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Use Plot Motivators to Move Your Fiction

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 3:59 pm 2 Responses »

Dec 312011

The following is excerpted from June and William Noble’s classic, Steal This Plot: A Writer’s Guide to Story Structure and Plagiarism. (The Write Thought recently republished Steal This Plot in our Classic Wisdom on Writing Series.)

There are certain items which become basic to story construction, and we’ve chosen to call them “plot motivators.” They aren’t plots, nor are they dramatic situations. They simply move the plot along and provide drama. There are thirteen in all which cover most available story opportunities for the writer.

But why plot motivator?

Because a plot—the story within a story—without some direction is like a large boulder in a bubbling stream. It’s a lovely scene. You see it, you might even be able to touch it, but it doesn’t move! Plot motivators make a story move, and they are the prime devices by which a writer can steal a plot and make it his own.

Take Benchley’s Jaws. Many have compared it, at least superficially, to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in the sense that there is an unremitting chase or search for a great white fish. Here again we have a similar plot—a human-devouring beast that must be destroyed. But look at what Benchley has done. He has asked “what if…” the scene becomes the south shore of Long Island… the fish is a Great White Shark… the hunters are motivated by more financial reward than anything else….

Yet before Benchley’s plot will really work, he has to ask why! Why must the fish be destroyed? The answer lies in the plot motivator, i.e. vengeance. Ahab in Moby Dick and his counterpart, the fishing boat captain in Jaws have both suffered grievous harm from the great white fish, and so they set out to destroy it to salve their own concepts of revenge. Vengeance moves the plot along; it motivates it!

Following are the common plot motivators that appear and reappear through literature. At any given time, of course, more than one plot motivator can exist side by side, affecting the story. The point is that these are the wheels that make the story go; they are the underpinnings for the various dramatic situations. You can take any story idea, attach one or more of these motivators to it, and you’ll have a plot and a story line.

In no particular order of importance the plot motivators are:

Vengeance

Catastrophe

Love and Hate

The Chase

Grief and Loss

Rebellion

Persecution

Self-Sacrifice

Survival (deliverance)

Rivalry

Discovery (quest)

Ambition

Betrayal

As good as plot motivators are in developing a story, there are times when they need further substance and direction. Think, for instance, about Ernest Hemingway’s well-told story, The Old Man and the Sea. The plot is simple and straightforward: Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman, sets out in his small boat to pursue his livelihood, alone and with just the barest of gear. Far from shore he lands the largest marlin he has ever seen, a fish that if he gets to port intact will rectify, perhaps forever, the misery he has endured throughout his life. Eighty-four days he has gone without catching a fish, and now his salvation is at hand!

Enter the plot motivator—survival. Hemingway paints a vivid portrait of Santiago’s fight, not only to land the huge fish but also to get it, intact, back to shore where he would be honored and recognized for such a feat. And it is truly an epic battle for survival, for the fisherman is almost overwhelmed time and time again, first by the huge marlin itself and then by the predators who are drawn to the boat by the trailing blood of the marlin as it remains lashed alongside. Survival is clearly the plot motivator for this story, and a battle for survival is fine story material.

When you are reading a novel or short story, see if you can identify multiple plot motivators. The best fiction writers mix and match plot motivators to make plots complex and rewarding to the reader.

Just a write thought.

Happy New Year.

Controversy Rages: Amazon to Lend Books

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 8:16 pm No Responses »

Nov 172011

Click on the image above to learn more about Amazon's new lending program.

There’s been quite a ruckus in the book publishing world lately. Amazon.com has recently announced its long-anticipated foray into lending e-books.

Kindle owners who are also Amazon Prime members, in addition to getting free two-day shipping on their orders and “unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows,” can also borrow books to read without an additional payment (Amazon Prime membership costs $79 per year). There doesn’t appear to be any limit on how long a book can be borrowed but only one book can be borrowed at a time.

Amazon says its lending library offers over 5,000 titles including 100 New York Times bestsellers. This is a far cry from the millions of print titles available on Amazon or the hundreds of thousands of e-books available as Kindle editions, but it is a toe in the water and publishers, authors, and literary agents are nervous.

How’s it work?

