In Today’s Journal
* Your Morning Serial: Description
* Contest Update
* Manuscript Format Redux
* Love Live-Action Bits?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Your Morning Serial: Description
For a great example of down-in-the-weeds, next-level setting description, read The Journey Home: The Ark (Chapter 4).
The chapter also actually stands alone as a short-short story, and in my opinion the description alone is worth studying.
Contest Update
Just so you know, I’ve narrowed the field of those vying for first place in the contest to five excellent stories. Please don’t ask about the titles or authors. I won’t tell you yet.
I’ve also decided to focus on my novel and finish it before I focus further on the contest.
All of the entries I didn’t reject are acceptable as they are. However, as I do a final read-through of the manuscripts for the anthology, I’ll turn on Track Changes and make any necessary minor edits.
I’ll also imbed comments as necessary to make any recommendations, and of course I’ll send the manuscripts back to you for your approval before publishing the anthology.
You may accept or reject the edits and/or recommendations. Your work will still be included in the anthology.
Manuscript Format Redux
People keep reminding me about William Shunn’s “proper” manuscript format. One even mentioned that Dean Wesley Smith recommends it. You can find that format here.
Other than the recommended line spacing and first-line indent, Shunn’s guidelines and mine don’t differ much.
As I recently told one of those writers, Shunn’s double-spaced .5″ indented first line format is archaic.
I suspect it’s perfect for paper submissions to agents and traditional publishers (which are also archaic), especially if you’re typing them out on a manual typewriter.
However, it is not so great for this modern era of computers and word processors and ebook readers.
I explained in detail my reasons for that assertion in the manuscript format article I wrote. You can download that article in PDF free by clicking here.
That said, do what you like. I’m only trying to ensure your greatest chance for success.
So to reiterate, if the venue to which you’re submitting your work for a contest or for publication offers formatting guidelines, I recommend you follow them to the letter.
If they don’t, the one I offered will make your manuscript easier to read and give the reader (editor) fewer places to skip out and stop reading.
Totally up to you.
Love Live-Action Bits?
In every novel I write—whether SF or Western or Mystery or Thriller—there are intense, high-action scenes in which everything just went to hell in a handbag.
But between those scenes, the characters are going about their normal lives.
In my generation-ship SF novels, maybe they’re having a drink in their local or doing laundry or eating a meal or having a spat. You know, between those times when Security’s dealing with a murderer who snuck aboard or aliens who suddenly made their presence known on the bridge.
In a Western, there are times when the guys and gals are sitting around a campfire in the evening, eating a plate of beans and tortillas or swapping tall tales or plodding along on horseback through country where they can’t ride fast and wild. In between shootouts with the Comanche or comancheros or other bad guys.
In a Mystery—Stern Talbot or otherwise—there are times when Stern or a police detective’s doing a little foot dangling in his desk chair as he waits for the phone to ring. In between trying to catch a bad guy without getting coldcocked with a blackjack or shot.
And in my Blackwell Ops series, there are interactions between operatives and contacts, male and female, and suppers and lunches and breakfasts and conversations. That’s in between the tense actual missions, which are made up of a covert ingress, the actual mission, and a relieved egress.
All of that works well for most readers because the characters are real people leading real lives.
Well, and because readers are real people who are curious about other real people. So the ‘down time’ tends to serve as a welcome respite from the intense, pulse-pounding action scenes.
But some readers mentally go into the kitchen to grab a snack while the characters are likewise doing something other than their job.
So for those readers who love live-action bits—the readers who will drop their snack and race back into the living room when they hear a character on TV yell “Gun!”—I’m thinking about publishing a new collection of action-only stories.
I’ll start with my Blackwell Ops series. I’ll cull select action scenes—the ingress, the hit, and the egress—from each book, then compile those in another book.
The overall collection, Blackwell Ops: The Strained Version, will serve a dual purpose:
First and foremost the stories will be highly entertaining for those readers who want to get straight into the action with none of the ‘rest’ periods. I will not knowingly sell those to people with heart problems, of course. (grin)
Secondly, they will serve as a kind of primer for fiction writers who want to study the how-to of writing action scenes:
- how to write the tension and anticipation and show the characters’ nervousness,
- how to write the characters’ stop-action thought processes,
- how to write the nuanced description of the action itself,
- how to depict the adrenaline raging through the characters’ system,
and - how to write the draining of that adrenaline when the character(s) realize one more mission is complete and he or she is still breathing.
If you’re reading this, chances are good you’re both a reader and a fiction writer.
So I’m asking: What do you think? Is this the sort of thing you might be interested in as a reader and/or as a fiction writer?
If so, let me know that along with any reasons or suggestions you might have.
If not, same thing: let me know that along with any reasons or suggestions you might have.
Thanks!
Of Interest
My Co-Editor of “True Pulp” Joins Me to talk Kickstarter! A LOT more than just about the Kickstarter.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1020
Writing of Blackwell Ops 45: Sam Granger | Ghost Trail 2
Day 1…… 2637 words. To date…… 2637
Day 2…… 3648 words. To date…… 6285
Day 3…… 3483 words. To date…… 9768
CUTS…… -4437 words. To date…… 5331
Day 4…… 3212 words. To date…… 8543
Day 5…… 2715 words. To date…… 11258
Day 6…… 2044 words. To date…… 13302
Day 7…… 2280 words. To date…… 15582
Day 8…… 2901 words. To date…… 18483
Day 9…… 2863 words. To date…… 21346
Fiction for June………………………. 8044
Fiction for 2025………………………. 471496
Nonfiction for June……………………. 4370
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 130520
2025 consumable words…………….. 595506
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 11
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 27
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 115
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 297
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.