Dead On Writing

By Robert Walker

Reviews rave about Dead On Writing as being Dead ON advice on all aspects of craft & marketing your book or novel. Imagine a production class between covers. Prof. R.Walker shares skills and secrets to success. Walker emphasizes craft and commercial thinking and how the two must work in tandem to interest large markets & Small. Find here some of the finest writing tips in print, hard-won and true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Walker
• Release date: Aug 14, 2009
• ISBN: 9781311839466

Robert Walker

I graduated from Northwestern University in 1972 with a BS and an MS in English Education and have taught English at the college level ever since. I have also written and published over 60 thrillers, suspense novels, mysteries, police procedurals, historical mysteries, and young adult titles mostly under my name (I have used 4 pen names). Some of my more recent books are a trilogy pubbed by HarperCollins entitled City for Ransom, Shadows in the White City, and City of the Absent. Other titles--PSI Blue, Deja Blue, Tre's Blue, Cuba Blue, both suspense with female detectives, and The Serpentine Fire - Flesh Wars 1 & 2, a science fiction horror romp from Miami to India, as well as Dead On Writing, a how-to for the dysfunctional writer in us all. Children of Salem was followed by Titanic 2012 and Bismarck 2013. My 14 book Instinct Series is my longest running of 8 Series, the latest being Absolute Instinct, The Edige of Instinct, and The Fear Collectors. This is a female sleuth FBI ME serial killer chase series. My Edge Seires began with Cutting Edge and ended with Final Edge--a male Texas Cherokee detective lead. I have recently completed Annie's War, The Red Path, The Cannoneers, Animiki and the Keepers of the Fire, Ragnar and The Battlestormer, Darkness Chasing Light, and The SubterraneanS, and Ransom Violence. My DEAD ON came out in hardcover in July 09 and is now a Kindle ebook. Dead On is set in Atlanta and is a fast-paced psychological thriller filled with suspense and humor in a mix of romance as well. I have just begun a series of novellas horror novels entitled CHICAGHOSTS with Imajin Books.I live now with my wife, Miranda in Hurricane, West Virginia by way of Chicago and Corinth, Mississippi.

Book preview

DEAD ON WRITING –

A Book for The Successfully Disorganized, Down & Dirty, Functionally Challenged Fiction Writer in You . . .

Robert W. Walker

Preface:

Writing is like shouting in the dark at stars too far to hear; like shooting in the dark at targets we don't always see, and once in a while we get lucky and hear a report back. We've hit our target. When first starting out, we do it not knowing enough about the tools at hand, or if we are holding our mouth right, or if the weapons we wield are loaded or sharpened. That is until we begin to practice and hit our stride, and soon writing, like firing off shot after shot, comes progressively easier on everyone, including the innocent bystanders we call readers-nice people who we don’t want to send screaming away from us for all our unintended results.

—Robert W. Walker, author of Dead On, Deja Blue, Cuba Blue, City for Ransom & more. Writing from Somewhere, West Virginia, 2009

DEAD ON WRITING is brought to you by Professor Robert W. Walker, a native of Mississippi who grew up in Chicago. He has published over 40 novels in genre fiction, including historical mystery, detective crime thrillers, and suspense. His novel Unnatural Instinct earned the Readers Choice Award for best suspense novel of 2002 at the Love Is Murder Readers & Writers Conference (Illinois) sponsored by the College of Dupage. He has recently published his City series – City for Ransom, Shadows in the White City (also a Lovey-Award winner), and City of the Absent – which are gaslight era Hystery-Mystery novels using the Chicago World’s Fair as backdrop to mayhem. His other series is the Rae Hiyakawa modern day psychic detective chase called PSI Blue and Deja Blue. Summer of 2009 saw publication of Dead On, a modern day noir novel set in Atlanta and the Georgia woods. Rob has won a teaching excellence award from Bethune-Cookman College, and several writing awards from the Florida Freelance Writers Assn. for fiction and non-fiction. Many of his titles have been translated for Czech, Polish, Japanese, and British English editions. Several of his books have been juried and accepted at Tamarack, an exclusive West Virginia arts center and bookstore. Rob has taught at Mountain State University and at Mountain State Academy, and West Virginia State University. A graduate of Northwestern University with a Masters in English Education, he lives in Charleston, WV with his novelist-RN wife, Miranda, their children, and their dog. Rob can be found at www.RobertWalkerbooks.com as well as www.myspace.com/robertwwalkerbooks.com and is blogging regularly at www.AcmeAuthorsLink.blogspot.com

DEAD On WRITING is divided into SEVEN Sections:

The largest being a 2-Part Section on CRAFT & EXECUTION with sub-sets dealing with every aspect of the art (and science) of writing from research and details to character, setting, plot, and dialogue. This is large because in CRAFT and EXECUTION is where you earn your unofficial PhD in Writing.

