My Guest: Eric J. Gates

As Christmas approaches, I need to save a few pennies for gifts for the family so my Guest this week is myself. But I'm taking advantage of the forum to tackle head-on something that's been bugging me for a while...

Eric J. Gates

Why you SHOULD Self-Edit!

If you are an Indie author or aspiring to become a novelist you probably have trawled the Interweb looking for sage advice on many different aspects of writing. One subject you will repeatedly encounter is the matter of editing the drafts of your completed work. Almost all (not to say one hundred percent) of what you will read about this important aspect of the writing process will insist you search out a professional editor and decry any mention of doing the job yourself.

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Now if you were to be a little cynical, you might note that almost all of these articles are written by… you’ve guessed it… editors, some blatantly offering their services at the bottom of said diatribe. Okay, so what’s wrong with that? Before I go into this I have nine words to say to those ‘Editors’ who are about to stop reading and pen an irate comment – STOP! Read to the end of this article first.

So what is wrong with editorial services being cited as the only way to create a ‘real’ book? Well, in my opinion, a number of issues.

Firstly, the editors you generally find (not all, please note, just a notable majority) fall into two camps. The first is the ‘I used to be an editor for a famous Traditional Publisher and have lots of experience’ people. Then there’s the wannabes, often attracted to the ‘profession’ of editing by the large sums of money the former group commands for their services.

Okay, let’s take a step or two back and look at the ‘business’ of editing, especially in today’s publishing paradigm, with a little more objectivity.

So just what IS editing?

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Okay you Google ‘Editing’ and are confused and lost almost immediately. Yes, you’ve just discovered there’s no such thing as a simple edit.

I was told, shortly after Man became bipedal, that editing was all about the four ‘C’s’ – Consistent, Concise, Correct and Clear. This will help you understand the different types of professional editing available:

Developmental editing is the most all-encompassing, consisting in revising the entire narrative to detect where improvements can be made in its structure. It will endeavor to root out plot-holes, inconsistencies in the storylines and their order, incorrect facts, shoddy writing, characters that just don’t convince, terrible pacing, waffling, and overlooked opportunities in the narrative. Yes, it’s a big job and usually the most expensive.

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Copy-editing will devolve around spelling and grammar essentially as well as Formatting and Style and is often confused with…

Line-editing which is the most invasive of the edits and will examine word choice, use of Passive tense, sentence flow and paragraph structure, overall pace, in short a very detailed analysis/rewrite of the prose itself.

Proofreading is the top level, the least incisive in the editing spectra. In Traditional Publishing, it is usually done just before publication and after all other editing has taken place. In essence it’s a hunt for errors in the text (spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, use of abbreviations, how you represent numbers and dates, in short, the nitty-gritty).

Now you’ll note I mentioned TradPub again. The World has changed since TradPub was the only solution to offering a ‘real’ book to an expectant readership. And, in the same way the TradPub houses are so slow to revise their methods of work (it takes eighteen months minimum to get a book from manuscript to the bookstore? Really? Have you noticed how many TradPub outfits run book

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competitions to help discover new talent? In most cases, within two months or less of the winner and runner-up being announced, their respective books are on the shelves in store! Inconsistent is the word I’m looking for, I think) their approach to editing is invasively being applied to the Indie world. 

But ‘Things’ are now different…

Most Indies work on tight budgets, after all they do everything themselves, so not only are they looking to produce an outstanding finished product (it’s their reputation on the line, not some anonymous worker bee in a huge TradPub firm) but they want to do this as cheaply as possible (Why? Remember all those surveys that say most Indies make about $500 a year from their books, then stack that up against an editor asking $4,000 for a Line-Edit. You don’t have to be a math genius to see which way the decision is going to go.)

This is how many are approaching the need to have in-depth editing of their work.

‘Beta-readers’ (often fellow writers) are given early drafts – never should be the first draft though (more on this in a minute) and these people are trusted to undertake a critical read-through, noting anything and everything that gives pause for thought. Typos, inconsistencies, grammatical errors, facts that are blatantly wrong or that need to be checked, punctuation, the rhythm, pace and flow of the tale, and even suggestions for improvement both in storyline and character development should be annotated). Some charge for this, fees considerably less than TradPub’s editors I might add; others do it for free on a reciprocal basis (something that you won’t find anywhere in TradPub).

