Plotting a Page Turner
Hallie Ephron
Willamette Writers Conference 2011
#WWCON11
  • Write novels and non-fiction
  • Several published books: Come and Find Me, Never Tell a Lie (made into a movie)
  • The DiVinci Code is an example of a book that’s hard to stop reading.
  • What is it that makes a page turner?
    • something important at stake
    • a main character the reader cares about
    • a plot with secrets and surprises
  • The others could be there (car chases, explosions, murders, threats to humanity, time pressure, action, premise) or not, but if the ones above are there, it won’t happen.
  • Page Turners: Like porn, you recognize it when you see it, but it’s not so easy to create it.
  • If you don’t stop screaming, no one will hear you. If you just have action, explosions, and chases from page 1 to page 450, the reader will get numb. There has to be an up and down in the book.
  • The three act structure
    • it’s just the way it is.
    • it goes back to aristotle.
    • you might as well ask why humans are bilaterally symmetrical? it’s just the way it is. 
  • 3 act structure… It’s not the only way to write a story. If you do it really well, you can break the rules, including the three act rule.
  • dramatic structure are these three acts
    • it’s about a conflict between the main characters and the world.
    • who wants what: characters have competing goals:
      • dorothy: starts out wanting to leave home. by the end, wants to go home.
    • who or what obstructs them
    • moving back and forth from disequilibrium to equilibrium to escalating disequilibrium. it’s not merely episodic, but escalating.
  • 75,000 to 80,000 words: typical novel or mystery, about 300 pages.
  • First 50-75 pages are Act I.
    • Introduce your protagonist and secondary characters
    • Establish your characters goals
    • Establish your setting
    • (You don’t want to explain your setting when your character is driving off a cliff)
    • You want to introduce your villain. 
    • You don’t want to weight it down with backstory. This is a common mistake, especially for first time writers.
    • You want to establish, establish, establish without being boring, boring, boring.
    • Read like a writer. Pick apart what you are reading. It’s rare and special when a book transports you away. Read that book a second time, picking apart:
      • how did the writer introduce these characters and explain setting while still transporting you away?
  • A page turner starts with a scene that grabs the readers attention.
    • But… you can’t just throw a character off the cliff.
    • You have to develop a character that readers care about, and then throw them off the cliff. All in the first scene.
    • There’s not a lot of telling or setting, but it does get laid in with the action.
  • Great books start with an out-of-whack event. Something happens that throw a main character out of whack. 
    • Example: main character, wealthy man, drives home in his red porsche, it smells kind of funny, kind of like detergent, all of his furniture is missing, and there’s a single red stilleto in the middle of the room.
      • this character is throw out of whack. the reader wants to know what is going to happen.
  • Some writers do it by creating a wonderfully quirky character in a ridiculous settings that grabs the reader.
  • Novels are written in scenes. With viewpoint.
  • Kill the author. Kill the narrator. Write Scenes.
    • when you are telling a story in a novel, you are telling it from the perspective of a character, not the author.
    • you always know which character is telling you the story, and you are getting it from their gut.
    • stories are told in scenes. a scene happens in a particular time and place. when the time or place changes, you are in a new scene.
  • Writing scenes is about “show, don’t tell”
    • You don’t say Maria stole the shows. You show the reader the drama of going into the store and wanting something and stealing it.
  • Act I ends with a reversal
    • the character doesn’t get whatever they are after.
    • In the wizard of oz: they arrive at the emerald city, and the wizard says “you have to kill the witch”.
  • Act II: the middle 150 pages of a 300 pages novel.
    • The mushy middle is long…
    • It’s easy to see what will happen in the early act and the end, but the middle is tough.
    • Usually the middle will have yet another turning point.
      • these are the secrets and surprises.
    • Act II is all about complications: more danger, more at stake, more drama, past comes to haunt them, protagonist tries to solve bigger problems, people are literally moving, not just sitting around. the antoganist obstructs.
    • Act III:
      • the protagonist rebounds.
      • the character finds what they want, even if it is a reversal of what they wanted earlier.
      • confrontation and triumph.
  • Workshop exercise
    • State protagonist
    • Their goal:
    • The obstacles:
    • Stake out your plot
      • Opening:
      • End of Act I:
      • Middle of Act II:
      • End of Act II:
      • Climax of Act III:
      • Resolution of Act III:
  • Ask an editor what they want most, and they say: an original voice.
    • an original voice comes from viewpoint. it’s hard to have strong original voice if you are sliding around viewpoints.
  • thrillers have multiple viewpoints.
    • tension can be built by telling the reader more than the main character can know.
    • the reader can feel tension even though the main character doesn’t. e.g. the reader knows the murderer is lurking around the corner, but the character doesn’t.
    • but you can create a very scary, intense novel by telling it from one viewpoint.
  • Secrets
    • in the wizard of oz, the witches can be melted with water. the slippers she needs have been on her feet all along. the monkeys who are the witches soldiers have been enslaved.
    • shouldn’t all be revealed in the same place.
    • should have lots of secrets: 10, 12, 15 or even more.
  • Scenes
    • Are the building blocks of plot
    • Scenes have shape. It’s not just a flat series of events.
    • Each scene has it’s own story arc and turning point/change.
    • Changes can be emotional:
      • A scene starts with a character feeling safe, and ends feeling endangered.
      • A scene from feeling trust to feeling betrayed.
      • From contentment (happy with life) to yearning.
      • From lust to disgust
    • Change can be in situation:
      • woman comes home, and drops her wedding ring in the garbage disposal.
      • dog runs out the door and jumps into a moving car.
    • If the only thing you did was establish a character, or describe backstory, you have not written a scene.
    • In page turners, in particular, every scene has to earn its way.
    • Something has to change, and when it is a surprising change, even better.
  • Placing chapter breaks
    • Scenes are organic. They behind where they behind and end where it ends.
    • But you can manipulate the chapter break to be where you want.
    • In the reading, the author breaks the scene both because it’s a logical breaking point, but also because it is suspenseful. So the reader goes on to read the next chapter.
    • Put it at a cliffhanger moment, and the reader will keep reading.
    • But don’t do it all the time, or the reader will feel manipulated.
    • You can pump the forward momentum by switching:
      • she is trapped in a cave, and the water is rising.
      • switch
      • he is outside, sees the cave, but doesn’t think she would be in there.
      • switch
      • she is inside, the water is still rising, and now rocks are falling from the ceiling.
      • switch
      • he is outside, he hears rocks falling, decides to investigate
      • switch
      • she is…
    • to speed things up:
      • short punchy sentences, fragments
      • limit extraneous detail
      • don’t explain
      • bring “camera” in close: what does the character smell, see, feel: immediacy of senses. 
      • end scenes with cliffhangers
      • stay in the present
      • minimize internal dialogue
      • staccato phrases
    • to slow things down:
      • longer, complex sentences
      • describe; load in sensory detail
      • establish
      • pull camera away
      • establishing narrative
      • end scenes with resolutions
      • flashbacks, backstory
      • reflection, internal dialogue
  • Questions
    • How do you deal with the effects of technology?
      • you can avoid it – set your book in 1968.
      • but don’t be predictable: suddenly there is no cell reception. people do predictable things with phones.
      • work with it: dna evidence can be manipulated, emails forged.
      • readers love to be surprised.
    • talk about secrets and who knows. should the reader know?
      • sometimes. we have a character who claims he doesn’t know anything about guns. but the police search his apartment, and find NRA magazines.
      • in one book, there was a horrible rape. the victim knows it, the boys know it, but the wife of one of the boys doesn’t know it.
      • people lie because they are embarrassed, to protect themselves or other people.
      • there is evidence of a husband having an affair. but it could be evidence of something else, possibly better or worse.
    • when writing in 1st person or 3rd person with one viewpoint, limits what you can convey. sometimes people will fill in some scenes from another point of view.
      • in first person, you don’t use the pronoun he or she. this is great for a thriller, because the villain can be in first person, and we don’t know if they are a woman or a man.
      • you can switch perspective, but you can’t just do a one-off: e.g. you can’t write a single scene from a different perspective. same for viewpoint: you can’t have one scene from one characters viewpoint. 
    • if you are writing in two different timelines, one way to do it is to write each timeline consecutively, then shuffle the cards, and see what you come up with.

