My Guest: Ken Grace

My Guest this week tackles a thorny subject all writers face: analysis of your own work! Welcome to the Dark Side! Ladies and Gentlemen...

Ken Grace

The Word According

to Jekyll and Hyde

When you’re faced with the daunting task of considering the quality of your own work, how can you possibly rise above the terrors of the subjective judgement? I mean, whose opinion really matters the most in this dank and murky world of writing? Once I might have said that my own opinion was truly the only one that really mattered, but come on, self-confidence doesn’t guarantee quality and is so regularly associated with self-deception that it’s hardly a reliable source of judgement. In fact, some of the grandest statements of self-promotion are often uttered by the more impoverished examples of the archetypical starving author.

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Then there’s the high level of unqualified opinion found in the vast majority of the general public to consider; people who don’t always seem that sympathetic when it comes to the sweat of your labours or the brilliance of your work. You can add to this, the positive views and obvious genius of your fan base, and even the potentially career crushing opinions delivered by your agent. That’s a lot of subjective judgement already, yet there’s still the views of the learned intellectuals, critics and literary assassins that seem to have the right to tear you to pieces that we also need to include in the mix. 

These views are often the educated, self-interested kind, or the type that are determined out of personal perceptions without the need to ever qualify these in any way. Haven’t we all been at that party or gathering, discussing the latest hit movie, when a particularly unlearned person states that the lead in the show ‘just can’t act’, even though that actor may have won many awards and carried many a multi-million dollar production through years of wonderful performances. 

I find it strange that outside of the literary world, there are so many people in the above group, both educated or otherwise that often believe they would have no trouble writing a novel, usually an autobiography. These same folk nearly always regard the business of literature, including the writing of said novel, to be easy. This seems to be a general consensus. Just put pen to paper and the incredible story of a life in the suburbs becomes a hit, without any need for further education. Maybe I can give up writing and develop manned spacecraft that can be sent to another galaxy; all out of the spare parts in my shed.

The act of writing must be easy; all an intended author needs to consider at any one moment throughout the writing process is little things, like, whether or not they’ve developed a unique protagonist and a likewise list of spectacular characters, who act and perform precisely out of the writer’s development of their core beliefs and colourful attitudes. Also there’s character growth born out of the conflicts you must create and the rising tensions that lead the reader on, enthralled to that knock’em-down climax. Then of course, there’s the sentence construction that just happens to determine the sound and style, and of course there’s the clever comparisons, as well as the correct word usage, the poignancy and subtlety that tweaks the emotions, the creation of perfectly balanced pacing and progression, the maintaining of focus, the experience of showing consequence and deeply felt ramifications through the actions of the characters, the adherence to genre, the perfect viewpoint and type of narrator, the tone, the development of breath taking settings, the creation of believability through the suspension of un-believability, the unique voice for your unique characters, the thrilling chapter hooks, the relevance in every word and sentence and paragraph of your story, the handling of backfill, the brilliant dialogue, the balance, the overall structure, the informative and colourful prose … all the while avoiding the ordinary, the commonplace and the cliché, whilst judging and determining the complexity of your story to fit with the needs of your intended readership … and so much more.

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Seriously easy hey? Yet such uniformed assumptions and even your own learnedness, may not be enough of a valuable guide to determine the quality of your hard work.

What then, if you have none of the wanted opinions we’ve covered and still achieve record book sales, or win major literary awards? Surely one of these achievements is enough to stamp ‘good’ on your work? Yet, these inquiries almost always manifests another all-encompassing question. Do sales figures and awards, or any of the above opinions, definitively qualify your creations?

Just about every writer in the universe has suffered the dualistic confusion found in the Jekyll and Hyde of opinion. After all, massive books sales don’t always guarantee positive critiques. Likewise, winning major literary awards provides no assurances of book sales.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all suffered some anger, or jealousy over the sub-standard publications that seem to magically ‘hit the target’ or ‘find that niche’ and sell a ridiculous amount of books right across the globe, despite their lack of technical accomplishment. Everybody tells you its absolute rubbish and not worth a read, yet even your grandmother bought a copy.