Amazon Prime members who are also Kindle owners are now presented with a “Borrow for Free” button next to the “Buy” button on selected books. When the member chooses to borrow a title, Amazon credits the publisher’s account with the same dollar amount as if the e-book was sold rather than loaned. At this point, the Amazon Prime member gets to read the book as a part of his or her yearly fee and the publisher effectively gets a full-priced sale.

So, why the controversy?

This sounds fair to me. I’d sign The Write Thought titles up. So why the hubbub?

I think the concern from the publishers—most publishers with titles among those available for loan weren’t notified that their titles would be included in this program—is that they haven’t agreed to Amazon “lending” titles even if Amazon pays as if they sold it.

Also, apparently Amazon plans to report revenue from this program to publishers as a lump sum leaving the publishers to allocate this revenue their authors. Amazon is said to be basing this lump sum by looking at the 12-month sales history of titles included in the program. A rather nebulous reporting method at best.

I think the Authors Guild and the Association of Authors’ Representatives (literary agents), two groups that have spoken out about this, are concerned since most contracts between authors and publishers have a set royalty paid to the author based on revenue from each e-books sale, say 25% of net revenue and a different amount on revenue generated from rights sales, say 50% of net.

The question being, which is this? Revenue from the sale of a book or revenue from a subsidiary right? And, of course, how is a publisher to properly allocate each of its author’s revenue share if Amazon doesn’t supply a complete breakdown by title?

Another concern, of course, is if this is simply Amazon’s first salvo into the world of lending books; will Amazon attempt to morph the program into something else. For instance, can Amazon purchase one copy of an e-book and “lend” or “rent” it as many times as it likes? Pay the publisher once and rent or loan it many times. Libraries do this now and many years ago so did bookstores.

The world is still hazy when it comes to e-books.

Just a write thought.

Instapaper, One of My Favorite Writing Tools

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:25 pm No Responses »

Nov 092011

Save time and energy saving articles to Instapaper

A dozen times a week I’ll stumble upon a news story or an article on the web that I’m interested in but don’t want to take the time to read right then.

This happens too when I’m researching material for this blog or the three (!) books I’m writing.

Pigs don’t fly.

I have never been foolish enough to tell myself I’d remember to go back to an article, so I tried to solve this problem by making folders under my browser’s “Favorites” for each project I was working on. I even had one called “Hot at the Moment” for oddball things that interested me but didn’t apply to my work.

There were numerous problems with this system. Foremost among them was that the folders would quickly fill up with a confusing morass of links. I also found myself reluctant to spend more time on the computer reading than I was already putting in.

Enter Instapaper.

With one click on a button on my browser toolbar titled “Read Later” I can now save the text on any web page to my Instapaper account.

Instapaper automatically synchs what I save to my iPad via the Instapaper app. The app’s opening screen lists the title of each of the items saved with a few lines of text so I can easily find what I’m looking for.

Since the items are downloaded to the iPad, I can read them anywhere including bed, bath, or beyond. Ok, not bath. That really would be daring with an iPad.

It’s mostly free and easy.

To get started, create a free account on Instapaper’s website and follow the simple instructions to install the Read Later button on your browser.

The iPad app, which is good to go on your iPhone too, is $4.99.

No iPad but you’ve got a Kindle or a Nook? With a little finessing you can download what you’ve saved to either one. Go here for instructions.

No iPad, no Kindle, and no Nook? Where do you buy those leisure suits? Have no fear, you can read your saved articles on your PC or laptop too.

Isn’t it great? With technology, life just gets easier and easier.

Just a write thought.

What Will They Want to Read Tomorrow? Anticipate Trends with “Top Searches.”

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:35 pm No Responses »

Oct 162011

George Bernard Shaw was an ardent socialist.

“If you want to see how a society thinks, look at what it searches for.”

—George Bernard Shaw

Allow me to slightly rewrite Shaw’s wise counsel: “If you want to know what a society is interested in reading about, look at what it searches for.”

As writers (and publishers) of nonfiction books, magazine articles—even novels—it behooves us to be on top of whatever is about to break into the collective consciousness.

In other words, to be able to predict what a majority—or at least a large segment—of us are going to be interested in next week, next month, or next year.

Easier said than done

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that, by the time I notice a trend exists, it’s already fading.

So how do you figure out what next will be hot?

