03

May

Plotting: I’m a believer. Are you?

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m in the midst of writing my sixth manuscript. It’s the third in my Reject High teen series.

I got stuck. Like all four wheels spinning helplessly in the mud stuck.

I didn’t want to try writing out my plot.

For my first three novels, I created my characters, wound them up and let them go. My major plot points were a function of their behaviors. While I knew where they were going and how it would end up, I let them guide me through the “how.”

With this book, it was just different. I couldn’t do that anymore. My characters were letting me down (they’re teenagers, so there’s that).

So, I turned off my cellphone and iPad, stepped away from my laptop and started writing with my main character, Jason. Once I finished his arc, I worked on his love interest. Three hours later, the entire plot was done.

I’d never thought I’d say so, but I’m a believer in sketching out plots on paper now. Are you? What’s your process?

21 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Explanations/Musings/Writing and Editing

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01

Feb

Writing in a time crunch

My writing process is insane. Don’t try it at home.

I envy those writers you read about who can flick their muse on and off like a light switch. I have, what my editing Jackie Rodriguez calls “writing jags.”

Imagine if your writing muse had the stomach flu. One moment, there’s nothing, and the next, there’s everything. 

One day, I might not write anything, the next, I’ll churn out thirty pages. I don’t pretend to make sense of it. I just ride it out.

You can imagine the flux I was thrown into halfway through my fifth novel when my second daughter was born. In addition, I went back to teaching full-time and we have a four-year-old in Pre-K as well. My peak writing times are — you guessed it — when I’m in school. Balancing my after-school commitments and family time is tough, but you do what you have to do.

To get through it, I grab any and all writing time I have. Ten minutes before I get my daughter up for school, five minutes while she plays in the bathtub. A half-hour when my wife is nursing our newborn, and maybe twenty minutes during my lunch break. My muse has learned to live with it and gradually, so have I.

So, tell me, if you’ve had a similar situation in your field, how have YOU done it?

112 days ago Short URL Comments

Musings/Writing and Editing

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07

Jul

What’s in a name?

Shakespeare famously said in Romeo and Juliet, that “A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.”

So, why are the names of your characters important?

They’re probably not terribly pivotal, but I try to make them meaningful in my novel-writing. To me, it’s like naming your child — if you happen to have 20+ of them. Any old name would work, but does it fit them? What purpose does it achieve?

My characters are less cardboard cut-out inventions and more “friends in my head.” Though I use a character building worksheet, I don’t refer back to it much after the personality is established. You don’t want your character to do something because you (the author, Almighty Oz, the string-pulling deity scribe) say so, but because they do so as a function of who they are. If I care that much about a character’s ideals, morals, and motivation, I’m less likely to label them “John” (no offense if your name is John), and keep going.

For example, Jason, the protagonist in my new book, is a scrawny, 15-year-old black kid with anger issues. He’s been suspended from school for fighting and sent to an alternative school. On his first day there, a bully picks on him and Jason fights him — not because I told him to, but because a 15-year-old kid with anger issues, a messed up home life, and fresh off of punishment really wants to keep his iPod. To do that, he fights for it. But, is he fighting for the right to keep his property, or for MORE than that?

Could Jason be called “Mark”? Probably. It’s about what fits your character as you go along, and I always pictured him as a Jason. Do what works for you. After all, a rose could be a “table,” but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

321 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Musings/Uncategorized

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02

Apr

I’ve been followed, too

If you’re a minority, you might have one of these stories. Thankfully, mine doesn’t end with a bullet.

During my freshman year at Morehouse, I hung out with a group of about 11 other young men. We hailed from different parts of the United States – Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Georgia, etc.

One day, we walked around Phipps Plaza — a fairly upscale shopping mall that used to have a music/video store in it. The dozen of us went into this store and split up. Our presence brought the attention of a white store employee, who asked us if we “needed something” ad nauseum.

This morning, I recounted the story to my wife, saying, “I can understand why we got followed. After all, there were 12 of us.”

