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It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of Amazon for book sales, so this is shocking news - thought I'd share it here for those of you promoting your work on Goodreads.
Hi - Jonathan here
To my shock, I've just seen that Amazon is buying book-review
site 'Goodreads' with its 16 million members.
But when I consider that Amazon dominates book sales online,
and Goodreads members have written over 23 million book reviews,
I can see that the marriage was almost inevitable.
This may have a substantial impact on your book sales,
although the reason why is hidden.
I've revealed all in my latest blog post.
http://bestsellerlabs.com/amazon-buys-goodreads-the-impact-on-authors
All the best,
Jonathan Gunson
BestsellerLabs.com
Hi - Jonathan here
To my shock, I've just seen that Amazon is buying book-review
site 'Goodreads' with its 16 million members.
But when I consider that Amazon dominates book sales online,
and Goodreads members have written over 23 million book reviews,
I can see that the marriage was almost inevitable.
This may have a substantial impact on your book sales,
although the reason why is hidden.
I've revealed all in my latest blog post.
http://bestsellerlabs.com/amazon-buys-goodreads-the-impact-on-authors
All the best,
Jonathan Gunson
BestsellerLabs.com
Administration
Oh don't get me wrong, I wasn't pointing fingers at anyone in particular. I was merely offering an opinion on writing about hot-topics like these. I think that more writers should tackle controversial topics, it just needs to be approached with sensitivity. I enjoy reading about things that make me think and feel deeply - whether those thoughts and feelings are good or bad ones.
Administration
I have to admit that the first time Bill tried to submit this story a few years ago, I was against having it on our site. He was very gracious about trying to understand our viewpoint - which to my recollection based on use of the 'N' word, but I stand corrected, as my memory is fuzzy at the best of times. Now, after having read it a few times after he's done the necessary revisions, I find nothing offensive about the story. It is a humour piece and should be judged as that. In my opinion, the disclaimer at the start of the story is what keeps this from being a story that glorifies racism in any way - the author clearly warns people what the story is about, which gives them the opportunity to decide whether or not they should read it.
I live in a country where racism was the order of the day up until a few years ago and racism in any form riles me to the point of distraction, yet I am able to see the humour in this piece. Over here, in a country that is still busy healing from the atrocities of apartheid, we find comedic relief in artists like Leon Schuster, Riyaad Moosa, Trevor Noah, etc. - all of them comedians for whom every second punchline is racist, but only if you're watching it with that frame of mind. They don't have any disclaimers at the start of a show and they make no apologies, because the intention is to entertain and they are using material that their audiences are familiar with - things that are relevant.
So yes, as a human being, I find any reference to the KKK offensive. I would never condone anything that glorifies their actions.
However, as a writer, I shudder at the thought of any person's right to express themselves being stifled. There is nothing more frustrating to a writer than to be told what they may or may not write about.
I live in a country where racism was the order of the day up until a few years ago and racism in any form riles me to the point of distraction, yet I am able to see the humour in this piece. Over here, in a country that is still busy healing from the atrocities of apartheid, we find comedic relief in artists like Leon Schuster, Riyaad Moosa, Trevor Noah, etc. - all of them comedians for whom every second punchline is racist, but only if you're watching it with that frame of mind. They don't have any disclaimers at the start of a show and they make no apologies, because the intention is to entertain and they are using material that their audiences are familiar with - things that are relevant.
So yes, as a human being, I find any reference to the KKK offensive. I would never condone anything that glorifies their actions.
However, as a writer, I shudder at the thought of any person's right to express themselves being stifled. There is nothing more frustrating to a writer than to be told what they may or may not write about.
Administration
This is one of the best poems I've heard in a long time.
Bullies Called Him Pork Chop. He Took That Pain With Him And Then Cooked It Into This.
[url]http://www.upworthy.com/bullies-called-him-pork-chop-he-took-that-pain-with-him-and-then-cooked-it-into?g=3[/url]
Bullies Called Him Pork Chop. He Took That Pain With Him And Then Cooked It Into This.
[url]http://www.upworthy.com/bullies-called-him-pork-chop-he-took-that-pain-with-him-and-then-cooked-it-into?g=3[/url]
Administration
Thank you for the suggestion, Diana. I'm not too clued up on how the tech side of things work, but I will bring it up with our resident IT guy.
That said, what Andrew suggests also works. Just right click on the link and select the "open link in new tab" option.
