In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Welcome
* Ian Fleming on How to Write
* A New Free Story Every Week
* The Craft Boils Down
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“You have to get the reader to turn over the page.” Ian Fleming (see “Of Interest”)
“I have a charming relative who is an angry young littérateur of renown. He is maddened by the fact that more people read my books than his. … I asked him how he described himself on his passport. ‘I bet you call yourself an Author,’ I said. He agreed, with a shade of reluctance, perhaps because he scented sarcasm on the way. ‘Just so,’ I said. ‘Well, I describe myself as a Writer. There are authors and artists, and then again there are writers and painters.'” Ian Fleming
“I looked for the simplest and plainest name I could find. I chose Jack, and not as a diminutive for John, either. It’s just Jack. … I wanted to underpin Reacher’s blunt and straightforward manner with a blunt and straightforward name.” Lee Child on how Jack Reacher’s first name came about
Welcome to new subscribers to the Journal.
If there’s anything I can do to help you as a writer or publisher, let me know. I’m pretty much always available via email at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Ian Fleming on How to Write
Thanks to my friend Gary V. for the link to the first item in “Of Interest” today. It’s an article Ian Fleming wrote 60 years ago about how to write a thriller. If you read nothing else today, read that. I’ve encountered it before, but I read it again this time too. Great stuff.
Please don’t be like the woman who crossed her arms over her chest and said she would never read Heinlein’s Rules, that they couldn’t possibly pertain to her because she doesn’t write science fiction. Puhlease.
Even if you don’t write thrillers, folks, fiction writing is fiction writing and storytelling is storytelling and Ian Fleming was a Stage-the-Hell Five writer.
A New Free Story Every Week
I keep forgetting to mention the new free short stories that come out once a week on Friday over at https://harveystanbroughwrites.com/category/short-story-of-the-week/. I have them scheduled well into June or July to come out every Friday at 10 a.m. on the site and a little later on the Substack. The current batch are all previously unpublished.
If you don’t want to miss any, you can subscribe to the substack. If you’d like to subscribe, visit https://stanbroughwrites.substack.com/, click on any story, and then click the subscribe button at the end. The current short story, a psychological suspense, is “A Long Way Down.”
One person, Bobbie J. Herring, left this comment: “An engaging story. Such detail. Thx for sharing. Almost made me want to restart writing again.”
Of course I thanked her and mentioned the Journal, a unique place where you can not only learn to write but to write with “such detail.”
The Craft Boils Down to Hooks, Openings (wherein you ground the reader in the setting via the POV character’s physical and emotional senses), scene or chapter Cliffhangers, and pacing.
Beyond that, you only need to get down in the trenches of the story with your characters and race through it with them. Then simply write what happens and what the characters say and do as the story unfolds all around you. Then practice, by which I mean put new words on the page.
Most of the time when I hear about writers who stopped writing fiction, they stopped because they lost interest, and they lost interest because they stayed in one place too long. They hovered over one work, outlining, revising, rewriting, etc. That nonsense will freeze any writer solid.
If you want to become a profilic, long-term professional writer, you have to make storytelling through writing something you enjoy. You have to make it fun. And the best way to do that is to stop taking it so seriously.
As I’ve written many times before and alluded to above, come down out of the authorial ivory tower, lose the robes, slip into jeans and a t-shirt and an old pair of tenny go-fasters. Then roll off the parapet of the story into the trenches and race through it with your characters.
Most important of all, remember the One Ring Truth, the truth that will control everything else you do as a fiction writer: THAT you write is all-important because, um, you’re a writer. But WHAT you write, the individual story or novel, is only a few minutes’ or hours’ entertainment. A passing fancy. It’s nothing more important than that.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller” at https://lithub.com/ian-fleming-explains-how-to-write-a-thriller/.
See “Orwell, Camus and truth” at https://thecritic.co.uk/orwell-camus-and-truth/. An extremely good article. Thanks to The Passive Voice.
See “Dean Challenges… Two of them” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/dean-challenges-two-of-them/.
See “Why Are All Action Heroes Named Jack, James, or John?” at https://slate.com/culture/2023/03/john-wick-james-bond-action-heroes-j-names.html. Beyond that, most action hero figures have single-syllable first names or nicknames.
See “Using the Big Five Personality Traits for Character Development” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/03/using-the-big-five-personality-traits-for-character-development.html. Read, study, learn. Then forget it while you’re writing.
See “The Battle for Your Brain” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-battle-for-your-brain/. Story ideas.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 870 words
Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)
Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051
Day 5…… 1451 words. Total words to date…… 11502
Total fiction words for March……… 1451
Total fiction words for 2023………… 54275
Total nonfiction words for March… 9420
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 50750
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 105025
Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: Because It Makes Sense, I preach trusting your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living. See My Best Advice for Fiction Writers at https://hestanbrough.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/My-Best-Advice-for-Fiction-Writers.pdf.