Archive for the ‘My Writing’ Category

What Is a Podcastable Story?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Greg Van Eekhout asks:

Thoughts on what kinds of sto­ries trans­late well to pod­casts and what kinds don’t?

First of all, full dis­claimer. I am the man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, the sci­ence fic­tion audio pod­cast. I’ve been doing this job for about 3 or 4 months now, and I am by no means an expert on to topic. I can only com­ment as to my per­sonal tastes here. I reserve the right to change my opin­ion as I learn more about my job and what seems to work.

I can talk much more eas­ily about what does not work well in pod­casts. Here are a few things:

  • Typographic weird­ness, of the sort you would see in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
  • Fiction that plays with for­mat­ting in some way–fake news report, branch­ing dia­logue, and so on. This would be great if we pro­duced audio dra­mas, but Escape Pod approaches pro­duc­tion in a very straigh­for­ward nar­ra­tive fash­ion. I’d love to do more radio-​​drama style read­ings, and we have one com­ing up that was recorded live by Steve Eley at a con­ven­tion. But the pro­duc­tion that goes into a reg­u­lar episode is dif­fi­cult enough.
  • Stories that have a lot of very short scenes and lots of jump­ing around in time.

The last one is the one I’m least cer­tain about, but I find that sto­ries that go back and forth in time can be a bit more con­fus­ing in audio for­mat. On the page, it seems eas­ier to orga­nize the events into a chrono­log­i­cal order, but when lis­ten­ing to a story, it is harder to do this. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but it’s def­i­nitely some­thing I pay atten­tion to.

Okay, so what works par­tic­u­larly well? Here are some gen­eral ideas:

  • A strong, unique per­spec­tive or voice. It’s my expe­ri­ence that some of the most pop­u­lar EP episodes have been from a very unique char­ac­ter, such as a bomb dog or the AI that resides in a soldier’s hel­met. These sto­ries are often in first per­son per­spec­tive. That’s not to say that I find first per­son bet­ter than third per­son. First per­son cou­pled with a really unique and orginal voice stands out very well. Like it does in reg­u­lar fiction.
  • All the other, usual things that make a story good.

Other than the few things I think don’t work that are spe­cific to the audio for­mat, I use basi­cally the same cri­te­ria for select­ing a story in audio that I would for select­ing in print. I have some restric­tions unique to Escape Pod, such as length. I can’t tell you how many times I remem­ber what I think would be a great story fo rthe pod­cast, only to look it up and find out that it was a novella. It’s some­thing I’d like to see us do more of in the future, but I’d want to pay more for them and pos­si­bly seri­al­ize them over the course of two or more episodes. It’s some­thing I think about a lit­tle when I have time.

If you lis­ten to pod­cast fic­tion, what do you think? What kinds of sto­ries really work well for you in audio? Try to focus on the things you think work par­tic­u­larly well, and cite spe­cific exam­ples if you like. This will make up for my rather under­de­vel­oped list. If you have some­thing crit­i­cal to say about a par­tic­u­lar pod­cast story, share it on the forums over at the ‘cast or send it to our feed­back email, as a favor to me, please.

Some Reprint Sales

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve sold a pod­cast reprint of “Storm Comes A’Callin’” to Drabblecast, fol­low­ing up on the 3-​​flash piece sales over there, and I’ve also sold a reprint of “Arties Aren’t Stupid”  to Hub Magazine.

I sup­pose it’s about time I get some new work out there, eh?

The Dancing Guy Stands For All That We Do

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a video mak­ing the rounds.  It’s not shot very well, and it might even make you a lit­tle motion sick, but if you can make it through it, I think it’s really worth it.   Try to get at least halfway through.  Here’s the video.  More after you watch it.

Here’s my expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this in a nut shell:

For me at least, the guy looked like a fool!  What a crazy way of danc­ing, and danc­ing all by your­self like that?  How embarass­ing!  I could never do tha–oh wow, some­one joined in. Hey,  here comes another.  Holy Shit.

I felt a shiver run down my spine when I real­ized what I was watch­ing.  Then I started to grin.  And I’m still grin­ning about it.  This is one of the more uplift­ing things I have seen in a long time.  I’ve been pon­der­ing why that is.

It feels like a metaphor for every cre­ative endeav­our.   Writing espe­cially, or blog­ging.  You’re on your own at first.  Dancing all by your­self in front of an indif­fer­ent crowd.   It’s harder than hell to get over the feel­ing that what you’re doing could be just a lit­tle ridicu­lous.  You keep doing it though, because it feels good.

