aroslav: Blog

This is number seventy-nine in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

IN KEEPING WITH last week’s theme of expanding your tool chest, I came across a concept that was pounded into me as a child. Picture, if you will, a small boy with a nail apron and a hammer, tapping on a nail. That's me.

Remember I quoted Abraham Kaplan as saying, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding.” I received my first literal toolbox for Christmas when I was five years old, and I set about ‘helping’ my father put an addition on the house. My first and favorite tool? My hammer, of course. That was in 1954. I could have been the inspiration for Kaplan's quote.

Now imagine that small boy on his hands and knees with a block of wood and a nail in front of him, tapping tapping tapping on the nail and making little progress. You see, at that time I was still putting the wood and nail between me and the hammer. So, my hammer was facing my body as I tapped.

My father, in all his wisdom and love, said, “Boy! Put your butt behind you!”

I don’t know if it was blind luck or instinct that led me to figuring out he meant to swing the hammer away from me instead of toward me. I did figure it out, eventually.

So, it strikes me that we often have writing tools at our disposal but haven’t actually learned how to use them properly.

My most popular series of novels is Living Next Door to Heaven. Its chapters have been downloaded over two million times. It was published in three parts on SOL and ten parts in eBooks. (Bonus question: Which of the ten books did Amazon declare didn’t meet their community standards because of the cover?)

Much of this series is based on my memories and fantasies of life in Mishawaka, Indiana (where the first photo above was taken). And it was narrated from a first person point of view (POV) by Brian Frost. Many of the background experiences were from my life, the way I remembered it (or wanted to remember it). Delivering newspapers, going to a dude ranch, demonstrating on a televised cooking show, and many other background events could be illustrated from my photo albums.

On the other hand, it is fiction! It isn’t my autobiography. And I had to learn the difference in order to use that as a tool in telling the story. As the narrator, I started out using the names of people I knew in my neighborhood while growing up and people I went to school with when I was very young. Oh no! Not if I was going to publish it to a broader audience than those who subscribed to SOL. Someone might recognize themselves!

In fact, one of the people from our old neighborhood did read the series, after I’d edited it and changed the names. We talked about it and with the simple name changes I made before publishing it in eBook, he didn’t recognize anyone.

“You mean Joanne is our Joanne next door? Oh! You know when she went to Purdue where I was, we finally managed to hook up. It was unbelievable!”

But that was one of the things I had to learn in using the first person POV and dragging my own experiences into it. Don’t follow history too closely! Let the characters you create tell their story, not the characters you knew in real life. I did much better with two other series loosely based on my life: Wonders of My World and Photo Finish.

The individual eBooks and entire Living Next Door to Heaven collection are available at Bookapy. And book seven, Hearthstone Entertainment, is free! So take that, Amazon!

I believe it is more likely for an author to fall into the trap of conforming to real life experience when they are writing from a first person POV. It’s very hard for an author to use the word “I” without actually seeing himself in the picture.

However, there are also pitfalls in using a third person POV that might need to be overcome when using that tool.

The first big problem is in head-hopping. For me, that is the trigger for saying “Put your butt behind you!” Head hopping is commonly a feature of the third person omniscient POV. From this viewpoint, the author can record what a character was thinking when he said something and in the next line record what the listener was thinking about the speaker. In one line you are in the head of the speaker and in the next line you are in the head of the listener.

When I read something that does this, I’m instantly confused as to who is thinking what and who knows what’s being thought. Here’s a quick sample.

“I think I know better how to do this than you do,” Brad said, smugly denigrating Lisa’s abilities.
“What an asshole,” Lisa thought.
Brad was offended.

Wait! What was Brad offended by? He couldn’t know what Lisa thought, could he? Who knows what? Whose head am I supposed to be in? Now try extending that to a group scene:

Tom secretly agreed with Lisa’s opinion.
Everyone knew that Alice thought all men were assholes.
“I’d like to show her what a nice guy is really like,” Bill thought.

I don’t even know what the subject is any longer, let alone whose head I’m in!

Even in a story in which the narrator knows everything, it is more effective to limit what is being talked about to the perspective of one or another character. In the next scene, go ahead and switch perspectives to a different character, but try to maintain a single character focus in each scene. This is sometimes referred to as third person limited rather than omniscient.