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There’s even an odd bunch called ‘Alpha-readers’ who will help out a fellow author when they have lost the thread in their novel to such an extent, they are not sure how to get back on the right track. I’ve done a few of these myself for aspiring authors and they take much, much longer than a Beta-read because you are applying your own knowledge and experience to help someone who hasn’t been on the same learning curve. You’re providing a serious shortcut!

The idea behind this phenomenon of ‘authors-helping-authors’ in the Indie world is simple: most of us do not see our fellow Indies as competitors but as allies; we are all fighting the same battles, maybe for the same audience of readers, but that doesn’t mean we have to be at each-other’s throats. This very blog, which has hosted fellow writers and their work for more than four years now and actively promotes my ‘competitors’ and helps them sell more of their books, and all this for free, is an example of how this philosophy can be extended beyond Beta-reading.

Now I’ve mentioned you should never ask a fellow scribbler to read a first draft; why? You, the author, have a responsibility to make that as good as you can, which implies polishing and fine-tuning. Otherwise it’s like dumping a wrecked car on an auto-savvy mate with a ‘sort that out, will you’ attitude.

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Just a mo’, you cry. I’m new to this and have no idea how to edit. Me inglish ai’nt up to it, bro!

And guess what, you are also missing out on something very important. Improving your writing skills! Interesting, yes? Learning to do an optimal self-edit will highlight the mistakes you make and thus help you get better at the craft of writing.

So how can you perform an exhaustive self-edit, evolve your writing technique in the process, and still maintain your sanity? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the Interweb. No, I’m not referring to spell-checkers, or bits of software that are little more than Word’s own spell-checker.

The danger of using the tools built into your writing software or just re-reading the manuscript yourself can be summed up by the following:

I have a lovely spelling check

That came with my PC,

Witch plainly marks, four my revue,

Miss takes I can not sea.

I’ve run this poem threw the thing.

I’m sure your please too no.

It’s latter perfect in every weigh.

My checker tolled me sew.

Or this:

Your memory will recognize the

the words and convince your

your brain it is reading what should

be on the page.

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And this will blow your mind:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Yes, a spell-check should have a fit over the last one.

So what do you need? For a number of years now I have been a fan of ‘Stylewriter’ (just click on the name to go to their website – yes, it’s an affiliate link – this is a business for me as an Indie too; the business bit is not just the purview of TradPub. Plus I will never recommend anything I haven’t used myself and which I don’t fully support). Now don’t be put off by the ‘serious’ nature of their presentation – yes it does look like they market primarily to large enterprises and governments rather than the lonely writer ensconced in their garrets seeking salvation, but, believe me, their software does have enormous benefits for the novelist (just click on the fiction option from the pull-down menu at the top, then, with practice, turn on those editing options you are interested in from the many on offer). Expensive? It might appear so, but here’s a couple of tips: there’s a free trail period where you can test drive the full package, using it against your work – you’ll be convinced! There are three versions on offer too. From experience, the basic one falls short for our needs and the most expensive just adds a lot of statistical data that I personally find useless, so the mid-range option is the best choice for a writer.

Now, I’m expecting a lot of comments on this post, mostly from irate Editors; I am apparently attacking their livelyhood after all. Perhaps if they took another, less avaricious, approach to the changes in publishing, they would gain new clients from the Indie world. And, not all TradPub editors are equally expert either. Last year I read the latest novel from a top bestselling writer (who shall remain nameless for reasons that will become obvious) and came across a whole paragraph (eight lines) of sheer nonsense that read more like the Cambridge University study sample above than anything else. Supposedly that paragraph had ‘passed’ all four editing phases with flying colours during the eighteen months to two years it had taken to produce the book! We can all have bad days, but software has far fewer than humans do, and using an outstanding tool such as the one I recommend you’ll improve your skills too while not losing any control over what you write.

Best wishes to all my fellow Indies, Beta-Readers, and friends in the new writing world out there. Remember the words of Don Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza: 

“Patience, and shuffle the cards!”

