Aug 31 2008
I'm a former assistant editor with advice about how to write novels, comic books and graphic novels. Most of my content applies to fiction-writing in general, but I also provide articles specifically about superhero stories.
The author claims that Star Wars was better because it was human-centric rather than world- or action-centric. Our contributors respond…
Aug 31 2008
B. Mac provides these references for boots. These will help you design a character for a comic book or novel-cover.
Aug 30 2008
I’ve revised the first edition of our webcomic. What do you think?
In case you’d like to see the old version of this comic, please look below the jump.
Aug 29 2008
No Heroics is a thoroughly British sit-com about 4 superheroes, with some PG-13 sexual humor.
This felt time-worn but likable. I appreciate that the superpowers are not meant to be laugh-lines. Absurdly useless superpowers are rarely funny.
Aug 28 2008
Tobias Buckell gathered some data describing how much authors make on their first advance. The median author in SF or fantasy makes $5000. The average in both categories is slightly higher (about $6500), but that’s probably distorted by a few superstars that skewed the distribution curve.
He also broke the data down by agented vs. unagented submissions. The median advance for an unagented manuscript is $4000, compared to $5500 for an agented manuscript. You might think to yourself “aha! I will make more if I have a superior negotiator on my side!” That’s probably true, but please also consider that a novelist that is good enough to convince an agent to work with him is probably better-than-average to begin with. In addition to that selection bias, you’d also have to factor in the agent’s share of the advance.
That said, I think an agent can be a powerful ally and (all things considered) one that will probably pay for himself.
Aug 27 2008
Living Color put together this pretty hilarious blend of Star Trek and Louis Farrakhan.
Aug 27 2008
Cadet Davis reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.
Aug 27 2008
Our new blogroll focuses on the sites we find particularly funny, but we have a few sites devoted to writing and the publishing industry. If you’d like to suggest a site, we’d love to hear from you.
Aug 26 2008
Our website is a year old now. Without navel-gazing too much, I’d like to offer some quick visuals to suggest just how dramatically our crappiness quotient has dropped. These are our first six months worth of headers…
Aug 26 2008
If you’re interested in writing about thieves at the top of their game, you might find it interesting to know how the super-wealthy protect themselves. For example, a German shepherd from a security services firm will cost $40,000. What kind of face-ripper does that buy you? Here’s what one customer says…
Aug 23 2008
Some authors are now marketing their books with videos (book trailers). Frequently they emphasize Hollywood-lite visuals over elements that would speak well of the book. For example, this one for Christine Feehan’s Dark Curse uses a live-action dragon and bats at a decent production level. But the trailer’s writing is atrocious. There’s no dialogue and the text that shows up on the screen is almost too bad to believe.
FROM New York Times BEST-SELLING AUTHOR CHRISTINE FEEHAN.
THE TIME HAS COME
TO FIGHT THE EVIL
TO RECLAIM A BIRTHRIGHT
TO CLAIM A HEART
TO SAVE US ALL
AT ANY COST
FROM THE…
DARK CURSE.
Continue Reading »
Aug 23 2008
Picture taken from one of the Marvel Civil War comics. #1, I think.
Aug 22 2008
You can shake it like a Polaroid picture… but can you shake it like Batman?
Aug 22 2008
In Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Clark Kent is written to be an idealized Red-Stater and Lois Lane is an idealized Blue-Stater. What I love about her, compared to the average damsel in distress, is that she adds something. She completes him. Usually, fictional stories write love interests as cardboard characters designed to show that the protagonist has “arrived.” These characters typically seem more like trophies than people. If they are developed at all, it will be to show how desirable a trophy they are: really beautiful and super high-class! Enter Eragon, stage right.
Aug 21 2008
1) Story (and variations like tale, legend, ballad, book, etc). Let’s say your book is named Carl’s Story. The word “story” insults the audience’s intelligence. We can see it’s a story. Furthermore, the word “story” fails to offer any information that would convince a reader to read this story. What sort of story is this? I would only recommend using these sorts of words in the title for humorous effect (Ballad of the Drunken Squeegee-Master) or to convey information that isn’t immediately obvious (Autobiographies from Death Row).
2) Man/Person. Generic nouns are usually vague, which makes them poorly-suited for a title. For example, Two Men and a Sword is bland and forgettable. Two Firemen and a Sword is more intriguing. Try to replace generic words with ones that provide more information about the story to prospective readers.