A small deviation from this rule is found in most contemporary romance. In the typical boy meets girl romance we know there will be an attraction, it will be fought against by at least one of the characters, they will part in a seemingly irreconcilable way, and eventually they will get back together. The reader expects to get a glimpse inside each character’s head, often seeing how they respond differently to a situation and to each other. But to use this tool effectively, the author needs to show clearly which character is the focus and how the emphasis has shifted from one to the other. Otherwise, the reader will be confused and in doubt.

So, even with POV in my tool chest, I need to learn to put my butt behind me in order to apply it correctly. Then I can really swing that hammer!

I’ve an idea for next week’s post regarding tenses and the third wall. No, they don’t have anything to do with each other, except that I’ve had to deal with both in one book. Let’s call it “Theatrical Design in the Novel.”

This is number seventy-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

“WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.”

That’s my rephrasing of an adage passed down through the sixties by the likes of Abraham Kaplan and Abraham Maslow. Kaplan referred to it as the law of the instrument. He says: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding.”

I prefer to believe that all through the sixties, the underlying message was not only to recognize different kinds of problems, but to expand your tool chest. Certainly, one might expand the uses of a hammer as well. Pull nails, act as a doorstop, be a murder weapon, weigh down a stack of paper, etc. But most of those could be accomplished by using a better tool.

Crime fiction novelist Raymond Chandler once said, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” I read a serial by a popular SOL author back in the days before I started writing erotica. This author was known for his cliff-hanger chapter endings. (Sorry, I can’t remember the name of the author.) (My editor, Pixel the Cat, has made this prediction: I predict you’ll get at least 10 emails with the name—and at least 3 will have the wrong name. We’ll see.) This SOL author had taken Chandler’s advice literally and a man with a gun entering the room popped up at the end of many chapters. An alternative was, “And then the phone rang.” Or, “Headlights flashed through the window.” The interruption to an action sequence that was really going nowhere in a story that had no end was the interpretation for this author.

When you only have one tool, it has to be the solution to every problem you encounter. So, I began working on my tool chest to expand the ways I could create intrigue, action, suspense, and just general good writing. That’s when I encountered the Johari window.

The Johari window was advanced in 1955 as a means of better understanding oneself and one’s relationship to others. The name came from the combined first names of its inventors, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham.

The Johari window is a simple grid of four cells, two across and two down. Across the top the cells are labeled “Known to self” and “Not known to self.” On the left, the cells are labeled “Known to others” and “Not known to others. The upper left cell, then, is what is known both to oneself and to others. It is common knowledge, also referred to as ‘the arena.’ It is where most social interaction occurs.

The upper right cell is things that are known to others, but not known to oneself. It is the self’s blind spot. The lower left cell is what is not known to others, but is known to oneself. It may be referred to as the façade, or the hidden. The final, lower right cell is the unknown. These are things not known by either the self or others. It is sometimes referred to as the area of discovery.

That seemed to be exactly what the structure of a novel or even a good scene could be. We have a protagonist, an antagonist, and what is known to whom.

I think of a famous scene in the 1994 movie Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Both Michael and Demi know they are in an office trying to have sex or not have sex. Michael knows this is wrong and is having difficulty communicating it to Demi. Demi knows this is a way to control Michael and ultimately shift blame for plant failure from her to him. What neither of them know is that Michael’s phone is still connected to another person’s voicemail and their encounter is being recorded.

That scene was the first that made me think the Johari window could be used as a technique for plotting a scene. We have what the protagonist knows and doesn’t know, and we have what the antagonist knows and doesn’t know. The action of the scene is in ‘the arena,’ or what both know. But the story lies in the unknown. It contains the big discovery that will bring the story to light.

I used the Johari window technique at critical points of the Team Manager series. For example, in SWISH!, the bad guys know someone is spying on them and they believe it was Dennis and his father. Dennis’s father knows it was some girl or small boy who had taken pictures. The action is in that arena. The story, or discovery, however, is it is the sister of one of the bad guys who was spying and taking the pictures.