Wait, what? 

Twelve educated, well-dressed, African-American men cannot walk together in a group and disperse into a store without drawing suspicion? What if we were dressed in designer business suits instead of jeans? Would that have made a difference?

I have a real problem with the point-of-view that says “We’re going to keep an eye on you, just in case you do something. If you actually do something, that justifies our suspicions. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.”

And. . .what if nothing happens? Not one of us stole a thing. Isn’t it a violation of my rights as a human being, to not be able to browse a store without “Big Brother” policing my prospective inner intentions?

You can investigate my past – I’ll tell you, I’m not a saint. I’ve done some things I’d rather not have to explain to everyone on the planet. I crashed my mom’s car in 1994. Tomorrow, I will turn 36 and she still reminds me of it, along with pretty much everything I did wrong as a teenager. I forgot to take out the trash, A LOT. I once broke curfew to drive a drunk friend home.

Still, my imperfections don’t mean I deserve to be followed, or get a bullet to the chest, do they?

417 days ago Short URL Comments

Musings

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23

Feb

The war over e-book prices

Do you own an e-reader? Are you an avid reader and/or author? If you answered “yes,” read up on the current e-book pricing decisions of the Big 6 legacy publishers (Hatchette, MacMillan, Simon and Shuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House). Here’s a quick 

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

primer.  Otherwise, you might get sticker shock the next time you go e-book shopping.
What’s the beef? From a publishing standpoint, e-books are very lucrative. They cost very little to distribute and the production costs are one-time. Inflating the price of an e-book is one sure way for a publisher to make money, which is why legacy-published books won’t EVER be cheap again.

Recently, the Big 6 have banded together to fix their prices much higher than consumers are used to paying for e-books. One of the most expensive e-books in the Kindle Library is The Greater Journeyby David McCullough. Published by Simon and Shuster, the e-book costs $19.99. Figure a few cents to transfer the file, $6 to Amazon, there’s $14 left over. At a 15% royalty rate (the average is between 6%-15% of retail), Mr. McCullough gets $3, Simon and Schuster makes $11. Multiply it out to 200,000 books sold. McCullough makes about $600,000; Simon and Schuster makes $2.2 million with no overhead (printing costs, shipping, storage, etc.) to subtract.

In a Twitter chat last week, I asked an author about their opinion regarding e-book pricing. They said “don’t have one.”

Wait, what? 

As a relatively unknown author, it’s an uphill battle to get new readers no matter how much marketing you do or how outstanding your product is. In fact, after two books, I still have to get past the friends and family that ask for free copies. Price your book at .99 cents, and you get the “impulse buy” crowd. But when the natural ebb-and-flow of sales happens (or boom and bust, depending on your vantage point), what do you do to position yourself for more sales? Drop it to .50 cents, or free?

If you are a writer, or aspire to be legacy-published, the Big 6′s stance should outrage you. In addition to all of the other obstacles you face, now you have to wonder if a reader will shell out $20 for your book or go to an online pirating site and get it for free. Indie authors, like me, are stuck between offering books for close to nothing, or pricing them as high as the market goes and seeing our sales suffer.

What do you think?

456 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

DIY Publishing/Musings

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26

Jan

Sometimes, the best closure is worth waiting for

Anything you regret doing or not doing in your life?

I’ve got two. Here’s one of them:

In 1992, I attended an out-of-state funeral. Until then, I rarely knew the deceased. My cousin Lizzie died; the one with a mustache who always wanted to kiss me on the lips. That’s not the regret, though I REALLY regret it.

That Sunday, Mom and I dropped off my grandmother (her mother) in New Jersey and we went home. Gram (as I called her) had been coughing a lot the whole trip through Monday. My mom asked my uncle to take Gram to the hospital. He said she was “fine,” and he’d take her to the doctor Tuesday morning.

Still concerned, my mom decided to drive to New Jersey and asked if I wanted to go.