3) Song. This is like “story,” but even more aggravating. Unless your book is literally about a musician or music, please do not use “song” in your title.
4) Heart. This is usually a generic and ineffective way to suggest your story is emotionally driven. Which characters experience which emotions? Why should we care?
5) Night/Black/Dark/Darkness. These are typically used ineffectively to suggest that the story is dark and foreboding. You can do better. For example, Requiem for a Dream. If you use something like night/black/darkness anyway, please at least combine it with something unexpected to intrigue readers. For example, Darkness at Noon or the series title His Dark Materials.
6) Stranger. This word is often superfluous in a title and can usually be replaced with a more specific, powerful noun. Let’s say your title is The Strangers Among Us. You can replace “stranger” here with a more interesting and specific noun. If the title were The Soldiers Among Us, for instance, we would understand that the soldiers are strangers compared to “us.”
7) Boring adjectives. I’ve seen The Green Dragon… The Strongest Barbarian… The Forest Ranger. If you use an adjective, make sure it’s one that readers will care about. As a rule of thumb, unexpected and unusual adjectives tend to be most interesting. For example, compare The Green Dragon to Backyard Dragon or His Majesty’s Dragon.
8 ) Fictional place names. Readers aren’t familiar with your fictional kingdoms and cities. We probably won’t care about them. Please focus on the elements of your story that will engage prospective readers. Alternately, if you need to refer to a place, it may be more effective to name its type of building rather than the building specifically. For example, Murder in the Cathedral or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
9) Fictional character names. We don’t know who your characters are, so their names will probably not interest us much unless they are extraordinarily evocative, such as Barbara Bloodbath. Instead of naming a fictional character, it’s usually more effective to refer to him by his profession or rank or something else that describes his role in the story. For example, His Majesty’s Dragon is a far more effective novel title than Temeraire would have been.
10) A reference clear to few prospective readers. For example, a title like Gethsemane would be unwise unless you were writing for an audience that is highly Bible-savvy. Alternatively, if you use a reference that a prospective reader doesn’t know, is the title effective anyway? For example, a title like Dead Letter Office might establish a vaguely sinister mood even if you don’t know what a dead letter office is.
Aug 21 2008
(This comic had a convoluted plot; Batman wore funky costumes to prevent anyone from noticing that Robin’s arm was in a cast).
Aug 21 2008
Some editors can rewrite an absolutely mediocre story into a masterpiece, but please give yours more to work with than this…
From the New York Times: “Few want a handout, but fewer want government to abandon them. A simmering hurt suffuses their words, a sense that neither hard work nor their unions could save them.”
It’s hard to tell which part of this passage was the worst, but it probably wasn’t “a simmering hurt suffuses their words.” I found “fewer want government to abandon them” more painful. The author really struggled to create a parallel structure with the previous clause. I would recommend rephrasing that sentence as “When polled, residents were uneasy about government handouts but enthusiastic about vocational education programs,” or another form of government assistance that came up frequently.
Aug 19 2008
Historians that try to pack centuries of information into a single book often fail disastrously because they cannot give each event the length it deserves. Not surprisingly, Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States is a bit flitty, even at 750 pages. For example, the first eight chapters focus on…
Aug 19 2008
To save face in Japan, tourists may have to tell lies. Crazy, jaw-dropping lies. Should you ever have to tell outrageous lies about life in the United States, this article will help.
Aug 19 2008
B. Mac, a regular customer of freelance art, offers this article for freelance artists that want to maximize their sales.
Aug 18 2008
On Fiction Addiction, literary agent Jeff Kleinman offers a few ways to protect your plot ideas. I have nothing against copyright registration (although it is unnecessary for novelists), but I wouldn’t recommend getting hung up on fears that someone is going to steal your ideas. Most novels excel based on their execution rather than their original content. An extraordinarily well-written story will stand out even if its premise is time-worn.
For example, His Majesty’s Dragon has a premise very similar to Harry Turtledove’s Into the Darkness. (Humans use dragons to fight Napoleon or a thinly-veiled fantasy Hitler, respectively). HMD is drastically better, not because its plot is original but because its characters are far better-executed and its writing is snappier. If someone writes a book with a premise similar to yours– and that will almost assuredly happen to superhero writers– you will probably have to compete with them for readers by demonstrating superior style and execution.
