_______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ The Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Publisher: Randy Ingermanson ("the Snowflake guy") Motto: "A Vision for Excellence" Date: June 1, 2005 Issue: Volume 1, Number 4 Home Pages: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com http://www.Ingermanson.com Circulation: 1486 writers, each of them creating a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ What's in This Issue 1) Welcome to the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine! 2) Improving On The Masters, Part I 3) Improving On The Masters, Part II 4) Improving On The Masters, Part III 5) An Interview With Lee Silber 6) What's New At AdvancedFictionWriting.com 7) Steal This E-zine! _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 1) Welcome to the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine! Those of you who have joined in the past month (almost 300 of you are new for this issue), welcome to the e-zine! You can find past issues of all the previous issues on my web site at: http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/html/afwezine.html This issue spends a LOT of time focusing on the craft of writing fiction. So much time, in fact, that I've decided not to do my usual Tiger Marketing column this month. I have plenty to say, but I don't want to wear you out. (OK, I'll be honest--I don't want to wear me out either.) As it is, this issue is slightly longer than usual. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 2) Improving On The Masters, Part I Last month, I gave away one of my biggest secrets in the craft of writing fiction. I spilled the beans on MRUs. What's an MRU? It does sound hideous, doesn't it? Like one of those "Meals Ready to Eat" that the military gives to soldiers. "MRU" stands for "Motivation-Reaction Unit" and the term was invented by Dwight Swain, one of the great teachers of fiction way back in the 1960s. I still swear by Swain's book, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which I consider one of the great writing books of all time. HOWEVER, Swain was not thinking when he named these things. "MRU" just isn't an exciting name. If you missed last month's article, now would be a good time to go read it or to check out the article on my web site on "Writing the Perfect Scene" at http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/perfect_scene.html As a VERY brief reminder, an MRU has two parts, a "Motivation" and a "Reaction". The Motivation is objective and external. The Reaction is subjective and mostly internal to your Point of View character. What I'd like to do this month is to pick some random scenes from some of my favorite novels and see if we can "improve" the MRUs. This is risky business. Can we really improve on masters of the art of writing like Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, and Michael Crichton? We'll see . . . As a first example, I'm going to pick a random page in Tom Clancy's latest novel, The Teeth of the Tiger (hardback edition). OK, turning to a random page, I find a nice sequence on page 15, in which an FBI agent, Dominic Caruso, is searching for a young girl who's been kidnaped. There's a report that the suspect may be driving a white van. Caruso sees a van on a secluded lane near an isolated house and goes to investigate. Before he does, of course he checks in with his boss, Ellis, by cell phone. That's where we'll pick up the action. For convenience, I'll number the paragraphs. We pick up right after Dominic Caruso interrupts his boss. His boss responds: 1 "Yeah, Dominic?" 2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door." 3 "You want backup?" 4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger that." 5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes away. Stand by," Ellis advised. 6 "Roger, standing by." 7 But a little girl's life was on the line . . . 8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of the sight lines from the nearest windows. That's when time stopped. 9 He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the scream. It was an awful, shrill sound, like someone looking at Death himself. His brain processed the information, and he suddenly found that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky, but in his hands even so. It had been a woman's scream, he realized, and something just went click inside his head. Randy sez: This sequence is vintage Clancy. He's set things up nicely, so the action here is ready to hop into high gear. Clancy doesn't waste space on dialogue tags in the first couple of paragraphs, and he doesn't need to, since we know who's talking. Let's walk through these in Super-Slo-Mo, with my commentary after every paragraph: 1 "Yeah, Dominic?" Paragraph 1 is a Motivation, since it's Ellis speaking and our POV character is Caruso. Note that this is objective and external--it's exactly what a tape recorder would hear. It's also exactly what Caruso hears, but Clancy doesn't tell us that. He doesn't need to. It's obvious from the context. 2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door." Paragraph 2 is Caruso's Reaction. Remember that a Reaction can have up to three parts--a Feeling (can begin within a tenth of a second), a Reflexive Action (takes between a tenth of a second and a half second), and a Rational Action (takes longer than half a second to start). This Reaction skips the Feeling and the Reflexive Action and goes straight to the Rational Action (a sentence that Caruso says). 