Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

If you want to confuse your reader, try using as many different ways as possible to refer to the characters in your novel.

Shane posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

When writing character names, which name is appropriate? First name, last name or combination?

I’m working on a thriller novel that I’ve mixed a secondary characters first and last name depending on my writing pattern on any given day. I want to standardize. Using his last name seems odd, but when in dialog, I use his first name, cuz, that’s how people talk.

In my mind and daily life, I rarely use peoples last names. I’m a first person guy, so in writing, I tend to reference their first names, a lot. Is there a standard? In Thriller/mystery’s is it different? I’ve read a lot of police procedure stuff that tends to focus on last name.

Randy sez: A lot depends on what category of fiction you’re writing and what your readers expect. In Russian novels (or novels with Russian characters), it’s common to refer to characters with their full names, including the middle name. This drives American readers crazy because those Russian names can get quite long. I can remember a few Tom Clancy novels in which the extra Russian names seemed to add another 100 pages to the book.

My rule of thumb is to use one name almost exclusively for each character. In most cases, that’s the first name of the character. In a few cases, it’s more natural to refer to certain characters by their last names.

It’s common in certain communities for everybody to go by their last names. Military units. Sports teams. Cop environments. Certain dorms I’ve lived in. If I were writing a novel set in one of these communities, then I’d be sure that the characters used each other’s last names in dialogue. However, in the action parts, I’d probably refer to most of them by their first names, unless there was a compelling reason to use the last name.

One mistake that you should avoid is trying to eliminate repetition by mixing up first names, last names, nicknames, and roles in a horrible hodge-podge. That just confuses the reader.

To illustrate how badly this can go wrong, let me write a really wretched bit of fanfic. Count how many characters you see in this snippet of a scene:

“Go away,” Harry said.

Lord Voldemort gave a high, cold laugh. “Says who?”

“Do it,” said the green-eyed boy wizard. “Now.”

The greatest dark wizard of all time pointed his wand at Potter’s chest.

“You think you’re really something, don’t you, Riddle?” sneered the son of James and Lily.

“Call me Tom.”

“One thing I’ll never call you is the Dark Lord,” said the Gryffindor seeker.

He Who Must Not Be Named hissed sharply as he twirled the wand between his long, pale fingers. “You will,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice.

“And I refuse to use euphemisms like You Know Who,” said the Boy Who Lived. “I’m not afraid of you and that’s why you hate me.”

Randy sez: Gack! How many characters did you see? If you haven’t read the Harry Potter series, then you counted these thirteen characters:

1. Harry
2. Lord Voldemort
3. The green-eyed boy wizard
4. The greatest dark wizard of all time
5. Potter
6. Riddle
7. The son of James and Lily
8. Tom
9. The Dark Lord
10. The Gryffindor seeker
11. He Who Must Not Be Named
12. You Know Who
13. The Boy Who Lived

If you’re familiar with the series, then you know that there are only two characters here: Harry Potter is the green-eyed Boy Who Lived, the only son of James and Lily Potter, and he’s also the seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Tom Riddle is the greatest dark wizard of all time, self-proclaimed Lord Voldemort, known to his followers as the Dark Lord and feared by his enemies as either He Who Must Not Be Named or as You Know Who.

In the series, Harry Potter is mostly referred to as “Harry,” although many characters refer to him in dialogue as “Potter.” The various other appellations for Harry are rarely used.

Lord Voldemort is generally called “You Know Who” by those who fear him. A few brave souls call him “Voldemort” when speaking about him. Professor Dumbledore calls him “Tom” and Harry calls him “Riddle” when speaking to him. Voldemort’s followers always call him “the Dark Lord”.

The key thing is consistency. Throughout the series, the context determines what Harry and Voldemort will be called, and things are never confusing.

Don’t be afraid of a bit of repetition. Clarity is good. If you have to use “Harry” and “Voldemort” fifteen times on the same page, then do so. Don’t confuse things by constantly switching appellations. If “Harry” appears in every paragraph, the name quickly becomes invisible and the story flows smoothly.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

When writing a synopsis for your novel, are you allowed to hold back information, or must you spoil the surprise for your editor by telling all? That’s the first of two questions we’ll look at today.

Alice posted two questions on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have a question about writing a synopsis for a mystery novel. Should you try to leave at least a bit of a mystery unsolved in synopsis (like, who’s the bad guy) or should you reveal all the secrets? What bothers me is that mystery novel is supposed to be a mystery and if the publisher knows everything right from the start, could it be that it won’t be interesting for him/her to read that novel?

That question concerns not just mystery novels but all other novels that may have a surprise in the end. Should you reveal it in your synopsis or can you hide it?