Perhaps the answer to each of the questions we’ve asked is the same one. Art and storytelling are as old as man and even back then sitting by the fire in our caves, each artist and story teller pursued their gifts for their own reasons, expectations and aspirations. And, maybe that’s just how it is, quite apart from the rules of technical application and evaluation, the quality of your work may always have to live within the Jekyll and Hyde of the subjective, because we are all different and lucky enough in most cases to be able to voice our opinion, no matter its validity.

A Warning from the Author:

BIO:

(written by Ken)

As an author, Ken Grace can only be described as a God-like figure, born with the physical attributes gifted to such a deity. His amazing characteristics could be accredited thusly:

He is sensationally short, brilliantly bald … lucky in that his hair has migrated from his head to other areas of his person such as his back and massive buttocks. He is also fabulously flabby, ridiculously rude, verbally incontinent and weird in that he stares at you in a creepy and superior way for no earthly apparent reason.

There is also his disdain of cleanliness, his ability to produce wind in the most inappropriate of circumstances and his knack of seeing the negative in every situation, to take into account.

Also, his vision is impaired, his hearing is almost non-existent, the air around him smells like sewerage and he can only taste sausage that has been left in the sun for several weeks. Yet, it’s his sense of touch that is possibly the most interesting, in that he has to hug everything he comes in contact with, from lamp posts to people, with the experience of his touch feeling something akin to sharp ice, only sticky, wet and greasy.

All in all, he has often been described as the perfect form with an intellect that is so special that it has so far never been detected. 

When Ken's not writing amusing Biographical material or sizzling SciFi novels, he can be found here:

Website:  www.kengracebooks.com
Blog:  https://kengraceblog.wordpress.com/
Twitter:   https://twitter.com/KenGraceBooks
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/OfficialKenGrace
Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7829687.Ken_Grace

Thanks, Ken, for revealing what to many readers is probably something they have never considered before: the writer's need to have feedback on their work. With this in mind, I entreat ALL READERS always to write reviews of the novels they finish - for those of us who sweat blood and tears during hundreds of long hours to bring you this timeless form of entertainment, it's our lifeblood!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Barb Taub

When I first read the post by this week's Guest, I had tears in my eyes... initially from laughing so hard, then through the realisation she had hit the nail on the head. Intrigued? Ladies and Gentlemen...

Barb Taub

The Write Biz

When Eric invited me to contribute a guest post, he had only two requests. It should be about writing, and it should be "awesome". Well, damn. I could think of a lot of awesome stuff, but if I tried to diagram the overlap with writing stuff, it would look like this:

Unfortunately, (although she is awesome), I don't think my dog is what Eric had in mind for this post. So with the other 99% of my topic ideas eliminated, I was saved at the last minute when a friend sent me (yet another) Very Serious Discussion about embracing the business side of our craft. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the way we writers undertake the business of writing. I wondered what it might look like if other professions marketed their product the way writers do.

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    ·     Gynecologist: The first ten people who 'like' me on Facebook get a free pelvic exam.

    ·         Lawyer: I'm not actually charging my clients because I'm building my reputation. Someday I'll be famous and they'll line up to pay.

    ·         CEO: It's okay if we don't show a profit. I've got some savings and my retirement—we can use that to keep going for a while.

    ·    Accountant: I could get better medical insurance if I worked for Starbucks, but I'm sticking with this because all my life I've dreamed of auditing tax returns.    

    

    ·      Surgeon: I'm giving away free

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appendectomies so more people can experience my art. I'm working two extra jobs to pay the bills, but it will be worth it when the reviews start rolling in.

     ·         Psychiatrist: I've spent over twelve years honing my skills, working a day job at Chez Mac's while exchanging free psychotherapy consults with my psychiatry group at night.

    ·       Dentist: I'm doing a blog tour, and you can enter my rafflecopter giveaway if you send a tweet, leave a comment, and add your email to my mailing list. Winner gets a free root canal.

    ·    Broker: I'm sending out free shares in hopes that people give them good reviews on Goodreads.

     ·        Chef: If I charge more than the food truck at Amazon, nobody will buy my next dish. Instead, I'll get a day job at Chez Mac's so I can keep giving my gourmet dishes away.