Bio

Eric J. Gates has had a curious life filled with the stuff of thriller novels. Writing Operating Systems for Supercomputers, cracking cryptographic codes under extreme pressure using only paper and pen and teaching cyberwarfare to spies are just a few of the moments he’s willing to recall publicly. He is an ex-International Consultant who has travelled extensively worldwide, speaks several languages, and has had articles and papers published in technical magazines in six different countries, as well as radio and TV spots. His specialty, Information Technology Security, has brought him into contact with the Military and Intelligence communities on numerous occasions.

He is also an expert martial artist, holding 14 black belt degrees in distinct disciplines. He has taught his skills to Police and Military personnel, as well as to the public.

He now writes thriller novels, drawing on his experiences with the confidential and secret worlds that surround us.

LINKS:

Website: www.ericjgates.com

Blog: You're here - what do you need a link for?

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/eThrillerWriter

By the way, there are a few subtle suggestions for Christmas book gifts in the above article. Just saying...  AND they are all FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Fiona Quinn

My Guest this week chose to put into words what many are feeling in their hearts at this moment. Ladies and Gentlemen...

As I write this article, the Friday 13^th massacre in Paris just happened. Whenever there is a disaster either natural or man-made, I feel much more vulnerable and as a coping mechanism, I focus on the heroes. The ones who, while running for their lives, turn and grab the hand of someone. That choice often means life instead of death for a total stranger.

I was reading about a man at Bataclan who had been shot in the elbow and fell to the floor. From that vantage point, he could see the three gun men cold-bloodedly shooting those who lay around him. He rose up and ran for the exit, which was blocked by all those who were desperate to be outside and away from the deranged terrorists. He worked at moving forward and finally he felt the night air on his hand. And he thought, this is how I’ll die. Then, from outside, someone grasped his hand and pulled mightily. Pulled him right out of the body-parts-jumble that kept the people from escaping, and he landed, free and alive in the alley.

I watched a video of a pregnant woman dangling inexplicably from a window sill far enough away from the ground that if she lost her grip would mean her death. She held there for long moments.  I found myself counting the seconds under my breath because, from my time in the gym, I knew that after thirty seconds of holding one’s weight, things get dire pretty quickly. She held and called for almost two minutes. Finally, a stranger made the terrifying journey outside of the windows toward her, reached down, and suddenly she was safe.

These are the extremes hopefully none of us will experience. But as I learn about these events, it stirs a memory for me. One that to this day, ten years later, when I think about it, affects me as if I’m back in that moment. My eyes are red now, tears streaming down my face, it is that strong of a memory. I experience this overwhelming emotion every single time this event bubbles up for me.

I had surgery on my knee and my husband took me home. As I came back to awareness from the pain killers, I looked at my little girl, and I knew that she was about to die. I knew it as sure as I knew that I had a heart pumping blood.

It took me some time to convince anyone to listen to me – understandable to anyone who’s been near someone coming out of surgery. It took some more time to get the doctor to come to the same conclusion that I had come to. And it took time to get my daughter into the emergency department and under the care of the doctor who ultimately saved her life.

In all of that action and noise and horror, there was a moment which I would like to share. The doctor realized that my daughter had keto-acidosis -- a life threatening event which often precipitates the diagnosis of type-one diabetes. The ED doctor called my pediatrician so that she could be the one who broke the news to me, I guess because we had a rapport and I trusted her. The nurse who came to bring me to the phone must have known that the life-changing message was going to be passed through that receiver. And when I put the phone to my ear, she lined her body up with mine. She didn’t hug me, or lean on me, or invade that moment. But there was no space between where she stood and where I did, no light or air between our bodies.

I honestly don’t know what would have happened to me in that soul-fragile moment had she not done exactly that. It was so deeply human. It kept me sane. Thinking my six-year-old was going to die and then knowing that if she didn’t die that day, then she would be faced with this terrible disease . . .well you parents know. I don’t need to say anymore from that perspective.

But I’m telling you this story for a writerly reason. Sometimes the hand that is held out saves a life in an overt way like the heroes in Paris, and sometimes the gesture seems smaller – but it’s not. I can’t think of a time in my life when I have been touched so meaningfully -- that was as poignant to me. I never knew the nurse's name. I can’t remember her face. I was in shock, and I was desperate, and she was my anchor. That’s all I knew then, and all I know now.