Then some­one starts pay­ing atten­tion.  Your friends, maybe.  Then their friends.  You accrete fans, or fol­low­ers, or read­ers, what­ever.  The next thing you know, you’ve started that.  It’s a brave damned thing to do, and it’s never struck me until watch­ing this just now.

I hope this moti­vates you like it has me.  Keep danc­ing.  Just keep danc­ing,  no mat­ter what.

Expedition Update

Wow, I have some amaz­ing friends.  We’ve raised $160 towards my pho­to­graphic expe­di­tion to Yellowstone.  Proving that I am the AntiChrist or some­thing, I now only need to raise $666.   Please con­sider throw­ing a few bucks in the pot. The pic­tures are SO going to be worth it.

Charles Tan: Leveraging Book Review Blogs and Interviews for Promotion

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Charles Tan  has posted a great essay on using book review blogs for pro­mo­tion. This is really well thought-​​out and rea­soned.  For example:

People in gen­eral (unless they’re your die-​​hard fans or you’re Oprah) don’t value your opin­ions about your own work. That’s why writ­ing a review of your own book is frowned upon. Or why the opin­ions of a hun­dred strangers in Amazon have more bear­ing than your own, no mat­ter how tal­ented or knowl­edge­able you might be com­pared to them. Or sim­ply why blurbs are used in pro­mo­tion, and why they don’t come from your­self or your mom.

This gen­er­al­iza­tion is what fuels book reviews and inter­views (whether print or online). It’s one thing to be fea­tured in your own site, it’s another to be fea­tured else­where. This also pre­vents most authors from con­duct­ing inter­views with them­selves (it’s not quite taboo and some have actu­ally done it but for the most part, it’s not practiced).

If you’re a nov­el­ist with a book you’re try­ing to pro­mote, I heartily sug­gest you give this arti­cle a read.

A Writing Observation from the Glee Pilot

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hulu has the pilot up for a new tele­vi­sion show, Glee, that I noticed some buzz about on Twitter. This past week, Sarah and I gave it a watch and really enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I’m not that inter­ested in musi­cals usu­ally, the show man­aged to grab me with its really unusual cast of characters.

Nearly every char­ac­ter has some­thing weird and unlik­able about them. No every­men or women in this show. Our teacher who restarts the Glee Club, osten­si­bly our main pro­tag­o­nist, is in a ter­ri­ble mar­riage, longs for the days when he was in Glee Club in high school, and in order to con­vince a teen to join the club, plants drugs in his locker and pre­tends to bust him, offer­ing him a choice of deten­tion or Glee Club. All of the teach­ers are sim­i­larly flawed, but with lik­able traits as well.

Some of the stu­dent cast are fairly two dimen­sional, but the two teen lead char­ac­ters are very mixed as well. The girl is lit­er­ally insane, but sym­pa­thetic for being picked on so badly by her class­mates (despite hav­ing accused the for­mer Glee Club teacher of being gay because he didn’t give her the part she wanted). The boy is a jock who par­tic­i­pates in tor­tur­ing the teens lower on the social hier­ar­chy of high school, includ­ing the other kids in the Glee Club.

As I watched the show, com­pletely riv­eted, I asked myself what was it about the show that had my atten­tion, and I decided it had to be these will­ing­ness to make its lead char­ac­ter com­plete ass­holes. Most sit­coms would never dare to make char­ac­ters so bor­der­line unlik­able. The last TV show I can remem­ber doing this well was Arrested Development. What is it about Fox that they’re will­ing to do this? Say what you will about these guys, but they gen­er­ally are will­ing to take risks on shows that none of the other net­works will?

I think it’s pos­si­ble that sim­ply unlik­able char­ac­ters would not be enough to get my atten­tion. It’s that com­bi­na­tion of sit­com with unlik­able char­ac­ters that seems to work here. The show plays with your expec­ta­tions about sit­com char­ac­ters, and while it’s obvi­ously not the first to do so, I thought it was inter­est­ing, and that I would share it with you all.

What do you think about this tech­nique? It seems like it would be much harder to pull off in a short story, where the pres­sure to have a sym­pa­thetic pro­tag­o­nist right away is fairly high. Do you know of any sto­ries or nov­els that suceeded with this tac­tic for you? Mentioning your own sto­ries if they’re pub­lished is cool too. I’d like to study the idea more.

I’ll be talk­ing quite a bit about writ­ing for the screen this week. Up later (no pun intended) will be some lessons about writ­ing that I’ve gleaned from watch­ing Pixar films, includ­ing the lat­est, er, Up. I con­sider Pixar to be some of the best sto­ry­tellers work­ing in any medium, and I think they have a lot to teach us about telling broadly acces­si­ble sto­ries.  If you’re won­der­ing if you should go see Up, and you liked ear­lier films, don’t even hes­i­tate.  See the next show you can make time for.  It’s that good.

