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This is number seventy-five in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
IT HAS BECOME increasingly important to me to have a solid story arc in mind before I start writing. That might sound like an obvious statement. How can you start writing a novel before you have a story arc? Surprisingly, it’s not uncommon.
I first encountered National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2004 and have participated for twenty years, ‘winning’ every year. A NaNoWriMo ‘win’ is completing 50,000 words of a new story in 30 days. If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that it is pretty common for me to complete the 50,000-word goal in as little as eight days. But it wasn’t always so.
My first NaNoWriMo ‘novel’ was Willow Mills. I’d conceived the idea of creating a small Indiana town, not unlike Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon. It wasn’t really a single story, but was a series of short pieces describing the town and citizens of Willow Mills, Indiana. Each ‘chapter’ started with the front page of the weekly newspaper of the town that said what had happened this week in 1999. This was followed by short stories that expanded on the background of the people and places mentioned in the articles. It was loosely set around references to Albert Bailey’s Prize Bull, the story of which was saved until the end.
It was approaching midnight on November 30, 2004 when I uploaded my story and discovered I was a thousand words short of the 50,000-word goal. I quickly had to come up with additional stories and statements that would extend the word-count past the goal. I did it with quotes from all the citizens of the town on what it meant to enter a new millennium.
The whole concept was fueled by Chris Baty’s (founder and then president of NaNoWriMo) book No Plot? No Problem! He emphasized that you didn’t need a plot to write a book, but just to create some characters and let them take you where they wanted to go. Sadly, many people (myself included) assumed that writing a draft of a story like that was all that was necessary. But a lot of times the characters were clueless!
It would be hard to count the number of books that have been published (or serials on SOL) that never did get to the story. I think I mentioned that last week.
Fortunately, not all my stories are such stream of consciousness works as that first NaNo effort. Usually, I have a pretty good idea what the plot of the book will be and how I’m going to get there. Sometimes it’s more vague than others, but I have good editors who tend to help pull my vision into focus.
There were advantages to working with the storyboard. I could see at a glance whether the action in each episode contributed to the storyline for that chapter. I could rearrange the cards and move pieces to different episodes—or, indeed, from one book to the other. But carrying a cork board, pins, and nearly a thousand index cards from place to place as I worked on the story was cumbersome. I was constantly riffling through all the cards looking for the right piece. When was it right to talk about Jitterz Coffee Shop? How were various people interrelated?
This is not the only technique I have used to organize the plot of my stories. And most recently, I have worked with the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel beat sheets. This book by Jessica Brody is based on the phenomenally successful guide to screen writing by Blake Snyder called Save the Cat! She divides the structure of a novel into fifteen logical beats that describe what successful novels generally look like.
I began exploring the technique seriously with my recently published Nathan Everett novel, The Staircase of Dragon Jerico. I also used several other techniques in that book and overall, I consider it quite successful as a contemporary romance.
More seriously, I structured my new Devon Layne (aroslav) novel, The Strongman, entirely in the three acts and fifteen beats of the Save the Cat! method. I had the theme and message of the story worked out, and even the overall plot of the book, but the beat sheets forced me to describe the progress in terms that would drive the story forward.
The Strongman is available for pre-sale on Bookapy today and will begin posting with its release next Sunday!
Now I have begun my next Devon Layne novel, working title Head Talkers, only after completing a structural beat sheet. It includes the following:
A logline or brief pitch for the story.
A one-page synopsis.
Fifteen beats in three acts as described in the method. (% indicates how far into the book the beat takes place.)
Act One
1. Opening Image (0%-1%)
2. Theme Stated (5%)
3. Setup (1%-10%)
4. Catalyst (10%)
5. Debate (10%-20%)
Act Two
6. Break into 2 (20%)
7. B Story (22%)
8. Fun and Games (20%-50%)
9. Mid-point (50%)
10. The bad guys close in (50%-75%)
11. All is Lost (75%)
12. The Dark Night of the Soul (75%-80%)
Act Three
13. Break into 3 (80%)
14. Finale (80%-99%)
15. Final Image (99%-100%)
You might be able to tell just from that how the book is structured, but next week, when I announce the release of The Strongman, I’ll expand on what goes into the fifteen beats that helps drive the plot forward—even when the book includes erotica.
