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The Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine
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Publisher: Randy Ingermanson ("the Snowflake guy")
Motto: "A Vision for Excellence"
Date: April 4, 2006
Issue: Volume 2, Number 2
Home Pages: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com
http://www.RSIngermanson.com
Circulation: 4573 writers, each of them creating a
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
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What's in This Issue
1) Welcome to the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine!
2) Dialogue and the Art of War
3) Those Pesky Back Pains
4) Tiger Marketing--When Google Treats You Wrong
5) Fiction Writing Info on the Web
6) What's New At AdvancedFictionWriting.com
7) Steal This E-zine!
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1) Welcome to the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine!
Those of you who have joined in the past month (almost
250 of you are new since my last issue), welcome to my
e-zine! You can find all the previous issues on my web
site at:
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/html/afwezine.html
All readers of this e-zine are supposed to be here by
choice. If you have somehow found yourself receiving
this e-zine by accident, there is a link at the bottom
of this email that will terminate you.
In this issue I'd like to focus on the fine art of
writing dialogue. Ever read a chunk of dialogue that
bored the living heck out of you? So have I. I'll show
you an example of boring dialogue from a best-selling
author who shall remain nameless. (Let's call him "Tom
Clancy.") I'll explain exactly what "Tom" did wrong.
I'd also like to talk about a very practical issue for
every working writer (and lazy ones too): back pain.
Most writers face this at one time or another, and I
have a few suggestions.
If you've been reading this e-zine long, you'll know
that I'm a huge promoter of what I call "Tiger
Marketing"--letting the web bring customers to you.
Part of that is learning to help Google help you. But
what happens when Google gets cranky and starts saying
stuff about you that ISN'T EVEN ON YOUR SITE? Whaddaya
do? I'll tell you in this very issue.
Finally, I'd like to mention some other writing
resources on the web that you might find useful. Or
not. It depends on who you are, where you are in your
career, and what you need right now.
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2) Dialogue and the Art of War
If you write fiction, then you have probably gone
through a stage where you tried your best to make your
dialogue sound like Real Conversation.
The problem is that Real Conversation is boring! Go
ahead. Test me on this. Next time you're in the subway
or on the bus or in line at the supermarket, eavesdrop
on the conversations around you. If you're listening in
on teenage girls, you'll get something like this:
"And then he said, 'No way!' And I'm like, 'Yes way.'"
"No!"
"Yeah!"
"So whatcha gonna do?"
"I dunno."
We interrupt this wretched Real Conversation now,
before you die of sleep apnea. Let's tune in now on two
middle-aged guys talking sports:
"Could be the year for the Dodgers."
"Yeah, maybe. If they can get a decent #4 in their
pitching rotation."
"Ain't gonna happen. They'll have to do it with
hitting."
"So whaddaya think about the steroid thing?"
"Terrible. The commissioner shoulda done something ten
years ago."
Again, this Real Conversation works better than Sominex
at putting you out. If your fiction sounds like this
kind of Real Conversation, then you are slitting your
novel's throat.
So what's a writer to do?
Well, duh! It's obvious! Don't write Real Conversation.
Write Dialogue!
You'll notice that I just capitalized the word
Dialogue. I didn't capitalize it at the beginning of
this article, but I capitalized it here. I did that to
make it clear that in this context it is an RTT
(Randy's Technical Term). The term Real Conversation is
also an RTT.
I better define those two RTTs. Real Conversation is
that informational sort of back-and-forth that you saw
in the two snippets above. There is no conflict in Real
Conversation, and that's the problem. Fiction is about
conflict. More precisely, fiction is about characters
in conflict.
Now I'll say it again: Don't write Real Conversation.
Write Dialogue.
Real Conversation is RARELY about conflict. Think about
the Real Conversations you've had lately. You'll find
they fall into various boring categories like these:
a) People making small talk to pass the time.
b) People exchanging information.
c) People avoiding conflict.
d) People trying to solve a problem.
Why are these boring? Simple. Look for the conflict in
each one:
Small talk has zero conflict. Don't put small talk into
your fiction! It's a killer.
Exchanging information also usually has no conflict. If
one of the parties is trying to HIDE information, then
there is conflict. If you MUST write a Dialogue in
which information gets exchanged, then make the
informer do his best to avoid informing the informee.
Avoiding conflict also has no conflict, unless you
subtext the conflict. See, for example, just about any
scene in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. If you like subtexted
conflict (and I do), you'll love Jane Austen.