Keep the suggestions coming, we welcome any suggestion that will improve the site.
That said, what Andrew suggests also works. Just right click on the link and select the "open link in new tab" option.
Keep the suggestions coming, we welcome any suggestion that will improve the site.
Administration
And here's this week's installment...
Storytelling as a Fine Art Part 2
David Farland begins to identify the secrets writers have sought throughout history that make up a fine story.
JimWolverton
10/15/2011
Many writers don’t consider “storytelling” to be a fine art. In fact, the most popular storytellers often get jeers from their colleagues. When Stephen King first began hitting high on the New York Times Bestseller list, I often heard literary writers condemning his work. When John Grisham became the most popular writer in America, critics complained about his “terrible style.” When J.K. Rowling struck it big, I heard one award-winning children’s writer go so far as to call her a “fraud.” When Stephenie Meyer sold some 15% of all the novels in the English language in 2009, Stephen King complained about her prose.
One might be tempted to conclude that this is just “jealousy” talking. It isn’t. To some degree it’s a difference in tastes between consumers of fiction.
After long study, Ernest Hemingway concluded that when you look at all great writing, “it’s just poetry.” That’s only partly right. In order to have a great style you do need to have a deep sensitivity to the use of language and rhythm. In short, you need to master poetry. But most of the world isn’t so attuned to poetry that they really care.
The bestselling writers of our time—of any time—aren’t necessarily great poets, they’re powerful storytellers. They recognize a vast audience, create tales for that audience, and relate stories that people love. Each of the authors that I mentioned above shows a genius for storytelling. Stephen King is a great storyteller, and so is Stephenie Meyer. Why didn’t he like her? Is her prose truly unreadable?
I was Stephenie’s writing instructor in college. I remember considering her final grade in class and thinking, “This young woman has a very interesting and unique voice. If she ever really gets consumed by a tale, she could go very, very far.”
She’s quite readable, and she’s a far better stylist than King gives her credit for. But she wasn’t writing for Stephen King. The truth is that she was writing to young women, not to older men. Stephen King was so far outside her audience demographic that he just couldn’t quite connect with her, and since he didn’t connect to her tale, he had to blame the storyteller.
That of course is the problem with storytellers. If you’re not part of their intended audience, you won’t be captivated by their tale. You’ll end up outside the crowd, wondering what in the world everyone is so excited about.
Not all great writers are great storytellers. Have you ever read the work of a consummate stylist that left you cold, someone who wrote reams and reams of prose in a gorgeous voice, but whose work ended up having an anesthetic quality? I’ve read entire tomes where nothing of interest happened to anyone, where the writer seemed to work harder and harder to write more prettily about nothing at all. I recently read a novel where the author’s breathtaking prose described a porch on a lonely ranch house in tremendous detail—some twenty pages. I could see it, feel it, taste it. Big deal. I’m sure that I could have found a ranch house just like that within five minutes of my house.
So I look for writers who have a balance of skills, ones who can engineer stories that enthrall me while delivering them in acceptable prose. I love John Grisham, Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, and dozens of other big-name authors. I recognize that none of them write the most gorgeous prose that I’ve ever read.
In fact, I know that if they tried, their prose might only become a barrier to my enjoyment of their stories. Elegant prose I like. But too often the work of stylists is written for style alone. It becomes overwrought.
Over the ages, storytelling as an art form has come under attack by many writers and critics. One can point at romance novels or Westerns or science fiction and point out their similarities. It often seems that authors are repeating the same story over and over with just the slightest variations. Thus fiction that has a strong form is derided as “formula” fiction.
It’s true. When a powerful and original storyteller comes along (I call them “genre builders”), they often inspire imitation. Thus, when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, he told a great yarn, one that inspired thousands of followers. Most of those people couldn’t write at a publishable level, and their manuscripts never saw the light of day, but thousands of “Pirate Stories” were published, enough so that entire novel lines and magazines were devoted to them for fifty years after Treasure Island was written. Stevenson built a genre.
In the same way, we saw imitators of Stephen King in horror, Terry Brooks in fantasy, John Grisham in thrillers, Rowling in children’s literature, or Stephenie Meyer with paranormal teen romance. Some of the imitators were far better stylists than their predecessors, but lacked the genre-builder’s facility for storytelling. Consequently, their works are eventually forgotten.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that style isn’t important. I’m just saying that the import of telling a riveting story shouldn’t be ignored. An author must stand on two legs—style and story.