Subplots: The Stories Within the Story
Jessica P. Morrell
Willamette Writers Conference 2011
#WWCON11
  • Morrell is a developmental editor
  • Three main elements to fiction
    • Balanced: the action is interspersed, not all in the beginning or end. There is a mix of description and action and dialogue. the protagonist has a starring role.
      • look at published authors to look at their ratios:
        • backstory
        • tightness of dialogue
        • when the first action scene happens
    • Cohesive: written by one person, with a cohesive voice, and flows well. unified, polished sense.
      • often we work on a story over a long period of time, and we change over time. or we get feedback from a critique group, and end up writing by committee. we end up with a patchwork.
    • Good fiction is intimate. Readers want fictional friends. 
      • we feel like we are living in that world.
      • we move in and unpack our suitcase.
      • we know what that world smells like, what the bed feels like.
      • when the story ends, the reader feels lost, they don’t want to leave the characters behind.
      • even if writing in another century or another planet, the reader still have to feel intimate. we need to prove the reality of the setting and the story, so that when the big stuff happens, the villain breaks into with a machinegun, we’ll believe in the story more if we are anchored by lifelike characters and settings.
  • Character traits
    • What do the characters stand for?
    • Their traits must be put to the test by the story.
    • The antagonist too.
  • Something dramatic has to happen early: the brick being thrown through the glass window.
    • an inciting incident.
    • the world and the character have to be thrown off balance, and they struggle to right to the world.
    • from that incident, the character has to make decisions and have goals.
    • they are reluctant to enter the action, and are forced into it.
      • even if they might be: a detective is hired for a case, thinking it is insurance fraud [willing], but it is actually a murder coverup [reluctant].
    • plot points: one way gates that the character enters, and once they do, they can’t go back.
      • in a movie it happens in the first 5 minutes.
      • in a book, it happens in the first 10 to 50 pages.
  • In the midpoint of your story, you will have a major reversal.
    • Reversal of fortune. 
    • the characters are heading in one direction, and then something happens, and they are heading in a totally different direction.
      • example: the titantic. the start is intertwined stories and two families, and a romance. in the second half, the ship is sinking, and now they are fighting for their lives.
    • Learn to notice this in the stories you read.
  • Sensory:
    • write for all the senses: smells, light, shadows, sounds, weather.
    • we react a lot to weather and light.
    • and set up the senses ahead of time: if a car chase has skidding on wet pavement, there should have been a rainstorm in a scene sometime ahead.
    • in the story “stand by me”: look at how they use all the senses to engage
  • Subplots:
    • You need about 3 subplots for a novel.
    • Without subplots, you aren’t writing a novel, you are writing a short story.
    • Subplots need to have a beginning, middle, and end. But not all subplots need to be resolved within the story.
    • But they shouldn’t take over the story.
  • Subplots create resonance.
    • there should be lots of echos.
    • in metaphors, in subplots, in themes.
  • Main subplot involves your main character.
  • You can have one or two subplots about secondary characters.
  • Story about Stephanie Plum series from Janet Evanovich
    • Plum has this idea that she’s going to become a bounty hunter
    • She has to bring in guys on the lam.
    • She doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. She’s always in over her head.
    • She’s always getting sucked into something bigger than she is.
    • As the series go along, she’s putting more and more people into danger besides herself: criminals show up at her parents house, or blow up her apartment.
    • But in the meantime…
      • She has a sidekick named Lola who used to be a prostitute.
      • She’s always taking Stephanie into more danger.
      • There’s also a subplot about Lola’s lovelife.
    • There’s a subplot about her love life: Joe Morelli and Ranger. One is a policeman, and one is a sexy ex-Marine.
      • In every book she either gets closer to Joe or closer to Ranger.
      • The romance subplot creates suspense and fun. It complicates the characters’ lives.
      • If you are trying to choose between the good guy and the dangerous guy, it’s creating a distraction for the character.
  • Subplots
    • Not random events or details.
    • Specific path of events that tell a story in their own right.
    • Some can stem from the backstory, but mostly take place all within the main story
    • They are connected to the primary storyline. They can’t be disconnected.
    • Before the climax we have the “dark night of the soul”.
      • It’s some point where the characters don’t seem like they are going to make it out alive.
    • The subplots get resolved before the climax.
    • Some of the subplots get smaller and smaller.
    • The A subplot is going to start early, maybe even start the overall story, and it is going to get resolved.
    • The B, C, D subplots are going to start later (but not too late), and they don’t all have to be resolved. By the midpoint, some of the subplots are getting resolved. 
    • They don’t alter the main storyline, but they can complicate it or more it harder to achieve.