This is number seventy-four in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
LOTS OF PEOPLE (more than thirty) have asked for another volume in the Photo Finish series that shows what happens to the family of Nate Hart in the future. Maybe of his success and business fifteen years down the line. Maybe of Toni, Alex, and his future children, and the two children of Jane and Peter. When I think about this, I think of all the things that are on the horizon for them all—some light and some dark.
1. Nate’s father has been battling cancer for the past five years now. When will he succumb?
2. How will the conference deal with Rev. Mother Superior when she is a widow and all the other preachers are staying away from her at the urging of their wives?
3. Uncle Nate Mayer is fifteen years older than his sister, Rev. Mother Superior. He suffers still from PTSD. Will he last much longer?
4. Will Nate ever have any more patrons?
5. Adrienne and Nate’s ‘sponsor’ has been ill and deteriorating for a long time. What will happen to Adrienne when the sponsor dies?
6. Chris is in an unhappy marriage to a man who fools around and might be carrying diseases. How will she end up, and can she ever be part of the family again?
7. We are about to enter the era of the AIDS epidemic. How will that affect Devon/Dora, Peter, and Derek?
8. Will Nate and family choose to continue in Stratford, or try to find a more profitable place in the US?
9. Will Nate manage to teach at Columbia without getting in trouble with a student?
10. What does Nate’s business look like in the growing conservativism of the late 20th century and early 21st? (He’s a prime ‘Me Too’ candidate.)
11. How much do I need to learn about color photography and processing?
12. When do things start turning digital? (My magazine photographer was battling whether or not he should even investigate doing digital photography as early as 1987.)
13. How does the computer start affecting Nate’s business?
14. Does Sandra finish her degrees and publish her book on female sexuality and development with the pictures Nate took?
15. What was the big change happening in Nate’s photo style that he was struggling to understand or even describe?
16. Can Kat and Julie stay together and really make a life of it?
17. What will happen when Kat brings Julie to Nate to make a baby?
18. How many children will Nate have before he says “No more!”?
19. How will his wives continue to hold together? Will any leave or be left?
20. How does Xian blend into the family, especially with Patricia?
21. Does Xian meet up with her father? How does that go?
22. What happens to Elizabeth and does she ever re-enter the picture?
23. Can Nate and family maintain a relationship with Jordan and Nadia?
24. What good things are going to happen down the road? Births. Weddings. Celebrations. New Movies. Awards. New photo style.
25. Does Ronda continue working for the State Department? Does Nate return for “special missions?”
Overall, I think one of the most important things that is overlooked in planning any story, not just a sequel, is to answer, “What’s the point?” In other words, what is the story?
When I wrote Devon Layne’s Photo Finish series, I had a very specific story in mind for the books to tell. It would span approximately nine years, from 1966-1975. I knew what the beginning and the ending of the story would be and decided to fill in much of the minutia from my own life growing up in the Midwest. The story wouldn’t be my life, but would have the background of my life.
It was the story of a young man growing into adulthood in the Midwest. It would include the latter part of his high school years, his college years, and his first job out of college. There would be an ongoing conflict between Nate and a racist cop who becomes a member of his draft board. In the end, Nate would be sent to the exact place he was trying to avoid, and without firing a shot, would become a kind of hero.
Thinking about going beyond the point I planned is a daunting task, for all the reasons above. But beyond that, I continually ask myself, what would the story be?
Starting with Full Frame, all the books of the Photo Finish series are available as individual books or as a collection on Bookapy.
I find I am having the same problem with the potential book I’ve been exploring regarding the singularity. I have some effective world-building. I have a state of humanity and an evolution of humanity. But I don’t really have a storyline. I look at what I’ve captured so far and have to say, “What’s the point?”