I have also another question that got me into an argument with my friend. If your POV character doesn’t notice (for different reasons) something that is important TO THE READER (not the characters) to know, can the author peek over his shoulder and show the reader what the POV character can’t see? I think the author can do that, but my friend argues that it will ruin the mood of the scene and that the reader would be more immersed in the story if they are not shown stuff POV character fails to notice. Problem is, her POV character fails to notice quite a lot of stuff that I, as a reader, would like to see and that quite the contrary irritates me and prevents me from getting the feel of the story.

Randy sez: Editors wear two hats at all times. All editors are readers. All editors are editors. (I’m sure this is not terribly surprising.)

When wearing the reader hat, the editor likes to be surprised as much as anyone else does.

When wearing the editor hat, the editor wants to know that you can deliver a good story. That means that she wants to know how the story ends. If you know who the bad guy is, you need to tell your editor. If you’ve planned a super-cool, extraordinary, knock-their-socks-off surprise ending, you need to tell your editor.

There is a loophole here. If you look closely, you’ll see that I used the words “If you know.”

What if you don’t know the ending? Well then, you can’t tell the editor, can you?

What if you think you know the ending but when you go to write it, an even better one weasels its way into your brain? As long as it’s a better ending, your editor will forgive.

What if you tell the editor an ending that makes sense, but you’re holding in reserve an even better ending? Well then, you’d better be able to fib Xtremely well to your editor and convince her that you never had an inkling the real killer was Throckmorton until you got to the last chapter and there he was with a bloody knife in his hands and only then did you realize that it wasn’t Fredholm after all, even though his fingerprints were all over Griselda’s iPod.

Now for Alice’s second question, is it ever legitimate to tell the reader something that the POV character doesn’t know?

This question is a little like asking, “Is it ever legitimate for an elephant to be a tiger?”

Go ahead and try to answer that question. Neither “yes” nor “no” seems to be appropriate. An elephant CAN’T be a tiger, so questioning the legitimacy of an elephant being a tiger misses that essential point. Let me unpack that a bit.

You have several different choices for the point of view of any given scene. One of those is called “omniscient POV” and it allows for you, the narrator, to tell the reader things that no character knows. In “omniscient POV” you don’t actually have a POV character. You can get inside the heads of your characters, but none of them is “the POV character.”

The reason is that in order to have a POV character, you implicitly make a decision that the scene is being filtered through the senses of one character. If you show part of the scene in some other way, then you are breaking POV.

Is it legitimate to write a scene in omniscient POV? Of course. Many fine novels have been written in omniscient, but there is no POV character when you make this choice. Instead, you have a “focal character.” (Tragically, the word POV is being asked to do double-duty here, as both a noun and an adjective, and that makes things seem more ambiguous than they actually are.)

It’s also legitimate to choose first person, third person, or even second person (this is rare). In any of these, you have an actual POV character. But when you make this choice, BY DEFINITION, you have chosen not to show the reader things the POV character doesn’t know.

It’s legitimate but fairly uncommon to use the “objective third person POV,” in which there is no POV character, there is only a “focal character”. (Again, the word POV is being used as both a noun and an adjective in the above sentence, which explains the apparent paradox.) When you write a scene this way, it’s perfectly fine to show the reader things the focal character doesn’t know. In fact, it’s common to do so, because the only way you can show emotion is by showing the physical responses of the character (like they do in the movies, where you also can’t get inside the character’s head). Most of those physical responses are not visible to the focal character.

One final question is whether the “head-hopping POV” is legitimate. In this choice, you get inside the heads of multiple characters in a scene. This is quite common and accepted in the romance category, where many readers want to experience the thoughts and emotions of more than one character in the same scene. I know good writers who claim this is legitimate. I know others who consider it the very work of Satan.

Personally, I don’t like head-hopping, but I think if it’s done well, it can get the job done. When the author skips back and forth between heads, never giving the reader the chance to identify with any character, that seems to me a clear case of bad head-hopping and there’s no POV character. When the author makes smooth transitions, it seems to me that the scene is simply being written with one POV character in one part and a different POV character in another part.

It seems that Alice likes omniscient or objective third person. Her friend likes first-person or third-person POV. Those preferences are a matter of taste, not a matter of legitimacy.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you’re a beginning fiction writer, you know good and well that your first novel is going to be awful. (If you don’t know this, then you have the added handicap of being delusional.) Given this fact, should you even bother to finish that first dreadful novel?

Rebecca posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m in the works of my first story but I my craft needs a whole lot of work. What ways do I work on my craft without writing an entire novel that will no doubt come out as junk in the end? I don’t want to overwhelm my brain trying to make it do something I’m not ready for. Should I try and write shorter stories or scenes for my novel? Any advice?

Randy sez: Here is a theorem which you can easily prove. You will never write your second novel unless you write your first. Even if your first novel is so awful you wouldn’t even use it to wipe up the mess the puppy made, it’s still a necessary step along the road to publication.

You learn to write a novel by writing novels. You get good by first being willing to be bad — if necessary to be dreadful.

Having said that, there are varieties of dreadfulness.

