What make me stand out from the crowd

When Jonathan first asked me to write a blog post on this topic, my first thought was that it was the hot pink tutu and lime green gumboots that made me stand out, then I  realised that everyone else was wearing hot pink tutus too and they were standing on fluffy foot stools with loud hailers shouting, ‘look at me. Look at me!’ Suddenly, I felt short and my gumboots seemed a little cumbersome compared to their high heeled diamante shoes. Some of them even sat on step ladders and had a cluster of spruikers gathered at the bottom handing out leaflets to passing people. How could I stand out amongst that lot?

I sat on the edge of the gutter and stared at all the people buying books from the brightest, noisiest, tallest authors. I was tempted to stick my thumb in my mouth, curl into a small ball and rock, but I didn’t. I stood up and walked right into the middle of the throng. “I love your pink tutu,” I said to the nearest author. And who did your awesome Mohawk?”

The author frowned, ran his hand over his head, checked his hips, glanced behind him then pointed at his chest. “Are you talking to me?” he asked.

I grinned and nodded. He grimaced, picked up his stool and scarpered (That’s Aussie for knicked off ie ran away.) 

Whoops, I hadn’t meant that to happen. The only explanation for his behaviour was if he didn’t see the pink tutu or the lime green Mohawk. I giggled and looked around and realised that everyone else probably didn’t see themselves quite the same way as I did. The giggle turned into a chuckle and the chuckle morphed into a laugh.

A girl wandered over, tucked her fingers into the tops of her jeans and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Why are you standing there laughing?” she asked.

“Because everything isn’t what it seems.”

“What is it then?”

I waved my arm in a wide arc. “It’s all just a passing dream.”

“Huh?”

“Yesterday has gone, tomorrow hasn’t come, and as soon as I say now, it’s passed. Where is everything, if it’s not a dream?”

She shrugged her shoulders, frowned, and shook her head, but she didn’t go away. She thought for a moment, then she grinned. ‘Where’d you get the awesome Mohawk?”

“My mother did it for me,” I replied.

I’m the one asking tricky questions. I’m not the only one who sees the circus, but I’m one who might be able to help you see it. Oh, and watch out for the shadow with the flaming eyes standing over your shoulder, you might not be able to see it, but I can assure you that it’s there. 

About A Matter of Perception 

Do you see what I see? Take a bunch of supernatural beings, a battle of magical light, a mysterious hole in the pavement, a dream of a future past and a pair of rose-coloured glasses, mix them with a little romance and a smidgen of philosophy and you might be left wondering if it isn’t all just a matter of perception. This thought-provoking collection of urban fantasy and magical realism stories includes ‘The Drorgon Slayer’s Choice’ and ‘The Boneyard’, a semi finalist in the Aussiecon 4 Make Ready fantasy/scifi competition of 2010.

Author links –  if you read Tahlia’s books could you please help her out by posting a short review on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you.

http://tahlianewland.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tahlia-Newland-author/188047104605893

http://twitter.com/#!/TahliaNewland 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5283573.Tahlia_Newland

Tahlia is offering one ebook copy of  her short paranormal romance, ‘The Drorgon Slayer’s Choice’, to give away. In order to enter the draw, all you need to do is:

1. Go to her Facebook page and like it
2. Leave a comment below saying why you’d like to read the book.

Please make sure to leave an email address in the comment so Tahlia can be in touch with you if you win.

So without any further ado, over to Mr Wood. 

Writing that Stands Out from the Crowd 

When Jonathan agreed to host an article as a part of the Magical Mystery Blog tour celebrating the release of my book, The Prodigal’s Foole, he suggested that the subject for this essay be “Writing that Stands Out from the Crowd.”

I thought “Wow.  What a phenomenal subject.  Let me thing about that for a while.”

I spent a lot of time researching the subject, more so than I did when I first started the construction of my book.

What I realized is there are a lot of opinions on what constitutes exceptional writing.

So instead of citing writing methods like Snowflake or 1-3-1, Let me tell you what I find necessary for stand out storytelling.

Characters

Human beings are wonderfully flawed and complex creatures.  Characters should be rich in development, motivations, and history.  I spent nearly a year developing the main characters for The Prodigal’s Foole. I can tell you which character broke her arm when she was five (thus leading to the first instance of magic occurring in her life).  I know their fears and their triumphs.  I know how they each make love and I know their triggers.  They’ve become, in some sense, very real to me.

Make your characters three-dimensional.  It will be obvious to your eventual readers if you do.

Plot

I have to quote Stephen Covey here.  “Begin with the End in Mind.”  Where do you want to go?  What journey do you want to take your characters on?  What will they learn?  What kind of story do you want to tell?

That last question is key.  Be in love with the story you want to tell.  If for no other reason than you will write, edit and revise so many times before your book is finished, that if you don’t love your story, you’ll never finish.