This concept is repeated in CHAMP! when Dennis is trapped in the coaches’ office as two thugs attempt to sabotage the building. He knows they are there and up to no good. They don’t know he is there. They know they are being paid well to drill holes in the roof. None of them know who is actually paying them to create havoc. Action and discovery, the arena of what both know as they discover what each other knows and the unknown instigator of the attack.

The individual eBooks and entire Team Manager series are available on Bookapy.

While this works well with a well-defined protagonist and antagonist, I’ve also discovered it works in a more general way when I am plotting and writing. I put myself in the picture as the narrator and characters, and you as the reader. There are things that we both know, i.e. what the narration and characters have divulged. There are things the reader knows because the narration has told them, but the characters don’t know. Of course, there are things the narrator knows that the reader doesn’t know because he hasn’t told them yet. And finally, there is the detail of how this is all going to come together to a resolution, which no one knows.

I can’t tell you how often I reach a point in a story where I simply don’t know! But I know how to find out.

Trying to fit every situation into a Johari window is the same as having only a hammer. Many situations don’t work and don’t enlighten the writer. That’s okay. It’s why we have other tools in the big box. We can always have a man with a gun enter the room!

I’ll try to continue the idea of tools next week, but I don’t have a title yet for the post. I’ve been going through papers I wrote many years ago in my Noveling Notes blog, which I have lost access to. There’s a lot of reading to be done. I think the possible title for next week is “Put Your Butt Behind You.” We’ll see.

This is number seventy-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I CUT MY TEETH in mythology by reading Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander, a collection of his essays on mythology. I believe it was a result of Dr. Cassell’s class in comparative religions at dear old ICC that introduced me to the book, published in 1968. But it inspired further digging into Campbell’s understanding of mythology when I started writing my own myth in Devon Layne’s (aroslav) Behind the Ivory Veil.

And what does mythology have to do with plotting a story and writing it down?

Campbell compared the mythology of dozens of religions on an equal footing. He held that the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus all shared a similar mythological base and that when they were interpreted as biography, history, or science, the story is killed—the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link to universal themes is lost.

His first and possibly most famous book was The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is where he first began alluding to the Hero’s Journey, a common theme within nearly every religious mythology in the world.

I thought ‘What better work of mine to illustrate the Hero’s Journey than Devon Layne’s Hero Lincoln Trilogy, set in Lazlo Zalezac’s “Damsels in Distress” universe.

The universe was made for stories of heroes, and it is best when the stories are focused on adhering to the rules of the universe and actually following a hero from his calling to his rescue of a damsel to his reward and return to his own world. This is essentially the Hero’s Journey, and you might recognize these elements in the previous posts about the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel beat sheets. But where the latter book focuses on contemporary literature, Campbell’s work takes us back in time to show us that this theme is a constant throughout history.

Set in a remote world where there are harsh realities and a high likelihood of death for would-be heroes, the stories are sufficiently remote from the reality of our world that we can accept the lessons they teach rather than searching for the historical precedents and factual material on which they are based. At that point, we can release ourselves from our disbelief and find parallels to almost everything in our own daily lives. And that is the purpose of mythology.

The Hero Lincoln Trilogy is available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy. It is also available as a single volume collection in paperback from Barnes and Noble.

So, how does this journey, derived from comparative mythology, help an author in writing fiction today? Much like the beats described last week, the Hero’s Journey plots the necessary steps that take place from page one of the manuscript to “The End.” I present them here in hopes that an alternative to the beat sheet might be helpful. I have used this outline repeatedly!

1. THE ORDINARY WORLD. The hero is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma or polarities in conflict.
2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. Something shakes up the situation so the hero must face the beginnings of change.
3. REFUSAL OF THE CALL. The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure.
4. MEETING WITH THE MENTOR. The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice.
5. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD. At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.
6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES. The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.
7. APPROACH. The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.
8. THE ORDEAL. Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts his or her greatest fear.
9. THE REWARD. The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.
10. THE ROAD BACK. About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero must get the treasure home. Urgency and danger.
11. THE RESURRECTION. At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.
12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR. The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the ordinary world as the hero has been transformed.