Check out the “Top Searches” lists supplied for free by many Internet search engines. Most of them keep the lists updated and archives of past lists are even available.

The searched-for items that appear on each list are undoubtedly what people are interested in at the moment.

However, these subjects may be old news by the time you do your research and write about them, so look for subjects that are just beginning to show up here and there on these lists. Also check the archived lists to see what subjects have exhibited staying power.

Here are some places to start:

Google Trends

On Google Trends, you can get a list of the 20 current hot searches or reset the date to see what was hot on any specific day going back to May 15, 2007.

You can also do a keyword search that returns a graph that shows search volume and news reference volume.

When I searched on “Kindle,” the graph went back to 2004, which I assume was the first mention of Kindle by Amazon.com. It then flat-lined through 2005, 2006, and most of 2007, spiking when the first Kindles became available late in 2007.

After a lackluster 2008, search volume steadily climbed in 2009 to the present with a huge spike coinciding with the recent release of the Kindle Fire.

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo Buzz lists its search engine’s current top 20 searches as well as the current top 20 “Movers.” Movers are terms that are currently spiking.

As I write this—on Sunday, October 16, 2011—Movers include “401k Plans,” “9 9 9 Tax Plan,” and “Bankruptcy Protection.” Hmmm. Wonder why.

Menu choices across the top of Yahoo Buzz’s home screen deliver the current top 20 searches under the categories actors, movies, music, sports, TV, and video games.

Want to know what’s fading? Click on “Decliners” for a current list of the 20 terms that are most rapidly declining in popularity.

Bing

Go to Bing Images to see the latest trends in what images people are searching for.

Technorati

Technorati doesn’t have a great deal to do with Internet searches, but nothing much is more current than the blogosphere. Spend some time on Technorati to keep up on what is popular in the world of bloggers.

By the way, George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Noble Prize for Literature and an Oscar. We should be so talented.

Just a write thought.

10 Things to Consider when Pricing E-Books

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 6:05 pm No Responses »

Aug 272011

To reuse a couple of ‘graphs from my previous blog, “Book Pricing, Finding the Sweet Spot”:

One grand thing about e-books is, since there is no printing involved, once edited, designed, typeset, and formatted, the cost of an e-book is zero. Another is that the retail price a publisher sets can vary day to day.

But, with these two advantages, what does a publisher need to be concerned about when pricing an e-book? Vook, the innovative company that melds books with video, has issued a splendid white paper that goes a long way toward answering this question.

Here are Vook’s Golden Rules of Pricing annotated by yours truly:

1. Zero variable cost means it’s OK to significantly lower prices to maximize revenue.

Week to week—or even day to day—price changes are easy, as are limited-time specials.

2. Optimal pricing is highly content specific.

Business books may command a higher price than books on how to write.

3. Certain pricing thresholds trigger psychological “automatic” purchases.

Lower prices increase impulse buying.

4. Categorization has a large role in optimal pricing and discoverability.

A book that lists calories in popular packaged foods is likely to be found by readers more often if it is placed in the category of “Health Care and Fitness” rather than “Reference.”

5. Merchandising whole catalogs is more effective than single titles: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

The Write Thought publishes a catalog of writing titles under the Classic Wisdom on Writing series. It is our hope that we will see a synergistic effect on revenue because of this grouping.

6. Containers are critical to driving upsell in App environment.

My understanding of the term “container” as used here is the same as “series.”

7. Lift effects through savvy launch promotions have a profound impact on sales.

For instance, it is suggested that a publisher may wish, when launching a title, to place a low price on it for a period of a few days to a couple of weeks in an effort to get sales to a level that will be noticed by a retailer’s algorithms. Books that stand out sales-wise are used to populate “you may also like” recommendations generating additional sales creating a cyclical effect.

8. In general apps cannot support as high price points as eBooks.

Apple has begun declining apps that are effectively unenhanced e-books, referring publishers to the iBookstore. This basically leaves the android app market for plain Jane e-book Apps.

9. Real‐time sales tracking is necessary to adjust pricing in a dynamic eBook world.

Just like any data, you have to watch what’s happening and adjust accordingly.