    ·       Banker: I think I'll just work from my dining table at home, alone, second-guessing all my decisions while I whine about getting lenders-block.

     ·      Human Resources: Instead of a salary, we'll pay people a small advance against future profits. Then they'll get paid in

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royalties. If they actually sell enough to pay back that advance, that is. And there will be at least a year's delay before the payments start, of course.

    ·        CIA: Even though you work for an evil empire, we want to keep your leaders on our side so we're going to give you everything you want. Besides, if we don't like what you do with it, we can always come back and kill you off in the sequel. [Oh...wait. The writer's business model is already the same as the CIA? Who knew?]

I know what you're going to say. It's not fair, especially when some of the best writers in the world are still asking, "And would you like fries with that?" at their day jobs. A writer I know was adding up all she spent on editing, proofing, formatting, and marketing her book. Her conclusion? "I could probably have done better if I spent it all on lottery tickets."

But here's the thing. If you buy every single ticket in a particular lottery, you are guaranteed to lose—because the prize is NEVER more than a fraction of the ticket sales. The trick is to be lucky enough and smart enough to buy just enough tickets. Every word we write is a lottery ticket that we pay for with our time, our imagination, our talent, and our luck. Most of those tickets won't bring home the big prize. But they can't bring anything at all if we don't buy them to start with. So here's the business model I'm going to work with:

“I write to give myself strength.

I write to be the characters that I am not.

I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.”

That seems to be working for Joss Whedon. I'm guessing it will do for me.

But just in case — I've got this pile of free bookmarks if anyone's interested...

Bio:

In halcyon days BC (before children), Barb Taub wrote a humor column for several Midwest newspapers. With the arrival of Child #4, she veered toward the dark side and an HR career. Following a daring daytime escape to England, she's lived in a medieval castle and a hobbit house with her prince-of-a-guy and the World’s Most Spoiled Aussie Dog. Now all her days are Saturdays, and she spends them consulting with her occasional co-author/daughter on Marvel heroes, Null City, and translating from British to American. 

Just a word about her 'Null City' Series: Superpowers suck. If you just want to live a normal life, Null City is only a Metro ride away. After one day there, imps become baristas, and hellhounds become poodles. Demons settle down, become parents, join the PTA, and worry about their taxes. But outside of Null City, now that the century-long secret Nonwars between Gifts and Haven are over and the Accords Treaty is signed, an uneasy peace is policed by Wardens under the command of the Accords Agency. 

When Barb is not entertaining us with her keen wit or writing superb novels, she can be found here:

Blog:  http://barbtaub.com
Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/NullCityNovel
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/barbtaub
Goodreads:  http://www.goodreads.com/barbtaub
Amazon Author page:  http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00EZP9BS8

Thank you, Barb, for such an incisive and humourous disection of one of the aspects of an Indie writer's life that often goes unnoticed by our readers.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Dan Pollock

You've heard that old cliché 'Write what you know'? Well my Guest this week is here to reveal a few secrets regarding writing about stuff outside your comfort zone. Ladies and Gentlemen...

Dan Pollock

Writing What You Don't Know

Have you noticed? There’s a new breed of techno-thriller writer. More and more explosive page-turners are being churned out by ex-Delta operators, SEAL Team Sixers, Recon Marines, you name it. These guys have actually been there, done that and lived to tell about it—in gritty and convincing techno-detail.

I’m not one of them, alas. I’m a bookish, sedentary guy who conjures up macho heroes for fun and profit. Which means I have to research almost everything I write about.

That’s okay. I like to research. And I relish the challenge of making cumbersome research vanish in sheer narrative excitement. The way Mario Puzo did:

“I wrote The Godfather entirely from research. I never met a real honest-to-god gangster. I knew the gambling world pretty good, but that’s all. After the book became famous, I was introduced to a few gentlemen related to the material. They were flattering. They refused to believe that I had never been in the rackets. They refused to believe that I had never had the confidence of a Don. But all of them loved the book.”—Mario Puzo, The Godfather Papers, p. 36

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My first published thriller was set in exotic locales I’d never laid eyes on (and still haven’t)—Istanbul and the Eastern Mediterranean. 'Lair of theFox' was published in 1989, before the era of online, on-the-fly research, so my desk was piled high with National Geographics, maps ordered from around the world, travel books and magazines.

