk, in an office chair, on a large screen laptop with a second monitor hooked to it. A true workplace environment. I have an upright posture and a logical mindset.

Then, when it’s time to scribble some fiction, I curl up on the sofa with a little netbook in my lap, a blanket, low lighting, quiet music. I’m reclined, ready to be entertained and taken away to a different place. Sometimes I even revert to pen on paper, somehow connecting even more deeply to the emotional well.

So, different rooms, different computers, different posture even…all results in a different structure of words.

This blog post request got me thinking.

Just what are the main differences between these two types of writing? Why do they require such a dramatic change in setting for me to accomplish them effectively? Instead of differences, however, I started seeing how they are similar.

Most would say one is logical and the other emotional, and while it’s easy to see why that makes sense, I’m not sure I can agree completely. It is just as important to involve the reader emotionally in technical writing. Take for instance a sales letter. If you do not elicit the right emotion from the reader, they aren’t going to buy the product or click through to the website. On the flip side, fiction written without any logic is painful to read because plotting and consistency are lost.

And while writing a sales letter (or any other non-fiction technical piece) requires careful structuring of certain key elements, what novel doesn’t? Each document has goals that are strikingly similar: to inform, inspire, educate, and entertain. A novel has an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a conclusion. A sales letter has a great headline (inciting incident), a list of benefits with testimonials to add credibility (rising action), a reason to act now (climax), and a call to action with a risk-free promise (conclusion).

So maybe the difference lies in the tone and content of each? Yes, that must be it. Fiction is often lyrical, introspective, and dramatic, while technical writing involves more facts and figures, and a more straightforward language with which to present them. Yet both require strident research to achieve the best results. That lyrical prose needs the perfect word choice…and so does the technical paper. Good research is crucial to both, so in this way they are similar once again.

What I’m trying to get at is while fiction and non-fiction may seem to have very different goals, voice, and content, when it comes time to sit and do the work of writing it all looks the same to me–elicit the desired emotion from the reader, create a good structure of all the necessary key elements, and research your subject(s) thoroughly to ensure proper word selection and the best possible content.

That said, I’ll keep writing fiction in the cozy spot in the living room, and completing my copywriting projects at my desk in the office. Somehow it makes a difference.

Adria is an author and freelance editor that once upon a time earned
Honours in Journalism at SAIT. She co-edited the popular Urban Green Man anthology in 2013, which made the ballot for the Aurora Awards. Look for her stories in Orson Scott Card’s IGMS, the Third Flatiron anthologies Abbreviated Epics and Only Disconnect, FAE and Corvidae anthologies, Tesseracts 16, Neo-opsis, On-Spec, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and Hypersonic Tales, and a few others. Adria is a grateful member of IFWA (The Imaginative Fiction Writers Association) and a proud survivor of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. She is also a member of the Calgary Association of Freelance Editors (CAFÉ).

Flashes of Halloween

October 31, 2015

Guy Anthony De Marco

Horror Reading No Comments

As a token of appreciation for our readers and fans, we present a series of flash fiction stories to entertain and scare you. We hope you enjoy them, as does that ghostly figure reading this over your shoulder…

Steaks

Guy Anthony De Marco

Bob hated driving ‘cattle’ trucks. He liked the cargo, but the other drivers drove him mad. Soccer moms cutting him off on their way to the hairdressers and belligerent teenagers flipping him off all contributed to Bob’s loathing of city dwellers. He held his tongue for years, biding his time.

On Bob’s final run, the day he’d retire, he made a detour towards the old Quonset hut on his property. He would butcher and freeze this load to keep him in steaks for months, maybe years.

As he turned the crowded schoolbus into his driveway, he began to drool.

Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

Pamela K. Kinney

“Want a unique experience?” asked the woman in a tight mini dress and stiletto heels.

The man grinned. “What do you have in mind?”

“Something I know you never had done to you before and can only be done once.”

He followed her down an alley. They stopped beneath a sickly yellow light.

The man said, “I’ve done every sexual position you can imagine.”

“This is not about sex.”

The prostitute vanished, replaced by a monster. Before he could escape, it ate him.