If your paragraphs are dreadful, the solution is to write more paragraphs. Lots of them. Get them critiqued. Try to improve them. And keep doing that over and over and over. Eventually, they’ll get better.

If your scenes are dreadful, the solution is the same, but here it can be helpful to also study up a bit on the theory of writing scenes, because other people have solved the problems you’re struggling with. I’d recommend my free article on this web site, “Writing the Perfect Scene” as your first place to look. That article will recommend some books you can then buy if you need more help.

If the structure of your novel is dreadful, then I don’t recommend continuing to work on it, however. I recommend that you first learn what makes a well-structured novel.

There are plenty of sources for that. My buddy James Scott Bell has a terrific book, PLOT & STRUCTURE which I have been recommending for a long time. I have long sworn by Dwight Swain’s book TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER. My own recent book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES is my best shot at teaching the theory of story structure.

Once you understand why the story structure of your novel sucks, either fix it or move on to a different story. My first attempt at a novel had a serious defect that I didn’t recognize for two and a half years. It was a structural problem. As soon as a friend of mine (John DeSimone, my first writing buddy) pointed out the problem, I abandoned the book.

I don’t think it makes sense to keep working on a novel that you know is doomed. Work on one that you think has a chance of succeeding. If you later discover that one is also doomed by a faulty structure, then fix it or abandon it. Writing fiction is a tough business and it’s hard to maintain your enthusiasm even when you believe your story walks on water. If you know that the main story is broken, you’ll find it impossible to keep slogging on, writing ever-better scenes and paragraphs.

That’s my opinion, anyway, but I”m always willing to hear another point of view. What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Have you ever realized that your whole novel was fatally flawed? What did you do?

A postscript: After abandoning my first novel, I worked on #2 for several months until I realized that it, too, was fatally flawed. I abandoned that immediately, grateful that I was learning how to fail faster. I worked on novel #3 for a couple of years and its structure was fundamentally sound and I finished it.

I then found an agent who worked for years to sell it while I worked on Books #4 and #5, each of which also had fatal flaws which caused me to abandon them.

Book #3 circulated for years, but we never sold it, although we had some near misses. However, the comments we got from publishers prompted me to write Book #6, which was the first book I sold. I hope to someday publish #3. It had some nice points, but it was too long for the market then, so I might need to slice it into two books.

I am sorry to say that the agent who worked so hard to sell Book #3, Ron Haynes, died suddenly of a heart attack before I completed Book #6, so I sold it without an agent. Ron thought I had talent, and he was an endless source of encouragement, but his hard work never came to fruition in his lifetime. Ron, wherever you are, I thank you.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Do you have to use all the facts you know in your fiction? When the facts contradict the story you want to write, what do you do?

Micky posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve been working on this book in FanStory.com and I’ve gotten articles from the Mayor of Ketchikan I’m using for ‘kinda’ the place this young woman is going to to be a teacher. He had a few girls that did the same thing at 19. Now that rules were if the woman got married she could not teach anymore. This rule was in 1920’s and lasted until the 50’s. In my story I have the teacher getting married. Do I have to make her quit teaching or ignore a rule no one else is going to know? Isn’t there some kind of writing rule that allows you to write things the way you want? I am making this a Romance book, and she happens to be a teacher in the 1920’s Alaska!
What is your answer?

Randy sez: Fiction is not required to follow the facts 100%. You are not only allowed to make stuff up, you’re expected to do so. Fiction is not a documentary.

Having said that, it’s important to be as true to your facts as your category requires. If you’re writing a police procedural, for example, your readers expect your cops to do cop stuff the way actual cops in your particular setting do cop stuff. However, your readers also don’t mind if you make up stuff in your cops’ personal lives that may not be typical of the personal lives of most cops. It’s fiction.

If you’re writing a historical novel set in a particular place and time, your readers expect you to not violate any known historical facts about that place and time. If you do, then you are disobeying one of the cardinal rules of historical fiction. Micky, it does no good to argue that this is a rule nobody will know about. If you know about it, then somebody else knows about it too — probably somebody close to your setting who could be a strong promoter for your book if it rings true. If it rings false, you can count on that “somebody” telling anybody who’ll listen that you don’t know your stuff.

There’s a way around this, of course. If you really insist on this woman continuing to teach after she gets married, then make that part of the conflict. The rules say she has to quit. She doesn’t want to — and she fights the system. Now whatever your story is, it just got better. Conflict always improves a story.

There are some classes of historical fiction where you don’t have to stick with the known facts. Some examples:

• Historical fantasy. Xena the Warrior Princess gets a lot of latitude from her fans, who really don’t care whether the history is anything remotely correct, so long as Xena does lots of fighting in an outlandishly skimpy costume.
• Alternative history. Harry Turtledove is one of the masters of this category. In this class of fiction, you’re expected to diverge from the known facts. It’s an exercise in “what if?” that lets you explore those pesky historical paths not taken.

