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Troy Kirby

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Plot Structure, Writing, and Ebook Publishing with Intent

Piecing together a good story is hard work. A lot of writers leave sections of their books dull and drab, with extraneous information that really doesn't move. And you want to have your story move.

Here is my method. It works for me, may work for you, or may not (then you are screwed to find your own method).

Story:

George is cheating on his wife with Monica, her husband surprises them, shoots himself but makes it look like George and Monica committed murder.
Monica starts to panic. George sits there, unsure what to do. Monica starts to call 911, George tells her "No, they'll think we did it."
George and Monica move dead husband's body, where they are surprised by a neighbor coming over to borrow lawn tools. They are unsure if he saw anything, but the worry of being found out is too much.
George goes home to be with his wife, doesn't take calls from Monica on his cell. She goes over to the neighbor's house to investigate what he saw, ends up poisoning him to prevent anyone from talking.

You see where this is going, right? I am building a lot of story components which will go into one segment or chapter. I do the same with every chapter, then build them out from there. Some of the segments won't work (I have no idea whether the neighbor would just be poisoned by Monica or if it would turn into a knock-out, drag-out fight that ends up with him being dead.

It does create tense. Who knows what? Can George trust Monica now that she has killed someone? Doesn't he just want to go back to his regular life with his wife and forget her issues ever happened? Perhaps he wants to tell the police, and she keeps resisting his logic that they can tell its a suicide (now that they've moved the body, they've done enough to create suspicion for them).

These components create an atmosphere of tension. Several books appear to lack any tension, even though they are good ideas.

Tension is what builds story. Without it, the lives of the characters involved are dull, boring. As one of my old professor's used to say, "listen, if that's the best a creative person like you can do, I can get some untalented guy from the diesel tech program to do it."

Words to live by, and he wasn't even talking about writing. But it holds true to what a writer is supposed to be doing. If the best you can do is something that anyone, especially a person without your skill-set can accomplish, then what makes you unique or the right person for the job?

I know a lot of people who enjoy the idea of being a comedian. They don't like the work involved. They worry about getting up on stage, talking in front of people they don't know. The worst is that they have to write, develop and hone their skills in private. There are some who choose to grab their jokes off the internet (because the jokes are winners) rather than create their own jokes and have to handle silence if people don't think they are funny.

That is the same with creative writing. It takes a lot of hard work, ideas that are garbage that you believe are fantastic that you will spend hours, days, weeks, months, years on. And even though they suck as ideas that you will eventually have to scrap, it is the bottom-out process of understanding how to develop a really good story that will separate you.

That's why I am not afraid of the ebook revolution. Thousands upon thousands will publish one crappy ebook in their lifetime. But it is the ability to separate yourself, by developing a good story, by creating memorable characters, and writing more than that one story which will separate you from the rest. If all you have in you is one story, you will not be a great writer. It is the nine hundredth story that you write, after you have decided to do it for yourself and keep your day job, that will make you greater than any of the rest.

It is not about selling a bunch of ebooks from one idea. It is about building following. Getting readership. I don't expect there to always be a million hits on this blog. In fact, the idea behind this blog was to improve my writing. Every single word I write has to be straight-forward, without it being part of a short story. I have to get up every day, think about what I want to write about, and even then, my brain pushes forth ideas during the writing process which I never would have considered. If this blog didn't exist, perhaps my writing would have not be improving as much as I believe it is.

And writing about 5,000 words a day helps too. It increases how to think about a subject. When I started this blog entry, I had a small idea that I thought would last about 200 words. Instead, I am already crossing the 1,000 word mark. That's important because the ideas set forth have become a free-flow process that would not have existed if I wrote only what I planned to and didn't build from that.

Comedians have straight material that they write, then they improv around it on stage (sometimes they keep that material, sometimes they blank and have to beg anyone watching to tell them what they said). Live performance is a tough gig. Usually people are heckling, talking crap to you (whether you are on stage or even back stage). Consider how easy it is to sit, write a story, and not have to be verbally abused (however, the internet comments that people leave are basically pot-shots from guys who would get decked in person).

It's all up to what you want to put into it. Writing happens to be one of the last elite businesses. Sure, anyone can write a decent enough story as an ebook and have it published, but to create something compelling enough that people want to pay for it and whatever else you have written, now that is what truly separates writers from the pretenders.

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