3 "You want backup?" Paragraph 3 is a new Motivation. Again, it's a very simple Motivation, with no space wasted on a dialogue tag. These short, one-sentence paragraphs give the reader the feeling of fast action, which is what you want in a scene like this. Clancy is doing great so far. 4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger that." Paragraph 4 is a Reaction in two parts. Clancy tells us that Caruso takes a second to think. Then he shows us the result--the Rational Speech. The purpose of the "telling" sentence here is two-fold: It gives us a tag so we won't get lost and forget who's speaking. It also slightly slows down the action, which is the right thing to do. Caruso is about to go into a man's house (and will end up killing the kidnaper in cold blood.) Clancy needs to show that he's proceeding rationally here. 5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes away. Stand by," Ellis advised. Paragraph 5 is a new Motivation with some nice FBI lingo in the first sentence. This is what Clancy is good at. He trips up a little bit in the second sentence by using a dialogue tag when none is really needed, and a poor one at that. Most writing teachers will tell you that "said" is the least obtrusive dialogue tag. Clancy seems to love anything but the word "said". Here he has Ellis "advising". In other places, he'll use "questioned", "raged", "insisted", "philosophized", etc. All of these are worse than "said". Better still would be an action tag, or nothing at all. 6 "Roger, standing by." Paragraph 6 is Caruso's Reaction, and as in all the previous Reactions, it's strictly Rational. This is typical in action scenes. What comes next is interior monologue, the first we've seen in this sequence: 7 But a little girl's life was on the line . . . Paragraph 7 feels a little abrupt. Why? Because it's a continuation of the Reaction begun in Paragraph 6, but it's not really a Reaction to anything, not even the passage of time. In fact, Caruso is presumably still holding his cell phone. It might be better for him to put it away, which would be an objective action that would allow a slight passage of time that would perform the same function as a Motivation. 8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of the sight lines from the nearest windows. That's when time stopped. Paragraph 8 is a continuation of the Reaction begun in Paragraph 7, and it follows naturally and logically from Paragraph 7, so there is no need for a Motivation between 7 and 8. However, note how Clancy blunders here by telegraphing what's about to happen. The final sentence in Paragraph 8 "tells" rather than "shows". Clancy informs us that time stops here, rather than letting us feel the shock of what comes next. He compounds the problem by putting the effect before the cause: 9 He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the scream. It was an awful, shrill sound, like someone looking at Death himself. His brain processed the information, and he suddenly found that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky, but in his hands even so. It had been a woman's scream, he realized, and something just went click inside his head. Paragraph 9 could have been so much better. The first clause is a Reaction (a Reflexive Action)--"He nearly jumped out of his skin"--but a Reaction to what? We don't find out until the second clause--"when he heard the scream". Never mind that "jumping out of his skin" is a cliche. When you show the effect first, the reader doesn't respond emotionally, because there is nothing to respond TO. So this paragraph is a mix of a Reaction, followed by the Motivation that caused it, followed by more Reaction (this time Rational Action). Also, note that Clancy gives us some interior monologue "it had been a woman's scream", followed by the entirely unnecessary tag, "he realized". Let's see now if we can improve on Clancy just a wee bit by rewriting this sequence into pure MRUs, as follows. (Yes, I have a lot of chutzpah to rewrite Zillion-Selling Tom Clancy, but what the heck.) Whether the rewrite is better than the original, I leave for you to judge: 1 "Yeah, Dominic?" 2 "I'm going to knock on this guy's door." 3 "You want backup?" 4 Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative--roger that." 5 "There's a countie mountie about ten minutes away," Ellis said. "Stand by." 6 "Roger, standing by." Caruso jammed his cell phone back in his pocket and stared at the van. A little girl's life was on the line . . . 8 He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of the sight lines from the nearest windows. 9a A scream slit the morning stillness. 9b Caruso's heart slammed in his chest. The scream was an awful, shrill sound, like someone looking at Death himself. His brain processed it, and he suddenly found that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky. It had been a woman's scream, not a child's. Something went click inside his head. Randy sez: OK, I think that last paragraph is still kind of overwrought, but I don't want to mess too much with Tom's style. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 3) Improving On The Masters, Part II You may or may not agree that my surgery on Clancy's writing actually cured the patient, but I hope it's clear what procedure I used--separating out the Motivations and Reactions and fixing bad dialogue tags. Let's take another random example from Dan Brown's book, The DaVinci Code (hardback edition). Oops, Brown tends to be more careful than Clancy, and most of his MRUs are pretty good. So let's take a NONrandom sample. Let's look at his celebrated chapter in which the Truth About Mary Magdalene Comes Out. The setting is as follows. The Point of View characters is Sophie Neveu, a cryptographer who is not knowledgeable in art history. She's in the study of Sir Leigh Teabing, a scholar whose role in this scene is to fill Sophie in on Dan Brown's views on Mary Magdalene. Teabing will have help from Sophie's companion on this adventure, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. The author's goal here is to use dialogue to present a large amount of information to the reader, by having two scholars explain it all to a novice. Brown's initial presentation here is almost flawless, as he shows Langdon and Teabing giving Sophie a lesson from DaVinci's painting, The Last Supper. We pick up the action as Brown moves from his forte, medieval art history, into his weaker area, early church history: 1 Sophie weighed the information. "I'll admit, the hidden M's are intriguing, although I assume nobody is claiming they are proof of Jesus' marriage to Magdalene." 