The one thing you really must do is to make your category clear to your reader and then follow its conventions. In my view, one reason Dan Brown’s book THE DA VINCI CODE was so widely panned by critics was that it claimed to be giving the “correct history of early Christianity” when in reality it was giving an interpretation favored only by a few self-proclaimed “Holy Grail theorists.” Historians across a broad spectrum of philosophical persuasions saw no merit in this interpretation.

This would have been fine if the book were presented as a typical conspiracy book, like many of Robert Ludlum’s books. But Ludlum clearly never believed that his novels represented actual truth, whereas Dan Brown obviously does believe that his does.

Micky, I hope that answers your question. In your case, it seems like you need to account for the facts you know, and my idea to just use this to add to the conflict of your story makes sense to me.

What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? If you were Micky, would you take note of this rule in the story, or would you ignore it?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: In scanning my favorite blogs today, I found three that sounded downright radical on the prospects of e-books and p-books in the immediate future:

• Seth Godin’s Blog. In a blog entry titled “But who will speak for the trees?” Seth argues that the demise of paper will “doom” newspapers, book publishers, and magazine publishers — probably within three years. (”Doom” means to change them beyond recognition.)
• Mark Coker’s SmashWords Blog. In a blog entry titled “How Indie Ebooks will Transform the Future of Book Publishing” Mark remarks that the future is bright for authors and for publishers willing to change. But he sees a dim future for those publishers who take a bunker mentality.
• Joe Konrath’s Blog. In a blog entry titled “Konrath on Wylie” Joe comments on the case of Andrew Wylie, an agent who has e-published some of the older books of his clients which were contracted before e-books were mentioned in contracts. Konrath warns publishers to embrace the e-future and start treating their authors better, with a better share of the e-book pie.

Things are changing even faster than I expected in my recent blog entry, “The Future of Publishing.” As writers, we need to be willing to adjust to the new realities. Bear in mind as the future comes rushing at you that we are essential to the future of publishing, no matter what form it takes. If you don’t have a writer, then you don’t have a story. Period.

Yesterday, we analyzed a one-sentence storyline posted by Seth. Today, we’ll be looking at four different variants of a storyline posted by a different reader, Daniel, and we’ll try to optimize his work.

Daniel posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have a question about One-Sentence Summaries / Storylines regarding their scale and scope. Here are 4 that I developed for my WIP:

(A) A teenage detective tracks down his father’s killer. (9 words)
(B) A teenage detective with a sleeping disorder tracks down his father’s killer. (13 words)
(C) A teenage detective with a sleeping disorder turns his curse into a strength to track down his father’s killer. (20 words)
(D) A teenage detective with a sleeping disorder turns his curse into a strength to track down his father’s killer and discovers he is his family’s biggest secret. (28 words)

As you can see, they build from simplest to most complex. In working on developing the best storyline I could, I initially came up with the (C) and (D) versions and simply worked backward to get the (A) and (B) versions.

So, my question: Which is best? (A) is simplest and meets all the right criteria but is also so bland as to be a non-starter. Or does “less is more” still apply? Is there a minimum word count? I can add some intriguing details to make it unique with both (B) and (C) and still be under the 25 word mark. Then there’s my whopper (D) which includes a hint at the outcome but is over the word limit.

I’ve tried to meet all the criteria for these things that you’ve mentioned, all from Rachelle Gardner’s blog, and more. Personally, I lean toward (C) to pack in the most punch while still meeting the word limit. But what do you and your readers think?

Randy sez: Agent Rachelle Gardner recently ran a contest on her Rants and Ramblings blog for one-sentence storylines and got quite a large number of entries. If you don’t follow Rachelle, you really should. She’s consistently one of the top bloggers in the Books category on Technorati, and she quite often has the #1 position on that list. I read Rachelle’s blog every day.

The problem with (D) is that it gives away too much of the ending. The one-sentence storyline should give away nothing that happens beyond the first-quarter of the book. The reason is simple: Your one-sentence storyline is a selling tool. It raises a “Story Question” which your novel is meant to answer. If you tell anything about the answer, then you have hobbled your Story Question. The Story Question is this: “Will this teenage detective find his father’s killer?”

In fact, if you look at all four options, (A) through (D), they all answer the Story Question, because they all say explicitly that he tracks down his father’s killer. That’s the main problem I’m seeing here.

An immediate way to improve (A) would therefore be to focus on the teen’s desire to track down the killer, not on his success in doing so: “A teenage detective vows to track down his father’s killer.”

Now the Story Question is clear: Will he or won’t he?

However, as Daniel noted, this is fairly bland. I’ll use a variant of the same question I asked yesterday, on both halves of the sentence:

• How is this teenage detective different from all other teenage detectives?
• How is this killer different from all other killers?

The answers to these questions add uniqueness to your hero or your villain and makes the story far more intriguing.

For example, in Mark Haddon’s brilliant novel, THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, there is a teenage detective who has Asperger’s syndrome. So a one-sentence summary of this book might be, “An autistic teenage detective vows to find the murderer of his neighbor’s dog.”