I sent an advanced reading copy to Eric Ambler (d. 1998), whose 1939 masterpiece, A Coffin for Demetrios (also set in Istanbul) was my inspiration for Lair. Ambler promised to read my fledgling novel, then added that he, too, had not had a chance to visit Istanbul before writing about it. Eventually, he said, he came to know the city quite well and applied this knowledge in several works, especially The Light of Day (filmed as Topkapi).

Interestingly, Ambler confessed, some “old Stamboul hands” later told him that the “atmospherics” of the magical city were far more convincing in Demetrios than his subsequent works.

Those convincing atmospherics were compounded of equal parts free-flowing imagination and painstaking research.

“I try to research whatever I write about. I think writers who don’t are lazy. I just stop reading when, especially if it’s a book about cops or crime, it’s written by someone who does no research and just wings it. Especially Hollywoodish writers. I close the book. It shuts me down, and I can’t suspend my disbelief any longer. It’s just all cartoons.”— Joe Wambaugh, interview, San Diego Reader, 11/4/93

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If you read a swashbuckler by C.S. Forester or Patrick O’Brian (as I hope you will), you’ll find yourself awash in authentic, briny detail. Both were masters of nautical and historical research. As was that master craftsman Rudyard Kipling:

“I embarked on a little book which was called Captains Courageous… I reveled in profligate abundance of detail—not necessarily for publication but for the joy of it.”— Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself, p. 139)

Kipling’s zeal for authenticity contrasts starkly with the following example of lazy non-research. The perpetrator is John Grisham. In his breakout blockbuster, the otherwise gifted storyteller simply copies a list of sailing terms to explain how his characters learned to sail:

“They listened to and memorized words like spinnaker, mast, bow, stern, aft, tiller, halyard winches, masthead fittings, shrouds, lifelines, stanchions, sheet winch, bow pulpit, coamings, transom, clew outhaul, genoa sheets, mainsail, jib, jibstays, jib sheets, cam cleats and boom vangs. [They were] lectured on heeling, luffing, running, blanketing, backwinding, heading up, trimming and pointing.” —John Grisham, The Firm

Another brand-name bard, Stephen King, admits to a similar sin in one of his pseudonymous Richard Bachman novels:

“There are some places where they’re talking in Romany, the gypsy language. What I did was I yanked some old Czechoslovakian editions of my works off the shelves and just took stuff out at random. And I got caught. I got nailed for it [by the readers], and I deserved to be, because it was lazy.” (Writer’s Digest, 3/92, p. 26)

             

Today, thanks to the instant omniscience of Google, an opposite temptation confronts the fiction writer—larding up the narrative with too much impressive-sounding research. The trick is to select the telling detail and to discard the dross tonnage.

“With each new draft, I throw out my research, taking out anything that hinders the story.” —Sidney Sheldon, Los Angeles Magazine, 10/79

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In the techno-thriller, a genre more or less created by Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October (with a nod to Ian Fleming), the temptation to indulge in information overload is almost irresistible. High-tech is king, after all, and readers fully expect to be bombarded with military acronyms, barracks jargon and the latest in operational paraphernalia.

But in the wrong hands “high-tech” is a virtue that can quickly turn vicious. Here’s a sample from the blood-and-guts oeuvre of ex-Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko:

“My black, knee-length Pakistani ‘pasha’ tunic covering the carbon-colored, custom-suppressed Heckler & Koch USP 9mm in its ballistic nylon thigh holster, a titanium-framed Emerson CQC6 combat folder clipped to my waistband next to the Motorola beeper…”—Richard Marcinko (Rogue Warrior: Green Team, co-authored by John Weisman, p. 3)

The passage rambles on in this indigestible vein, inviting comparison to Grisham’s nautical cataloguing.