I edited a manuscript for a hopeful author a few years ago. I knew we were worlds apart politically, but I determined not to let that interfere with my objective evaluation of the story. When I received the manuscript, he warned me that it was a very dark story. I braced myself.
It was a dark future history statement. It wasn’t a story. There was exactly one line of dialog near the end of the 60,000-word manuscript. The lead character was really only there to advance the world-view of what a catastrophe the nation was headed toward in the next twenty years. I called it futurism, not fiction.
Author Lance Winslow wrote a 2009 article titled “What is the difference between science fiction and futurism?” The brief answer is in this quote.
Futurism is predicting the future without the use of characters and a storyline. Science Fiction is a literary art, where a story is told and characters are involved. You see, some things you cannot say in real life, as it is not politically correct, but you can tell of it in a storyline.
(ezine link no longer available.)
While there was a character in my client’s manuscript, the whole thing was ‘merely’ a recitation of the events that would lead to a specific future. It was really all world-building.
I’m sorry to say that I have not heard one word from that author in the three years since I returned his manuscript and my notes. It’s too bad. If he’d had a story to go with his world-building I think it could have been a very good book. I wish him luck.
I’m striving to not let that happen in my own new writings. As I think back on some of my abandoned manuscripts, I believe that was the problem. I painted a world and maybe even a good character, but I didn’t have a story. My novel about the singularity is likely going to wait a while before I get the story in my mind.
I’m about to head south tomorrow. If all goes to plan, I’ll follow the Pacific Coast and have a leisurely drive enjoying nature’s beauty. Ah yes: a journey without a point, other than getting me back to Las Vegas eventually. We’ll see what next week’s post reveals about my state of mind. Something’s brewing.
This is number seventy-three in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
This is number seventy-two in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing. (Sorry I couldn't get this up earlier, but lost internet connectivity on the ship this morning.)
MY NEW STORY IDEA takes place in the distant future. (A hundred years? A thousand?) Long enough for evolution to have an effect on who we are, understanding that we are already 600-800,000 years into that cycle. But many of the questions remain the same as those we face today. This, then, is part of the world building.
It is possible for us to meet the physical needs of every living being on our planet. Ephemeralization is real. For millennia we have been doing more with less and less. If you return to the early twentieth century, you will find the antecedents of the current computer technology—massive things that filled a room. Since that time, we have constantly created more and more powerful computing devices that are smaller and smaller. The personal computer. The laptop computer. The cell phone and smartphone. Smart watches. Implantable devices.
A pacemaker the size of a pea can be inserted in the heart to keep it beating at a consistent rate even long after a person dies. This can be replaced by a microchip in the brain that regulates the signals for a beating heart.
Now, what do I mean by meeting the physical needs? For a person, I would say shelter from the elements, food for nourishment, physical health. And sex, I suppose. That is a physical need that all creatures function better with. I listed that instead of clothing. I call clothing a psychological need. It is not the same for everyone.
We find the use of deliberate clothing that wasn’t needed to provide shelter or warmth, was a development of Homo sapiens only about 200,000 years ago. It came after the development of tools, pottery, and fire.
Can we provide for every creature’s psychological needs? As long as the psychological need is within the realm of the physical, yes. There is plenty to go around. But here is where need and desire often get confused. Psychologically, we may need clothing, love, companionship, art, security, self-determination, and knowledge.
However, desires often conflict with providing these fundamental needs. Those desires include wealth, power, greed, lust, envy, and pride. Hmm. Remarkably close to the seven deadly sins, but these are the desires that may openly conflict with the needs of others. Because some desire wealth, others are left poor. Because some desire power, others are left insecure and dominated. Because some desire elaborate and expensive clothing, others are left in rags or naked.
I noticed the conflict you did. I listed sex as a physical need, but lust as a psychological desire. Lust is a one-way path. It is the desire of one person placed over the self-determination of another. It may apply to sex, money, possessions, station in life, or relationships.