I will leave you with this cryptic cartoon about the dangers of relying too much on an unusual concept to sell a book…
Aug 16 2008
My plane leaves Nagoya in about twenty hours and I will get back home roughly twenty hours later, thanks to an extended layover in Detroit.
Aug 15 2008
Diagnosing the Problem
Homo superiors are characters that are like humans but better in every conceivable way. How would you describe how Superman differs from a human? “Well, he can do anything a human can, but a hundred times better.” He even looks like a human. Homo superiors are usually aliens or elves, but sometimes a human with enough superpowers or enhancements.
A homo superior is usually not merely better at fighting than everyone else, but also more sophisticated and savvy. If he has a character flaw, he’s probably arrogant because he knows he’s so much better than everyone else in the story.
Why Homo Superiors Wreck Stories
Homo superiors are usually undramatic. Superman never really struggles to do anything, because he’s the best at everything. But a struggling character is what makes stories interesting. If a police officer is in a standoff with a hostage-taker, that’s dramatic because we don’t know if the police officer will succeed. The police officer will only win if he’s wittier and craftier than the criminal. Perhaps he convinces the criminal to surrender. Maybe he convinces the criminal to lower his gun and then shoots him in the face. In contrast, Superman just uses his superspeed or eye-rays and stops the criminal. That’s quite boring, especially after you’ve already seen it a few times.
Homo superiors also usually lead to overpowered characters, which can make the plot feel unbelievable. Let’s say you want to write a fantasy story with a dragon rider. But why would the dragon take a rider? What does he think he gets out of having a puny human on his back? Why is Superman willing to risk his own life for humans? I couldn’t imagine myself being so charitable to ants and, from his perspective, we must seem something like smarter ants. Why would an incredible elven-mage be willing to join a ragtag band of adventurers? Etc.
Fixing the Problem
The best way is to try to explore ways in which the character is either mediocre or inferior. Maybe that elf, normally so elegant and well-spoken, completely goes to pieces in high-stress situations like combat. Maybe the dragon thinks that having a human might be useful in certain situations.
Here are some other ways in which a character might be different and/or inferior.
Aug 14 2008
B. Mac reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.
Aug 14 2008
If you are (or want to be) a credible writer, hopefully your sentences are free of spelling, grammatical and punctuation mistakes. No one will take your website seriously if you write like you’re texting a message. With that in mind, please check the last five comments that users have left on your blog. Do any of them meet the level you set for yourself? Even on the writing sites I follow, the comments are poorly written, sometimes so poorly that they reflect poorly on the website. Even intelligent comments are often hidden behind grammatical nonchalance. Here are some suggestions.
Aug 13 2008
One of the tropes of superhero stories is that the superhero ties up the bad guys and leaves them for the police. This helps readers feel that Spiderman isn’t a vigilante trying to replace the police, he’s just helping them. But when the police find a criminal tied up somewhere, what do they charge him with? Unless they have enough evidence to make a case, the police have to release him. Here are a few ways you can use this to create dramatic situations…
1) The superhero comes across several criminals he tied up the day before. If this happened repeatedly, it may make him cynical about his work as a superhero.
2) Your hero blathers about how much he loves police officers (“they do all the things I do but without superpowers!”), but cops hate him because he never gives them anything they can use to secure a conviction. He never shows up to testify or deliver depositions. If the hero ever comes looking for leads, expect the police to give him the cold shoulder.
3) The police department gets sued because they’re complicit in the superhero’s abuse of the civil liberties of alleged criminals. Look at this from the perspective of a defense attorney or the ACLU. The police department gets easy arrests because Batman savagely beats confessions out of suspects. Batman regularly assaults criminals. Not only has the police department failed to arrest Batman or freeze his assets, but he sometimes meets with police officers in the station. If a defense attorney can’t convince a judge that’s police-sponsored brutality, he should be disbarred.
Aug 13 2008
You should only use the word “insure” if you’re talking about buying or selling insurance policies. The word “ensure” should be used when you want to guarantee an outcome. For example, “please ensure that you don’t make that mistake.” Unfortunately, Fox News hasn’t gotten the memo…
Fox News: “We expect Russia to insure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit,” Bush said.