“The novelist is ill-advised to be too technical. The practice of using a multitude of cant terms is tiresome. It should be possible to give verisimilitude without that, and atmosphere is dearly bought at the price of tediousness.”—W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, p. 69

“There’s such a thing as too authentic,” writes David Poyer, an ex-Navy officer who has penned dozens of nautical thrillers. “The problem with doing a Navy book is that the average reader can’t understand what you’re talking about.” Poyer’s solution is to introduce technical language gradually and in context. “By the last third of the book,” he says, “the non-naval reader is in tune with what’s going on.” (Publishers Weekly interview, 7/5/93)

As a final note, Clancy, the master of technical verisimilitude, enjoyed occasionally taking liberties with facts and indulging his fancy. An example occurred in his 1989 thriller, Clear and Present Danger. Clancy wanted a bomb that exploded silently. When the latest in weaponry wasn’t up to his standards, he simply invented his own hardware. He called it the “Hushaboom.”

“I got the idea from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” Clancy told an interviewer.

(Philip Morris Magazine, summer, 1991)

Bio:

Dan Pollock was born in New York City to a family of writers and grew up in Laguna Beach, California. A former syndicate editor with the Los Angeles Times, Pollock is the author of six thriller novels— Countdown to Casablanca, Lair of the Fox, Duel of Assassins, Orinoco (originally published as Pursuit Into Darkness), The Running Boy and Ringland —and a specially commissioned “logistics” thriller, Precipice. With his wife, Constance, Pollock edited and published three literary, inspirational volumes: The Book of Uncommon Prayer; Gospel: The Life of Jesus as Told by the World's Great Writers; and Visions of the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Revelation as Viewed by the World's Great Writers. The Pollocks live in Southern California with their two children.

When not writing nail-biting thrillers, Dan can be located here:

Email: dbpollock@gmail.com

Blog: http://danpollock.blogspot.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielpollock

Website: http://www.danpollockthrillers.com

Thank you, Dan, for the superb advice and a fascinating analysis that breaks with one of writing's most often-repeated adages... a superb breath of fresh air!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Wolf Schimanski

My Guest this week will have your heart thumping in your chest as you read one of his fast-paced action thrillers. But what makes an author choose to try to give you a heart attack? Ladies and Gentlemen...

Wolf Schimanski

My Writing and Motivation Influences

I really cannot say I have any experience in blogging whatsoever so I thought I would share some ideas and facts about how I came to write and who and what has influenced me along the way. My Mom was an insatiable reader and devoured books by the hundreds if not thousands throughout her 94 years on this planet. That passion must have been genetic as it was certainly passed down to me. Anything that looked remotely mysterious and suspenseful, I picked up and tore through. After some time, however, I started looking for that unique blend of excitement, suspense, action, spice and humor that only the Masters of my action/thriller genre could provide.

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I call them the Masters not only because of the millions of books they have sold world-wide but because of the way they have touched, motivated, inspired and influenced me. There is a long list of them but I have really concentrated on four to whom I am extremely grateful. First and foremost is the late and great Robert B. Parker whose dry wit, short sentences and unique stories amaze me every time I read one of his fabulous books.

Secondly, the amazing James Patterson; not so much his current work but his earlier Alex Cross series just blew me away and still gives me spine tingles every time I re-read those books.

Thirdly, Greg Iles has now become my favorite current author. His vivid descriptions of life in the deep south along with his scorching plot lines keep me turning those pages in awe. And last but certainly not least, John Sandford, just a terrific novelist and master storyteller of whom I can never get enough of.

Steven King, Dean Koontz, John Grisham and so many more have also managed to touch my thriller soul and to these authors I will always be thankful for what they were able to share with the world and myself. Because of these great writers, I was sitting around reflecting a number of years ago and a strange, wonderful and exciting thought came to me. “What would I like to read next?” And with that came, “Why not write the story I would like to read most that my favorite authors have not written?”

Now that I had a mission, how was I going to fulfill it? I started with a correspondence course on the essentials of writing as after all, just being a reader, what did I know about writing?  I had written some articles for a high school entertainment paper years ago but that hardly qualified me as a writer. So after learning the basics and being tutored by a successful author in his own right, the “Meter” series was born.  Once I finished the first book, 'Meter of Deception', my problem was now what do I do to get the message out to all the people out there that just could not wait for it, right?