As you can see, the structure is very similar, but has different phrasing than the three-act beat sheets, but significant things occur in sync. Take, for example, 8. The Ordeal. Just as in the beat sheets, this comes halfway through the story and the hero is apparently triumphant or apparently defeated. He must work his way back, facing his greatest weaknesses or demons to actually seize the sword—or the object of the quest—to claim the reward. Even then, the journey is not over. He must find his way back to the normal world, with the damsel, if you will, and bring her across to reality.

What impresses me most about comparing the Hero’s Journey with the Save the Cat! beat sheets is how contemporary literature, on which the beat sheets are based, so closely follows the same pattern that has made compelling myths throughout human history, on which the Hero’s Journey was based.

Joseph Campbell passed away in 1987, not long after filming a series of interviews with Bill Moyer that aired soon thereafter. The series, titled The Power of Myth, goes more deeply into the Hero’s Journey and Campbell clarifies some of his earlier statements, like the often misinterpreted “Follow your bliss.” He comments that he should have said “Follow your blisters.” The Power of Myth is available as an eBook or video. It will help any writer of fiction, in my humble opinion.

I believe I’ll get into a couple of tools I use for determining what goes into a particular chapter next week. Assuming I have a decent map with the Hero’s Journey or the beat sheets, there is still a story to be written. The excitement of the story is what you put around that skeleton. Just for laughs, I think I’ll call the next one “The Johari Window.”

This is number seventy-six in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I PROMISED MORE about plotting and story arc in last week’s post, and here I am to deliver. Sort of. With seventy-odd books in the market and two different author names--four if you count the avatars on SOL--you would think I should know what I’m talking about. It ain’t always so.

In fact, I get comments from readers who challenge me on nearly every topic that comes up in my books, including my use or avoidance of plots. An excellent and highly respected author sent me a message after reading one of my stories and said, “I struggled to understand what the underlying message of it was, or if there was one at all.”

I was called out! Indeed, any concept of an underlying message was vague if present at all. But I was personally awakened to revitalizing my plotting of stories and doing less of a diary approach to the development of a story.

Even as a double major in college in English and Theatre, I was not taught how to become a famous author. I was taught to analyze and discuss the works of famous authors, but missed the day the professors discussed how to apply that thinking to my own writing.

So, the things I explore in this blog are often things that, at the ripe old age of @%$^&, I’m still struggling with, whether in erotica or mainstream fiction.

I also mentioned I would discuss the creation of a beat sheet in the context of today’s official release of my newest Devon Layne (aroslav) book, The Strongman. I'm happy to see readers on SOL reading the first chapter and sales starting on Bookapy this morning.

The first step in creating the beat sheet is to create the logline. A logline is supposed to be a one-sentence description of what the story is all about. In a sentence(!!!) it is supposed to answer the question asked me by the author referred to above. What is the underlying message? In other words, “Why should I read it?”

I’ve found that one-sentence descriptions often end up so convoluted that I’m willing to break them into smaller bites. The idea, though, is to give the message of the book in as few words as possible. Here it is:

Tired of being a 68-pound weakling, Paul vows to get big and strong so guys will stop picking on him and girls will finally notice him; but when Paul’s gymnastics world begins to fall apart, his girlfriend leaves him, his new partner becomes abusive, and his dream of becoming an Olympic champion begins to fade, he must dig deep inside to discover the true meaning of strength and find a purpose for his life.

Okay. That’s what I mean by a single convoluted sentence. Let’s break it down. First, we have the hero’s starting situation. We have his proposed solution. We have the results of getting there. And finally, we have revealed the underlying message. Being strong doesn’t necessarily mean what he thought it did as a child.

The Strongman by Devon Layne has been released this morning (August 25, 2024) in both eBook and paperback at Bookapy and most online bookstores around the world. The 27-chapter serial starts today on SOL and will post a chapter every three days.

This statement guided the writing of The Strongman from the first words on the page to the end of the book. But, of course, it wasn’t quite enough to write the whole story. And so, we get into the beat sheet. Remember the three acts and fifteen beats I alluded to last week? To start, let’s define a beat as a segment of the story that has a clear goal. Beats may overlap or even be re-ordered, but they have a clear goal for moving the story forward. This is where they become the strength of the plot.