10. For each retailer there are distinct best practices to maximize discoverability and revenues.

Pricing doesn’t need to be the same for each retailer. The sweet spot for an e-book in Apple’s iBookstore may be higher than the sweet spot for the same title in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

It’s a new world out there full of challenges and rewards. Sharpen your spear and forge forth.

Just a write thought.

Book Pricing, Finding the Sweet Spot

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 5:21 pm 3 Responses »

Aug 182011

At Quill Driver Books we put a lot of thought into the pricing of each title we published.

Here is an abbreviated list of things we considered:

• How big we anticipated the market for the title would be. A small, concentrated market may support a higher price because there are fewer books for those who are in this market to choose from. Large general markets may require a competitive price.

• The buyer demographics: Is this book for poor, starving writers or successful business people?

• How are competing titles priced? The last thing we wanted to do was to compete on price, but we knew the retailers were sensitive to pricing and might not stock a book they felt was overpriced.

• What the demand for the book would be. We felt we could get a couple of extra bucks for a book written by an author with a huge platform. Duh.

• What it cost us to print the book.

With all these factors—and more—to consider, we likely missed the optimum price, that is, the price that would return the largest profit to us. This price is often called the “sweet spot.”

For instance, if we priced a book so we netted $3 on each copy and sold 10,000 copies, we would make $30,000. But, if we priced it with $6 in it for us and sold 40 percent less, or 6,000 copies, we would make $36,000, a 20 percent increase in profit. Of course if the price that returned $6 each cut our sales to 3,000 copies we would make only $18,000.

Until a title sold down and we went back to press on it, we were stuck with the price we set since it was printed on the back cover.

I say, we “likely” missed the optimum price because, how could we ever know unless we published the identical book at different prices in identical parallel universes?

You can see why we gave it so much thought.

Enter E-Books

Clever, Clever

Crown Publishing is rushing out a $.99 e-book on Rick Perry, the latest candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. The book is actually one chapter from The Victory Lab a fall 2011 release by Sasha Issenberg. According to Crown, Victory will present a broad coverage of electoral strategies and the motivations behind the voting decisions people make and isn’t solely about Perry. This is doubly clever, because the $.99 book will sell on its own and act as an ad for the whole book. Why not consider doing this with a chapter of one of your books? If you’re an author, suggest this to your publisher.

Just a write thought.

Need to Add a Plot Twist? Watch This.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 10:31 am 2 Responses »

Jul 172011

Under the category of “Beware What You Wish For” comes this author-centric video in which the plot device is the plot device.

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

That was worth nine minutes, wasn’t it?
I first saw this on Kristin, the polite agent’s, blog: Pub Rants.
BTW, polite literary agents abound, it just seems otherwise since the self-impressed ones make so much noise.

Just a write thought.

Emulate James Lee Burke’s Strong Imagery to Show Not Tell

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 11:24 am 3 Responses »

Jul 102011

Burke's writing is as rich and multihued as a Louisiana bayou.

I’m a fan of James Lee Burke. I thought I’d read every Dave Robicheaux novel he’s written, but just yesterday I found a jacket-less hard cover copy of Crusader’s Cross mixed in with books I’d picked up somewhere and had been meaning to get to. It was like opening a discarded wallet and finding a hundred dollar bill.

Burke is strong on imagery and thrifty on words.

Here, in Cross, is how he tells us what Dave Robicheaux and his brother Jimmie’s childhoods were like:

Before breakfast, my mother would return from the barn smelling of manure and horse sweat, a pail of frothy milk in one hand and an armful of brown eggs smeared with chickenshit clutched against her chest. Then she would pull off her shirt, scrub her hands and arms with Lava soap under the pump in the sink, and in her bra fill our bowls with cush-cush and make ham-and-onion sandwiches for our lunches.

Jimmie and I both had paper routes in New Iberia’s red-light district. We set pins in the bowling alley and with our mother washed bottles in the Tabasco factory on the bayou. My father hand-built the home we lived in, notching and pegging the oak beams with such seamless craftsmanship that it survived the full brunt of a half dozen hurricanes with no structural damage. My mother ironed clothes in a laundry nine hours a day in hundred-and-ten-degree heat. She scalded and picked chickens for five cents apiece in our backyard, and secretly saved money in a coffee can for two years in order to buy an electric ice grinder and start a snowball concession at the minor league baseball park.