Notice that this focuses on the uniqueness of the hero and it has a twist at the end: the victim of the murder is a dog. Most people wouldn’t care much about a dog nor label it a murder, but this detective is different — he is autistic, and it makes sense that he’ll see the death of a dog differently than most people. He, in fact, sees the entire world differently and that’s what makes this novel special.

You might focus instead on the killer. What’s special about him? What’s unique? We might try something like this:

“A teenage detective vows to track down the last surviving member of the Nazi High Command — the man who murdered his father.”

The last surviving member of the Nazi High Command is by definition unique. That heightens the appeal for the novel because the man is a villain on a global scale. But by making him the murderer of our hero’s father, that adds a personal hook that makes it plausible that this hero will not quit, ever.

Of course, this Nazi bad guy, if he exists, would be close to 100 years old. A book like this would have worked better in the 1970s or 1980s, so it would be more plausible to bring this villain forward a few years.

In (B), (C), and (D), Daniel brings in the teen’s sleeping disorder, but in my view, this needs more oomph. (”Oomph” is a technical term which means . . . um, “oomph.”)

The problem is that in (B) there’s no connection between a sleeping disorder and the main quest. It isn’t clear how it could help or hurt the teen’s pursuit of justice.

In (C) and (D), we’re told that the sleeping disorder somehow helps pursue the killer, but since we have no clear indication of how this could possibly happen, it makes the storylines less plausible without making them more interesting. To make these work, we need some sort of explanation.

Daniel has several options:

1. Make the hero unique or more clearly specified.
2. Make the villain unique or more clearly specified.
3. Explain how a sleep disorder can be an advantage.
4. Do something else that brings the story to life.

We’ve already covered Doors #1, #2, and #3. But what about that mysterious Door #4? That’s fertile ground, but we don’t have enough information about Daniel’s story to know what’s happening that could spice up the storyline. Daniel hints that he has some things that could do it, and I think those might be just the ticket.

To answer the final unanswered questions Daniel asked: Yes, less is more in a storyline. No, there is no minimum word count.

For example, I can give you an Xtremely short storyline for my friend Tosca Lee’s next book. Here it is, in just one word: “Judas.”

Tosca’s book is titled ISCARIOT, and it’s the story of Judas Iscariot. If you’re a fan of Tosca’s writing, as I am, that’s really all you need to know. (Because I have a lot of expertise in the time and place that Tosca’s writing about, she and I have talked about her story a lot. Tosca is a research fiend like I am, so I’ve pointed her to my favorite research sources and have given her my best understanding of the political state of first-century Judea and Galilee.)

The reason a one-word storyline works for Tosca’s book is that she’s a character-oriented writer and her lead character is uniquely specified by his first name.

Bottom line: We don’t have enough information about Daniel’s story to perfect his storyline. But he does. I hope he’ll find inspiration to make it better and that he’ll post his improved version here as a comment.

Any thoughts from my Loyal Blog Readers? I’m sure you all know by now that I’m not always right in these judgment calls. But I’ve given my opinion. Anyone else got one? Post it here as a comment.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Today we’ll analyze a one-sentence storyline for a novel involving a massive conspiracy. But don’t tell anyone!

Seth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hey Randy, I’m new to this website, but I’ve already learned lots from your articles. I just recently started looking at the blog page, and was wondering if you were still doing one sentence critiques. I noticed that they were in March, so I may be behind the times, but hopefully you can still take a look at this.

“An adopted boy’s search for his real parents accidently uncovers a massive conspiracy that may threaten millions of lives, including his.”

Randy sez: I periodically run clinics on this blog to critique one-sentence storylines. It’s a great exercise for every novelist, and you can always improve. The last clinic was in March and we worked for a couple of weeks on submitted storylines. We certainly didn’t run out of them, but we just couldn’t do them all. Let’s analyze Seth’s storyline in detail, a few words at a time:

“An adopted boy’s search for his real parents…” is a good way to start out a storyline. It’s been done before, of course, but no story is ever completely original, so that’s not a bad thing. A search for parents strikes an emotional chord in just about everyone. This sounds like it’s going to be an intensely personal story.

“…accidently uncovers a massive conspiracy…” now switches gears and shows that the story is both personal and public. That’s good. Any story that threatens lots of people is going to be interesting to a large group of readers. But the wider the scale of the story, the more important it is to personalize it. It’s a lot easier to care about the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War when you are personally invested in the lives of Scarlett and Melanie.

