Category: Things that make you think

Writing tips!

Hey, peeperinos–

Here are a couple of good writing tip links. Here’s Jeff Abbott, award-winning international suspense- and thriller-writing guy over at Amazon’s Omnivoracious talking about how to “build a hero” in your mystery/thriller books. Abbott talks about how he comes to embrace a hero in his books, and the characteristics a hero should have.

And here’s Writer’s Digest, with 5 most excellent tips for building a story.

Here’s a flavor (Quote):

1. Orientation:
The beginning of a story must grab the reader’s attention, orient her to the setting, mood and tone of the story, and introduce her to a protagonist she will care about, even worry about, and emotionally invest time and attention into. If readers don’t care about your protagonist, they won’t care about your story, either.

So, what’s the best way to introduce this all-important character? In essence, you want to set reader expectations and reveal a portrait of the main character by giving readers a glimpse of her normal life. If your protagonist is a detective, we want to see him at a crime scene. If you’re writing romance, we want to see normal life for the young woman who’s searching for love. Whatever portrait you draw of your character’s life, keep in mind that it will also serve as a promise to your readers of the transformation that this character will undergo as the story progresses.
source

And there are four more with great explanations. Check ’em out and have fun!

Happy writing, happy reading, Happy freakin’ Thursday!

by Categories: Inspiration, Things that make you think, Writing tipsTags: , , ,

Sunday and the reading’s kinda fun

Hey, all–

FIRST! Check out this podcast of me chatting with the awesome folks over at the Bar Rag. WOOO!

Okay. Moving along.

As some of you may have already ascertained, I’m one of those weird apocalyptic types how is endlessly fascinated by human interaction with various end-of-the-world or natural disaster scenarios.

So thank the stars for Outside Magazine, which seems to have picked up on my weirdness and offered this piece on how to at least try to survive various disaster scenarios. No tips on zombies, but that’s okay. These might be far more relevant.

So here you go. Outside’s “The Apocalypse Handbook.” It includes survivors’ accounts of things that have happened (and they’re not always pretty).

Some of you may live in areas that these scenarios affect. Might be a good idea to get your survival kit ready and know what to do if something scary happens.

Happy reading!

by Categories: Apocalypse, Cool stuff to read, Things that make you thinkTags: , ,

Ban, baby, ban

Censorship is so last century.

That’s why I’m always surprised when I come across articles like this in HuffPo. Specifically, a Missouri school district has banned two books from the high school curriculum and library over concerns that they’ll apparently cause high school students to swear a lot and even have sex. Or something.

Which books, you may ask, have that kind of power? The unmitigated power to cause someone to suddenly start swearing like a drunken sailor on shore leave and, quite possibly, to suddenly want to have oodles of sex on a beach?

Click to find out. Oh, the horrors.

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by Categories: Bless Their Hearts, Books, Stuff that sucks, Things that make you think, Things you shouldn't doTags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Do some readin’!

Hi, peeps–

Just wanted to pass along a groovy reading tip. I’m a little late to this party (this book was published in 1997), but I highly recommend Barbara Hambly‘s A Free Man of Color, which is a murder mystery set in 1833 New Orleans (right around Mardi Gras). This is the first in this series. The main character is Benjamin January (or Janvier, as the French and Creole New Orleans residents call him), a free man of color, whose stepfather freed him upon his death.


source

Want more? Keep on clickin’…

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by Categories: Books, Cool stuff to read, History, Things that make you thinkTags: , ,

Follow the Evidence

Hi, kids–

Well, there’s been a major freak-out over the Casey Anthony verdict (as I knew there would be), but I’m also hearing some really hateful and ignorant things being tossed around about the case and the jurors. Just a little reminder about manners, friends. Sure, disagree with someone. And sure, disagree strongly. But threats? Really? Behaving like that doesn’t make your case hold up that well, either. Just a friendly tip from the etiquette gallery.

