Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 2

What happens after that first draft is that Doyle gets it, and the next time I see it it's Wholly Different.

John Scalzi has a post today about the latest scam going on over at Amazon, this time dealing with Kindle Unlimited.

Lots of news in the last couple of weeks about Amazon Kindle Unlimited scammers, who are creating 3,000-page books filled with mostly garbage because that’s what lets them take advantage of the way Amazon pays authors participating in the KU scheme: Amazon tracks the last page synced and pays out by how far into the book someone’s gone (as opposed to read).

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Who gains? Scammers. Who loses? Real authors with legitimate books. Who doesn't care? Amazon.

Speaking of scam affecting writers (as we just were),

'It sounded like my child': the 'virtual kidnappers' scamming Americans

Tracy Holczer was driving with a friend to their writers’ group in a suburb of Los Angeles when she got a terrifying call on her cellphone from a number she didn’t recognize. A hysterical girl was screaming on the other end of the line.
“Mommy, please help me! Someone grabbed me, and I’m in a van. I don’t know where I am!”


It was 4.45pm on 22 March, and it was immediately clear to Holczer that she was experiencing the most unimaginable horror any parent could comprehend: her 14-year-old daughter, Maddy, whom she had left at home 30 minutes earlier, had been kidnapped.

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The connection to writers is this: first, that the victim of the scam described in the article is a writer. Second, that any scam has, at its base, a story.

Story is one of the great powers of the universe. Like fire, it is both useful and terrible. Use it wisely, and only for good.

Thanks for the heads up, James. What a revealing and depressing article about Amazon KU. I've blogged about similar topics and pulled my punches. I know what's wrong but I dare not come out and say it. Scalzi is getting to the heart of the matter.

Meanwhile, over at the Guardian, "Ten Everyday Grammar Mistakes You Might Be Making."

I mostly agree with most of them (though I regularly use 'whilst,' because I like it and 'amongst' just sounds right). Do not forget Orwell's advice: break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

Another used-to-been regular says "hi, I'm back"

I wasn't sure whether it was the Done Thing to do a "hi, I'm back" post here, but I see triceretops has done so to good effect, so. Hi! I'm back.

Just met a local-to-me writer today in the course of the critique group she's just started up; I hadn't been in a face-to-face critique group for a while, so I RSVP'd. I gave her the latest draft of my story-in-progress, she gave me her Chapter 1, I kind of remember how this goes, it's gonna be good. She's a relative newbie in terms of the industry, so she's picking my brains about the whole submissions and markets and publishers thing. But she's also a natural novelist where I'm a natural short story writer, so I'm picking her brains about "how do you keep it all organized in your head? How do you get to The End? How do you revise?"

So of course I came back here to find the URL of this thread (and its predecessors, and its adjuncts) for her. (If she shows up and sees this: Hi! It's me! Awesome hail storm we got after our meetup broke up this morning, right? Spring in Colorado, what are you?) And I read a few of the latest pages of the thread and, because they're made of awesome, my brain started to percolate pleasantly.

I haven't done anything new with my, er, ten or so messy, incoherent novel drafts that I've accumulated over many years of NaNoWriMo'ing - what I did with the first three chapters of that one novel in order to apply to Viable Paradise in 2006 was as much as I ever did, novelwise. And I'm kind of tired of the lack of motion in novel land. So I'm hoping coming back to this thread on a regular basis will help me restart that part of my writer brain and maybe I'll get somewhere this time.

Meanwhile, I'm doing my regular Butt in Chair, I'm revising, I'm submitting stuff to paying markets, and I'm putting very short things up on Patreon four times a month as an ongoing experiment in "it makes me type THE END regularly, if nothing else". Writing is happening. But I would like more of it to be novel writing.

Hi back, Niki -- great to see you again.

When Doyle and I were writing what turned out to be our first novel we we still calling it The Short Story when we were on page 220 (which shows we were Unclear On The Concept).

The difference between a short story and a novel is that a short story closes down from the first page, while a novel opens up from the first page. (Inverted triangle for short story, pyramid for novel.)

So, when you come to a choice in the beginning of your work in progress, if you want a novel, make a choice that makes things wider. If you want a short story make a choice that brings things closer.

To get back to the chess game -- get your pieces off the rear rank and into play.

James D. Macdonald said:

The difference between a short story and a novel is that a short story closes down from the first page, while a novel opens up from the first page. (Inverted triangle for short story, pyramid for novel.)

So, when you come to a choice in the beginning of your work in progress, if you want a novel, make a choice that makes things wider. If you want a short story make a choice that brings things closer.

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That's a wonderfully helpful way of looking the difference between the two. Thank you!

I wonder if anyone ever actually leaves AW. I go off and come back once in a while to lurk for a few days, get caught up, feed my addiction and then drift off into the other world. Is that really leaving or is it just a small departure? (returning to lurk mode.)