I said “no,” and continued playing my football video game. Monday was the last time I saw Gram alive.

When I was writing The Anarchists, I dug into how I felt about that – just like Damario, Harper, Quinne, and Teanna eventually had to do. For about two years, I was depressed more than a 16-year-old should be. I drank alcohol from my mom’s cabinet and did not want to live anymore. Unlike the first funeral I experienced at 6, or the half dozen or so afterward, this one hurt me to my soul. If I was a character in my book and got the opportunity to “begin again” in 1992, I’d get in that Toyota hatchback with my mom and go to the hospital without hesitation.

If I did, my last memories of Gram might be different. Maybe I needed not to go to get to this kind of closure:

One day, ten years later, I was driving to class in North Philly. The skies opened and shined sunlight through my windshield. Not to sound spooky, but I heard God tell me that Gram was in my life to help raise me, and when she finished, He took her. It was a peace I still carry, don’t understand, can’t fully describe, and wish I could pass on to you.

What’s my other regret? You know what: it doesn’t matter so much anymore. Relax, it’s not like I was going to tell you anyway :)

 

484 days ago Short URL Comments

Musings/Writing and Editing

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18

Jan

Definitive time travel rules

Cover of "Back to the Future"

Time travel is a tricky concept to master

For my next book, I spent A LOT of time researching time travel, quantum physics, and alternate realities. All of it is theoretical, of course, which presents a number of obstacles. I found a solution that seems to work, and I’ll share a little bit of it with you.

Some Debbie Downer chaos theorists say that any mode of successful time travel within your own lifetime would destroy the planet. Makes for an anti-climactic novel, don’t you think? The call to action destroying all of mankind? Bummer.

There’s the Back to the Future theory, where you can travel outside of your own lifetime, like Marty McFly, and return to a reality resembling the one you left. To make this movie work, his parents would have to have awful memories, wouldn’t they?

My wife loved The Lake House. I still don’t buy Keanu Reeves as a romantic lead, but I like Sandra Bullock enough to ignore most of the potholes in the time-jumping plot. And, while The Butterfly Effect was critically panned, I appreciated the negative consequences of Evan’s time-jumping. He caused brain damage to himself. After all, once you change your past, EVERYTHING, from the clothes you wear the next day to the next sentence you speak, has the possibility to be different.

Here’s are three tips that I found useful:

  1. I’ve heard it said that if you write characters that the reader/viewer falls in love with, you can get away with pretty much anything plot-wise. Yeah, my soapbox on writing good characters  is pretty much always in use. But think about it: how many movies have you seen with unbelievable plots but you didn’t care?
  2. Make your theme clear. Sure, they’re going back in time. It’s cool and adventurous. But, why did they go in the first place? What’s the ultimate message? In Back to the Future, Marty was warned not to interfere with history, but he did it to save his friend. Ultimately, that was deemed an okay rule to bend. Evan in The Butterfly Effect sacrificed the love of his life and destroy his method of time travel after realizing that playing God was too dangerous.
  3. Keep it simple. If you get lost in the writing, your reader will get lost in the reading — and not in a good way. Some of my writing was once compared to that of Toni Morrison. She’s a Nobel Prize winner and a celebrated author, but I did not take that as a compliment. It was her excuse for not reading any further. Don’t let the same happen to you.
Happy writing!
B
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Explanations/Musings/Writing and Editing

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17

Jan

Characterization: real people with real issues

How do you write real people with real issues? I write inspirational fiction and shy away from calling it “Christian fiction” because of the genre’s tendency towards squeaky-clean people or the other side of the spectrum: wrong-side-of-the-tracks bad boys or girls.

My preference is for a multi-cultural cast of characters. They have screwy childhoods and destructive tendencies that evolve into redemptive qualities at the end. Sometimes :) Not everyone deserves a happy ending, and not everyone who gets a happy ending deserves it.