2 "No, no," Teabing said, going to a nearby table of books. "As I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record." He began pawing through his book collection. "Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor." 3 "Why?" Sophie asked. 4 "Because Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said, taking over while Teabing searched for his book, "and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible's gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood." 5 Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound edition was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. Sophie could see it contained photographs of what appeared to be magnified passages of ancient documents--tattered papyrus with handwritten text. She did not recognize the ancient language, but the facing pages bore typed translations. 6 "These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier," Teabing said. "The earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible." Randy sez: This passage is one of a large number of "informational sections" in The DaVinci Code. This particular section is one of Brown's more controversial passages, where he makes some rather bizarre claims. Let's examine the sequence paragraph by paragraph to see Brown's technique: 1 Sophie weighed the information. "I'll admit, the hidden M's are intriguing, although I assume nobody is claiming they are proof of Jesus' marriage to Magdalene." This is a Reaction to the previous paragraph, which was a long summary of the art history lesson Teabing has just given on The Last Supper. The information is speculative, and Sophie is making the obvious point that it doesn't prove anything. She has to make this point, since the reader will naturally be thinking the same thing. 2a "No, no," Teabing said, going to a nearby table of books. "As I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record." This is a new Motivation, in which Teabing concedes the point that the painting proves nothing. Then he pulls an extraordinary reverse by claiming that the marriage is a matter of historical record (a factoid that would be disputed by virtually all historians). Remarkably, Brown does not have Sophie contest this claim. The net effect is to make her seem either timid or stupid, since most readers are going to be astounded by this claim. Teabing continues on: 2b He began pawing through his book collection. "Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor." This is a continuation of the Motivation, and the sermon is now getting kind of long. Brown desperately needs to inject a little conflict in this scene by intervening here with an objection from Sophie that would give Teabing some sort of opportunity to explain himself better. 3 "Why?" Sophie asked. At last, Sophie gets a word in, but it's too little and too late to create any real conflict. This is a Reaction, but it feels remarkably tepid. It might be good to include some sort of Feeling here. Surprise at the very least, given Sophie's upbringing. 4a "Because Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said, taking over while Teabing searched for his book, "and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible's gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood." This is a Motivation, but we see no Reaction from Sophie, which is problematic. What is she feeling? What is she thinking? It might have been nice to have Sophie better educated in history. Then she could object at this point that the first-century Jewish priest and historian Josephus was ALSO not married until past the age of thirty, with nobody accusing him of being in an unnatural state of bachelorhood. The net effect here is that Langdon is bulldozing Sophie with a weak chain of logic, and she lets him get away with it. 5a Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound edition was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. This continues the Motivation with some visuals and breaks up the rather heavy dose of dialogue. The final clause might be more effective by splitting into a new paragraph, since the paragraphs in this chapter tend to be long, leaving little white space on the page. The net effect is that the chapter looks and feels like a sermon. 5b Sophie could see it contained photographs of what appeared to be magnified passages of ancient documents--tattered papyrus with handwritten text. She did not recognize the ancient language, but the facing pages bore typed translations. This is a Reaction, but it is weakened a bit since it is mostly "telling" rather than "showing". 6 "These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier," Teabing said. "The earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible." This is a new Motivation. Note the peculiar adverb "troublingly" in the dialogue. This is a rather odd usage, and gives Teabing the feel of a caricature academic. The only troubling part here are the two glaring factual errors: First, the Nag Hammadi scrolls are second century Gnostic Christian texts that most historians date several decades later than the New Testament documents. Second, the Dead Sea scrolls are not Christian documents. So it is not clear why Teabing should find it troubling that these documents don't match the Biblical gospels. Sophie apparently doesn't know this, so she gives no Reaction. I would like to revise this sequence to enhance the conflict, but I don't see an easy way to do it without giving Sophie more knowledge than a cryptographer normally