Yet as a young man, I found when looking for books on storytelling that it had been ignored. Many teachers on college campuses in the US even today refuse to discuss genre literatures (which are considered to be formulaic), claiming that they’re not “real literature.”
In an effort to divest themselves of formula, many writers sought to create “stories” that had no form. Hemingway, for example, truncated his stories, cutting off the beginnings and endings. Others, like Wolfe, sought to write “slice of life” pieces that included some loving character portraits along with bits of fine description. Such experiments failed far more often than not, though much can be learned even from the failures.
Artists at that time in the mediums of poetry, music, and painting were also trying to discover new ways to express themselves, so that we had various experiments cropping up—poetry that was un-metered or un-rhymed, music that was cacophonic or avoided self-resonance, and paintings that sought to draw out the viewer’s emotions by the use of color and texture rather than by portraying any realistic images, and so on.
If you look at literary critics of that day, it’s not hard to find statements that don’t just denigrate formulaic fiction, but that attack all formed fiction at once. Some critics believed that life is random and purposeless, and that the human mind simply tries to “make sense” of life through storytelling. They concluded that “all stories are therefore dishonest in nature.” Stories happen rarely, if ever.
They’re right in some ways. Stories don’t often happen to us in the way that we relate. Even when a story does happen in real life, we sometimes don’t recognize it for months or years, because there is so much “unimportant garbage” that happens in-between the relevant incidents.
Yet stories are vital because something in stories is strongly tied to how we learn and how we create communities. I’ll talk more about that later.
So as I approach this book on storytelling, please don’t believe that I’m saying that story is “all important.” It’s only part of the equation. Storytelling is a complex art, one that requires that creator to have a deep understanding of how to create a world and characters, how to deal with conflicts and resolutions, and how to integrate the new insights that come from this into a successful tale.
Storytelling as a Fine Art Part 2
David Farland begins to identify the secrets writers have sought throughout history that make up a fine story.
JimWolverton
10/15/2011
Many writers don’t consider “storytelling” to be a fine art. In fact, the most popular storytellers often get jeers from their colleagues. When Stephen King first began hitting high on the New York Times Bestseller list, I often heard literary writers condemning his work. When John Grisham became the most popular writer in America, critics complained about his “terrible style.” When J.K. Rowling struck it big, I heard one award-winning children’s writer go so far as to call her a “fraud.” When Stephenie Meyer sold some 15% of all the novels in the English language in 2009, Stephen King complained about her prose.
One might be tempted to conclude that this is just “jealousy” talking. It isn’t. To some degree it’s a difference in tastes between consumers of fiction.
After long study, Ernest Hemingway concluded that when you look at all great writing, “it’s just poetry.” That’s only partly right. In order to have a great style you do need to have a deep sensitivity to the use of language and rhythm. In short, you need to master poetry. But most of the world isn’t so attuned to poetry that they really care.
The bestselling writers of our time—of any time—aren’t necessarily great poets, they’re powerful storytellers. They recognize a vast audience, create tales for that audience, and relate stories that people love. Each of the authors that I mentioned above shows a genius for storytelling. Stephen King is a great storyteller, and so is Stephenie Meyer. Why didn’t he like her? Is her prose truly unreadable?
I was Stephenie’s writing instructor in college. I remember considering her final grade in class and thinking, “This young woman has a very interesting and unique voice. If she ever really gets consumed by a tale, she could go very, very far.”
She’s quite readable, and she’s a far better stylist than King gives her credit for. But she wasn’t writing for Stephen King. The truth is that she was writing to young women, not to older men. Stephen King was so far outside her audience demographic that he just couldn’t quite connect with her, and since he didn’t connect to her tale, he had to blame the storyteller.
That of course is the problem with storytellers. If you’re not part of their intended audience, you won’t be captivated by their tale. You’ll end up outside the crowd, wondering what in the world everyone is so excited about.
Not all great writers are great storytellers. Have you ever read the work of a consummate stylist that left you cold, someone who wrote reams and reams of prose in a gorgeous voice, but whose work ended up having an anesthetic quality? I’ve read entire tomes where nothing of interest happened to anyone, where the writer seemed to work harder and harder to write more prettily about nothing at all. I recently read a novel where the author’s breathtaking prose described a porch on a lonely ranch house in tremendous detail—some twenty pages. I could see it, feel it, taste it. Big deal. I’m sure that I could have found a ranch house just like that within five minutes of my house.