The Third Section is devoted to REWRITING & EDITING, which ought to be considered as part of Craft as well.

The Fourth Section is on SELLING the manuscript to AGENTS, EDITORS, & PUBLISHERS in today’s unique markets, including online efforts.

The Fifth Section is on the business of PROMOTING, MARKETING, & BOOK SALES of the finished book.

The Sixth Section is on GRAM’S GRAMMA’ ISSUES, which sneakily really is part of Craft.

Finally, the Seventh Section is an ADDENDUM(B) of miscellaneous and extraneous material too good not to include.

Confessions from the outset: This book divides unevenly and in disorganized fashion as the philosophy here is that you need to perfect Craft & Execution before you can sell it to an agent, an editor, a publisher of any size or quality; that you first must bleed the ink, perspire the ink, and cry the ink; in short do the work. Second confession: I use my own material for examples/samples throughout because it is easier, simpler, cheaper, and I know the material—where it fits, when it fits to demonstrate what is needed to best teach you. So while on the surface it may look like I am just big-headed, trust me I am beyond an egoism. This business has knocked it out of me years ago. To reiterate, learning the ropes of writing is enough work to have otherwise earned you a PhD in letters had you sought out a program at a university.

In essence, when you go down the path of an avowed professional writer, you become a PhD candidate in writing—and most of the lessons, while teachable and learnable must come at a time when you, the student or candidate, are READY. In other words, if you are ready, the master appears. And if you are ready, read on and learn the craft and live with the tools and make the gargantuan but fulfilling effort. I started on the path at a very young age, wrote my first short stories in 6th and 7th grade and graduated on to write my first novel straddling my second and third year of high school. However, you can start on this marvelous journey filled with every imaginable emotion at any age.

There are a series of exercises in the craft section and more in the ADDENDUM(B) that I will point you toward and urge you to complete as you go. These are results-getting exercises that will end in product. Production of pages equals experience and practice. In a film class you work on volume, on production, and practice; a writing lifestyle must be the same. I call these exercises finger exercises for good reason. You can repeat any of them as many times as possible before you become sick to death of them. But you should absolutely take to heart their value, as you would practice sessions on a piano or practice in shooting baskets or practice in any endeavor. You may also want to take years—perhaps up to four years –just learning the craft and the art of writing before you dare go on the path of seeking to sell your stuff. That’s what I did and I sell a book a year on average. Now let’s jump right in on your unofficial by highly useful PhD effort, shall we? Let’s begin at the beginning but you may read any section of the ADDEN-DUMB at any time for the fun of it.

ONE: CRAFT & EXECUTION

BEGINNIGS & ESTABLISHING SHOTS –

No, this is not about booze. It is about making the right opening moves; not in a bar but in a bar in your story…or whatever setting you open with. First lines and first paragraphs which establish character and much more are absolutely crucial. True whether you begin with the weather or a cobra about to strike.

When you open a story, you really have to rework it and rewrite it so that those opening moments are pure gold…as pure as you can make them. Clear as you can make them as well as exciting as you can make them (excitement does not necessarily mean fireworks or car chases). Think of every good film that has SET the stage in the very first seconds and minutes of the film. These first shots establish time and place along with tension and character. Perhaps you might have a page or two to interest the reader in a character or the actions being taken by a character, but this can’t possibly happen if your story opens in a miasma of confusion in which we know nothing whatsoever of the setting, the time, the character, perhaps his or her occupation, where his or her hands are at the moment, what action(s) the character(s) are currently occupied with…what pie they have their hands in. HANDS are so important to characters; about as important as LEGS and FEET.