When writing moments of personal desperation -- scenes that are explosive like the night of the Paris attacks, or scenes that are quiet like a mom, standing with a phone pressed to her ear at the hospital nurses' station – I always think about how I can include a tiny-gesture hero. The hero that with a brief moment of contact changes things enough that they are forever a vivid part of that recipient's story.

May you be blessed (whatever that might mean to you) and safe.

Fiona Quinn

(Message from Fiona to Eric: I would prefer not including anything with this article that would promote me or my books - I just wanted to share it as is)

Thank you, Fiona.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Nathan A. Goodman

My Guest this week has some serious advice (and a challenge) for those starting out as writers. This just may be the push you all need to finish that first novel. Ladies and Gentlemen...

Nathan A. Goodman

I don’t believe in luck

You still haven’t started writing that novel, have you? Surveys tell us that 80% of people just like you and I state that they want to write a book, yet only 1% ever do so. Why is that? If you are reading this article, my bet is that you haven’t started writing that novel yet. For each of us, the journey is a little different. Let me tell you about my own journey. Perhaps it doesn’t sound so different from your own. 

In 1992, I sat down and wrote a page of text. It was something that just spilled out of me, as if someone had begun to pour a glass of milk that overflowed the rim. I didn’t have control over the words spilling out, they just came. It was only a single page of text, but to this day, it is the single best thing I’ve ever written. Some of you reading this are scoffing right now. I can hear you. You’re saying, “Yeah, that’s great for him. He’s got words pouring onto the page, and I can’t think of how I’d even start to write.” And that may be true. With those first words, I was lucky. But those of us who believe we are lucky are actually the same people who make their own luck. I don’t believe in luck. I believe we are given a set of circumstances which surround us, and the “lucky” ones are the ones who take those circumstances and make something out of them. We forge our own way. In short, we decide. We decide to write. We decide to take action. We make our own luck.

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But how do you start? I didn’t know how to write a novel back then. I did know that I had enough creativity inside me to write, but I had no idea what to do next. To me, it felt like wanting to build a house with no help, and I didn’t even know how to create a set of blueprints. Fortunately, others have gone before us and written novels, and you can too. Enter a book written by the author Stephen King. This book was not another novel, this book was written for budding authors. In it King revealed the way he writes. He’s written books for decades, and his method of writing does not change. Once I learned how he does it, I was hooked. It was like I had suddenly found the key to what was locked inside me. I knew how to get it out. And, I felt so much freedom in what King was telling me to do, I felt unencumbered from any need to delay.

'On Writing' (Amazon Link) revealed the most simplistic of approaches to writing a novel. No outlines, no character studies, no research. In fact, no organization at all. So how does King do it? First, he sits down and thinks up a question. The question you think up will end up being the basis of your entire novel. 

Here’s an example. ”I wonder what would happen if a struggling, alcoholic writer (both these things described King at the time), were to take his family and become the winter caretakers of an old hotel during the isolated winter months. Oh, by the way, the hotel is haunted.” That question became the entire novel, 'The Shining'. Here’s an example question I created for my bestselling thriller, 'The Fourteenth Protocol'. “What if the CIA, in an effort to break a terror cell, followed the playbook that the Drug Enforcement Administration uses when breaking up a huge drug ring?” You see, the way the DEA conducts investigations is that they first make drug purchases from low level dealers. Then they make larger and larger purchases as they climb higher into the drug organization, until finally, they arrest everyone involved. So what would happen if the CIA started actually funding a terrorist organization with the same goal in mind? 

When I asked myself this question, I didn’t know the answer. But following Stephen

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King’s lead, I just began to write. I created a character and put him into the midst of this situation. Once I understood, I was free to just start writing. I didn’t have to plan everything. I didn’t have to map the story out. I didn’t have to think up each character and create a full personality profile and background on them. In fact, by creating a story this way (unplanned), I came out with a much better novel. Why did this method produce a much better novel? Because planning a story before you write it hamstrings the story. It boxes it into a set of parameters. If instead, you let it be unscripted, you have no idea where the story will go, and you’ll uncover amazing new thoughts and twists along the way. 