Act I
1. Opening Image (0% to 1%) – A “before” snapshot of the hero and his or her world.
2. Theme Stated (5%) – A statement made by a character that hints at what the hero must learn/discover before the end of the book.
3. Setup (1% - 10%) – An exploration of the hero’s status quo life and all its flaws, where we learn what the hero’s life looks like before its epic transformation. Here we also introduce other supporting characters and the hero’s primary goal.
4. Catalyst (10%) – An inciting incident (or life-changing event) that happens to the hero, which will catapult them into a new world or new way of thinking.
5. Debate (10% to 20%) – A reaction sequence in which the hero debates what they will do next.

Act II
6. Break Into 2 (20%) – The moment the hero decides to accept the call to action, leave their comfort zone, try something new, or venture into a new world or new way of thinking.
7. B Story (22%) – The introduction of a new character or characters who will ultimately serve to help the hero learn the theme.
8. Fun and Games (20% to 50%) – This is where we see the hero in their new world. They’re either loving it or hating it. Succeeding or floundering. Also called the promise of the premise.
9. Midpoint (50%) – Literally the middle of the novel, where the Fun and Games culminates in either a false victory or a false defeat. Something should happen here to raise the stakes and push the hero toward real change.
10. Bad Guys Close In (50% to 75%) – If the Midpoint was a false victory, this section will be a downward path where things get progressively worse for the hero. The hero’s deep-rooted flaws (or internal bad guys) are closing in.
11. All Is Lost (75%) – The lowest point of the novel. An action beat where something happens to the hero that, combined with the internal bad guys, pushes the hero to rock bottom.
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75% to 80%) – A reaction beat where the hero takes time to process everything that’s happened thus far. The hero should be worse off than at the start of the novel.

Act III
13. Break Into 3 (80%) – The “aha!” moment. The hero realizes what they must to do to not only fix the problems created in Act 2, but more important, fix themself.
14. Finale (80% to 99%) – The hero proves they have truly learned the theme and enacts the plan they came up with in the Break Into 3. Not only is the hero’s world saved, but it’s a better place than it was before.
15. Final Image (99% to 100%) – A mirror to the Opening Image, this is the “after” snapshot of who the hero is after going through this epic and satisfying transformation.

I credit all the information on the beat sheet to Jessica Brody’s book Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, which was in turn based on Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book, Save the Cat!

Is this information—the story arc created by the beat sheet—sufficient? It’s a great place to start, and I believe The Strongman is a fair representation of a book based on a carefully constructed beat sheet. However, the beat sheet is not a formula for writing, nor is it the only way to approach the problem. After I completed the beat sheet, for example, I went on to create a detailed outline, chapter-by-chapter, that described what was unique about this book. The outline, of course, is where a dedicated author will fill in the details. It’s also where we find differences between the exact structure of the beat sheet and the story arc as it develops. That’s different for every book.

I think I’ll write at least one more blog on the general subject of plotting. Next week, I’d like to compare another famous description of the story arc: Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.

I'm happy to announce that my newest work, The Strongman, will release and start serialization next Sunday. Today, the eBook went on pre-sale at Bookapy and most other vendors. There will be a paperback edition of this one and it should be available online next Sunday as well. Here's the skinny:

Fed up with being a 98-pound weakling, Paul sets out on a course to become ‘big and strong’ as a gymnast, so guys will stop picking on him and girls will sit up and take notice. But even when he becomes strong, he finds popularity and social acceptance elusive. Then partially paralyzed acrobatic gymnast Tara tracks him down as a potential mixed pairs partner.

Tara believes her intimacy with her former partner was what caused her accident and agrees to date Paul, but she has rules about their relationship. Their closeness as partners, his partnership in her physical rehabilitation, and pressure from friends, family, and other performers drive the two closer and closer as they approach the grand performance that will re-establish Tara as a gymnast.

But when Paul’s gymnastics world begins to fall apart, his girlfriend leaves him, his new partner becomes abusive, and his dream of becoming an Olympic gymnast begins to fade, he must dig deep inside to discover the true meaning of strength and find a purpose for his life.

If you followed any of the Olympic gymnastics, either men's or women's, this year, you know how tiny errors can cost a medal. Sometimes the errors aren't even on the gymnast's part! Paul will experience many of the thrills of victory and agonies of defeat that were once a theme of ABC's Wide World of Sports. You won't want to miss a step in his journey in The Strongman.

Enjoy!