A couple of issues that should be addressed:

• The correct spelling of the word should be “accidentally.”
• It’s not clear to me that it matters that the discovery is accidental. If not, then it’s best to trim this word, because every single word in a one-sentence storyline needs to be necessary. A 14-word sentence is better than a 15-word sentence, all other things being equal.
• Massive conspiracies are good stuff, and they form the foundation of many good novels. However, there’s the rub — many other good novels have had massive conspiracies. The editor is going to be asking, “How is this massive conspiracy different from all other massive conspiracies?” Seth, you MUST answer that question in this storyline. Unless you do, the editor thinks, “It’s been done. No thanks.” So what you really need to do is explain in a few words what the massively conspiring conspirators hope to achieve. Do they want to destroy the Federal Reserve? Emasculate all the fighting men in the US Army? Corner the market on rum-flavored teddy bears? Each of these is a different (and undoubtedly fascinating) story. Each of these is UNIQUE.

“…that may threaten millions of lives, including his.” It’s a fine thing to threaten millions of lives in a novel. It’s an even finer thing to threaten the life of the protagonist. However, this is not something you want to tell. It’s something you want to show.

Just as an example, suppose that I have a story about a terrorist plan to explode a nuclear weapon at the Super Bowl (the storyline of one of Tom Clancy’s novels, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS.) If Tom wrote a one-sentence storyline, it might go like this: “Arab terrorists create a nuclear bomb with plans to detonate it at the Super Bowl in Denver.”

With that level of detail, it’s really not necessary to add a phrase about the number who might be killed: “Arab terrorists create a nuclear bomb with plans to detonate it at the Super Bowl in Denver, which may threaten millions of lives.”

See the difference? When you tell specifically what the disaster is, you don’t also have to tell what the horrible consequences are. You also don’t need to add that the hero of the story also might get killed.

If the storyline were a bit more specific, I could make some tweaks to tighten it up. However, in this case, I don’t know enough about the story to know exactly how to do that. I don’t know what sort of conspiracy this is or what the possible consequences are. So all I can say is this: Make it more specific and you’ll have a good strong storyline.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If your novel is too short, is there an easy way to make it longer? How do you beef it up without adding lard?

Rob posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

This is a follow-up to the question about scene/chapter length. When writing a novel with short scenes (i.e. 1000 words) it seems you run into the challenge of coming up with MORE scenes to make a full novel. For me, I always feel like I’m coming up short. If I want to write a 100,000-word novel with 1000-word scenes, that means coming up with 100 scenes. Seems like a lot of scenes to invent. I’m tempted to make scenes longer just so I don’t have to work so hard.

Is there a method to “beefing” up a plot?

Randy sez: The trend these days is to shorter novels. Ten years ago, the number I heard for a full-length novel was about 100,000 words. When I went over 110,000 (which was most of the time), my editors let me know I was stretching the budget. When I went over 120,000 they either got a special dispensation from the pope or they told me to cut back. (Hint: cutting back is easier.)

So these days, if you come in at 90,000 words you’re fine. So rather than “beefing” up your novel, you really want to “tofu” it down.

If you can’t come up with that many words, making scenes longer isn’t the answer. Each scene has a natural length. That may be 100 words. It may be 3000 words. I’m pretty sure I’ve written scenes that short and that long. If you try to make a scene longer or shorter than its natural length, you distort the story.

What do you do if you need more words than you’ve got? The simple answer is to add another story thread. Your main story focuses on your lead character (or lead pair if you’re writing a romance). If you want to add another story thread, then add another major character, write a one-sentence summary for his story, then expand that to a one-paragraph summary, then expand that to a full page synopsis. Make sure that this story thread intersects with your main story thread at every possible opportunity.

Add more story threads until you have enough of that pesky “beef” in your story. I typically have 3 to 5 viewpoint characters in a novel. Of course, one of these dominates the story, but generally one or two others have really major roles to play.

That’s how I add beef to a story, because I’m a character-oriented writer. I’m wondering if plot-oriented writers (or setting-oriented or theme-oriented writers) have a different way to approach this. What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Do you have any tricks and tips for adding beef without adding lard? Leave a comment and share your secrets!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: Those of you who’ve been following my thoughts on the brave new e-future we face in publishing may find this blog post from a couple of days ago of high interest: “Publishing is the New Literacy” by blogger Jane Friedman on her “There Are No Rules” blog at Writer’s Digest.

If you publish a book, are you allowed to choose your own title? Or do you sell your soul to the publisher when you sell your book?

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I was wondering how much control do authors have over the title of their books. I have read from authors like J.K. Rowling and D.J. MacHale that they picked their titles for their books, I have read from Bryan Davis that his editor changed the title of his trilogy from what he was calling it. You even mentioned you have had your editor change the title of one of your books. So could you help clear this up for me, thank you.

Randy sez: Many titles get changed by the publisher. Remember that when a royalty-paying publisher buys the rights to your book, they’re investing a substantial amount of money — typically several tens of thousands of dollars. If you were investing that much money, you’d want to make sure you did everything possible to recoup that investment. That’s why publishers think they should have a say in your title. Of course, they’re right.