No, Fox, no! You will rot in the deepest, hottest bowels of grammatical hell. Devils will stab you with semi-colons until you beg for death’s sweet embrace.
Aug 12 2008
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, spoke at my workplace when he came to Washington in 2006. Sadly, the only thing I remember about his appearance was that I got to work within a few feet of a Secret Service agent.
Aug 11 2008
This isn’t government-sponsored national service, but I think that twelve stitches and a hell of a lot of ass-kicking earn the tag.
A Tulsa newspaper reports that a Batman imposter walked into a grocery store and unsuccessfully tried to open fire. Then an airline mechanic tackled him from behind. Several minutes of unrelenting pounding ensued.
Aug 09 2008
B. Mac reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.
Aug 08 2008
If you have a list of links in your sidebar or site-map, test the links once a month. It amazes me how often we change the permalinks without updating the sidebar. The monthly link-test is easily the most productive minute I spend on website design.
Aug 08 2008
This short article will help beginning novelists avoid another five common mistakes that will usually cause publishers to throw out a manuscript.
Aug 06 2008
I don’t expect to post very much today, given that I’ll be in transit for 18 hours. However, in the meantime, I will leave you with this nugget of wisdom: avoid immortal characters. They’re terrible.
Aug 05 2008
From Wired.com: “Thomas Edison, never shy about exploiting a situation to his advantage, especially if it could cripple a rival, therefore built the electric chair to operate on alternating current [the preferred system of his rivals]. By associating the Tesla-Westinghouse current with something as unpleasant as capital punishment, Edison hoped to turn public opinion his way. He even suggested replacing the new coinage, electrocution, with ‘to be Westinghoused.’ It never caught on.”
That invented use of “Westinghouse” is brilliant. Which words could you repurpose for your fiction?
Aug 05 2008
If you ever come across one of these words as you rewrite, please replace it with something more specific and spicy.
Did I forget any words you love to hate?
Aug 05 2008
Mary Sues are characters that are overpowerful, self-insertions of the author. This article will help you identify and fix some of the biggest problems with Mary Sues.
Aug 04 2008
Expecting perfection from the first draft will probably paralyze you. On the first draft, the most important thing is to write something and then you can turn it into a coherent, clean masterpiece later. When you’re writing the first draft, it may help to think of your job as giving your internal self-editor material to work with rather than writing a story fit for public consumption.
Here are a few suggestions to avoid perfectionist impulses during the first draft…
1) Don’t edit.
2) If you get stuck on what happens in one part of the story, summarize it in a few sentences and move on. You can fill it in later.
3) Commit yourself to writing for at least 30 or 45 minutes. After ten minutes of accomplishing little, you will hopefully start to feel frustrated and lower your expectations. “Maybe this line is good enough.”
Aug 04 2008
City Journal wrote a well-researched article on the future of conservative nonfiction, but I’d like to make a larger point about political nonfiction. “Since the new conservative imprints have far less latitude than traditional nonfiction imprints to fail, they tend to rely heavily on, and largely be defined by, a handful of proven iconic authors.” It’s probably true that smaller publishers have to be wary about rolling the dice with noncelebrities. But, because of blogging, I think that it’s tremendously difficult for a non-celebrity of any political persuasion to publish political nonfiction. Readers can find blogs that offer any style of political thought for free. Some blogs are exceedingly well-written and intelligent. So why would anyone want to pay for your opinion? Because you’re someone who has an invaluable perspective because you used to be a President, a secretary of state, or are a hugely popular talk-radio host, etc…*
Aug 03 2008
Observations from the Balcony suggests it is because mysteries are helped more by cinema than other forms of literary fiction. I’d lay out two alternate theories: 1) it’s far easier to make a detective story intriguing and interactive, because the readers can solve the case alongside the detective. 2) The premises, particularly in detective mysteries, are easier to sell than exotic premises that use magic or advanced technology.
Additionally, I think it’s slightly easier to write mysteries…
Aug 03 2008
The author best known for Gulag Archipelago has passed away.
Aug 03 2008
Cadet Davis reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.
Above Average
Aug 02 2008
When you try to sell your work to a publisher or readers, please do not use the word “parody” interchangeably with “comedy.” A parody imitates the style or plays on the conventions of an author/genre /work to make fun of it. Most comedies are not parodies. There are two common reasons that authors may misuse the word parody…
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