There CAN be conflict when people are trying to solve a
problem, depending on whether the problem is easy or
hard (and whether one of the players isn't too keen on
the getting the problem solved). If you're going to
solve a problem in Dialogue, then make it a nasty,
vicious, horrible problem. Or make one of the players
an obstructionist who would find it disastrous for the
problem to actually BE solved.
The strange thing is that every author is tempted to
put some Real Conversation into their novel, especially
early in the story before the characters have figured
out what the conflict is about. There's a remarkable
example of deadly dull Real Conversation in RED STORM
RISING, by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond.
The book opens with an exciting sequence in which
Islamic terrorists destroy a Soviet oil refinery,
drastically cutting Soviet oil production (and
eventually leading up to World War III). Meanwhile,
over in the US, we meet Our Hero, Bob Toland, who
hasn't quite figured out that he's the star of an
international bestseller yet. Bob is engaging in some
truly wretched Real Conversation, which I quote here
verbatim:
Bob Toland frowned at his spice cake. I shouldn't be
eating dessert, the intelligence analyst reminded
himself. But the National Security Agency commissary
served this only once a week, and spice cake was his
favorite, and it was only about two hundred calories.
That was all. An extra five minutes on the exercise
bike when he got home.
"What did you think of that article in the paper, Bob?"
a co-worker asked.
"The oil-field thing?" Toland rechecked the man's
security badge. He wasn't cleared for satellite
intelligence. "Sounds like they had themselves quite a
fire."
"You didn't see anything official on it?"
"Let's just say that the leak in the papers came from a
higher security clearance than I have."
"Top Secret--Press?" Both men laughed.
"Something like that. The story had information that I
haven't seen," Toland said, speaking the truth, mostly.
The fire was out, and people in his department had been
speculating on how Ivan had put it out so fast.
"Shouldn't hurt them too bad. I mean, they don't have
mi11ions of people taking to the road on summer
vacations, do they?"
"Not hardly. How's the cake?"
"Not bad." Toland smiled, already wondering if he
needed the extra time on the bike.
Randy sez: Oh, Lordy, Lordy! Spice cake? Exercise
bike? Where is a mean old editor with a blue pencil
when you need him? This Real Conversation sucks, to be
perfectly blunt. There is no Dialogue here, no
conflict. There is a hint that maybe Toland knows
something that he's not telling, but it's so far
submerged that it's useless.
I remember reading this book when it first came out.
The first scenes read so fast I could hardly flip the
pages fast enough. Then I got to this scene and WHACK!
It felt like I was swimming in sand. There is NOTHING
go on here! Spice cake? An overweight NSA analyst?
Journalist jokes? Please, Tom, give us some Dialogue
here!
And what's the cure for this scene, you may be asking?
Simple. Cut it. There is no hope for a scene like this.
No conflict. No opposing interests. No nothing. Neither
character really gives a rip about this dialogue, so
why should the reader? Scissor this monstrosity right
out of the manuscript and you have a better novel.
Luckily for Tom, he already had about a billion fans
from his previous book, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Plus
this novel began with some serious zing. But what if
this was Tom's first novel? What if he'd started out
the book with this Real Conversation? Poor Tom would
have sunk like an Elbonian sub.
Let me say it straight. Dialogue is war. There is never
an excuse for writing Real Conversation that has no
conflict in it. Such informational tripe is not
Dialogue. Slash it.
Don't get me wrong. It's perfectly legitimate to write
Dialogue that ALSO transmits information or reveals
character or backstory or the story world. But all
Dialogue had better have conflict in it FIRST. That
means two characters talking who have opposing
interests.
If you look at the Real Conversation above, you see
that that's exactly what's missing. Bob Toland's
interest is the spice cake. (And how pitiful is that?)
The unnamed co-worker's interest is to make small talk
about the fire, which he doesn't think is serious. (And
how much more pitiful is that?) These are different
interests, but they are not in opposition. No conflict.
No Dialogue.
If you're Tom Clancy, you can get away with this
(except that you will still be mocked in the Advanced
Fiction Writing E-zine if you write this badly). But
you aren't Tom. Neither am I. Write Dialogue, not Real
Conversation.
If you have my Fiction 101 CD, you'll be delighted
beyond words to be reminded that I discuss the
fundamentals of Dialogue in lecture #6. If you don't
have my Fiction 101 CD, I invite you to listen to
lecture #1 for free on my web site:
http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=214702
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3) Those Pesky Back Pains
I remember the day I sold my first book. It was a
horribly hot day in August, 1998. I was scrunched up in
my miserable little Dilbertesque cubicle at work trying
to get my face closer to the tepid stream coming out of
an unambitious air conditioner.