    • When the main character is involved in the subplot, then it reveals additional information about how they handle stress, or additional character traits.
    • Examples: someone’s job is on the line, someone is going through divorce, or has partial custody of their kid, or their mother is dying. You want to reveal other characteristics that aren’t going to show up “on the job”. 
    • A character will have contrasting traits:
      • they may be brave, and a fighter, but then they may cry when they are with their kids.
      • we want to have something to surprise the reader with.
    • Titanic: The first plot point is when Rose is standing on the bow of the ship and deciding whether to live or die.
      • she’s marrying this rich guy that she’s not only not in love with, but he is also abusive.
      • her relationship with her mother is another subplot.
      • by the end of the story, when she is in the water, floating among the ice: because she chooses to hide from her mother and her fiance.
    • At the end…
      • she’s come back from being suicidal.
      • she’s come alive again.
      • Now the love of her life, poor Jack (who is blue and looking frozen in the water), is dying.
      • What will she choose? will she choose life again?
  • The best subplots, like flashlights, cast an illuminating light on the main storyline.
    • Flashback are scenes that happen in the past. Most stories have 3 or 4 scenes that introduce the past. If we don’t see that, then the characters don’t come to life.
      • One flashback isn’t enough. It’s a sore thumb that sticks out.
      • No or few flashbacks towards the end of the book.
      • Get your flashbacks over early.
      • What do they show that the main storyline can’t show?
    • At least one of the subplots show be showcasing characters emotional needs, in addition to the main storyline.
    • Themes 
      • Themes tie your book and subplots together.
      • The theme of jurassic park is greed: they are trying to exploit the dinosaurs. the subplots all involve greed as well…. They may even be counter to the theme: e.g. in jurassic park, there is a father figure who is protecting the kids, showing that children/family are more important than money.
      • As you start writing the story, you may not know your theme, but it will emerge.
      • The Accidental Tourist is about grief. the main character is comfortable in his grief [because of his son’s death by murder], and his greatest fear is to love again, to trust people and to let them into his life. he travels without experiencing anything. he goes to england and eats at mcdonalds.
      • What people are most afraid to try next is exactly what you need to throw back at them.
        • A woman whose husband dies in Iraq isn’t going to marry an accountant. she might struggle in a relationship with one, but she’s going to fall in love with someone who is another risk-taker, a firefighter or a policeman, causing her to have to face the fear of losing someone all over again.
    • the subplot will share the dream of the main plot.
    • Read To Kill A Mockingbird – great examples of themes woven in by subplots.
    • Other examples
      • Harry Potter: 
        • all the romances 
        • the dersley’s
        • everything happening at the school
      • Stieg Larson series
        • what’s going on at the magazine, the fate of it.
        • the family that’s come to solve the mystery
        • lizbeth’s experiences
        • from a series standpoint: the subplot of lizbeth’s life in the first book becomes the main story in the second book.
    • in action stories and thrillers, the subplots will affect the main story line more than in a literary story.
  • Subplots can manipulate the energy level of the story:
    • You can lower the temperature if there’s too much stress in the main story.
    • You can raise the temperature if the main story is at a slow point.
    • You can vary the locales, and bring more details in.
    • Subplots can create little delays in relying key information, creating suspense for the main story line.
  • We need layers of worry that are rolled in. the reader can’t just worry about the main character and main issues.
  • And things don’t happen in a vacuum in real life
  • Ingredients of Subplots
    • Keep your tense. Can’t change it.
    • Essential character; main or secondary.
    • Central goal:
    • Conflict: between characters and other.
    • Resolution: most of them will have resolution, but not necessarily all of them. Main subplots must get tied off, the smaller they are, the more they can dangle.
  • Questions
    • Thrillers?
      • For thrillers, one way to work things in is to have things break. Then the character has to fix them. We get to learn about their skills, their past.
        • Thrillers can have 10 to 20% backstory, without a problem.
        • You need to establish forward momentum and stakes early on.
        • You need to have characters off balanced and under stress early on.
    • Are themes an emotion?
      • Some themes are revenge, some loyalty. It’s about humanity, but it doesn’t have to be about emotion. It’s some aspect of human nature.
    • How do I cut? I have 130,000 words.
      • Can you combine some characters? Do we need six best friends?
      • If they are just adding color, get rid of them.
      • If they don’t reflect on your themes, get rid of them.
      • Does it reinforce the dominant traits?
      • Go after it word by word:
        • Get your words tighter.
        • Write in the active voice.
        • Get rid of your modifiers.
        • People clump prepositional phrases together. Don’t do that, especially in action scenes.