Topic for Discussion

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have run out of time to write a post for today, so here’s a topic for discussion:

Amish mad scientists.

Talk amongst yourselves.

On Recreating the Shower Creativity Surge (minus water)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I know I am not the only writer who finds that inpira­tion oftens strikes in the bath. I’ve had a num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions with fel­low writ­ers about how strange it seems that some of our best ideas come to us at that moment. I can think of a cou­ple of the­o­ries as to why this happens:

  • The time of the day that you shower is par­tic­u­larly con­du­sive to cre­ative think­ing. I shower first thing in the morn­ing, and I know my cre­ative brain is a lit­tle bit stronger when the ana­lyt­i­cal brain is still swip­ing away the pre­vi­ous night’s cob­webs and puz­zling over what the hell those rab­bits on stilts were doing in that last dream.
  • The white noise sound gen­er­ated by the shower puts us into a par­tic­u­lar brain wave state or something.
  • The absence of dis­trac­tion from elec­tron­ics and media and every­thing allows us to actu­ally think freely. Personally, it is the only time in the day that I am not inter­act­ing with some kind of elec­tronic device. If I’m not on the com­puter, I’m watch­ing TV, or read­ing a book, and my iPhone is never more than a reach away. Basically, dis­trac­tions abound.

It is hard to say which of these three aspects are most directly respon­si­ble for that cre­ative burst, so I am going to try and recre­ate the expe­ri­ence with a few mod­i­fi­ca­tions to make it eas­ier to actu­ally cap­ture the ideas that come from it. One of the biggest prob­lems i have with hav­ing inspiri­a­tion then is that I can’t remem­ber it long enough to get it down on the com­puter or paper. Someone sug­gested putting in some kind of mark­ers or bath­room crayons in the tub so that you can write it out on the wall, but as I rent, I don’t want to deal with any poten­tial dis­as­ters there. So:

  1. Roll out of bed first thing and into the office. Turn on a white noise gen­er­at­ing pro­gram, or a long record­ing of rain.
  2. Turn off the inter­net con­nec­tion. Load up a full screen wordprocessor
  3. See what happens.

I will be attempt­ing this exper­i­ment in the next cou­ple of weeks, and will report back when I’ve gath­ered enough data to deter­mine whether it’s help­ful. If you want to join in, please do so. More peo­ple attempt­ing to do this could result in a bet­ter per­spec­tive on the phenomenon.

Photo by Flickr user Turyddu

Writers Should Not Blog About Writing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

We’re writ­ers, so we should write about every­thing, right? Not if we care about main­tain­ing an audi­ence, we shouldn’t.  Despite our deep-​​seated belief that every thing that hap­pens to us and every thought we have is inter­est­ing to oth­ers, some things writ­ers like to blog about are just plain bor­ing or, worse, por­tray them in a neg­a­tive light.  I’ve learned most of these because I’ve done them and dri­ven off read­ers with them, so don’t think I’m set­ting these down as reminders for oth­ers.  They apply to me dou­bly so.  They include:

  • Your rejec­tion let­ters.  You can use them to illus­trate a point, but blog­ging “rejected by F&SF, 8 days” isn’t very inter­est­ing.  Also, it makes you look kinda like a schlub when your blog is full of rejec­tion let­ters.  Your read­ers only need to know when you have new work com­ing out. They don’t care how many agents turned you down, or how many rejec­tions you gath­ered along the way before the sale.
  • Your word count for the day.  Good for you, seri­ously.  I know some peo­ple use this as a kind of social rein­force­ment, but per­son­ally, I can’t stand look­ing at a blog and see­ing noth­ing but a long list of short posts talk­ing about what you wrote that day.
  • Your favorite snip­pet from your work-​​in-​​progress.  Out of con­text, it isn’t nearly as neat or inter­est­ing as you think it is.  Publish the story and we’ll bask in the glow of your genius then.
  • Grammar.  Snore.
  • In gen­eral, the craft and daily tra­vails of being a writer.

I firmly believe that writ­ers should be inter­est­ing for some­thing other than being a writer.  It’s a rare indi­vid­ual who can be scin­til­lat­ing to the gen­eral pub­lic while talk­ing about the sausage-​​making of writ­ing.*     If you’re a writer, surely you’re pas­sion­ate about some­thing other than writ­ing.  Blog about what­ever that is.