So I look for writers who have a balance of skills, ones who can engineer stories that enthrall me while delivering them in acceptable prose. I love John Grisham, Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, and dozens of other big-name authors. I recognize that none of them write the most gorgeous prose that I’ve ever read.
In fact, I know that if they tried, their prose might only become a barrier to my enjoyment of their stories. Elegant prose I like. But too often the work of stylists is written for style alone. It becomes overwrought.
Over the ages, storytelling as an art form has come under attack by many writers and critics. One can point at romance novels or Westerns or science fiction and point out their similarities. It often seems that authors are repeating the same story over and over with just the slightest variations. Thus fiction that has a strong form is derided as “formula” fiction.
It’s true. When a powerful and original storyteller comes along (I call them “genre builders”), they often inspire imitation. Thus, when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, he told a great yarn, one that inspired thousands of followers. Most of those people couldn’t write at a publishable level, and their manuscripts never saw the light of day, but thousands of “Pirate Stories” were published, enough so that entire novel lines and magazines were devoted to them for fifty years after Treasure Island was written. Stevenson built a genre.
In the same way, we saw imitators of Stephen King in horror, Terry Brooks in fantasy, John Grisham in thrillers, Rowling in children’s literature, or Stephenie Meyer with paranormal teen romance. Some of the imitators were far better stylists than their predecessors, but lacked the genre-builder’s facility for storytelling. Consequently, their works are eventually forgotten.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that style isn’t important. I’m just saying that the import of telling a riveting story shouldn’t be ignored. An author must stand on two legs—style and story.
Yet as a young man, I found when looking for books on storytelling that it had been ignored. Many teachers on college campuses in the US even today refuse to discuss genre literatures (which are considered to be formulaic), claiming that they’re not “real literature.”
In an effort to divest themselves of formula, many writers sought to create “stories” that had no form. Hemingway, for example, truncated his stories, cutting off the beginnings and endings. Others, like Wolfe, sought to write “slice of life” pieces that included some loving character portraits along with bits of fine description. Such experiments failed far more often than not, though much can be learned even from the failures.
Artists at that time in the mediums of poetry, music, and painting were also trying to discover new ways to express themselves, so that we had various experiments cropping up—poetry that was un-metered or un-rhymed, music that was cacophonic or avoided self-resonance, and paintings that sought to draw out the viewer’s emotions by the use of color and texture rather than by portraying any realistic images, and so on.
If you look at literary critics of that day, it’s not hard to find statements that don’t just denigrate formulaic fiction, but that attack all formed fiction at once. Some critics believed that life is random and purposeless, and that the human mind simply tries to “make sense” of life through storytelling. They concluded that “all stories are therefore dishonest in nature.” Stories happen rarely, if ever.
They’re right in some ways. Stories don’t often happen to us in the way that we relate. Even when a story does happen in real life, we sometimes don’t recognize it for months or years, because there is so much “unimportant garbage” that happens in-between the relevant incidents.
Yet stories are vital because something in stories is strongly tied to how we learn and how we create communities. I’ll talk more about that later.
So as I approach this book on storytelling, please don’t believe that I’m saying that story is “all important.” It’s only part of the equation. Storytelling is a complex art, one that requires that creator to have a deep understanding of how to create a world and characters, how to deal with conflicts and resolutions, and how to integrate the new insights that come from this into a successful tale.
Administration
Storytelling as a Fine Art
David Farland's quest to find any hidden wisdom on the art of storytelling
JimWolverton
10/15/2011
When I was 16, my brother-in-law Dan McBride talked me into reading a novel. He finagled, cajoled, urged. He really had to work at it. You see, I opened the book a couple of times and sincerely tried to read it, but couldn’t get excited about it.
It appeared to be a silly book about imaginary creatures called “hobbits,” and the opening to the book bored me silly.
After several attempts, and after Dan had explained a bit about the background to the story, I read one evening and eventually discovered that after a tedious opening, the book became riveting. I remember even looking at the page and wondering what had changed. When had it gone from dull to lustrous? When had it turned from something that was mind-numbing into something that consumed me?