That said, I write a character who is an Albuquerque homicide detective named Chris Gutierrez, and in her first book, State of Denial, she has to solve a murder. A suspect presents early, but Chris — like any good detective knows — must prove the case. That is, she must find the evidence that clearly demonstrates a link (hopefully, more than one link) from the dead person to the suspect, and between what happened to the dead person to the suspect. She has her suspicions, but she also knows what happens in court is contingent on the quality of the evidence she collects and the procedures she employed to collect it. There must be little, if any doubt, that the evidence clearly links a suspect to the victim. As a writer of mysteries and police procedurals, I have to get this stuff as accurate as I can. I’m trying to write a convincing detective who does a good job. In order to do that, I have to educate myself about police procedure and criminalistics.

I want to be very clear about something here. I noticed that many of the “polls” circulating on the Interwebs ask the following question: “Do you believe Casey Anthony is guilty?” I think that’s the wrong question to ask about this case. It is my belief that clearly, something happened in the Anthony household (which has been called “dysfunctional” in the trial, with accusations that Ms. Anthony was abused by her father) that led to the death of Caylee Anthony. The question remains as to what specifically that was. The question, I think, that should be asked is whether you think there was enough concrete evidence to convict Ms. Anthony on a charge of 1st degree murder.

To prove 1st degree murder, you have to prove that a suspect planned out a murder with malice ahead of time, and then acted out that plan. I don’t think the prosecution had that concrete evidence, and the jury had to assess whether or not the evidence the prosecution provided was strong enough to lead them to conclude that Ms. Anthony plotted her daughter’s murder, carried it out, then disposed of her body.

So let’s chat about this a bit more, yes?

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by Categories: Random WTF stuff, Things that make you think, Writing tipsTags: , , , 1 Comment

Tips on writing stronger characters

Hi, all–

Usually on Sundays I provide some reading material or share with you a title of an article or book I’m reading. But since I am a writer, I also like to share tips for those of you who, for whatever reason, thought being a writer was a good idea. Welcome to my circus! I thought it was a good idea, too! LOL

Anyway, since we’re on this journey together, here are a couple of articles from Writer’s Digest that might help you create stronger, more nuanced characters. Plus, there’s another link to a blog that fellow writer Clifford Henderson did on it. And readers, if you ever read something and the writer makes it look easy, I hope you can appreciate the amount of work that went into that tract. Because it’s when everything’s working properly and smoothly that you know it’s the best kind of writing. Most writers work hard to achieve that — I don’t know if I have, yet, but dang it, I keep trying.

Want some more?

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by Categories: Cool articles, Cool blogs, Inspiration, Things that make you think, Writing tipsTags: , , , , , , , 6 Comments

You. Must. Chill.

All right, this week has been crazy scary busy for me. One thing after another and deadlines and freakiness and…like that.

So tonight, I’m passing along a message that I used to tell my college-aged students when I was teaching. It was kind of a challenge I issued to them, if only because them crazy youngsters come out of the womb with electrical, not umbilical cords. I’d tell them this:

Be Amish for a week. Or at least a weekend (no disrespect at all to Amish people).

That is, unplug. Turn off your TV and computers. All your electronic devices. Leave your phone at home. Don’t drive anywhere. Or, better yet, do drive somewhere out of reach, like a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no internet connection and no TV.

Learn how to be with yourself, without the distractions of electronic devices that so many people today seem to define themselves either with or as. You are an individual, and healthy individuals need to spend time alone, without distractions, without obsessively checking email or text messaging. Get off the information superhighway and reconnect with your immediate surroundings, your family, your neighborhood.

And make this a habit. At least 1-2 evenings a week be tech-free (Amish). And extend it. You don’t need the constant mind-numbing bombardment of information, or the corporate-driven consumer drivel that makes you think you need things you really don’t. Turn it off. Build a community, build a true revolution that emphasizes individuals working in tangent with other unique individuals to oppose the brainless prattle that passes for “news” and “information” these days. Go to a library and read. Spend time with yourself, and spend face-time with people, rather than interacting via text and email.