Costumed as the human woman again, the monster patted her belly. “Now, you experienced being my meal.”

Troubles

Guy Anthony De Marco

“All right, you horrible jerk.”

The Mrs. is pissed off at me again. I rack my brain, trying to think of what she could have discovered. My mistress died suddenly, so she couldn’t have squealed about our affair. Nobody saw me hit the crippled guy with my car last year.

She’s not crying, so it has nothing to do with the jerk she was having an affair with while I was at work. I killed him too.

“Okay, I give. What did I do this time?”

She held up a severed, partially gnawed woman’s hand.

“I thought you were on a diet, dear?”

Trick Or Treat

Frank Morin

He hated Halloween, with all those grasping, selfish children.

This year he prepared a special treat. The children would gobble them down, not even tasting the ricin. They’d die painfully in a few days, and no one could ever trace the source of the deadly toxin back to him.

Halloween night, he hosted a party of dear friends, but when he went to fetch the bowl of poisoned chocolate, he found it filled with different candy.

His wife called, “Give the brats the cheap stuff.”

“Where are my chocolates?”

“Gone,” she laughed. “They were the hit of the party.”

After the Crossroads

Mary Pletsch

I am sorry, my friend…but you are a mother too. You will understand—I couldn’t leave my daughter alone. You often said how you couldn’t comprehend what I was going through, watching my little girl wither away.

You would not have laughed at me if I had told you that in my desperation I had gone down to the crossroads with four black candles and a Club Pack of chicken breasts, $4.99 per pound on sale. You would not have made fun of my sacrifice. You would have known that even at that price, I would be skipping meals for the rest of the week.

You, if anyone, would have held my hand as I invoked Him. You would have reassured me. You would have told me there was no fault in trying.

The next morning my daughter drank from the bottle He gave me in exchange for the soul of the head of the house. My friend, I am so sorry… On my way to the hospital I walked past my own door and drew the mark on yours.

I will watch over your sons as you would have watched over my daughter, had the situation been reversed.

Vultures

Guy Anthony De Marco

The lines were longer than expected. It took a while to dock with the geosynchronous auction house, where robotic transports shuttled bidders to the main deck. The inner wall of the doughnut-shaped vessel displayed flashes of upcoming items; the outer gave the occupants a view of incoming ships.

Hun-Rey appreciated the attention to detail provided by the auctioneers. Disposable holo-vids of the major pieces, organic foods, and many intoxicating beverages — the house expected to pull in big numbers.

Most of the elite stopped by, pumping each other for inside information. Hun-Rey greeted each one, and divulged misinformation with a smile. He was a professional, a bidder with clairvoyance and charm.

A small bell tolled three times, and the auction began.

“Today we have a rarity. One certified dead world, with many antiquities intact. We will start with item one, a tubular underwater vehicle with all sixteen nuclear weapons unfired…”

Leftovers

Kristin Luna

The tabby strolled down the steps, weaving between the banisters. She hadn’t been fed for days, and her short hair began to suck to her body to display her ribs.

When she reached the ground level of her domicile, she peered into the kitchen and sat on her haunches. She stared at her owners sitting still in their chairs. She approached the youngest one that usually had bits of leftover breading from chicken fingers or cheese or cookie bits stuck to her fingers. She smelled the little fingers, but there was only the smell of acrid pickles. All the same, she rubbed against the little fingers and the rope end that dangled from the girl’s wrists.

She quickly passed by the one with the slick, black shoes that kicked her often and went straight for the one in the slippers and nightgown who poured her cat food every morning. She rubbed against the slippered feet, but again, was given no pats or rubs in return.

Demanding as she was, the feline jumped up to the table, as the action demanded attention in the past. But no one batted her away or placed her back down on the floor. Her presence unprotested, the cat sniffed a puddle of a strange liquid, and paused. She looked at the pool as if considering. But after a moment had passed, the tabby bent her head farther and drank from it anyway. At first slowly, the reddish brown coagulations catching on her tongue, and the sharp flavor different from water or milk. But the tabby was hungry, and this red milk would have to do.