My phone rang.
I almost didn't have the energy to pick it up.
Good think I did. It was an editor calling to say that
her publishing committee had met that day and voted to
publish my book! Yow! Now there's a cure for lethargy!
I was so happy, gravity just about lost its grip on me,
because I was floating about three feet off the ground
all afternoon. I had been writing my guts out for more
then 10 years, and now I had finally joined The Club! I
was an author.
After about an hour of breathing Cloud Nine Air,
reality whacked me in the face. They needed the full
manuscript in 9 weeks. And of course I'd told the
editor that wouldn't be a problem. This was a
nonfiction book of maybe 45000 words and I already had
four whole chapters written. I didn't think it would be
hard to finish the other fourteen. I figured it would
be a piece of cake. And it should have been.
The only problem was that my back was killing me that
month. You probably know the feeling--it's like having
3000 wolverines gnawing on your lower back. You're
afraid you're going to die. Then you're afraid you
AREN'T going to die.
The reason my back was feeling whacked was that my
cheapskate employer had given all us peons some really
crummy chairs. They looked deceptively like nice
expensive office chairs, but they were cheap knockoffs.
Oh sure, they had actual armrests. They even had wheels
which actually rotated--sometimes. But there was no
height adjustment. None. Nor would the things tilt. Nor
would they swivel.
My chair was too short for me and there was NO WAY TO
RAISE IT. I could have eased the stress on my back by
leaning back, but there was NO WAY TO TILT IT. And
every time I had to turn in my chair, my back got
twisted, because THE CHAIR DIDN'T SWIVEL.
I think I can make a strong theological case that there
is specially reserved seating in hell for employers who
buy lousy chairs for their employees. After two years
of working in that chair, my back was a mess. And now I
had to get a book finished in nine weeks.
There is only one way to write a book. You come home
from your day job after sitting in a chair for eight
hours. Then you sit in your own chair and you type at a
computer for a bunch more hours and you hope to get a
few thousand words of usable text. You keep doing that
day after day after day until the thing is done. Then
you sit in that same chair and you make revisions for
hours every day until the second draft is done. Then
you repeat for as many drafts as you need. In my case,
five drafts is about right.
When your back is aching, two hours in a chair feels
like two weeks. Five drafts feels like fifty. But when
you've got a contract, you do what you gotta do.
What I did was talk to the Back Pain Expert, a guy
named Tom who sat in the cube next to mine at work. Tom
was a guy in great physical shape who had somehow
messed up his back about a year earlier. I don't know
how, but he did, and he spent months out of commission.
When my back started hurting, Tom had recently returned
to work and was doing well. So I asked him if there was
some special exercise I could do to make my back feel
better. I was using ice and aspirin, but I didn't want
to just numb the pain--I wanted to strengthen my back.
I wanted it now. To be honest, I wanted some magic.
Tom said just one word: "Walk."
That just made me mad. I wanted a vampire killer and I
wanted it yesterday. "Tom, I don't think you
understand. I need a SPECIAL exercise. My back's
killing me."
Tom gave me that same kind of exasperated look that I
give to writers who want a shortcut to fame and glory.
"The best exercise you can possibly do for your back is
to walk. Every day. Several times a day."
I was desperate, so I did what Tom told me, even though
it sounded a little too simple. Every hour, on the
hour, I'd get out of my nightmare chair and go take a
walk around the parking lot. It wasted about ten
minutes out of every hour, but I did it. And yes, I let
the company pay for those ten minutes of my time,
because they were the ones who wrecked my back by
paying fifty bucks for a crappy chair when a hundred
bucks would have bought a decent one. (Wasn't that a
great way to save some money? Oooh, great thinking,
Bossbert!)
I also took walk breaks while writing. Every hour, I'd
get up and walk around the block. If I could have
figured out a way to get Bossbert to pay for that, I
would have.
It kept me going. Nine weeks later, I had the fifth
draft of my book ready to FedEx out to my publisher.
And I had my back in working order again. It wasn't
quick or magic or easy but it worked.
One of the first things I bought with the advance money
for my book was a brand new chair for home. Not just
any old adjustable chair. I bought a Herman Miller
Aeron II chair that goes for a list price of around
$1300. It's one of the best chairs money can buy. I
found a place that sold it at discount for only $900.
My Bossbert at work made some noises about buying me a
decent chair, but he never did. So I kept walking every
day, on company time, to keep my back from going out
again. Apparently, Bossbert's motto was "Economy at any
cost!"