The novel of course was Tolkien’s epic masterpiece Lord of the Rings. I raced through the book, and then re-read it, and pored over it again. As I did, I found that the “slow” beginning wasn’t really slow. It was more relaxed, and it contained important clues to mysteries that would later appear throughout the book. It gave me time to learn to love Tolkien’s world and his characters, which was enormously important, since this is a novel in which the entire world is placed in jeopardy.
So I began to see clues as to why the author had put certain words and ideas to pen, and the things that had once bored me became intellectually exciting.
Yet a question remained: “How did Tolkien do it?” To me, his work seemed as magical and as mysterious as the world he’d devised.
I went searching for books of similar quality, hunting for fantasy novels wherever I could, reading science fiction when I couldn’t find fantasy. I read anything that had won a Hugo or Nebula Award, then expanded into mainstream fiction, reading from the Nobel Prize winners, and a great many others. That’s how my love affair with reading began.
Along the path, I also decided to become a writer. If you’re reading this, most likely you’re one of us.
I know the instant that it happened. I was running out of fantasy novels to read, and so I began making up my own story and telling it to a friend at work, a hippie named Paul Toups. Paul would relate his troubles. He’d rented a house on an island in the Willamette River, and raised corn on his little farm, called Frog Hollow. Often, pigs would swim across the river and ravage his cornfield. Then he had problems with a crotchety landlord who often threatened to turn him out.
So his stories became inspiration for a fantasy, and he became Master Toups, the mayor of the village of Frog Hollow. Pigs became ravaging monsters that ransacked the village and his landlord an evil sorcerer. One day as I was spinning this yarn, he said, “You know, you should take all of this and put it in a book!”
It hit me: of course I should write a book. Other people do it, so why can’t I?
That night after work, I drove to the nearest town that had a major university and ransacked their bookstore. I found textbooks professors required their budding writers to read, and bought them all—along with a used typewriter.
But as I began to study the books, I discovered something to my dismay. The first book that I read gave excellent advice. It was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, a classic in the business. It had reams of good advice on how to write with flare and precision and grace, but didn’t give a single clue as to how to compose a great story.
So I read more books, many by accomplished writers, and found that they too were lacking. A lot of the basic body of writing knowledge was repetitious—handed down from author to author, and I soon realized the information I was getting came in four major categories: basic mechanics for writers, stylistic tips, storytelling tips, and marketing tips.
“Writing Mechanics” is the basic information on how to punctuate properly, how to put manuscripts into proper format so that editors won’t toss them instantly into the trash, and so on. Every author needs to know this, and so almost every beginning book on writing will cover it.
The second body of information is “Stylistic Tips.” That’s what Strunk and White covered. They offered great advice on things about avoiding sound repetition, keeping your sentences short and readable, using voice properly by avoiding anachronistic speech or neologisms. This helps new writers get over the hurdles of basic composition and recognize their own weaknesses, and so on.
Every author needs to know this, and nearly every beginning book on writing will cover it. In fact, because during the early twentieth century authors became very focused on style, and many of our finest writers are great stylists, the information presented in this field is quite complete, though in many cases the guidelines are rather arbitrary and sometimes even wrong. I’ve heard authors proclaim, for example, that you should “never use an –ly adverb.” So I can’t say that “she sang beautifully”?
Another body of knowledge that is often discussed is “How to Market Your Work” to editors, agents, and the public. Every author needs to know this of course. We’re all small businessmen. Yet marketing advice is pretty ephemeral. The information must be updated from time to time, and what was true ten years ago is false now. When I began writing, we worried about how to sell to agents and editors. Now we’re studying how to market our works electronically to global audiences.
A final body of knowledge that authors need to know has to do with “Storytelling.” By that I mean, how do we tell a story? How do we put the pieces of a story together? I kept finding information in writing books, but the information I gathered seemed to be contradictory and scant.
In fact, authors couldn’t even agree on what constituted a story. One prominent author went so far as to say, “If I write something on paper and say that it’s a story, it’s a story.” It didn’t matter if it was a slice of life, or only a jape, or simply a character study. He called it a story. Other authors from the time of Aristotle have had far more restrictive definitions, ones that tried to answer the question “What makes a great story?”
If we couldn’t even figure out how to answer the most basic question, then it’s no wonder that we couldn’t begin to answer simple questions about story parts. Many authors describe a story as having a “beginning, middle, and end.” But that didn’t answer my burning need to know “How do I engross a reader from the opening line?” Where should the beginning begin, and how should the beginning end? How long is a middle? What parts does a middle have? How can I build my story through the middle? What makes a great conclusion?