Whatever became of the one page of text I wrote back in 1992? It became the novel 'Twinkle', which was probably the most satisfying thing I’ve ever written. Now it’s your turn. I want you to take this one action item, right now, before you get back to email, raising kids, cooking dinner, or getting into traffic during your commute home from work. Go buy a copy of 'On Writing' by Stephen King. You never know just where it will lead you.

There is a novel inside you. It’s your job to get it out. 

This could be the beginning of something amazing.

Bio 

Nathan A. Goodman is the bestselling author of 'The Fourteenth Protocol', a runaway thriller with over 150 reviews. For a limited time, receive a free copy at bit.ly/1QI4sMv.

When Nathan is not writing action-packed thrillers he can be found here:

Website: NathanAGoodman.com

Twitter: @NathanAGoodman

Thanks, Nathan, for sharing this invaluable advice. I've read 'The Fourteenth Protocol' and recommend it; it's a masterful page-turner!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Jaye Rothman

My Guest this week shares a couple of things with me: First she's a lover of hard-core Spy thrillers, having cut her teeth on Ian Fleming just like yours truly, and second, she uses strong female protagonists in her novels. Ladies and Gentlemen...

Jaye Rothman

Love and Cold Wars

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. ~ Toni Morrison.

I grew up in a sleepy little town outside London, England during the Cold War. Perhaps because of that, I have always been fascinated by life behind the Iron Curtain.

When I was just a teenager, I watched my first James Bond movie. It was one of the very early ones – I can’t remember which one, now – and I vividly remember being absolutely mesmerised by the action, the intrigue, and the exotic locations. The next day I rushed to the library and over the next few weeks I devoured all of Ian Fleming’s books. Shortly after that, I discovered Len Deighton and John Le Carré – and so began my lifelong love affair with espionage novels and movies.

In particular, I think Deighton’s three trilogies, featuring Bernard Samson as the disillusioned MI6 spy, perfectly capture the era and the paranoia of the Cold War during the 1980s. They are still among my favourite books.

One thing that always bothered me as a female reader, though, was that most of the protagonists in spy thrillers were men. I desperately wanted to read about a female James Bond–type character, but there was nothing.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War officially ended – but my fascination with it did not. Nor did my quest for stories about female Cold War protagonists.

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During the 1990s, Stella Remington, who was then Director General of MI5, wrote a series of books featuring Liz Carlyle, who (unsurprisingly) worked for MI5. I devoured them, hoping against hope… But no. Close, but not quite: the books were set in the 1990s. “Too little, too late,” I thought.

Fast forward again to 2012 when, like many people in our middle years, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with my job. One evening after I’d had a particularly horrendous day at work, my partner turned to me and said, “You spend hours reading thrillers. Why don’t you write one?”

Why indeed? I wondered, and the die was cast.

But where to start?

When I was at university I had written papers, of course, but I had never written anything fictional. So I Googled “writing classes in New Zealand,” and came across a correspondence writing course with the intriguing title “How to write a thriller in 10 weeks.”

I enrolled, and four days later a package arrived. Eagerly, I ripped it open, read through the contents and began my first assignment.

First, of course, I needed a protagonist. That part wasn’t actually all that difficult: during my years of searching in vain for a female Cold War spy/protagonist in other people’s books, I had been constructing “what if” scenarios in my head, imagining a female character I would have wanted to read about. She even had a name: MI6 agent Nikki Sinclair, the heroine I write about now. But writing a believable character proved to be more of a challenge: I had to give her a past, a life story, lay out the reasons for why she behaves the way she behaves and does the things she does.

Next, I needed a plot.

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Again, I had one handy: during the 1980s I had had a hair-raising adventure in Kinshasa – for real! – and I’d always suspected it would make a great story line for an espionage thriller: I was flying to Johannesburg and we were scheduled for a two-hour stopover in Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo but was then known as Zaire. On landing, we were told that the plane had developed mechanical problems and, as the parts had to be flown from Lisbon, it would take three days to fix.

All of us white passengers had to surrender our passports, and we were then bundled into a clapped-out bus manned by armed soldiers and told we were being taken to a hotel outside the city.

I tried to remain calm as I stared out the windows at the streets and the people – not an easy task. We passed an army camp, and the soldiers barked at us not to take photographs or we would be arrested – believe me, photography was about the last thing on my mind!