Not too long after that, I got an offer to work at
another company. They offered me a bit more money. The
work was a bit more interesting. I asked for just one
extra perk. "There's this great chair that I bought for
my home office. I want one just like it for work."
The new boss smiled. "You come to work for me and I'll
buy you any chair you want."
Then I told him how much a Herman Miller Aeron II chair
cost.
He paid up without blinking an eye.
There was a man who knew that a thousand bucks for a
chair is a small price to pay to keep an employee
healthy.
I don't work for a boss anymore. I work for me. And I
take a walking break every day. That and the chair are
small investments for keeping my back in shape.
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4) Tiger Marketing--When Google Treats You Wrong
Not long ago, Colleen Coble, one of my writer friends,
discovered that Google was mistreating her. No, they
weren't directing searchers for "miserable failure" to
her site. (The top result for that is George Bush's bio
page.)
But Google was definitely misrepresenting Colleen and
she wanted it to stop.
If you typed the words "Colleen Coble" into Google,
Colleen's web site came up as the top entry. That was
fine. But the description of her site was all wrong. It
read like this:
"Historical and Contemporary romance author, who often
writes with a touch of intrigue. Photo album, experts,
newsletter and schedule of appearances."
Well now, isn't that bland???? Gack. Colleen felt that
it was a horrible, wretched description of her site.
And it didn't describe her well either. Colleen writes
romantic suspense for Christian readers. She doesn't
write "historical and contemporary romance." (Nothing
wrong with writing that, but it isn't what she writes.)
And what's this nonsense about "a touch of intrigue?" A
suspense writer does not want to be tarred with the
"touch of intrigue" brush. She wants to be tarred with
the "big screaming boatloads of intrigue" brush.
Colleen had no idea WHY Google was showing such a tepid
description. That paragraph does not appear anywhere on
her site. So how did Google come up with it?
And more importantly, how could Colleen make them
change it? Google is a hundred-billion-dollar
corporation. Colleen is . . . not. How could she fight
the behemoth and win?
Colleen sent out a blanket appeal for help to a number
of her writer friends. I saw at once that this was a
simple example of Tiger Marketing. Or more precisely, a
simple example of NOT Tiger Marketing. A five minute
investigation led me to the answer, which I then sent
to Colleen and our mutual circle of friends.
Colleen has graciously given me permission to tell the
whole sordid tale in today's column. Here is what I
wrote, after my five-minute investigation:
The weird thing is that this paragraph is not found
anywhere on Colleen's site. She has a number of
metatags on her site, but no DESCRIPTION metatag. And
therein lies the problem. If she had a DESCRIPTION
metatag on her site, then Google would use the
description she provides. Since she provides none,
Google has to go elsewhere. And where do they go?
Answer: Alexa.com. Check out this link:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.colleencoble.com
You'll see precisely the description given above. As I
understand it, this paragraph was written by a human
from Alexa.com who visited Colleen's web site. They
didn't necessarily get the impression she wanted them
to receive. So they wrote a generic description and
Google grabbed it.
And who is Alexa.com?
Alexa provides rankings of web sites, and it ranks
Colleen's site at 2,775,664. The ranking is like on
Amazon, where a lower number is better. Colleen's
ranking is typical of a personal web site that has not
been optimized for Google and doesn't draw a lot of
traffic.
So what can Colleen do to get the description she wants
on Google?
Simple. She needs a DESCRIPTION metatag on the top
page of her web site that would look like this:
This is simple and gives the essence of Colleen. Of
course, she could probably write a better sentence than
this, but not MUCH better. It's pretty good, and far
better than Alexa's.
By the way, speaking of various kinds of metatags,
another common kind is the KEYWORDS metatag. It is
tempting for novice webmasters to lard in a bunch of
KEYWORDS metatags so that Google will find them more
easily. This is a mistake. The more KEYWORDS metatags on
a page, the less Google thinks any one of them is
relevant to the page. So you dilute the effectiveness
of all of them. It would be tempting for Colleen to
have a KEYWORDS metatag that look like this:
and on and on. (I
made up some of those keywords, by the way.)
Unfortunately, Google will look at these and decide
that Colleen doesn't stand for much of anything. This
is the Google equivalent of brand-dilution and it's a
killer.
Far better for her to have a KEYWORDS metatag that
looks like this:
(or whatever specific keyword she would
like to capture).
The thing is that Colleen has a number of pages on her
web site, and each of these can have a different
KEYWORDS metatag. On those pages, she could have
"mystery" or "sexy Christian fiction" or "dog lover" or
whatever. But only one keyword per page!