For hundreds of thousands of years, the species of earth lived in an economy of scarcity. If the crop was poor, we died. If there was a drought or a fire, we died. If the hunt came back empty, we died. And as a result of this mindset of scarcity, we determined that we were not entitled to our basic needs if we did not work for or earn them. The value of each creature was based on what they could produce.
But we no longer live in a time of scarcity. We have an economy of abundance. And once the individual’s basic needs are all met, we no longer equate personal worth to the accumulation of wealth. Those who directly impact the society by improving conditions for all, are directly rewarded. They need not shy away from contributing because the fruits of their labor are collected by a magnate to increase his or her power and wealth.
“So, why…” you ask, “…do people not simply stop working and live a life of sloth?”
Some do. In fact, we see evidence that a devolved species is emerging that has no desire beyond the basic physical needs—living the lives of the lower animals. For it is desire that drives the improvement of one’s lot in life, not physical needs. With physical needs met—food, shelter, health, and sex—it is the psychological needs and desires that drive a person forward.
Let me remind you that the psychological needs include clothing, love, companionship, art, security, self-determination, and knowledge. We do well to provide an environment where such things are available and attainable, but we cannot simply assign love from some storeroom in our society and fulfill that psychological need. Certain behaviors, including labor and social contribution, make it possible for an individual to fulfill their own psychological needs. As long as society provides an environment where such things are available and attainable, people will strive to contribute in order to attain them.
In generations past, people had to spend most of their labor and creativity on attaining the basic physical needs of food, shelter, health, and sex. There was no leeway to improve through labor and to fulfill the psychological needs, let alone any other desires a person might have.
Above, I listed desires that conflict with the needs of others, but not all desires conflict with these physical or psychological needs. The simple desire for comfort is not a negative. With the basic physical needs met, one can attain comfort. The only difficulty with this is when comfort becomes uncomfortable. When the accumulation of property requires limitless work or the exploitation of others, then it is a burden instead of a comfort. It changes from comfort to greed.
With such a huge amount of machine labor available to us, what kind of contribution can one make to society?
First, with their physical needs met, one need not be afraid of machine labor replacing their own ability to contribute. Thus, art expands significantly. I am not referring to the splashing of paint on a canvas and seeking payment for it. Some painters may, indeed, exchange the fruit of their labor for psychological needs and desires. Machine-art, machine-writing, even machine-programming are banned and are the exclusive provinces of biological life.
Consider that bread from the factory producing food for the masses is good food. There is nothing wrong with it. But an artisan baker creating a few dozen delicious alternatives to factory bread will always find a market driven by the psychological needs and desires of others.
The machines that farm the land to provide food for the masses, have not replaced the gardens and small farms of those who love the land and its husbandry. The machines that build housing for the masses do not alter the need for carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers, and other artisans to provide more comfortable or aesthetically pleasing houses. There is always a demand for those crafts and there will always be professionals in those crafts as they, too, have needs and desires to fulfill.
We need not fear when we provide the physical needs for all beings.
I can only set these thoughts in the context of a distant future society. It would be too difficult to imagine them as part of today’s world. Yet… Perhaps we will evolve enough to recognize these as fundamental rights guaranteed to all. Next week, “The Singularity.”
This is number seventy-one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I’M TOYING WITH A CONCEPT for a new story that has been on my mind for seven years now. That’s what I get for sifting through my ‘Idea File.’ I was driving for an hour or so recently and this came bubbling up. Mostly I’ll give you this bit without an explanation, except to say that the story idea takes place in the distant future. (A hundred years? A thousand?) Long enough for evolution to have an effect on who we are, understanding that we already have 800,000 of those years as a species behind us. But many of the questions remain the same.
Living beings are all equal in value. As we discovered in the early twenty-first century, bees are vital to our existence. Who would think the annoying little creatures would have been so valuable? But we were nearly too late to restore the population. Plants were dying and without them, oxygen was being depleted.