Reconnect with nature. You need balance in your life, and being constantly plugged in to something techie is robbing you of real, sensory experiences.

So try it. Be Amish for a while. It could change your life.

Happy living!

by Categories: Inspiration, Random WTF stuff, Things that make you thinkTags: 4 Comments

Vonnegut interviews people he never met

Okay, so I was totally just going to go on off to bed because the ol’ day job kicked my ass today, but I found this awesome bloglink from Brain Pickings and I just HAD to share.

Here’s Brain Picking’s link, BTW.

So I’ll pimp Brain Pickings while I’m at it–irreverent, esoteric, and just a lot of fun stuff over there, like this post: “Kurt Vonnegut’s Fictional Interviews with Luminaries.”

QUOTE:
In 1997, iconic writer Kurt Vonnegut pitched an idea to New York public radio station WNYC: He would conduct fictional interview with dead cultural luminaries and ordinary people through controlled near-death experiences courtesy of real-life physician-assisted suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian, allowing the author to access heaven, converse with his subjects, and leave before it’s too late. The producers loved the idea and Vonnegut churned out a number of 90-second segments “interviewing” anyone from Jesus to Hitler to Isaac Asimov. The interviews — funny, poignant, illuminating, timeless, profoundly human — are collected in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, a fantastic anthology playing on the title of Vonnegut’s 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, some of the best cultural satire of the past century.

Brain Pickings gives you a link to “Letters of Note,” which tells you a bit more. Here. I’ll be totally pimping that site soon!

Anyway, enjoy!

by Categories: Books, Cool blogs, Cool stuff to read, Coolness, The Awesome, Things that make you thinkTags: , ,

Writing tip! A, B, Cs of plot development!

Hey, all–

Found this groovy writing tips site that includes this:

The ABCs (and Ds and Es) of Plot Development.

Here’s an excerpt:

Plot develops out of conflict, either external, such as a person or an event that precipitates a series of actions the main character undertakes, or internal, driven by the protagonist’s wants and/or needs. How that character, and others, makes choices and otherwise responds to stimuli determines the course of events.

The traditional structure of a plot is linear, in which the protagonist’s actions are charted in a more or less straight line, although many stories shift from that person’s point of view to that of one or more other characters as the tale progresses. Others involve one or more flashbacks, introducing new elements to the overarching plot.

Here’s the quick n’ dirty:
A = Action
B = Background
C= Conflict
D = Development
E = End

Go on and check it out.

Happy writing, happy reading!

by Categories: Inspiration, Things that make you think, Writing tipsTags: ,

Groovy Movie Tips: it’s a conspiracy!

Hi, kids–

Sometimes I post about movies that I see that I think are interesting for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they’re older movies that have come up again for whatever reasons and I pass that info along. Today is such an occasion.

A bit of background — I’ve been thinking recently about conspiracy theories and how they can be fun, yes, but they can also prove immensely damaging to individual, community, and even national psyches. I’m not suggesting there aren’t sometimes forces at work behind the scenes, or that government is always on the up-and-up. Certainly, there are plenty of cases to be made that demonstrate otherwise, so conspiracy theories have been around throughout recorded history.

However, conspiracy theorizing can put you in an echo chamber of more and more conspiracies, until everything you see and hear is part of some kind of conspiracy, and you’re unable to discern what is correct information and what’s not. The interwebs have allowed, I think, a massive increase in the spread of conspiracy theories, which is one of the downsides of it. It becomes difficult to tell what sites are disseminating truly useful and fact-based information and what sites are drawing exclusively from conspiracy theories. And it allows anybody with a keyboard to set him- or herself up as expert of something, whether it’s the FEMA camps that will soon hold us all prisoner; the black helicopters; fluoride in the water; birth certificates; bin Laden’s not really dead; vaccinations are a form of mind control; national ID systems will allow the government to put a microchip in your head; they’re all out to get you; and on and on like that.

More? Keep readin’…

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by Categories: Movies, Things that make you thinkTags: , , , , ,