The Heart of Storytelling 
Jessica P. Morrell
Willamette Writers Conference 2011
#WWCON11
  • Poll of audience: 
    • half from out of town
    • 20% for the first time
    • 90% writing fiction
  • Written 5 books for writers
  • Both fiction and memoirs need action and narrative
  • Good writing simmers and brims on the page, slips into the readers brain, involves readers emotionally
  • No emotion in the story, they won’t connect to the characters
  • We don’t want happy readers, we want nervous readers. Threats to characters. The reader keeps turning the page.
  • Take someone out of their comfort zone, and force them to act.
  • Readers want:
    • People read to escape. Some people are looking for positive social changes — especially science fiction. Talks about society, morals, etc. A way to vision the world in a more positive way. People read for laughs and wit, or for the intellectual challenge, or for puzzles. 
    • Some people read because they want a predictable, safe world that they can return to again and again. Comfortable predictability.
    • People want happy endings because real life doesn’t provide enough happy endings.
    • People want to be surprised, or to see aspects of human life they have never seen before.
    • Suspense, and the arousal that comes with it.
    • People looking for real visible characters and settings.
    • Because society has become so visual, from TV to high def movies to computers, readers need more visual elements in their writing. There should be something on every page.
    • Writers need to be careful not to preach their agends.
  • Connecting to characters
    • It’s safe.
    • It’s a pleasure to connect with them.
    • We want to empathize 
    • We have fictional friends as kids, characters are extensions of that as adults.
  • The way characters see the world, the way their hearts open up, this is what makes characters rich.
  • Anecdotal story about a boy in a small town who goes to the library. He goes to the kids section, sits at a table, and starts reading. Hours later the library closes, but no one notices him,. The boy is missing, and they search the town for him. Hours later, they think to check the library, and the boy is still there reading at the table. 
  • Fiction has power to give meaning to meaningless lives.
    • In fiction, there is cause and effect. There is no randomness, the way there is in real-life.
    • Everything that happens in the story has a cause, some of it is in the backstory, the characters lives before the story.
    • Characters choices and decisions should be made in scenes: they are too important to overlook.
      • choices and decisions affect things. What is the event that makes things happen – that kicks off the whole story? e.g. the story
      • as characters make choices, they are also being threatened. these threats and also different agenda are forces on the character.
    • The most important things happen to characters in action scenes.
    • Most characters will have a single defining moment. These most often happen in an action scene.
    • in screen writing, action is always a physical action: a punch, a gunfight, etc.
    • In fiction, it is less necessary to have physical action, but there needs to be tremendous threat.
    • In the movie Saving Private Ryan… there is the opening action scene where they storm the beach. That’s one form of action. Later in the movie, there is another scene, late in the movie, where the characters are in a village, and one character needs to bring ammunition up the staircase to the rest of his team, or they will die, and he struggles to go up the stairs. it’s an emotional action scene.
    • good action scenes provoke your flight or fight response. your heart should race faster, get your adrenaline pumping, and feel vibrantly alive. 
    • fictional characters are vulnerable: in the kitchen scene in jurassic park, there is a velociraptor against a bunch of kids, who should have been safe.
    • when you are writing action scenes, you are slowing down time. it’s like being in a car accident, where things slow down.
      • but it can’t slow down so much that characters are thinking about the grocery shopping list.
      • the higher the action, the less time characters should have for thoughts, for either introspection or flashbacks.
    • a scene brings characters to a new place. we write in scenes as much as we can, we don’t just summarize. scenes have tension and mood.
    • what in the story is going to have the most dramatic potention?
    • for stories that are around 80k to 90k words…
      • you’ll have at least six big action scenes. sometimes called set pieces.
      • everything is building for a while, setting things up for the set piece.
    • dominant traits that your character has are going to be showcased in the set piece. a risk taker will step over the edge too far, a brave guy will have fights thrown at him. 
    • somewhere in the first 50 pages of your manuscript, there has to be a scene which is a point of no return, and it needs to be showcased.
    • because we’re writers and not directors, we have a bigger challenge to write action scenes. we can’t have stunning visuals and sound effects… we need to do it all with written words.
    • scene: a unit of conflict that is lived through by the character and the reader
      • the character wants something
      • something else stands in their way
      • the character will win or lose
      • most scenes end in disaster
    • sequel: a unit of transition that links scenes. it’s what happens after the big fight, as the characters come to terms with what has happened. their unsaid words. new goals that form as a result of the action. new decisions that result from the action.
    • if possible, there should be 3 reasons for every scene:
      • show protagonist feelings