Characters need motivation: a reason why they do things. If your bad girl is promiscuous, why is she promiscuous?  If it’s because she likes sex, why does she like sex? Sound like a stupid question? “Because it feels good,” “it’s a part of the genre,” or “sex sells” are convenient and lazy reasons. Dig deeper with your character. It’s her way of taking back the power over her body that was robbed from her by an assault. Or, she uses sex to get what she really wants — intimacy from a man — because it’s what she was told she had to do to get it.

I’m writing a character for my next book who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’m fleshing her out by interviewing people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The character, named Isoke, is a hardened war survivor with abandonment issues. In addition to my research, the experiences of those people help color Isoke’s world for me. How can she sustain relationships with PTSD. Can she sustain a romantic relationship with someone who does not understand her or her feelings? If she can, how? 

My characterization form, which I cobbled together from different sources, is kind of (REALLY) long, but useful. If you’d like a copy, drop me a comment or e-mail me at brian@authorbrianthompson.com

Happy writing!

B

493 days ago Short URL Comments

DIY Publishing/Explanations/Musings/Writing and Editing

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02

Jan

Let love in or shut it out? You decide.

How do you move beyond the pain to start a fresh relationship?

I’m knee-deep in Isoke: a character I’ve known for about a year. Isoke’s background is littered with issues. Her mother, Hawa, left the family to pursue a calling greater than the responsibility of a family. When Hawa was present, she berated Isoke, who had an incurable blood disease. Constant sickness isolated her from everyone, including her husband and adopted children.

Through a miracle, Isoke conceives a son, whom she has to give up to destiny. Alone once more, she combats feelings of resentment and the urge to strike out. Now, the opportunity for love arises, and she has no idea how to accept it or whether or not she should even try.

What do you think she should do?

Brian Thompson’s passion is motivating and encouraging others to write and to pursue Do-It-Yourself publishing. He is also the author of acclaimed Christian fiction thrillers The Lost Testament, The Revelation Gate and the upcoming 2012 release, The Anarchists. 

508 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Musings/Writing and Editing

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30

Dec

Turning back the clock

Cover of Quantum Leap#10, art by C. Winston Taylor

TIme travel or no time travel?

Last year, my wife presented me with a wild idea for a science fiction book.

I’m not a devotee to the genre, but I LOVE Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, and H.G. Wells, among others. Some of my favorite TV shows were sci-fi: Smallville, Quantum Leap, Sliders, and No Ordinary Family (yeah, I know that last one was rotten!).

The concept forced me to think about two well-worn, sci-fi motifs: alternate realities and time travel. By and large, both have not been done well, or at least without a gaping plot hole left unexplained.

Here’s what I came up with: time travel works only if you travel to a date within your lifetime and never return to the present you knew. Doing it within your lifetime solves the “how-did-he-not-drastically-alter-history?” and never returning fixes the “how-is-everything-pretty-much-the-same?” issue. You create a different reality by changing your choice and living with it.

We take it for granted, but there are trillions of things we effect each day just by our existence at a particular space and time. Changing that balance causes an alternate reality of chaos, and chaos is unpredictable and dangerous.

Once, my wife and I got rear-ended by an elderly couple in a sedan. In front of us was a large truck several feet higher than our hood. At their speed, had we not been between them and the truck, the impact might have seriously injured or killed them.

While writing, I asked people this question: given the opportunity to travel back in time, would you? No. Why not?  Because my experiences made me who I am. These are the stock answers I received.

It’s pointless to even ask because time travel is impossible. It’s like playing Texas Hold ‘Em with no money on the table. There’s no risk involved.

Think of the worst thing that ever happened to you, or a grand mistake you made that changed your life for the worst. If offered a bona fide opportunity to avoid a painful situation like that, wouldn’t you at least think about it?

Brian Thompson’s passion is motivating and encouraging others to write and to pursue Do-It-Yourself publishing. He is also the author of acclaimed Christian fiction thrillers The Lost Testament, The Revelation Gate and the upcoming 2012 release, The Anarchists. 

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511 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Musings/Theories and such

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