Our parents were illiterate and barely spoke English, but they were among the most brave and resourceful people I ever knew. Neither of them would consciously set about to do wrong. But they destroyed one another just the same—my father with his alcoholism, my mother with her lust and insatiable need for male attention. Then they destroyed their self-respect, their family, and their home. They did all this with the innocence of people who had never been farther away from their Cajun world than their weekend honeymoon trip to New Orleans.

In three short, image-filled paragraphs Burke shows us, rather than tells us, his family was poor, hardworking, and dysfunctional.

Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, Burke’s frugal yet rich style is worth emulating.

Just a write thought.

Book Authors Need Platforms

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 10:28 pm 1 Response »

Jun 282011

I’m working on the second edition of my book, The Fast-Track Course on How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal. It’ll be published in the spring of 2012. Here’s a sidebar I’m thinking of including.

Authors Need Platforms

Attendees at writer’s conferences often hear that agents and editors want authors with a “platform.”

Basically, a platform is whatever an author can bring to the table that will help market the author’s books.

This platform may include being elected to the Senate or hosting a national TV show. Authorship of a column is often a good platform. The column by Peter H. Gott, M.D. appears daily in 350 newspapers. When he mentions one of his books in the column, sales soar.

Being famous is a platform in itself. When we contracted with Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer to publish Dr. Ruth’s Sex After 50, we knew Dr. Ruth’s international celebrity status would help sell the book.

Unfortunately few of us are Senators, host TV shows, are internationally famous, or write syndicated columns. But we can do things such as developing a hefty schedule of speaking engagements—even if only in our local geographical area—or establishing ourselves as an authority in a particular industry by writing for trade periodicals and presenting at conferences. One of the easiest things to do is to create a noted online presence.

For help in that last part, read Stephanie Chandler’s The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books. The ideas in John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book will also help you establish a platform.

If you’re thinking of publishing a book and you don’t have a platform already, start building yours today. If you do have one, see what you can do to enhance it.

Just a write thought.

Write Like You Talk

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 9:17 am No Responses »

Jun 242011

June issue

I don’t subscribe to Vanity Fair, but, like with the New Yorker (To which I also don’t subscribe; I quit my subscription as a minor vice on which I both spent too much time and felt guilty for not spending more—the darn thing comes weekly!), whenever I crack the cover, I find remarkable writing.

It was no different when a friend loaned (or is it “lent”) me the June issue of Vanity Fair. Christopher Hitchens, who has spent the past year “living dyingly,” has written an intimate piece that is at once poignant journal, great writing, and solid writing advice.

To set the stage, Hitchens, who has written critiques for a number of magazines and is known for his controversial and confrontational debating style, opens with a few lines of T.S, Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:

I have seen the moment of my greatness
flicker.

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold
my coat, and snicker.

And in short, I was afraid.

Hitchens’ says he doesn’t “so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down.”

The snickering of “a teasing special of the day, or a flavor of the month. It might be random sores and ulcers, on the tongue or in the mouth. Or why not a touch of peripheral neuropathy, involving numb and chilly feet?”

An atheist—he prefers the term “antitheist”—Hitchens likens the effects of his cancer to the wooden-legged piglet that belonged to a “sadistically sentimental family that could bear to eat him only a chunk at a time.”

The latest chunk to be devoured was his voice. Literally. The cancer, in attacking his vocal cords, struck him dumb, “like a silly cat that had abruptly lost its meow.”

Hitchens says he owes a “vast debt” (I’m quoting a “vast” bit from the article because I so enjoy Hitchens’ exacting word choices. A level to which all of we-who-write should so aspire.) to an early critic who advised he should write “more like the way that you talk.”

I remember a 1960s high school English class where we were taught to take the “I” out of our essays. I guess we were being taught to emulate the mind-numbing high school text books they issued us.

IMHO, in everything you write, write like you are in the room with the reader discussing a subject you are passionate about. Let the “you” come through. Your opinions, your views, your biases (okay, keep your biases out of straight journalistic reporting), your vocabulary.

Make the reader feel you. Put the “I” into your writing.

Hitchens advises: “If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.”

Get a copy of the June Vanity Fair and read Hitchen’s article. It’s both a lesson in writing and a lesson in dying.

Just a write thought.

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