      • introduce or develop a character
      • add romance or threat to the story
      • always: develop the character, push the story forward.
      • [like permaculture, everything should have 3 purposes]
      • if it doesn’t move the story forward, it doesn’t belong.
    • your protagonist is going to change…
    • the antagonist is the push that forces the protganist to change. they don’t have to be a villain to do that. 
    • the protagonist wants something. a goal is not a goal until it is concrete and meaningful enough for the character to take action to get it.
    • conflict: engine of fiction. stories without conflict are not stories.
    • goal choice + conflict = character must take action and make decisions.
    • disasters are at the ends of scenes because they are hooks.
      • they intrigue our imagination. “what’s going to happen next? how is that going to affect so and so?”
      • and you can have a reverse disaster: “and alice knew that everything was so perfect, nothing bad could ever happen again.”
  • structure of scenes
    • made up of action and reaction
    • can have only one character: climbing a mountain.
    • if you have a lot of scenes with one character thinking about things, that’s not a scene, it’s an introspection.
    • you need to mix it up. as much as possible have more than one character in a scene, especially action scenes.
    • there are limited countered examples: the character has to cut off their arm to survive, the movie castaway.
    • love-making is an action scene.
    • you need to set things up ahead of time:
      • if it is going to rain in a scene, there should be clouds ahead of time.
    • don’t summarize. stay in the moment.
    • develop character or advance the plot.
  • suspense and tension are not the same thing:
    • tension is like really bad humidity. it penetrates everything and frays your nerves. it’s an undercurrent of unease. you try to get tension in all your scenes, especially action scenes.
    • suspense is knowing something is going to happen, and waiting for it to happen. we create suspense by delaying answers.
    • an action scene is a release of suspense: it’s a catharsis.
    • if they are too fast-paced, the reader gets lost.
    • too slow, the reader gets bored.
    • too over the top, and it’s not believable. 
    • Hollywood action scenes are not good examples for books: they are just visual, over the top eye candy, and the viewer doesn’t have time to think about the unplausibility.
    • But when writing, the reader has time to think about the details: “But wait! I don’t think they can jump 40 feet across buildings!”
    • Everything you write in the action scene has to have an emotional purpose. It can’t have details just for the sake of details: we don’t need to know she is wearing a pink shirt, unless later that shirt is going to be stained in blood.
    • the stakes have to justify the action.
    • if the heroine knows judo, we have to know way ahead of time that they know judo: an earlier scene shows her coming out of judo class.
    • if characters have a lot of skills, and they don’t use them, that has to be justified.
  • pacing
    • if the action scene is really fast paced, then the scenes below should be slower, and connect us more to the character, to create more of a rollercoaster ride.
    • the writing itself should get tighter and tighter, even working with sentence fragments if needed
    • ticking timebombs are important in fiction. e.g. the villain is killing girls at certain intervals, and it is a race against time to find him.
    • in action scenes, we don’t channel surf. we stick with one viewpoint.
    • choreographer:
      • the number of bullets in the clip, where the gun lands when it gets knocked out of their hand, everything has to be thought through. 
    • there’s not a lot of internal dialogue.
    • external dialogue can’t be speeches.
    • it can be interrupted.
    • action to break up dialogue, and dialogue to break up action.
    • the shorter the segments are, the faster the perceived pace.
    • don’t interrupt the action: there’s no introspection on where the perfume was made in the middle of a love scene.
    • real people get tired. sword fighters get tired. they can’t go on for pages and pages of sword fighting. even in the princess bride, they get tired and take a break.
    • you can’t have too many action scenes all squished together. they need to be interspersed with character building and discovery.
    • all the action scenes have to matter: they serve a greater purpose than other scenes.
    • when possible, use humor: characters have witty little barbs, it helps break up the tension, keeps the action more enjoyable.
    • action can be non-violent.
  • In workshop exercise:
    • write a prompt for an action scene. example: man gets lost in cave.
    • then fill in worksheet:
      • scene purpose: what prompted the action, why do you need the scene
      • scene goal: what is the protagonist is trying to achieve
      • scene action: who, what stands in protagonist’s path
      • internal response: key emotions, emotional reversal within protagonist
      • how the scene develops character or pushes the plot forward
      • result: what has changed or learned by the action in the scene. what were the consequences.
  • Q & A:
    • I have a demon with a really different viewpoint. How do I handle it?
      • Don’t do it in the action scene. Do it before. Maybe even an excerpt in italics to differentiate it.
    • How to do a car chase?
      • Make it realistic. It can’t go on and on.
      • Lots of verbs, but don’t repeat verbs,
      • Besides the chase itself, make sure there are other barriers: the apple carts, wet pavement, and babystroller across the street.
      • Character has to make moral chase: do they run down the baby?
      • short paragraphs!

Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse and How to Survive a Robot Uprising spoke in Portland, Oregon at the monthly meeting of Willamette Writers. Wilson’s novel Robopocalypse is being made into a film by Steven Spielberg.

I’m particularly interested in Wilson’s Robopocalypse, because it is so similar in theme to my first two novels, Avogadro Corp, and AI Apocalypse. (Notice that slight naming similarity there?) They all explore humanity’s reaction to the emergence of artificial intelligence. By comparison, many other great authors, such as Charles Stross, will zip right by that point of emergence. 
Robopocalypse explores a war between AI and humans from the viewpoint of about six different characters, jumping to different key inflection points.
My notes from his talk about below. As usual, I apologize for any errors I’ve introduced in my note taking. “Me” and “I” below should be taken as from Wilson’s perspective.

  • Written 6 other books
    • smaller, non-fiction
    • “people tell me they like to read them in the bathroom”
  • robopocalypse, first adult fiction
  • a future in which people are trying to survive when technology stops working and starts to attack them
  • starts at the end: the protagonist finds a black box that records some of the most significant parts of the the war
  • the structure allowed me to tell the story from the perspective from six different characters
    • who have very different backgrounds, cultural stuff
    • different relationships with technology
  • structure allowed me to pick and write only the best parts. by definition, they would be only the most important parts.
  • lots of myself in the book. a robot walks into a yogurt store and just starts to kill people. i worked in a yogurt store, and i worked with that guy, and i had those experiences (minus being killed by the robot)
  • grew up in oklahoma. i’m part cherokee. i grew up seeing how these two governments had to coexist.
  • always thought that if the shit hit the fan, these smaller, more compact, more nimble societies exist in miniature. 
  • all the scenes with the human soldiers following the spider robots (walking tanks) were really based on his grandfather’s experiences fighting in WW2, working with half-tracks.
  • i’m not unique or great in any way, but i do know a lot about robots, and have thought a lot about robots and people. and that’s what is unique.
  • i wrote stories as a teenager… lots of short stories, and submitted them. they were awful.
  • so i went and got a computer science degree. then i realized you could study artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • studied robotics at CMU, got a PhD in robotics.
  • although i never got to study english, i did have to do a lot of writing.
    • crazy amounts of grant proposals
    • technical papers
  • get very familiar with people ripping your stuff apart in the academic environment.
  • nobody makes you do anything in graduate school. no one makes you go to the lab, do your work. so students build up competitiveness and self-loathing/guilt to get themselves to go to work and do your job when there is no one there to make you do it.
  • robotics is a field at the intersection of a lot of different fields.
    • consumer robotics: roomba
    • industrial robotics
    • medical robotics
  • building up a catalog of experiences and ideas: this is great, but wouldn’t it be even greater if… [it could do X, if it could kill you, …]
  • worked on a machine learning algorithm to detect and eliminate bathroom noises from cellphones.
    • spent  a summer recording bathroom noises
  • got to ride in an automated car
  • got to see Honda’s ASIMOV
  • it wasn’t my personal experiences that sold robopocalypse, it was my passion for robotics.
  • first book i sold was how to survive a robot uprising. it was as a grad student.
    • thought i could just interview different robotics professors and ask them what they would do if their robots would attack them.
  • sent query letter to editor
    • editor said: what the heck are you doing? go talk to one of these agents, and gave list.
    • agent said send me a proposal, and then said: what the hell is this? this is how you write a proposal.
    • then one day got a phone call: hey, i am your film agent, and i sold robot uprising. would you like some money?
  • fish food theory
    • when you have an idea for a book, short story, whatever…
    • when you drop your nugget of fish food into the tank, you aren’t trying to get just one fish, but you are hoping for lots of little fish to come and nibble at your pellet of food.
  • besides writing 5 non-fiction books, was writing for popular mechanic, wired, etc. got invited to host a television show.
    • i would write anything if you would pay me.
    • meanwhile, i am getting to talk to roboticists, staying current in the field, etc. 
  • got two book deal…
    • sold bro-jistu. wrote down martial arts moves he did on brother, and gave it a clever name.
    • then publisher asked him to if he could do something else instead the planned second book
    • then published allow him to write a middle reader. it was terrible. rewrote it four times from scratch. took more than a year. and it was still terrible. editor would say “do you just want to call it quits? we don’t have to do this?”
    • other book about boy and his robot. smaller publishing house. no one knows about it.
  • Questions
    • Q: Are you afraid that Robopocalypse will have an anti-technology message?
      • A: when people think of robots, they think of robot uprisings. that’s inevitable. it gets people to show up to the book.
      • People who study robots are inspired by all sorts of robots in pop culture. they like terminator just as much as Robby. it doesn’t have to be a positive portrayal of a robot to be inspiring.
    • Q: what changes to writing to make change from non-fiction to fiction?
      • when interviewing people, learned to listen for the nugget. they always have some kernel that is really cool. used that for fiction writing: what is the really cool thing?
      • Needed to focus on plot, on getting across what is happening. Need to make sure the way I am describing things is unique, really is gut-punching.
    • Q: Next book?
      • Amp: Near future, when people start integrating technology into their bodies. Parents have to make that decision for their kids.
    • Q: Biggest science fiction influencers?
      • Philip K Dick Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, (more, couldn’t get all names)
      • Sea of Glass – favorite book, about computer watching over mankind, and building models of human behavior.
    • Q: A sequel to robopocalypse?
      • don’t want to pigeon hole myself, write myself into a corner.
      • Amp deliberately doesn’t have any robots
      • want to write about the way humanity intersections with technology
    • Q: what is your process of writing? what do you do when you get stuck? how do you pull yourself out of it?
      • outline a lot. need to have a target.
      • when i get stuck, i have conversations with my wife…
      • or i walked about in circles with my headphones or sit in the shower.
      • if none of that is working, i have to go read some non-fiction books.
      • read the writer’s journey
      • my writers group… sometimes it’s just “tell me the answer!”
      • outline
      • write for 3 hours at coffee shop
      • come home
      • have lunch
      • try to write after that. (not so successfully.)
    • Q: control of film? do they ask you anything?
      • they would send me visualizations, and i would give them pages of feedback. not creative, but as a roboticist.
      • no control over screenplay. all that is what you sell.
    • Q: how did you find writer’s group?
      • went to dinner party
      • met mark [someone]
      • got invited
    • Q: how many words are in the story? what is your pitch for robopocalypse?
      • words: 100,000 or a little more.
      • Amp will be shorter, about 80,000.
      • pitch:
        • cool image on the front: just steal the coolest image you can find. robot walking down the street in ww2. change the font to a 1942 underwood font. 
        • explained the concept. why he was the perfect person to write it. why everyone was going to want to read it.
    • Q: who is reading it?
      • reaching a wider audience. marketed as a techno-thriller as well as a science-fiction. weird thing that: biggest movies are sci-fi, but sci-fi novels are considered niche.
      • sci-fi fans as well as mainstream are reading it.