To become proficient at opening successive chapters beyond Chapter One, too, you’ve got to establish the basic Five W’s of Who, What, Where, When, and How or at least four of the above. With each new scene this job’s got to happen. All this has to be repeated over again with each geographical shift, point of view shift, time shift. Such shifts have to be carefully glued together by comforting road signs as with a time word or two such as since, before, then, now, when…

To become proficient at openings, read the back jacket copy of every paperback you can get your hands on, and tell me how many of these interest grabbers appear in paragraph one or two: Time period, setting with place names, character’s names (names have resonance), occupation of main character, chief tension or problem (the how and why that keeps us turning pages).

Take a lesson from the back-flap writers. In fact, become adept at writing your own flap to place in your query letter and synopsis. They say never judge a book by its cover, but when the flap is well written, go ahead—judge a book by its synopsis. Learn to write the most important short story you will ever need to write—the story of your story in its most elemental form, my dear Watson. (More on writing a salaciously sales-worthy pitch/back-flap can be found in the section on Marketing and Sales).

You can also use this in pitch sessions—the back-flap you write for your own book! You may want to begin with the word WHEN—as in:

Just when Inspector Alastair Ransom had cut off the head of one snake slithering about the gas-lit streets of Chicago in 1893, a second fiend raises his ugly head to mar the prosperity of the city and the success of the World’s Fair.

In one fell swoop, one sentence, you get the name and profession of the main character, the time period and the location and a teasing tension. Write the copy you’d like to see on the back of your book!

An opening line and paragraph and page ought to engage the reader and excite his interest, of course, but it also ought to plant the reader’s feet firmly in place, square into the moment, square into the story. But no beginning is of any use no matter how spectacular if the story fails to move forward and a plot or at least a series of engaging episodic events do not occur. A plot must become evident and fairly soon. To this end, a good faith attempt at writing a rip-snorting ghost story or mystery or at least a men’s adventure yarn is a great and wonderful tool for a writer to learn the craft of plotting.

PART II of Beginnings and Establishing Shots:

A young writer must write a mystery. But WHY WRITE MYSTERY?

This is a question my students fight me on, especially those who are most likely to fail at plotting. I want my students to write a mystery story in order to have their eyes opened to just precisely how plot works. The plot is not a limp clothes line to hang events on. Plot is a forward moving dynamic tightrope pulled taut by conflict. Plot is the event that begets the next event and the next. And in crafting a mystery—even one about a thieving weasel in a child’s story—a new writer learns far far more and far far faster the lessons of plotting than in any other genre or type of writing. Trust me on this.

Why do we write suspense, mystery, intrigue? What is the allure for both readers and writers of the mystery novel? I can’t speak for every thriller author, but I know why I write in this genre. It is for a number of reasons, not the least being MONEY. This is a hugely popular genre; in fact, seven or eight of the fiction titles on the current bestseller lists are mysteries or some sub-genre of the traditional mystery. Certainly money is not the only reason we authors of intrigue choose to write mysteries.

The mystery is always fascinating as it always pits our hero—someone not far from us in terms of character—against overwhelming odds. The payoff is always satisfactory, the loose ends always tied up, and if not in the prequel then in the sequel. We love this category also because it allows for a built-in structure, the comfy one that calls for a beginning, a middle, and an end like a well organized composition or a well oiled machine (but as in a Tarantino film, these elements can be jumbled).

We love mysteries too because the main character, whether PI or departmental cop, whether an Inspector Mom or an Inspector out of 1893 Chicago (City for Ransom, Shadows in the White City, City of the Absent), we relate even as our character relates to the real world. In no other category save perhaps the philosophical western is the human condition put on display. In the mystery, we go from misery to joy, love to hate, and in fact murder mystery is the very definition of passions gone amok.

Social issues of the day, common and not so common concerns of the flesh, all of it is fodder for the mystery. Why write the Who Dunnit, or the Why Dunnit, or the Way Off Base Dunnit? In the end it is just plain great fun and fulfilling to create a gumshoe, male of female or a team whose character(s) drives the plot rather than being driven by plot. And in what other genre is there so many fist fights, chase scenes, in short ACTION. A fine mystery is a film playing in your head. Besides Life’s a Mystery and Love is Murder, so to speak.