In the 1970s, I couldn’t find the answers to those kinds of questions in print. If there was a single book on the topic, I never found it.
As an author, I wanted to know how to compose great stories, but the advice often contradicted known facts. For example, it’s commonly said that when we write a story, we should begin “In medas res,” in the middle of a narrative, so that the story opens with explosive action. Yet many fine novels don’t do that at all. Is A Tale of Two Cities a fluke? Or The Grapes of Wrath? Or even such popular fare as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? None of them have gripping action in the beginning. So what’s up?
Much of the information was just too vague to be useful.
In fact, even the most basic questions went unanswered: Why do people read? What makes a story riveting? How can I write the best stories of our time?
The answers that I found gave interesting clues, but in small bits of data. I felt like a starving man who goes to a feast, only to discover that all he’ll get is hors d'oeuvres.
In fact, the more that I studied writing, the more I hungered to find a book on storytelling that would answer some of my basic questions.
• How can I write a novel that will attract millions of fans, one that will be loved and remembered for ages?
• How can I create a world that enthralls readers?
• How creative should I be? When do I cross the line between being original and downright strange?
• How do I get an audience fully engaged with my protagonist’s conflict?
• What makes a protagonist fascinating to a particular reader?
• How many characters can a novel have?
• What are the best techniques for grabbing a reader’s attention early?
• What can I do to make my middles entrancing?
• How do I handle a protagonist who has weaknesses?
• In short, how can I beat stories told by Shakespeare, Tolkien, Herbert, and [insert the name of your all-time favorite author here]?
My list of questions seemed endless. The answers were scattered and few. Many fine writers simply didn’t know the answers. They wrote based upon instinct and gut feeling, honing their work until it felt right.
Some secretive authors didn’t talk about their craft much. They wanted to keep their answers hidden, for personal gain, or maybe they just didn’t think anyone would care. So I would study the works of Shakespeare or Twain or Borges and look for clues as to how they worked. Often I spent months or years pondering a question before I discovered the answer on my own. In fact, one question required three decades of thought.
Sometimes I would find a great storyteller—an author, agent, editor, director, scholar—who was pondering the same questions, and in those cases I was able to incorporate their ideas into my own. These include a long list of critics from the past, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Philip Sidney, to modern critics like Orson Scott Card, Robert McKee, Albert Zuckerman, and Tom Doherty.
As a young man, I kept haunting the bookshelves looking for a text on “Storytelling for Authors,” and never did find it. Twenty years ago, I realized that I would have to write my own.
David Farland's quest to find any hidden wisdom on the art of storytelling
JimWolverton
10/15/2011
When I was 16, my brother-in-law Dan McBride talked me into reading a novel. He finagled, cajoled, urged. He really had to work at it. You see, I opened the book a couple of times and sincerely tried to read it, but couldn’t get excited about it.
It appeared to be a silly book about imaginary creatures called “hobbits,” and the opening to the book bored me silly.
After several attempts, and after Dan had explained a bit about the background to the story, I read one evening and eventually discovered that after a tedious opening, the book became riveting. I remember even looking at the page and wondering what had changed. When had it gone from dull to lustrous? When had it turned from something that was mind-numbing into something that consumed me?
The novel of course was Tolkien’s epic masterpiece Lord of the Rings. I raced through the book, and then re-read it, and pored over it again. As I did, I found that the “slow” beginning wasn’t really slow. It was more relaxed, and it contained important clues to mysteries that would later appear throughout the book. It gave me time to learn to love Tolkien’s world and his characters, which was enormously important, since this is a novel in which the entire world is placed in jeopardy.
So I began to see clues as to why the author had put certain words and ideas to pen, and the things that had once bored me became intellectually exciting.
Yet a question remained: “How did Tolkien do it?” To me, his work seemed as magical and as mysterious as the world he’d devised.
I went searching for books of similar quality, hunting for fantasy novels wherever I could, reading science fiction when I couldn’t find fantasy. I read anything that had won a Hugo or Nebula Award, then expanded into mainstream fiction, reading from the Nobel Prize winners, and a great many others. That’s how my love affair with reading began.
Along the path, I also decided to become a writer. If you’re reading this, most likely you’re one of us.