According to a story yesterday on Mashable, Twitter hit the milestone of 200 million daily tweets by its users.

To put that in perspective however, consider these details also revealed in the article:

Twitter surpassed 50 million tweets per day less than a year-and-a-half ago, and two years ago, Twitter users sent just 10 million tweets per day.

So two years ago, Twitter daily volume was 10 million tweets per day, a year and a half ago it was 50 million tweets per day, and now it’s 200 million tweets per day.

That means Twitter grew 5x in the six month period from two years ago to one and a half years ago (30% growth per month), then then grew only 4x in following eighteen month period (8% growth per month).

While most business would be delighted to grow at 8% per month, it’s still a tremendous decline off a 30% growth rate.

There’s a scene in AIpocalypse in which one of the main characters is describing “the mesh”. Here’s an excerpt:

Leon hesitated, weighing the coolness impact of answering, then decided. He felt sorry for the teacher. “The Mesh was formed ten years ago by Avogadro Corp to help maintain net neutrality,” he began. 

“At the time, access to the Internet in the United States was mostly under the control of a handful of companies such as Comcast, who had their own media products they wanted to push. They saw the Internet as competing with traditional TV channels, and so they wanted to control certain types of network traffic to eliminate competition with their own services.” 

“Very good, Leon. Can you tell us what they built, and why?” 

Leon sighed when he realized the teacher wasn’t going to let him off easy. “According to Avogadro, it would have been too expensive and time consuming to build out yet another network infrastructure comparable to what the cable companies and phone companies had built last century. Instead they built MeshBoxes and gave them away. A MeshBox does two things. It’s a high speed wireless access point that allows you to connect your phone or laptop to the Internet. But that’s just what Avogadro added so that people would want them. The real purpose of a MeshBox is to form a mesh network with nearby MeshBoxes. Instead of routing data packets from a computer to a wireless router over the Comcast, the MeshBox routes the data packets over the network of MeshBoxes.” 

Leon hadn’t realized it, but sometime during his speech he had stood up, and starting walking towards the netboard at the front of the room. “The Mesh network is slower in some ways, and faster in other ways.” He started drawing on the board. “It takes about nine hundred hops to get from New York to Los Angelos purely by mesh, but only about ten hops by backbone. That’s a seven second delay by mesh, compared to a a quarter second by backbone. But the aggregate bandwidth of the mesh in the United States is approximately four thousand times the aggregate bandwidth of the backbone because there are more than twenty million MeshBoxes in the United States. More than a hundred million around the world. The mesh is bad for phone calls or interactive gaming unless you’re within about two hundred files, but great for moving files and large data sets around at any distance.” 

He paused for a moment to cross out a stylized computer on the netboard. “One of the benefits of the Mesh is that it’s completely resistant to intrusion or tampering, way more so than the Internet ever was before the Mesh. If any node goes down, it can be routed around. Even if a thousand nodes go down, it’s trivial to route around them. The MeshBoxes themselves are tamperproof – Avogadro manufactured them as a monolithic block of circuitry with algorithms implemented in hardware circuits, rather than software. So no one can maliciously alter the functionality. The traffic between boxes is encrypted. Neighboring MeshBoxes exchange statistics on each other, so if someone tries to insert something into the Mesh trying to mimic a MeshBox, the neighboring MeshBoxes can compare behavior statistics and detect the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Compared to the traditional Internet structure, the Mesh is more reliable and secure.” 

Leon looked up and realized he was standing in front of the class. On the netboard behind him he realized he had draw topology diagrams of the backbone and mesh. The entire class was staring at him. James made a “what the hell are you doing?” face at him from the back of the room. If he had a time travel machine, he’d go back and warn his earlier self to keep his damn mouth shut. 

The teacher on the other hand, was glowing, and had a broad smile on his face. “Excellent, Leon. So Avogadro was concerned about net neutrality, and created a completely neutral network infrastructure. Why do do we care about this today?”

I think the time is right for Google to do something like this. They can afford to give away 60,000 Chrome notebooks to test Chrome, and give gigabit fiber optic to 500,000 people to test high speed connectivity. If they can do that, they can easily give away a million mesh-enabled wireless access points to help ensure net neutrality.

Furthermore, Google already has a presence of some kind in many cities: whether a corporate site, a data center, or a content distribution network. In that case, mesh networking would be even more effective, since the mesh network can interconnect with Google’s backbone. Most people would be within a dozen hops of a Google backbone, keeping latency down.

Gene Kim recently asked me about techniques to tighten up writing as he works on his novel. I thought I’d share my recommendation.

This technique works best if you start with a paper printout of your writing, although you can accomplish something similar by using highlighting in an editor.

This is a three pass technique.

  1. First Pass: Read through your writing, and identify half of your paragraphs to delete. You can do this by rating each paragraph on a scale of 1 to 3, or simply by crossing out unnecessary paragraphs. In some cases, you’ll want to keep an entire paragraph. In other cases, you’ll want to delete an entire paragraph. But more likely is that you’ll delete most of a paragraph, but keep a sentence or two.
  2. Second Pass: Refactor your hodge-podge of writing into new paragraphs. Don’t focus on final polish, because you still have more deleting to do. But end this phase with paragraphs of writing, with dead paragraphs removed.
  3. Third Pass: Identify sentences to remove. Your goal is to try to remove at least one in three or one in four sentences. Some words or phrases might migrate to other sentences, but you’re shooting to eliminate as much fluff as possible.
  4. Do a final editing pass over your writing, cleaning up any awkward transitions or awkward language.
The key concepts and best writing remain distilled down into their essence, while the weak, unnecessary, and redundant gets eliminated. At a minimum, you’ll get a 30% reduction in length, while more aggressive cutting will net you a 50 to 60% reduction. The result is tighter, more value-packed prose.