Look at it this way–who is your tar­get audi­ence?  The sub­ject of writ­ing is inter­est­ing to other writ­ers and aspir­ing writ­ers.  They are not nec­es­sar­ily the read­ers you want, because there are not very many of them.  If your goal is to col­lect a fol­low­ing greater than a few hun­dred peo­ple, then you need a sub­ject of broader interest–even just the genre that you write in is more inter­est­ing than the act of writ­ing itself.

Clearly I am not fol­low­ing the advice of the last point here. I write about writ­ing for a good rea­son, and that’s because my free­lance busi­ness caters to writ­ers.   Writers are my tar­get audi­ence for these posts, so I am com­fort­able with it.  As I com­plete my busi­ness web­site, these kinds of advice posts will tran­si­tion to that site, and my per­sonal blog will become more, well, personal.

*Exempt from this advice are writ­ers with stag­ger­ing read­er­ships, such as  Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi.

ETA:

Nick Mamatas has this to say in the com­ments, and it’s a strong point:

The sub­ject of writ­ing is inter­est­ing to other writ­ers and aspir­ing writ­ers. They are not nec­es­sar­ily the read­ers you want, because there are not very many of them.

Crazy talk. There are mil­lions of aspir­ing writ­ers, and thus an indus­try to ser­vice them—several monthly mag­a­zines, a plethora of how-​​to books, sem­i­nars and con­fer­ences, over 100 degree-​​granting pro­grams in the sub­ject, etc.

Aspiring writ­ers also tend to read more widely (and deeply) than non-​​aspirants. Aspiring writ­ers are cer­tainly a large audi­ence worth cultivating.

So I  took this advice much fur­ther than I should have.  And I should point out that my advice was aimed squarely not at writ­ers who blog as a kind of per­sonal jour­nal.  I aim it at peo­ple who are look­ing to delib­er­ately and method­i­cally grow an audi­ence.  If you’re writ­ing a per­sonal jour­nal style blog, but want to use your blog to grow an audi­ence, I thnk you need to think about tran­si­tion­ing the kind of con­tent you post.

On Getting Your Content in Front of People

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Smashing Magazine, a great web­site deal­ing with all things web design, had a really great arti­cle the other day titled “10 Ways to Put Your Content in Front of More People.”

Not all of these ideas are applic­a­ble to everyone–some are quite specif­i­cally techy.  Most cre­atives don’t really need an Adobe Air app on someone’s desk­top, and they don’t need to cre­ate an API or wid­get (although wid­gets are often pro­duced for authors by larger pub­lish­ers.  I don’t know that they get used by fans much, but they do get made).

However, the basics, like Facebook, Twitter, guest posts, and more are all very applic­a­ble meth­ods.  Using mul­ti­me­dia is still some­what rare in the author cir­cles I fre­quent, so it’s open for some real inno­va­tion.  Book trail­ers are just a start.  I’m work­ing with one client on some­thing that takes advan­tage of all these options.  More on that when it’s done.

My approach for my author clients is that any read­ers of their online media pres­ence are poten­tial read­ers of their books.  But I don’t have them treat their online pres­ence as a giant adver­tis­ing plat­form for those books.  No, the key to get­ting more peo­ple to look at your con­tent, above all else, is to write com­pelling con­tent.

There are tricks to mak­ing your web con­tent more com­pelling when it’s in a blog style for­mat.  The specifics of those tech­niques I save for my con­sult­ing clients.  In gen­eral, pay atten­tion to the kinds of posts that go viral, get retweeted and linked all over.  And match those post styles, but within your own niche.

Of sec­ondary impor­tance, after the con­tent, is estab­lish­ing a good niche and thus an iden­tity.   If you main­tain a niche, cre­ate a solid iden­tity (and thus some author­ity), and write in a link­able and web-​​friendly for­mat about com­pelling sub­jects, you’ll grow read­ers like crazy.

As many blogs out there as there are, peo­ple are always look­ing for some­thing new that grabs them by the throat.  Something that edu­cates them, or titil­i­ates. There are a lot of ways you can be com­pelling.  Hell, we all strug­gle with that in the non-​​online types of writ­ing we have to do.  But it’s not enough to just blog about your day and your word count, or your lat­est pho­tos.   It’s fine if you don’t mind what your audi­ence size is online, but if you’re inter­ested in build­ing a fol­low­ing, you have to take it further.

That’s what I’ve been try­ing to do with these posts, appear­ances on pod­casts, and so on.   And to be nice about all of it.  I gen­uinely enjoy help­ing peo­ple with this stuff, and shar­ing what I’ve learned.  So the extra read­ers are really just a bonus on top of  the main motivation.