I know the instant that it happened. I was running out of fantasy novels to read, and so I began making up my own story and telling it to a friend at work, a hippie named Paul Toups. Paul would relate his troubles. He’d rented a house on an island in the Willamette River, and raised corn on his little farm, called Frog Hollow. Often, pigs would swim across the river and ravage his cornfield. Then he had problems with a crotchety landlord who often threatened to turn him out.
So his stories became inspiration for a fantasy, and he became Master Toups, the mayor of the village of Frog Hollow. Pigs became ravaging monsters that ransacked the village and his landlord an evil sorcerer. One day as I was spinning this yarn, he said, “You know, you should take all of this and put it in a book!”
It hit me: of course I should write a book. Other people do it, so why can’t I?
That night after work, I drove to the nearest town that had a major university and ransacked their bookstore. I found textbooks professors required their budding writers to read, and bought them all—along with a used typewriter.
But as I began to study the books, I discovered something to my dismay. The first book that I read gave excellent advice. It was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, a classic in the business. It had reams of good advice on how to write with flare and precision and grace, but didn’t give a single clue as to how to compose a great story.
So I read more books, many by accomplished writers, and found that they too were lacking. A lot of the basic body of writing knowledge was repetitious—handed down from author to author, and I soon realized the information I was getting came in four major categories: basic mechanics for writers, stylistic tips, storytelling tips, and marketing tips.
“Writing Mechanics” is the basic information on how to punctuate properly, how to put manuscripts into proper format so that editors won’t toss them instantly into the trash, and so on. Every author needs to know this, and so almost every beginning book on writing will cover it.
The second body of information is “Stylistic Tips.” That’s what Strunk and White covered. They offered great advice on things about avoiding sound repetition, keeping your sentences short and readable, using voice properly by avoiding anachronistic speech or neologisms. This helps new writers get over the hurdles of basic composition and recognize their own weaknesses, and so on.
Every author needs to know this, and nearly every beginning book on writing will cover it. In fact, because during the early twentieth century authors became very focused on style, and many of our finest writers are great stylists, the information presented in this field is quite complete, though in many cases the guidelines are rather arbitrary and sometimes even wrong. I’ve heard authors proclaim, for example, that you should “never use an –ly adverb.” So I can’t say that “she sang beautifully”?
Another body of knowledge that is often discussed is “How to Market Your Work” to editors, agents, and the public. Every author needs to know this of course. We’re all small businessmen. Yet marketing advice is pretty ephemeral. The information must be updated from time to time, and what was true ten years ago is false now. When I began writing, we worried about how to sell to agents and editors. Now we’re studying how to market our works electronically to global audiences.
A final body of knowledge that authors need to know has to do with “Storytelling.” By that I mean, how do we tell a story? How do we put the pieces of a story together? I kept finding information in writing books, but the information I gathered seemed to be contradictory and scant.
In fact, authors couldn’t even agree on what constituted a story. One prominent author went so far as to say, “If I write something on paper and say that it’s a story, it’s a story.” It didn’t matter if it was a slice of life, or only a jape, or simply a character study. He called it a story. Other authors from the time of Aristotle have had far more restrictive definitions, ones that tried to answer the question “What makes a great story?”
If we couldn’t even figure out how to answer the most basic question, then it’s no wonder that we couldn’t begin to answer simple questions about story parts. Many authors describe a story as having a “beginning, middle, and end.” But that didn’t answer my burning need to know “How do I engross a reader from the opening line?” Where should the beginning begin, and how should the beginning end? How long is a middle? What parts does a middle have? How can I build my story through the middle? What makes a great conclusion?
In the 1970s, I couldn’t find the answers to those kinds of questions in print. If there was a single book on the topic, I never found it.
As an author, I wanted to know how to compose great stories, but the advice often contradicted known facts. For example, it’s commonly said that when we write a story, we should begin “In medas res,” in the middle of a narrative, so that the story opens with explosive action. Yet many fine novels don’t do that at all. Is A Tale of Two Cities a fluke? Or The Grapes of Wrath? Or even such popular fare as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? None of them have gripping action in the beginning. So what’s up?
Much of the information was just too vague to be useful.
In fact, even the most basic questions went unanswered: Why do people read? What makes a story riveting? How can I write the best stories of our time?
The answers that I found gave interesting clues, but in small bits of data. I felt like a starving man who goes to a feast, only to discover that all he’ll get is hors d'oeuvres.