Eventually we arrived at a run-down hotel in the middle of the rain forest. The soldiers jumped down first and ordered us all off the bus. Among other instructions, we were given explicit orders not to leave the hotel grounds. Someone asked to use the telephone, and we were told that all the communications had broken down and would be fixed in a few days – long after we were scheduled to depart again, of course.

We all settled in as best we could, and then descended en masse for dinner. The dining room at the hotel and the uneasy small talk we made among ourselves are what I remember most vividly about that first evening; the forced camaraderie and simultaneous anonymity of hotel dining rooms are a feature in many of my books.

Available soon - details here

And if you’ve read my book 'The Hell of Osirak (Betrayal)', my description of the route my characters take through the streets of Kinshasa is actually the route our bus took on that night in the 1980s.

Back to my assignment: to add to the visuals of the Kinshasa plot, I recalled reading in a newspaper about the shipment of yellowcake uranium from South Africa to Israel. Once again I started Googling information about it, and came across the back-story of Israel’s bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor called “Osirak” in 1981 during Operation Opera (a.k.a. Operation Babylon). Although there is not much verifiable information on the build-up to the actual bombing, it didn’t matter: I had found my story.

It took me about a year to write it, then to rewrite it and rewrite again – this is a fact of life for most authors. And like many of us who are just starting out, I worked full time during the days, and wrote at weekends, during the evenings, and in any and all down-time I had. Towards the end, I started to get restless, which is usually a good sign: I just wanted to finish the thing and get it published!

When I could see light at the end of the tunnel, I employed an editor to clean it up and a graphic designer to create a cover. When the text was finally ready, I had it formatted and then, heart in mouth, I self published it.

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Did I sell thousands of books? Of course not – few authors churn out a best-seller on the first try. But considering that I was a “newbie” who hadn’t had a clue about marketing, design, or the importance of a good book description, 'The Hell of Osirak' actually had good reviews and some very positive feedback.

By now I had caught the writing bug in earnest. During my research for Osirak, I had stumbled across the so-called “Umbrella Murder” of Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978. The details were gruesome, of course, but also fiendishly clever, and I had another one of those “what if…” moments: what if my heroine Nikki Sinclair were to be tasked with investigating a similar murder? What if there was not one victim but two – say, two Soviet defectors? And what if they were working away in a secret facility right under the noses of their British hosts?

And thus the plot for 'Murder by Umbrella' was hatched.

I had actually intended for it to be a stand-alone book, but as I wrote it, more ideas popped into my head for yet another book (did I mention that writing bug??), so I decided rather ambitiously to write a quartet.

As part of my own career development, in July of this year I attended Thrillerfest in New York City – it was my first trip abroad in ages, and although (thankfully!) there were no gun-toting soldiers on rattle-trap buses or isolated hotels, I did come away with some excellent ideas, and some solid advice: Write, write, and write some more. Write a quality book that has a good story and is edited well, and then repeat and repeat again.

Easier said than done, of course, but I am most definitely up to the task. Stay tuned!

Bio:

London-born author Jaye Rothman is a seasoned explorer, having travelled all over Europe, as well as to the United States, Australia, and Africa. She has also lived on a kibbutz in Israel.

A long-time lover of Cold War espionage stories, Jaye brings her own brand of unique wit and sense of romance to other fans of this genre. Her first book, The Hell of Osirak, features British agent Nikki Sinclair, a tough and uncompromising hero for all lovers of exciting spy drama.

Jaye currently lives in Auckland, NZ with her dog Izzy, who is a large and loyal English bull terrier-lab-pointer mix, whose soft white fur is adorned with coffee-coloured splashes.

When Jaye is not penning fast-paced, action-packed Spy Thrillers she can be found here:

Blog:          goo.gl/rWXlND 

Website:    goo.gl/Yv82s9  

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/jayerothman/boards/  

                  (Many of her boards relate to her books.)

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/jaye.rothman

Twitter:      https://twitter.com/jayerothman

Thank you, Jaye. Reading the above was like deja vù all over again (to quote Yogi Berra). My own trajectory is so similar to yours in so many respects, it was spooky.  I strongly recommend 'Murder by Umbrella' to lovers of great spy fiction - I read it last year and it was outstanding!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Stefania Mattana

My Guest this week brings with her a host of other characters. Yes, they are the ones we may often forget, yet without whose presence our protagonists and antagonists would not be who they are. Ladies and Gentlemen...