My own titles have often been changed by the publisher or at the request of my publisher, generally after consulting with me. Here is a list of all my published books, with their original titles:

1. WHO WROTE THE BIBLE CODE? (a nonfiction book on what was then a controversial topic). My original title was GOD, STATISTICS, AND THE BIBLE CODE. The publisher thought that was a so-so title (they were right) and made a number of suggestions. I felt that none of them really worked any better, so I made some suggestions of my own, and the publisher accepted one of them. (It was a takeoff on Richard Elliott Friedman’s bestselling book WHO WROTE THE BIBLE?).
2. TRANSGRESSION. My original title was AVATAR, which the publisher felt sounded too New-Agey. It’s possible they were right, but I always thought that my title fit the book better. My publisher gave me four alternative titles to choose from. I chose TRANSGRESSION from that list. Personally I still like AVATAR, but now that James Cameron has done a blockbuster movie with that title, I don’t think I can ever republish the book under its original title.
3. OXYGEN. This was my first book co-authored with John Olson, and his original title was O2. That is the chemical name for the usual form of oxygen that you breathe and we thought it was a very cool title. Our editor knew it wasn’t a good title, and he quickly convinced us that OXYGEN was a better one. I believe he was right. He also made sure that we got a really good cover for the book and he worked hard to make sure that it was a commercial success. I may as well thank him publicly here, because he did a great job on the book. Steve Laube, thanks — you made OXYGEN fly.
4. THE FIFTH MAN. Again, I co-authored this with John, who wanted to call it FIFTH MAN. Our publisher wanted to add the word “the” in front of that. So far as I’m concerned, either title is fine.
5. PREMONITION. The original title for this book was QUEEN OF HEAVEN. My publisher thought this carried some implications they didn’t want, and they asked me for some alternatives. I gave them several, but none of us were excited about any of them. Then, because this book was a sequel to TRANSGRESSION, I decided to go for phonetic similarity and I suggested the title PREMONITION. My publisher liked this and I think that it was a good title and fit the storyline well.
6. RETRIBUTION. This was my original title and my publisher thought it worked well, especially since it was a sequel to PREMONITION. This was my first book published with the exact same title that I gave it at the outset. My publisher also gave it a really nice cover, for which I really ought to thank them. Thank you, Zondervan!
7. DOUBLE VISION. This was my original title for the book and the publisher liked this one so we kept it. The book was about quantum mechanics and ambiguity and it also featured a love triangle in which an engineer with Asperger’s syndrome has to choose between two women, each very different, but each very appealing to him. The title was suggested to me by the song “Double Vision” by Foreigner. (What can I say? I grew up in the 1970s.) Each of the 5 parts of the book bore the name of a song: “Point of Know Return,” “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Dust in the Wind,” “The Grand lllusion,” and “Double Vision.” Remember that titles can’t be copyrighted, but lyrics can, so I took care to quote no lyrics in the book.
8. WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. This was the original title suggested by the publisher when they asked me to write the book. There is a slight ambiguity in the title. Is it a book to help dummies know how to write fiction? Or is about writing “fiction that dummies will like”? Plenty of people have pointed out this ambiguity. My view is that the “for dummies” line of books is so well known that there really isn’t any ambiguity. In any event, the book was their idea, so I thought they should get to write the title. When we mapped out the book, my editor and my co-author and I were completely agreed on one point — we wanted it to be the highest quality we could possibly make it. We didn’t want a dumbed-down book, whatever the title might say. We gave it our best shot.

Those are all my published books. As you can see, most of them got their titles changed in transit. In some cases, that was an improvement. In other cases, it was a wash or possibly a slight disimprovement. I don’t think any of the changes made things clearly worse. In talking with other authors, I am pretty sure that most of them have had similar experiences.

So, Tim, you might as well get used to the idea now that your editor might not like your title. She might insist on changing it. She might be right.

This is one reason why my one-time mentor, Sol Stein, strongly recommended AGAINST putting the title of your book in the header of your manuscript. As Sol said, suppose you have a perfectly dreadful title for your book. (I think the example he gave was ARKHOPPER or something like that.)

Imagine your editor is reading your manuscript and is really getting into your story, but every time she flips the page, she sees ARKHOPPER right at the top. If your manuscript has 400 pages, that is 400 negative jolts to your editor’s system.

Why do that to her? Why do that to yourself? Just put your last name in the header of your manuscript. That’s enough. (If your last name is “Arkhopper” you might want to consider changing it.)

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Blog of the Day: For those of you interested in my recent column on The Future of Publishing, you might be interested in the posts on Steve Laube’s blog for today and yesterday. Steve raises a lot of interesting issues, and one of them that I hadn’t thought about at all has to do with foreign rights and how to respect those in a world where an e-book can technically be delivered anywhere on earth, but perhaps not legally. (Yes, this is the same Steve who once acquired several of my books. He’s now an outstanding agent who represents several of my author friends.)

Can you get a novel published if your grammar ain’t no good? That’s a good question and it deserves a better answer than a mere “yes” or “no.”

