In Today’s Journal
* Author Intrusion: A Dual Introduction
* Of Interest
Author Intrusion: A Dual Introduction
About Me—Credentials
If you seriously want to learn to write fiction—or if you’re already a fiction writer and you want to improve your craft—it only makes sense to learn from those who’ve actually written a lot of fiction and who have the ability to teach.
Fortunately, I possess both of those attributes.
As I’ve said to many copyediting clients, mentoring students, and attendees while teaching in college classes and in private seminars and writers conferences over the past few decades, my own number one rule as a writer is this:
Never put anything—words or punctuation—on the page
that might distract the reader from the story
or interrupt the reading experience.
The fiction writer’s only role is to convey the story, not to interrupt mid-scene to comment on it.
When I say I’m a “prolific professional fiction writer,” I don’t mean I turn out a novel every six months or even every three months.
I mean I’ve written over nine million words of fiction in only ten years. That’s only around 2500 words of publishable fiction per day (about 2 hours’ work).
How did I do all of that? I showed up every day. The secret is making writing fiction a priority and establishing a routine.
Those nine million-plus words have gone into 123 novels, 10 novellas, and well over 300 short stories, all across several genres. I’ve been blessed with some great saga or series characters. As a result, the novels include
- a 53-volume contemporary Crime Thriller series that’s ongoing
- a 22-volume Period Western saga that begins in the 1870’s Texas Panhandle and ends 60+ years later in a fishing village in the state of Guerrero, Mexico
- a 10-volume SF saga that conveys the story of a generation space ship and the people on it
- a 7-volume Contemporary Mystery detective PI novel series that’s ongoing
- a 4-volume Period Action-Adventure saga set around the time of the Spanish Civil War, and
- 27 other novels in one-offs or in pairs.
A few more pertinent points:
- Of the novels, at my most prolific during a 42-week period in 2024–2025 I wrote and published 21 novels—so a novel every two weeks—in three or four different worlds.
- Of the novellas, 8 of the 10 were one-offs. Two others were part of series.
- Of the short stories, most were one-offs, but many sprang from the series or sagas listed above.
Look me up if you want to. I suggest you google Harvey Stanbrough or StoneThread Publishing or The New Daily Journal.
But after that, whip out your laptop and get busy writing. I welcome the company.
About This Book
First, let me define what I mean by author intrusion.
Author intrusion occurs any time the writer—annoyingly, needlessly, and without warning—pops up between the readers and the characters. Writers most often do this unconsciously, but it’s still annoying. And you can cut down on those intrusions or even eradicate them completely.
And you want to eradicate them. When you do anything that distracts the reader from the story or interrupts the reading, you’re shooting yourself in your own financial foot.
Of course, no writer consciously wants to intrude on the story and disrupt the reading experience.
And why would you? Why even risk disrupting the reading experience? Why even risk giving the reader the opportunity to close the book, find something else to do, and maybe not come back to open it again?
All of that is why I’m so dead-set against committing the writerly sin of author intrusion.
Neither will any reader ever tell you he didn’t like your story specifically because of author intrusion. Typical readers don’t even know writing techniques exist. Readers are only in it for the entertainment, and they generally only know “I like it” or “I don’t like it.”
Ideally, the reader should be so thoroughly engaged with your work that he or she won’t even realize you, the author, exists.
You know, like when you’re reading along, thoroughly engrossed in a story, and you suddenly realize someone’s been calling your name for awhile, trying to get your attention?
You want your readers to be that engaged. That’s your goal.
My goal with this book is to help you get there. I’ll do my best to help you achieve that level of craft.
In the chapters to come, I’ll talk at length about various kinds of author intrusion and a few other mistakes fiction writers commonly make. I’ll also include specific examples you can apply directly to the characters’ story.
Yes, the characters’ story. You’re only putting it in publishable form so readers can experience it too.
The characters are living the story, and they’re largely unaware of you or your world. But the characters, you, and your eventual readers are working together in a partnership:
- Even as the characters are living the story, they have invited you to observe and write down what happens (the events of the story) and how they react to those events in word and deed as the story unfolds around them. That’s it. Nothing more.
- You, on the other hand, are basically a reporter, live on the scene. You’re mentally there, but you’re not involved in the story. As such, you have zero reason to pop in from time to time to “correct” the character or to “clarify” anything for the reader. (I’ll say a great deal more about this in Chapter One: Using the Physical and Emotional Sense Verbs.)
- The readers complete the transaction by purchasing, opening, and becoming lost in the characters’ world and their story.
And at that point, frankly, the readers no longer need you at all. They will glean what they need in order to participate in the story by reading your excellent descriptions of the setting, the characters, and the scene.
(To read more about what to include, I recommend you key Writing Better Fiction into a search engine. It’s even available at a discount through my StoneThread Publishing Payhip store. Or email me at harveystanbrough[at]gmail[dot]com for information.)
So when the story’s finished and published, you’ve done your bit. You’ve observed and recorded the story and then happily licensed it to readers (in exchange for moolah) through your publisher or whatever aggregator or distributor you use.
Then all you have to do is hope you didn’t buy the story back from your readers by occasionally popping in to interrupt them while they were fully engaged in the story.
Following the concepts and techniques in this book will help ensure that you don’t.
The Good News
The good news is that over time and with practice putting new words on the page you will naturally begin to apply the concepts and techniques you’ll read and absorb from this book.
When that happens, you will apply those concepts and techniques as automatically as you can recite the alphabet, or as automatically as you would add a period at the end of a declarative sentence or a question mark after a direct question.
Or, if you’re writing by hand, you will apply them as automatically as you would dot a lower-case I or cross a lower-case T. In other words, you’ll apply these concepts and techniques without having to consciously think about them.
When you’ve had enough practice, the mistakes I talk about in this book will no longer exist in your writing so they’ll no longer be a problem for you.
But for now, even before you’ve begun to automatically apply these concepts and techniques, you (or more specifically, your characters) will be able to correct most of the mistakes I’ve listed in this book during what I call “cycling” sessions.
Because there’s a huge and important difference between cycling and editing, I’ve included a chapter on cycling vs. editing at the end of this book.
A Note Regarding “Practice”
It’s important that I define “practice” and, for that matter, “write.” In the context of writing fiction, those words are synonymous, and both of them are action verbs.
Neither “practice” nor “write” means thinking about writing or talking about writing.
Likewise, neither of them means researching or outlining or character sketching or world building or any of the other delay tactics fiction writers sometimes use to put off sitting down and actually writing a story.
Also, neither of those words means revise or rewrite or any other conscious-mind ploy used to put off submitting or publishing your work.
Both “practice” and “write” simply mean “put new words on the page.”
Finally, even if you believe you already know or have seen some of the concepts and techniques in this book, I strongly encourage you to revisit them. Unless you subscribe to The New Daily Journal, I can pretty well guarantee you’ve never seen them quite like this.
Enjoy.
Of Interest
Should You Write a Series? How Much is Enough?
6 Exercises to Practice Stoicism in a Stressful World
(Repeat) Craig Marttelle’s May I Write a Novel A 4-minute video announcing the Successful Indie Author’s May Writing Challenge. The website is in the next entry.
(Repeat) SIA Writing Challenge Completely free. Martelle’s only trying to encourage fiction writers.