Stefania Mattana

Secondary characters in fiction: 

why you can't neglect them

Every hero has a sidekick supporter. Here are some vital reasons the secondary characters development in fiction is so vital.

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There's no Batman without Robin, no Harry without Ron & Hermione, no Sherlock without Watson. In fiction, there are endless examples of minor characters who are not less important than the main ones. Let's see in depth why readers love them (sometimes more than the heroes!) and why plots can't exist without them. 

Sometimes Secondary characters are the core of the stories because they provide conflict.

Yes, the main character is the hero and/or the recurrent one in a book series - but what about the dark side of the plot? In mysteries, for example, there are killers to catch, and even if sometimes we don't know their identity, killers are ipso facto secondary characters, and everything turns around them.

Background characters can be also not likeable, on the other hand.

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Readers need someone to love, but also someone to reverse their hate to. Secondary characters fulfill that need. There are rare occasions where the main character is unlikable, and most of the times he's flanked by a positive character anyway - think of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, for example.

Secondary characters protect and back up the main characters.

Think of the most iconic couples or trios in the fiction literature: minor characters are often friends of the main hero and help him out in time of needs - or the other way around. In my mysteryand detective book series, the main character, Chase Williams, is a former Scotland Yard detective relocated in Italy, who helps his friend Inspector Angelo Alunni solve some murder cases happening in town. No matter how hard the main character(s) tries, nothing can be done without the support of the secondary

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characters, though. Unless you are not reading The Odyssey.

Secondary characters provide tridimensionality.

My mystery stories would lose their genuine nature if I haven't develop my main character's neighbourhood, which is populated by typical Italian inhabitants and gives the reader a truly experience of Italy. The world around Chase Williams takes life not only with descriptions and colours, but also thanks to the background characters who talk and interact with him.

The only danger here is to fall into stereotypes, but that's easily fixable by spending a bit of time defining the minor characters in details - doesn't matter if you include all their specifications in your stories; once you have sketched the characters, you know what to say about them and what to elude.

Consequently, secondary characters bring new plot and sub-plots on.

Each of them has a story that can be told, and can also cross the main plot.

New points of view are pulled by secondary characters.

My readers will never forget the moment when Chase and Inspector Alunni had an

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argument so bad that it brought even worse consequences - but at the same time that helped solve a murder case. Minor and background characters can show different perspectives of the same topics or situations to both readers and main characters - giving to both of them room for considerations and changes.

Animals can also work out very well as secondary characters.

Who said humans have to be the sidekicks? Chase solved some unusual mysteries thanks to his neighborhood dog, Luciano. If Luciano wasn't there, my readers would have less stories to enjoy! (not to mention the fact that Chase doesn't have Luciano's smell skill!)

A quick note for the writers to conclude my examination.

It's the author's responsibility to give secondary characters enough space on any plot. Readers needs minor characters as much as the main hero. Many readers can relate much more with secondary characters and find in them relief if the plot is getting too stressing or some sparks of curiosity or interest if they don't fancy the main plot (or the main character) very much.

In two sentences:

Sometimes, secondary characters hold up the whole novel and go outside the story. That's how spin-offs are born, but that's another story for another blog post.

Bio:

Stefania Mattana writes mystery and detective novels because she's a snooper. She and her main character Chase Williams, a former MET officer, have swapped locations, so she now lives in London while he enjoys the Italian life. 

Stef is an avid reader and a keen runner. Ever present on the internet, has written many nonfiction and fiction books, but she's having a blast with the Chase Williams Murder Mystery Book Series. When she's not writing or practising the dark art of SEO, she stalks dogs. 

Stef's relevant websites/social media hubs:

Websites:
Chase Williams: http://chasetwilliams.com
Stefania Mattana: http://eraniapinnera.com

Mailing List (for news and exclusive content): http://eepurl.com/Atn-5

Twitter:
Chase: http://twitter.com/ChaseWilliams78
Stefania: http://twitter.com/eraniapinnera

Thanks you, Stef, for your comprehensive review of the importance of our support characters which I'm sure will help readers and writers alike to appreciate their understated role. Best wishes for your novels.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com