In fact, the more that I studied writing, the more I hungered to find a book on storytelling that would answer some of my basic questions.
• How can I write a novel that will attract millions of fans, one that will be loved and remembered for ages?
• How can I create a world that enthralls readers?
• How creative should I be? When do I cross the line between being original and downright strange?
• How do I get an audience fully engaged with my protagonist’s conflict?
• What makes a protagonist fascinating to a particular reader?
• How many characters can a novel have?
• What are the best techniques for grabbing a reader’s attention early?
• What can I do to make my middles entrancing?
• How do I handle a protagonist who has weaknesses?
• In short, how can I beat stories told by Shakespeare, Tolkien, Herbert, and [insert the name of your all-time favorite author here]?
My list of questions seemed endless. The answers were scattered and few. Many fine writers simply didn’t know the answers. They wrote based upon instinct and gut feeling, honing their work until it felt right.
Some secretive authors didn’t talk about their craft much. They wanted to keep their answers hidden, for personal gain, or maybe they just didn’t think anyone would care. So I would study the works of Shakespeare or Twain or Borges and look for clues as to how they worked. Often I spent months or years pondering a question before I discovered the answer on my own. In fact, one question required three decades of thought.
Sometimes I would find a great storyteller—an author, agent, editor, director, scholar—who was pondering the same questions, and in those cases I was able to incorporate their ideas into my own. These include a long list of critics from the past, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Philip Sidney, to modern critics like Orson Scott Card, Robert McKee, Albert Zuckerman, and Tom Doherty.
As a young man, I kept haunting the bookshelves looking for a text on “Storytelling for Authors,” and never did find it. Twenty years ago, I realized that I would have to write my own.
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David Farland is an author of nearly fifty science fiction and fantasy novels for both adults and children. Besides being an award-winning New York Times bestselling author, David has also been head judge for one of the world's largest writing contests, a creative writing instructor and editor, a video-game designer, a screenwriter and a movie producer. David Farland also writes as David Wolverton (he was born John David Wolverton).
With David's permission, I will be posting some of his writing tips here. I trust that it will help all of you every bit as much as it has helped me. I will try to add something new every week.
With David's permission, I will be posting some of his writing tips here. I trust that it will help all of you every bit as much as it has helped me. I will try to add something new every week.
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There's nothing wrong with enjoying your own work. In fact, I think it's wrong to expect your readers to enjoy reading something that you don't want to read yourself. I go back and read my own work often, there's always something new that jumps out at me. Call me a narcissist if you like, but I happen to be my own favourite writer. 
to everyone who entered the competition, choosing only three out of all of the brilliantly written pieces was no easy task. Well done to all of you, but most especially to our top three contestants. Administration
Quote by JadeElise
hey, i am almost finished my first novel 'Confessions of a serial killer' i have made a twitter account for it which is https://twitter.com/JadeElise1
i will post quotes, character stories, news and when i can work it out i will upload some chapters
I look forward to reading it, sounds interesting. :)
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It's a very good question. I think that there is a huge market for erotica, but because of the stigma attached it doesn't sell very well in print. If you were to check any of the major online sites (Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, etc), you will find that the market is flooded. Problem is that people often confuse erotica with porn (there is a difference). There are some brilliant erotica writers out there, but sadly, when it comes to that genre, mosly e-books sell.
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Writing is something I've always wanted to do, but I never considered it as a career until two years ago. Most of my time as a teacher was spent writing stories for my lessons, stories that most other teachers at my school ended up using as well. I never thought of it as being 'a writer', merely as being 'a creative teacher'. I still write for fun and as a cheap form of therapy, but I am more serious now about wanting to be a writer.
And the first writer I read that inspired me to write was Ray Bradbury. I was a huge fan as a kid. Incidentally, Ray passed away little over a month ago, may his soul be at peace.
And the first writer I read that inspired me to write was Ray Bradbury. I was a huge fan as a kid. Incidentally, Ray passed away little over a month ago, may his soul be at peace.
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Quote by DirtyMartiniQuote by scooter
I joined because of the lack of gold membership fee's.
Damn, so I take it you won't be interested in the deluxe Stories Space Platinum membership plan anytime soon, eh? Comes with access to the special Platinum member private chat room...
Oh wait...our chat room is pretty private as it is...never mind...
You forgot to mention the private golf course, Martini.