has. Also, allowing Sophie to argue with Teabing and Langdon would knock the author off course as he presents a far-fetched version of history. So I'll leave the passage as it stands: a heavy-handed sermon. Brown's action scenes are a whole lot better. This passage illustrates one of the problems in constructing a storyline to fit a Theme. The thematic sections, such as this one, end up feeling contrived and a bit dull, due to lack of conflict. Better to let the Theme emerge from the story! (And, I might add, better to get an expert to check the technical parts you're not good at.) _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 4) Improving On The Masters, Part III The last scene was a fairly slow scene with lots of information being given to the reader in dialogue. Now let's look at a high-action scene from Michael Crichton's time-travel novel Timeline that also presents a lot of information in a lively and entertaining way. Marek is a history student who's been transported back to a time he knows well, 14th century France, and he's been snookered into participating in a joust. He knows what to do, but there's no guarantee he'll be able to do it, though he's a fine physical speciman. He's matched up against Sir Charles, who means to kill him. Quickly. As we pick up with the action, Marek and Charles are charging toward each other on horses and they're only eighty yards apart. Marek is the Point of View character: 1 He saw Sir Charles adjust his lance, angling it upward. He was going for the head. Or was it a feint? Jousting riders were known to change their aim at the last moment. Would he? 2 Sixty yards. 3 The head strike was risky if both riders were not aiming for it. A straight lance to the torso would impact a fraction of a second sooner than a lance to the head; it was a matter of the angles. The first impact would move both riders, making the head strike less certain. But a skilled knight might extend his lance farther forward, taking it out of counched position, to get six or eight inches of extra length, and thus the first impact. You had to have enormous arm strength to absorb the instant of impact, and control the lance as it socked back, so the horse would bear the brunt; but you were more likely to throw off the opponent's aim and timing. 4 Fifty yards. 5 Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he couched it, leaning forward in the saddle. He had more control of the lance now. Would he feint again? 6 Forty yards. 7 There was no way to know. Marek decided to go for the chest strike. He put his lance in position. He would not move it again. 8 Thirty yards. 9 He heard the thunder of hooves, the roar of the crowd. The medieval texts warned, "Do not close your eyes at the moment of impact. Keep your eyes open to make the hit." 10 Twenty yards. 11 His eyes were open. 12 Ten. 13 The bastard raised his lance. 14 He was going for the head. 15 Impact. 16 The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot. Marek felt a pain in his left shoulder, stabbing upward and hard. He rode on to the end of the course, dropped his shattered lance, extended his hand out for another. Randy sez: OK, let's walk through this, play by play. Crichton uses those one-sentence paragraphs very effectively to count down the time to impact. Each one plays the role of a Motivation. 1 He saw Sir Charles adjust his lance, angling it upward. He was going for the head. Or was it a feint? Jousting riders were known to change their aim at the last moment. Would he? This is intended to be Marek's Reaction, but it's a little muddled. Whenever an author writes "he saw", it's a telltale indicator that we have a Motivation in Reaction's clothing. The Motivation here is Sir Charles shifting his lance upward to point at Marek's head. The Reaction is the sequence of Marek's thought processes, very skillfully done. It would work a bit better to split this paragraph into two. 2 Sixty yards. This is a Motivation. Why? Because it's what a videocamera would show you. It's an objective and external view of the distance to that pesky charging horse. 3 The head strike was risky if both riders were not aiming for it. A straight lance to the torso would impact a fraction of a second sooner than a lance to the head; it was a matter of the angles. The first impact would move both riders, making the head strike less certain. But a skilled knight might extend his lance farther forward, taking it out of counched position, to get six or eight inches of extra length, and thus the first impact. You had to have enormous arm strength to absorb the instant of impact, and control the lance as it socked back, so the horse would bear the brunt; but you were more likely to throw off the opponent's aim and timing. This is a Reaction. It's all Rational Thought in Marek's head. There's a slight danger in putting a long paragraph of explanation in an action scene, since it might feel like it takes too long to read it. However, one can easily imagine all this flitting through Marek's head during a split second. Crichton needs to explain all this information to the reader so that the action that follows will be intelligible. This is the best place for it. The following paragraphs are progressively shorter, and the net effect is to make the reader feel like the horses are accelerating. 4 Fifty yards. Another short Motivation. 5 Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he couched it, leaning forward in the saddle. He had more control of the lance now. Would he feint again? This is again a mingling of Motivation and Reaction. The first two sentences are the Motivation. The last two sentences are Reaction. 6 Forty yards. Another Motivation. 7 There was no way to know. Marek decided to go for the chest strike. He put his lance in position. He would not move it again. This is again Reaction, and again it's Rational Thought followed by Rational Action. 