Still in the end, the final result and wish for the author is MONEY enough to feed his or her awful habit—the need to write more and to provide food on the table. True as they say, There’s no poetry in money, and no money in poetry, but there is or can be money in mystery. Why should only the crooks and CEO’s make crime pay? Now you too can make it pay and do it at your convenience with a successful author teaching an even more successful class right here in this text, a class aptly called:

WRITE TO SELL *

In this book-course we’ll take up CRAFT and EXECUTION – the basic elements that create consistent VOICE and the Elements of Style from Strunk & White to Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction. Useful and constructive information creating compelling lines via an authorial voice. Before you can sell a word, you must master this technique and if a poor kid from the North side of Chicago can do it, so can you master of dramatic active moving and flowing sentences that drive the dynamo of the story ever forward in a visually powerful flood that has readers ripping through pages. Again I am speaking of Craft, the art of writing well, and execution. This involves reading like a writer, observing as a writer, researching as a writer, re-thinking and re-writing as a writer must. In the end, it is all in the execution of your story or novella or novel.

In this book-course you’ll learn about TEASERS AND LURES – writing the shortest and most important story you will ever write – the treatment, logline, premise (whatever) of your novel. This sales tool is, among others, perhaps the most important single item that can sell or lose a sale in the marketplace of the agents, editors, and publishers you want to lure to your web…ahhh novel. You want to earn a reading, and you do that in the cover letter, the synopsis, the outline, and such lures and teasers as you can create. I will have you mastering this kind of writing, so stay with it!

In this book-course you’ll learn the ways of the MARKETING GENIUS – we all need more of it along with craft and execution. I want to turn you into a marketing guru with the many methods open to you to do SMART MARKETING in order to get your manuscript read by agents and editors who will want to grab it up, sure. But once it has been sold, you need a barrel full of tricks as well. This is a strategy that will set your finished book apart. These down and dirty techniques have proven useful in selling over forty novels to major publishers in New York City and to mid-sized publishers across the country.

While you read this book for techniques that work, you may well want to also have at hand one of my novels found at my website and easily ordered. When referring to opening and endings and middle chapter excitement, you should have a ready example at hand. However, there are peppered in and throughout this book many good and useful examples and samples—in fact it’s a smorgasbord of writing delights and finger exercises.

Continuing with CRAFT and EXECUTION of DEAD ON WRITING:

Some damn good Advice to Follow:

It's very hard for a writer so close to his own work (including a professional like myself) to see items and bothersome analytical needs and stuff like missing commas—or worse too many commas or semi-colons jammed in where commas need go—when the creative side sees and often fills in whole words even where they may be missing. (Whew! Take a breath . . . take notes…highlighter ready? Electronic blackboard?)

As far as the grammar rules go, if you have problems with these—as so many people do these days thanks to our screen-on-generation now, wherein if it isn't on a screen but coming out of a classroom or on a blackboard, it isn't worthy of anyone’s attention, well then join the crowd.

Could you follow that compound complex on top of complex last sentence? In a novel, if your reader gets lost, you have committed the number one writing sin of all—being unclear. Bringing your reader to a confusion at the cellular level of the sentence that cannot be followed. If you can’t make it sing, at least make it clear–great bumper sticker advice that. Call for Claritin. If it’s fuzzy and hard to follow, you’re in violation and ought be arrested for the biggest of the ten deadly sins of writing.

Yes, a question from the floor? I am asked by a young writer in all seriousness why some people—and he was naming no names—were such PEDANTS when it came to sentence structure and such thingies or thingys as the rules of grammar? My response (being an English and writing teacher) came fast and furiously as the question irritated me to no end. The question reminded me of the student who has no sense of history and does not want any either when we all know that what we do today determines our outcome for tomorrow—history!

Okay back to the constraints and restraints of rules of the road in writing: There are some ways to work around comma issues and semi-colon gaffs as in pay a professional, someone like myself who does freelance editing at cut rate prices to fix whatever issues a person has with grammatical stuff –and or find an instructor who really knows how to put it across (not all teachers can do it as well as they should, and most think they have but haven’t). Or find a friend or acquaintance who LOVES to edit stuff and will happily do it for you.

My young protégé’s response is immediate, and he says that's been done—50 times over—so that's not working (by the way if it is under 100 spell it out—fifty!)

So I take the young man aside and I say, "You know, son, there really are only like TEN deadly sins in writing, and most of us are committing only two or three of these offenses, and if someone can point out the pattern errors—serial killer errors—of the type that keep coming back at you, then once you SEE the connectedness of the error(s) and that it is the same error repeating itself like a recurrent nightmare, then and only then do you begin to feel a darn sight better about your single (or two or three issues).

At