Elizabeth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

My question is about grammar. I’ve just started to take my writing seriously and noticed that my grammar is not all that great and needs some real improvement. I’ve tried reading grammar books, but they seem to confuse me as to what I should do. Do you have any suggestions on this? I know I need to have good grammar to get published later on in life.

Randy sez: This is a good time to talk about your strengths and your weaknesses. Everybody has strengths. Everybody has weaknesses. Is it better to focus on the strengths or the weaknesses?

Strengths are those things that you do Xtremely well. An editor says “yes” to your book because of your strengths. But no writer on the planet is strong in everything. Some writers are strong on plot and only mediocre on character. Some are the opposite. Some writers shine on dialogue. Some on their creation of a compelling Storyworld. Readers have different tastes, but they typically gravitate to writers who are strong in what they like, even if they’re not so strong in other areas. If you’re going to get published, you need to be strong in at least one area.

Weaknesses are those things that you do Xtremely badly. An editor says “no” to your book because of your weaknesses. A weakness is a show-stopper, and you will find it very hard to get published if you have any serious weaknesses.

The strategy I teach for improving as a writer is the two-pronged approach:

• Identify your strengths and find ways to make them even stronger. Never outsource this, because if something is truly your strength, then it’s almost impossible to find somebody else who could do it better than you do.
• Identify your weaknesses and find ways to bring them up to the acceptable level. Don’t waste time trying to turn a weakness into a strength. That would be pointless and would waste vast amounts of time. Either find a resource that can teach you how to make your weaknesses at least acceptable, or else outsource this task.

Just as an example, if I were back in high school and wanting to go out for a sport, it would be idiotic to try for the weightlifting team (I’m a beanpole and always will be) or the baseball team (my eyesight is too bad). But my lean physique makes me a good candidate for the track team and I’d be ideal for the 5k, 10k, or marathon. It would make all kinds of sense to do mostly endurance training (my strength), with just enough weight training (my weakness) to give me a decent finishing sprint, and with no attempt at all to improve my eyesight (my other weakness).

Now moving on to Elizabeth’s actual question, her weakness is grammar. Elizabeth, you have two choices:

Door #1: Improve your grammar to the point where it’s acceptable. You’ve tried this and it isn’t working. Stop trying.

Door #2: Hire a freelance copyeditor or proofreader to bring your grammar up to snuff. This seems to make the most sense to me.

The bottom line on weaknesses: Either get the help you need to become acceptable, or outsource it to somebody for whom it’s a strength.

The bottom line on strengths: Focus a substantial amount of your effort on becoming world-class in your strength. Most of the rewards go to those who are really, really, really good in one particular thing. Remember that nobody can possibly be really, really, really good in everything. Pick one strength or two and focus your efforts on those.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

I recently discovered that copies of my novel RETRIBUTION are currently on sale at CBD.com for only 99 cents. Many of my fans believe, as I do, that RETRIBUTION is the best novel I’ve published.

RETRIBUTION is book #3 in my City of God series, a time-travel series of novels set in first-century Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish Revolt. Two of the characters, Rivka and Ari, are visitors from the 21st century, stranded in the first century after a physics experiment gone horribly wrong.

Rivka is a nice girl from San Diego who grew up in a Messianic Jewish family and then went to work on an archaeological dig in Israel.

Ari is a nice guy who grew up in Israel and got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics and got mixed up with a not-so-nice experimental physicist and wound up on the wrong side of a wormhole with the girl of his dreams.

Both Rivka and Ari know that Jerusalem is going to burn and all her people will be killed or carted off into slavery in just a few years. So they ought to be united in doing everything they can to get out of town.

But they have a serious personal conflict. They’re married, and they’re really, truly in love with each other. But Rivka is a devout Christian girl and she’s never going to change. And Ari is a devout atheist turned devout agnostic turned loyal Jew, and he’s never going to change. So they’ve got some religious differences and there’s no way in the world to resolve those.

Plus, Ari’s got some physics skills that come in incredibly useful to his friends who are plotting to destroy the Roman overlord. Ari’s a pacifist, but he’s also a loyal Jew and he would do anything to help his people. Rivka is a historian and she knows beyond any doubt that Rome can’t be beat, and the best thing to do is run for the hills. Both of them are right and both of them are wrong, because there just isn’t any good answer.

Rome is intent on exacting retribution from the Jewish freedom fighters. And in this part of the world, at this time in history, Rome gets whatever she wants.

I’m a physicist myself, but it’s not widely known that I also have a long interest in history and I know an awful lot about Jerusalem in the first century. I spent about 20 years researching the books for my City of God series. I taught myself to read Hebrew. I follow the world of Israeli archaeology — and got myself mixed up in one the biggest archaeological fights of the decade, the debate over the alleged Jesus family tomb. Why? Because I like to. Some people are just sick, sick, sick research puppies. I’m one of them.

You can find out about all of my books on the Books page of my personal web site.