That doesn’t mean all creatures are intelligent. It doesn’t mean some creatures aren’t food for others. It simply means that we all have an equal importance in the ecology of earth. When a being self-evaluates as more important than others, it is always limited to how important they are to themselves.
Information is not like that. All information is not created equal. It is up to the processing mechanism—you and me—to evaluate the information regarding its importance and veracity. How do we do that?
First and foremost, we need to discover if the information is true. It may surprise some of you to find that much information available to you today is based on or contains outright lies. The great invention of artificial intelligence was significant in propagating false information. It presented answers that were based solely on the popularity of responses and did no evaluation as to the truth or falsehood of the information. Even though we have learned to discount much of the machine-based information, we are not very good at evaluating it for ourselves.
So how do we discover whether the information is true? This seems like an overwhelming task at times. Can we all do primary research to get to the source of information? Of course not. So, we need to start by evaluating the immediate source. Is it reliable?
When an upright and dependable source is found to have presented information that seems unbelievable, and another source that is known to propagate lies declares the opposite, do we believe the unbelievable information from the reliable source, or the believable information from the known liar? Truth is not an easy path to follow, or even to discover.
We can test the information if it is empirical. How do we know one plus one equals two? If I place a walnut in each of my hands, I have one plus one. I can place them on the table and count them: one, two. The information that one plus one equals two is testable. I can prove it. And because one plus one equals two, I can plot the trajectory of a rocket and the amount of propulsion needed to reach orbit. It is true.
Unfortunately, terabytes of believable data are not testable by these standards. At that point, we must look at the information environment. Is this information consistent with other information that is known and tested. Interpersonal relationships frequently flounder because an inconsistent bit of information is given priority over bytes of contrary evidence.
Finally, we try the information with a jury that is knowledgeable in the field. The jury must evaluate all these things, bringing to the table their knowledge and experience to determine the reliability of the information. Understand, however, that they cannot supply validation that the information is true. They can only indicate that based on these criteria, the information is believable until otherwise discredited.
My first stab at writing a novel had to wait thirty years before I matured enough to read and edit the story for public consumption. The Props Master Series resulted, and it is possible that I will manage to complete the next volume sometime this year.
In Behind the Ivory Veil, both Rebecca and Wesley have to confront information that is contrary to their understanding of the world—especially as staunchly conservative Christians. Rebecca is plunged into initiation and training in a pagan circle that has existed for hundreds of years. Wesley sees Greek mythology come to life and is trapped by the goddess he thought was just a story.
Functioning with the information drilled into them from the beginning of their lives in the 1930s, they both have to evaluate new data that changes their worldview completely.
In many instances, people reject the evidence of their own hands and eyes in favor of information that has been believed for years. A generation later, in Ritual Reality, Wayne struggles with the same conflict of information, denying the evidence in front of him because it is impossible.
And finally, in A Touch of Magic, Paul’s belief that he is just good at sleight of hand is challenged by the reality of his journey to another dimension in order to save his lover’s father. He must recognize her healing power and the great cost it extracts.
The Props Master Series is available both as a collection and as individual eBooks at Bookapy.
Ah! But what do we do with true information? This is a difficult phase of information evaluation. Being true is not an indication of value, it is simply a gating factor. The next phase of our evaluation is whether the information is necessary or important. Understand that true information can be used to skew conclusions that would otherwise be absurd.
You might hear someone say, “I saw your mate come out of that apartment building. My mate lives in that building.” If that is all the information, it can lead to anxiety and conflict. The information by itself is neither necessary nor important. No matter what a thoughtful investigation concludes, the information is irrelevant.
This is closely related to the third criterion: Is the information hurtful? Spreading true information that might even be important is often hurtful. I say to you, this speaks far more about your character than about the veracity of the information. Is this information so important or so necessary that it is worth hurting another living being?
So, understand that even though the bee is as important to our ecology as a person, not all information is equal. Weigh what you think you know against these standards, and we will live in peace.
If the bug about this story continues to bite me, I may continue other aspects of this future world as they come to me. Next week, “Ephemeralization.”
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