By working hard, Colleen might conceivably "own" a
keyword, meaning that somebody who Googles that keyword
would see a page on Colleen's site as the TOP result.
This is gold if you can get it, but you have to work
hard. As an example, if you Google the phrase,
"writing a novel", you'll see why I get so many
visitors every day. I "own" several keywords on
Google, and those bring me a LOT of traffic, far out of
proportion to my actual importance in the universe.
After Colleen adds in DESCRIPTION metatags and KEYWORDS
metatags on her pages, she needs to go to Google and
ask it to rescan her web site so it'll be up to date.
If she doesn't, then Google will get around to it
eventually (maybe 3 months from now) but if she does
ask, then Google will do it within days. And then her
updated metatags will be doing some good.
To do this, Colleen just has to go to the page:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
and submit her top level page (www.colleencoble.com) to
Google. Google's spider will crawl the entire site
from that page and make adjustments quickly.
That's what I wrote to Colleen on March 28, exactly a
week ago. If you Google the words "Colleen Coble"
today, you'll see a short and succinct description of
her site on the first search result:
"Best-selling novelist Colleen Coble writes romantic
suspense for Christian readers."
Colleen has beaten the mighty Google into submission!
Hooray for Colleen for taking action! And hooray for
Google for responding so quickly! They both win.
Isn't it COOL when this Tiger Marketing stuff actually
WORKS?
By the way, Colleen's web site was named last year by
Writer's Digest as one of the Top Ten Writer's Web
Sites. What I like about her site is that it captures
her personality so well. Check it out:
http://www.colleencoble.com
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5) Fiction Writing Info on the Web
From time to time, I run across web sites that are
particularly good at supplying information on the craft
of writing. I like to mention those sites in this
e-zine. I don't receive any money from these folks for
mentioning their sites. I do it because you might find
them useful. This month, I'd like to highlight TWO
sites:
First is Moira Allen's web site:
http://www.writing-world.com/
On this site, you'll find a wide range of articles on
writing for both magazines and books, both fiction and
nonfiction. Moira also has an electronic newsletter
which you can sign up for on her site. Check it out!
Second are Bruce Cook's two related web sites:
http://www.author-me.com
http://www.authorme.com
These sites are international communities for writers.
Their mission is to offer hope to writers who go
unnoticed in the publishing world. You can post your
fiction, nonfiction, or poetry on these sites for
anyone in the world to read. Bruce gets close to
100,000 visitors per MONTH on his web sites. Find out
what they're all coming for!
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6) What's New At AdvancedFictionWriting.com
As I've been saying for the last few months, I'm
relocating to the Portland area with my family. Our
house is now officially for sale and we had our first
open house on Sunday. Our realtor says it was very
successful. I wasn't there, because . . . somebody had
to get the cats out of the house so they wouldn't spit
out hairballs on potential buyers. That "somebody" was
me. To be honest, our house looks too doggone nice to
sell and I really hope nobody buys it because I want to
stay.
In the few seconds I have every day that aren't related
to moving, I've been teaching my daughters the art and
craft of Tiger Marketing. My plan is to make
entrepreneurs out of the little brats so they can pay
their OWN way through college.
I'm hoping to find time in the coming month to (gasp)
actually write something. But I make no promises.
See ya next month with more stuff on the craft and
marketing of your fiction!
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7) Steal This E-zine!
This E-zine is free, and I personally guarantee it's
worth 76 times what you paid for it. I invite you to
"steal" it, but only if you do it nicely . . .
Distasteful legal babble: This E-zine is copyright
Randall Ingermanson, 2006. But you knew that, because
every flippin' word anyone writes is copyrighted the
instant they write it. Even if you scrawl your writing
in blood on old toilet paper, you own that sucker.
Extremely tasteful postscript: I encourage you to
email this E-zine to any writer friends of yours who
might benefit from it. I only ask that you email the
whole thing, not bits and pieces. That way, they'll
know where to go to get their own free subscription, if
they want one.
If you email it to a friend, remind them tactfully that
when they sign up they should name YOU as the person
who referred them. When my subscriber count reaches
5000, I'll hold a drawing for a brand-new iPod Nano.
Your name will be entered once for each subscriber you
referred. Subscribers who name themselves as referrers
unfortunately don't get credit, so they might as well
be honest and admit it was you!
At the moment, there are two places to subscribe:
My personal web site: http://www.RSIngermanson.com
My new web site: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com
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Randy Ingermanson
Publisher, Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine
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