Wrong. I had to figure out how to publish and market the book as well. After some unanswered query letters, I decided to take the book by the horns and do some research into what type of options were available for someone like me,  eager to  see my stories in print and get it into the hands of thriller fans. I found one such company called Createspace who designated a talented team of professionals to work with me on shaping and creating my dream, my first novel in print.

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The lessons learned from the first book were transferred into the second one, 'Meter of Corruption' which was published in early 2014, using the same characters from the first book. The reason being that I felt the characters had much more growing and experiencing to do so why not see what happens to them 5 years later? And so far my readers have agreed with my decision which has led me to work on my third book 'Meter of Redemption' to be completed sometime next year hopefully. This will complete the “Meter” series and give these unique and interesting characters the closure they deserve.

Anyone that has read Parker, Iles, Patterson and Sandford and then my books, will see where my influences and inspirations come from. I have never hesitated giving credit where credit is due. I owe them an immeasurable debt of gratitude along with my wife who is also my editor and staunchest supporter and all the readers and reviewers who have read and enjoyed my books so far. 

This whole journey has been a learning experience to this point and there is nothing more gratifying when a happy reader stops me or sends me a note to say, “I loved your book and cannot wait for the next one.” It proves that out of a crazy, totally obtuse idea, magic can happen; not only magic in my own life but magic in other people’s lives. It’s exciting to know I have the power to do that through a keyboard and some dear people that believe in me. 

So I will continue on my quest to write the most scintillating, exotic, thrilling and exciting page turners that I can and will never stop paying homage to the great writers that have inspired me and so many others, the Masters of my Action/Thriller genre.

BIO:

Wolf Schimanski is a man of many interests and talents. He has trained in martial arts, enjoys a variety of sports and is an accomplished guitarist and musician. Professionally Schimanski worked many years in the information technology, management and financial planning industries.

An avid reader turned breakthrough author, Schimanski brings his own unique spin to the action/thriller genre and thus far has released two exceptionally gripping, fast paced works of fiction - 'Meter of Deception' and 'Meter of Corruption'.

Schimanski lives with his wife Terri and divides his time between their lakeside home in Mount Forest, Ontario in the summer and their winter residence in London, Ontario, Canada.  He is currently working on his third novel, the final installment in the Meter trilogy.

When Wolf is not penning his action thrillers or plucking guitar strings, he can be found here:

Amazon Author page: www.amazon.com/Wolf-Schimanski/e/B0094JVA8O
GoodReads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7066889.Wolf_Schimanski
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wolfschim
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorWolfSchimanski

Thank you, Wolf, for talking about a subject most writers seem to shy away from, the Masters who've influenced their own work. Best wishes for book 3 in the series, 'Meter of Redemption'.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

How to turn an IDEA into a novel

Another PRACTICAL post this week about what to do if you have an idea, but can't turn it into a storyline. This dilema faces all writers at some point. 

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Okay, we have a potential source of ideas – everything! Reading outside our comfort zones helps stimulate our minds and you could easily find apparently disconnected seeds growing together to form a huge tree. 

But, what if you can’t see how to turn that idea into a story? What then?

As I’ve mentioned a few thousand times, I have been professionally trained in problem-solving. There a particular technique that I’ve often applied to my writing, which I am going to share with you now. This trick is not just for turning a germ of an idea into a potential storyline, it also works wonders when you are ‘stuck’ at a particular point in your tale and can’t see the way forward. When I was taught this, I was told it was called the ‘Word Analysis’ technique – call it whatever you will – labels are unimportant as long as something works. Remember my Sensei? “Use what is useful, throw the rest away". 

The guy who taught me this particular technique used to say that 90% of all solutions resides in the correct definition of the problem. The way it works is this: take a blank sheet of paper and describe you problem. Let’s work through an example to make this crystal clear – it does sound complex at first, but you’ll quickly get the hang of it and find yourself applying the technique in your head while driving the kids to school, walking the dog, snail-wrangling in Peru...

Definition of problem: X is allowed to walk free from a courtroom after having murdered someone, been caught, tried before a Judge, and found guilty. [This is our idea - if you have read 'Outsourced' you may recognize where the opening chapter originated.]

Sounds like a good premise for a John Grisham-type novel, right? Only problem, you can’t figure out how to turn the idea into a novel.