Hi, Allen.

Not even death will set you free.

Meanwhile, I'm engaging in Writing Avoidance Behavior, annotating a Whig songbook from the election of 1844.

allenparker said:

I wonder if anyone ever actually leaves AW. I go off and come back once in a while to lurk for a few days, get caught up, feed my addiction and then drift off into the other world. Is that really leaving or is it just a small departure? (returning to lurk mode.)

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I was actually thinking about you a few weeks ago, Allen. Insaw some PA/ASB posts and wondered what had happened to you. I've considered leaving but this place has got me for good, I think.

Back to Jim's inverted triangle: I get it that in a short story each progression narrows toward the conclusion, and although in a novel each progression opens things up (I read that as makes the problem more intractable, or raises the stakes for the characters, or adds to the amount of mess the characters have to deal with), doesn't a novel need to contract again to its conclusion? Of course, a satisfying ending contracts in a delightfully creative way. Could novels be two triangles, a larger conflict building triangle followed by a smaller resolution triangle?

Yep. At some point a novel starts moving to a conclusion, so perhaps it's diamond shaped. Though there are often paths leading other places -- that's where sequels come from. You don't have a whole lot of sequels to short stories. Series, yes. But you don't have to have read The Red-Headed League to read The Adventure of the Speckled Band.

Oh, I like the diamond-shaped analogy. In newspaper journalism, we were required to write in the upside down pyramid. In the beginning stage, I had no idea what that meant.

allenparker said:

I wonder if anyone ever actually leaves AW.

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No.

A few have tried...

For a while, I thought some had succeeded, but then I stumbled across a hidden door down one of the AW hallways. *shudder* I can't tell you the things I saw. Unspeakable things.

I... I've said too much already...

Hi. I'm Allen and I am an AWaholic. Glad to see I am in good company. I hate those groups I get addicted to that have all those bad eggs.

"Welcome to The Hotel California..."

Lynn, Lynn, city of sin,
You never come out the way you went in.

James D. Macdonald said:

Lynn, Lynn, city of sin,
You never come out the way you went in.

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Oh man. You have to be from MA or spent a lot of time here to know that one. Memories, man, you're bringing up memories of sneaking out to meet my best friend by flax pond or down on the common.

James D. Macdonald said:

Lynn, Lynn, city of sin,
You never come out the way you went in.

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My mom's always said it, "Lynn, Lynn, city of sin. Once you get out, you never get in."
...That never made sense to me. Thanks for clarifying.

I've also been to Lynn, MA and it never seemed so bad

Lynn was one of the original mill towns that hired lots of unmarried young women; that was where the term "working girl" came to be a euphemism for "prostitute."

Altered States of the Union

To the tune of "Old Rosin the Beau"

An anthology's coming this summer
So hurry to order, don't wait,
Glenn Hauman's the editor of 'er
The publisher is Crazy Eight.

The publisher is Crazy Eight,
The publisher is Crazy Eight.
Glenn Hauman's the editor of 'er
And the publisher is Crazy Eight.

They say it has hundreds of pages
Well who gives a darn if it do
Each sentence is real entertaining--
You'll laugh 'til you bust and cry too.

You'll laugh 'til you bust and cry too, &c.

The stories will be mostly truthful
You have to just go with the flow
Had one or two details been different
In the history most of us know.

In the history most of us know, &c.

So come over to IndieGoGo
And plunk down a dollar or three,
Your reward will be measured in heaven;
And some will be coming to me.

And some will be coming to me, &c.

Shameless Self Promotion part the next: People who back Altered States of the Union at $200 can get Tuckerized into one of the stories in the anthology.

James D. Macdonald said:

Lynn was one of the original mill towns that hired lots of unmarried young women; that was where the term "working girl" came to be a euphemism for "prostitute."

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Little known fact from my neck of the woods, Richmond Virginia, during the War Between the States, had 800 hospitals and 4000 brothels. Not counting slaves, health workers and such, the population was about 50,000 about half of which were women. Doing the math with 5 women per place, bet you can't guess what the average women did for a living...

Hey, Allen. Just damn nice seeing you around. That's all.

Um....hookers?

Florence Nightingale put her nurses in uniform so no one would mistake them for prostitutes.

(Florence went to her grave never believing in the new-fangled germ theory of disease. She did, however, believe in hot water, soap, sunlight, and fresh air, so it all worked out. She also kept a pet owl in her pocket, whom she used to consult.)

Meanwhile ... our Mechanical Prostitute Story, for free! The Clockwork Trollop. It's a steampunk science fiction horror erotica ghost story, finest kind. And it has jokes, too!

Last bit of Yet More Shameless Self Promotion:

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To the tune of "Old Dan Tucker"

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Now's the time to show your manners
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