8 Thirty yards. Another Motivation. The repeated pattern is very effective in heightening tension. 9 He heard the thunder of hooves, the roar of the crowd. The medieval texts warned, "Do not close your eyes at the moment of impact. Keep your eyes open to make the hit." This is Reaction. It is not necessary to say "he heard". Marek is reliving all his old history classes in the last split seconds before impact. 10 Twenty yards. Another Motivation. 11 His eyes were open. A Reaction, again Rational Action. The decreasing sentences jack the pace up to almost unbearable levels. 12 Ten. Another Motivation, shorter than ever. 13 The bastard raised his lance. Another Motivation, mingled with Reaction, since the word "bastard" can only be within Marek's mind. I'm sure this violates some Rule or other, but I don't see a better way to write this sequence. Motivation and Reaction are blurring together now at the speed of light. Isn't this FUN? 14 He was going for the head. This is straight Reaction, Marek's last Rational Thought before impact. Note that Crichton doesn't slow things down with emotive feeling here. That comes later . . . 15 Impact. A very nice Motivation. This is the end of a section. Just so you won't be left hanging, I include the first part of the next section: 16 The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot. Marek felt a pain in his left shoulder, stabbing upward and hard. He rode on to the end of the course, dropped his shattered lance, extended his hand out for another. The "crack of wood" is Motivation. Now, at last, we have Feeling, the pain in the left shoulder. In fast action scenes, there is often not a lot of time for Feelings. The Feeling here is followed by a sequence of Rational Actions that chew up some time and let the reader decompress a bit. It takes time to ride to the end of the course, drop a lance, and reach for another. It also takes a bit of courage. Marek has guts here, and Crichton doesn't tell you how courageous Marek is. He lets you figure that out for yourself. It's a strong scene, and I'm scared to death to try to improve it. But let's take a stab, shall we? The worst that can happen is that we'll see what goes wrong when you try to follow those Rules too closely. 1a Sir Charles adjusted his lance, angling it upward at Marek's head. 1b Was it a feint? Jousting riders were known to change their aim at the last moment. Would he? 2 Sixty yards. 3 The head strike was risky. A straight lance to the torso would strike a fraction of a second sooner than an angled lance to the head. But a skilled knight might extend his lance six or eight inches out of counched position to get the first impact. You had to have enormous arm strength to control the lance as it socked back; but you were more likely to throw off the opponent's aim and timing. 4 Fifty yards. 5a Sir Charles still held his lance high. But now he couched it, leaning forward in the saddle. 5b Marek tightened his grip on his lance. Sir Charles had more control of the lance now. Would he feint again? 6 Forty yards. 7 There was no way to know. Marek kept his lance in position for a chest strike. 8 Thirty yards. 9a The thunder of hooves. The roar of the crowd. 9b Marek desperately wanted to blink. The medieval texts warned, "Do not close your eyes at the moment of impact. Keep your eyes open to make the hit." 10 Twenty yards. 11 His eyes were open. 12 Ten. 13 The bastard raised his lance. 14 He was going for the head. 15 Impact. 16a The crack of wood sounded like a gunshot. 16b Pain lanced up Marek's left shoulder. He rode on to the end of the course, dropped his shattered lance, extended his hand out for another. Randy sez: I'm not sure whether I made it better or worse. I trimmed a few words and broke up a few paragraphs, but in the end, I have to say that Crichton earned his nickel on this one. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 5) An Interview With Lee Silber Drat it! I sent Lee my interview questions too late, and he's out of town! I'll include his interview in the next update for this e-zine, probably some time in the next couple of weeks. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 6) What's New At AdvancedFictionWriting.com I had a great time in May at a writing conference in the mountains of Colorado. But I got whacked with a bit of culture shock. They have wild elk wandering around outside! Here in San Diego, that would stop traffic in a hurry. We were up at an altitude of 8000 feet, which is enough to keep us sea-level folks breathless. And I made my kids jealous by calling home to tell them it was SNOWING. I didn't tell them that it wasn't sticking. I had six and a half hours of talking time at the conference, and I wound up writing up 173 pages of notes for my lectures. No kidding, 173 pages. I had no idea I could talk that much. The title of the course I gave was "Fiction 101", which was a lie, because it was a mix of what I'd call Fiction 101, 201, and a little bit of 301. So my next project is to disentangle the pieces into a true Fiction 101, Fiction 201, etc. What I'd really like to do is to add sound to my notes. That would fill in a lot of the details, since, believe it or not, 173 pages is still pretty sketchy. Technically, adding sound is easy; the hard part will be finding a bunch of hours to make the recording and edit it all. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 7) Steal This E-zine! This E-zine is free, and I personally guarantee it's worth ten 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, 2005. 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. At the moment, there are two such places to subscribe: My personal web site: http://www.RSIngermanson.com My new web site: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com That's all for this issue! See ya next month! Randy _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________