Before continuing, spend five minutes thinking about the idea – note down what you can come up with, then carry on reading. Some visual food for thought on the left.

 Now let’s apply the technique:

Step one: Question your basic assumptions

Did X really murder the victim? How was X caught? What evidence was available? How was X convicted? What would make a Judge release a convicted murderer? Would the Police agree to the release? And the Prosecuting Counsel? Is X the only person being allowed to walk? Is this something the Judge has done before?

Already you will notice two things – none of the questions are ‘What if?’ and your mind is already filling in some of the answers.

Step two: Go back to the definition and read the language you used. Consider the key words themselves and come up with alternatives, if these exist.

Key words here could be walk, courtroom, free, allowed, murdered, caught, trial (tried) and judge.

We said ‘walk free from the courtroom’ – nicely dramatic, would make a good opening scene perhaps. But how ‘free’ is X? Is he (I’ll use ‘he’ just to make reading this easier) on a leash of some sort? Is he free as long as he does something else – for the police, the Prosecutor or the Judge? Or is it bigger? Does he have to do something for the country or Mankind?

Now we have much more grist for the mill. The genre we have chosen to use will also suggest options. Suppose it’s Sci-fi, then X’s penance for freedom could have something to do with defeating an invading population of aliens by becoming infected with a deadly virus strain and transporting himself to their home planet.

Maybe it’s just straight thriller material: could X’s accomplices have the Judge’s family under wraps? Are the cops in on this too? Does the Judge secretly want someone else killed and by freeing this person, someone he knows is a killer, on a technicality, he can subsequently use X against his own target.

And so on…

By using alternative words for our key words, even more options emerge:

Walk – alternatives: carried, flee, kidnapped, escape.

Step three: Look for connection in the key words

Was this the Judge who convicted X or was it someone else and this is the appeal? What could happen to nullify the evidence against X? Was the trial and subsequent conviction legitimate, or is this Judge running their own private courtroom because they are a vigilante of sorts?

Step four: Now ask WHY?

This will highlight motivation and provide a solid basis for the story to evolve.

You see just how quickly we have progressed from having a problem to having a surfeit of possible solutions?

It’s a technique that usually works…

Until it doesn’t.

Sometimes you may need something else to get you jump-started, so the following should also prove useful:

Ask the Why question 7 times.

Why was X freed?

Why did the cops allow this?

Why did the Prosecuting Counsel allow this?

Why did X leave the courtroom and not the prison?

Why did…

You may not find 7 Why’s but it will get you thinking.

Look for humor in the situation.

Don’t worry about the genre you wish to use for now; is this in any way funny? Has X eaten the evidence in the courtroom, for example? Yes, I know it’s outlandish, but it will get you thinking.

Look at the situation from different viewpoints.

When you wrote the definition, there was an implied ‘this is X’s story’ feel to it. So, how would the cops, Prosecutor, Judge, Defense Counsel, Press, courtroom security guard, public, etc. react? This could be their story.

Best-case/Worst-case scenarios

What is the best and worst that could happen to X, the Judge, the cops, the Prosecutor, the Defense Counsel, the public etc. as a result of this decision? More ideas, right?

Ask someone else.

Not the dog (cat). You may find that a friend, spouse, child, the local barman, whatever, has a fresh opinion that stimulates your thoughts into a new direction. In the case cited, I’d try to find a Police Officer and ask them – they just might have experienced something similar, you never know.

A last word:

When trying to kick-start a novel idea, you need to always assume you have a GOOD idea to start with – only after tearing into it for a few days and not getting anywhere, should you leave it annotated in your notebook for some future time. You will know when your idea is beginning to take shape when you start to see the motivation behind your characters’ actions.

The above was extracted from the chapter on Turning Ideas into Stories in 'How NOT to be an ASPIRING Writer' by yours truly. It's aimed at anyone who's new to this writing business and, using a witty, chatty style, I will walk you through the minefield that is the new publishing paradigm; from how to generate an idea to using Social Media and all the interesting stuff in between.

If you want to lose that 'aspiring' word or simply become better at writing fiction (any genre) then this is for you.

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Eric @ www.ericjgates.com