If you’re considering a Kickstarter project, then it’s important to look at other projects to see what creates the conditions for a successful project. Two great resources are posts by Craig Mod, who funded a book project, and Jason Brubaker, who funded a graphic novel.

Both are excellent posts about what makes a project successful. Just a few highlights include:

  • Reaching out to your network, via social media, email, blog, and more. Having a following ahead of time really helps, as does having an opt-in email mailing list for your blog. Just as important is arranging press coverage (social media or traditional). In other words, you need a marketing plan associated with your kickstarter project.
  • A good video that plays to your highlights. Both blog posts shared tips.
  • Make sure people know who you are. They aren’t just backing a project, they are backing a person who is doing the project. They need to feel confident that you’ll use the money wisely.
  • Give thought to pledge levels. Don’t make them complicated, but do use the levels where people tend to contribute (usually $25, $50, $100, $250, $500)
  • Kickstarter projects tend to have high initial contributions, then lull, then are high again near the end. Expect this, and plan to build early momentum. If you don’t get substantial contributions in the first few days, don’t expect to make it up later.

OkTrends, the OkCupid blog about data analysis, is a great place to see what is possible with good data analysis. I think if you work in the field of data analysis, you should consider it a work obligation to read OkTrends.

One example of this is how they analyzed profile questions to determine which questions were both casual (easy to bring up) and strong predictors of compatibility. Read their post for the full analysis.
If you just want to cut to the chase, here are the key questions.
If you want to know if you and your date have long term potential, then ask:
  • Do you like horror movies?
  • Have you ever traveled around another country alone?
  • Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?
If you and your date answer the same way to all three questions, congratulations! You are 32% likely to become long term partners, compared to an average chance of 5% otherwise.
On the other hand, if all you want is sex on the first date, you just need to ask:
  • Do you like the taste of beer?
People who like the taste of beer are 60% more likely to have sex on the first date.

In 2010 I took a writing class with Merridawn Duckler. The class itself, offered at The Attic, was more than worthwhile, teaching me how to think critically about my writing, how to critique and observe what other writers were doing, and offering a forum to have my own work critiqued. 

Recently I needed some help with my second novel, so I paid Merridawn for a one on one consultation. She read my manuscript, then gave me feedback on my novel.
Although the feedback is specific to my novel, the issues and methods to address them could apply to anyone, so I thought I’d share.
  • Things can’t always go well. In most of my novel, things work out for the characters. If they are hungry, they go to town, and get food. If they need a computer, they find a computer store. If they don’t have money, it’s OK, they can make a deal. They struggle with the big issues, the main plot of the book, but they don’t even struggle with the little stuff. But they need to, in order to grow as characters, and in order to create tension for the reader.
  • Be sure of facts and timelines. I’m writing science fiction, and in that genre, even more than others, people really tend to notice any errors, even small ones, and pick them apart. So I need to be even more sure about timelines and locations. That doesn’t always mean I need to be specific about them in the book, but I do need to be specific about them in my head.
  • What makes the difference between science essay and science-fiction novels is characters that the reader can really get behind. If the characters are flat, underdeveloped, then the reader might as well be reading a science essay, because they have nothing to deepen their emotional connection to the work.
  • Work on language. My favorite novels are William Gibson’s early cyberpunk work. They have prose so beautiful I nearly weep when I read it. It feels impossible that I could ever create prose half so amazing, and yet if I don’t try, it won’t happen. I need to strive as much as possible to make that happen. (An aside: As I have told my friend Gene, if I was ever referred to as a “poor imitation of William Gibson”, I would be thrilled.)
  • Readers and characters need human problems. In my novel, there’s a scene where a building is burning down, and it’s been indirectly caused by the main character. He is overcome with guilt watching this. And yet, a building (or even an entire block of buildings) is too abstract for the reader or even the characters to be really affected by. It would be a far more personal, human problem if they said “Oh my god, Susie’s disabled mother lives in that building.”
  • Characters need skin. All of the action and all of the dialogue is focused on the events of the book. This makes for characters that are skeletons: they are there, but there is no meat or skin to them. The characters need to have lives outside the events of the book. Hearing this feedback made me ask, “But where does the inspiration for that skin come from? I read other books critically, and I always find myself wondering where all the non-core-plot stuff comes from. Why did they choose to have that character have that best friend? Why does the character have a birthday? Why did the author choose those things?” And that leads to…
  • One source for skin is the character’s relationship to the core theme of the book. All three of my books explore theme of man’s relationship to artificial intelligence: Can man and machine cohabit? For each character, then question then is, “How does this character relate to that theme?” For example, one of my characters is a woman named Rebecca Smith, who is a CEO in the first novel, and POTUS in the second. For her, the machines are just a distraction. She wants to do her thing, which is to run the company/country. She wants to be in control of the now. That’s how she relates to the theme. Which means that her skin should reflect those things: We should see her running the country: doing all the things a President would normally do: working with other politicians, dealing with her rivals, campaigning, etc. My main character is a student trying to get a scholarship when he is waylaid by the events of the book, but we should see him filling out scholarship papers, we should see him fail to get the scholarship when he doesn’t show up, etc.
I hope these ideas are useful to you. As I said, although the feedback is specific to my writing, these are issues anyone could struggle with. If you are in Portland, and want to get a similar critique of your work, I urge you to contact the The Attic. My experiences with them have all been very positive.