I’ll give you a quick example.  Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes because, quite frankly, he was done with the character.  The Public was furious, so the author brought him back (being a good business man).  But if you read the Holmes stories post the great detective’s penultimate fight with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, I think the stories are lesser in scope and impact.

My opinion, of course.  But I feel the same way about bringing Spock back after Wrath of Khan and the Star Wars prequels.  Fucking Jar-Jar Binks.

Anyway.  Map your story out,  How you do this doesn’t matter, whether you’re a pantser of a plotter—know where you want to go.

Research

Do your research.  If you are writing about Victorian England, read about the era.  And no, I don’t mean twenty minutes on Wikipedia.   A decade ago, I met a wonderful old gentleman.  In World War II, he had been gunner of a tank in the African campaigns.  I spoke with him for hours about many things, including his life in the war.

Read the prologue of my next book (included at the end of TPF)–I hope I captured our conversations and his experience.  Unfortunately he passed away some time ago so I’ll never be sure.

But my point is this.  The three things in my opinion that lead to a stand-out book are Character depth, a great story idea, and research.

Tie those things together, than you can worry about structure, grammar and those other things.

My two cents.

R.B. Wood 

R.B. Wood is a technology consultant and a writer of Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction and quite frankly anything else that strikes his fancy.  His first novel, The Prodigal’s Foole, is available now from Pfoxchase Publishing and other fine eRetailers.  Mr. Wood is currently working on the second book of his Arcana Chronicles series and is host of The Word Count podcast.

His Website/blog: http://www.rbwood.com

His Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/rbwoodwriter

His Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/rbwood

Links for The Prodigal’s Foole

Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/Prodigals-Foole-Novel-Arcana-Chronicles/dp/1936827336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1320359140&sr;=8-1

Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/Prodigals-Foole-Arcana-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B005WKF71U/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m;=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97139

Omnilit: http://www.omnilit.com/product-theprodigal039sfoole-615647-140.html

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12918243-the-prodigal-s-foole


Special Offer 

R.B. Wood has very generously offered to give away an e-copy of The Prodigal’s Foole to the most thoughtful response to his post.

Please leave your comments below – and make sure you include your email address so he can get in touch with you.

I know, most people wouldn’t find economics to be the most interesting subject, but I’m fascinated by it. So much of our life is governed by it. Politicians, bankers, business-people are constantly spinning stuff about it and let’s face it, most of us don’t really have any idea whether what they’re saying is right or wrong. I even wrote a poem about it which I posted to this very blog, titled The Hunters.

Now I’m hoping that nobody who has actually studied economics reads this because they’ll probably tell me I’m totally wrong in every way. But I think there’s a few things about economics that can be learnt by the way the indie author community works.

My understanding of economics is it basically goes back to the ideas of Adam Smith back in the 18th century. His model of the free market was all about individuals pursuing their own self-interests. The baker only baked bread because he could make money, but thanks to him the village had bread to eat. The blacksmith only pursued his trade because it was profitable for him, but thanks to him horses were shod. And so on. Everybody was basically in it for themselves as an individual, but all of these individuals working together for their own benefit ultimately create a community.

Now I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of these ideas – I know it’s all hotly contested and I wouldn’t say I know anywhere near enough to offer an educated opinion. The one comment I will make is this seems to be a lot like the way the indie community works.

We writers are primarily involved because we want to sell books, but because we know we can sell better if we work with other writers, cross-promoting communities appear. And then there are all those bloggers. They’re not putting their blogs up for charity. Many of them are writers themselves, looking to increase their recognition. But even the ones who aren’t  have their own reasons for trying to generate traffic to their blogs. The result is that both writers and bloggers end up benefiting.

As a result of all these individuals looking to achieve their own ends, an amazing community has sprung up. A community of people who are open, friendly, and willing to do what they can to help fellow-community members. A true free market of indie authors and their colleagues.

Of course, in any community there are always those people who go out of their way to make that extra effort on behalf of others. I want to finish off this post by paying tribute to one of those people – my friend Donna Brown. Her fabulous event, Adopt an Indie Writer, begins today. Please join in, make yourself at home, and become part of the wonderful world of indie authors.

This got me thinking a little bit more about who else we give the prefix super to. Obviously, the major recipients of this title are heroes. And superheroes really are great aren’t they. For someone who writes humor, the idea of characters with a particular “power” that makes them extraordinary is fantastic writing fodder. I’ve had several goes at it myself. One of the favourites of all the comedy sketches I’ve written is about Procrasto-man, a superhero who never quite gets around to saving the day. I also had a go at creating a clutch of dysfunctional superheroes for a writing assignment in a short story class – which you can read on this very blog. And who can forget the wonderful Bicycle Repair Man sketch by Monty Python – an all time classic.

Silliness aside, what other sorts of people could we think of as super? In my supermodels post, I talked about superteachers and superdoctors. All very good and worthy. But what about us writers? We do extraordinary things all the time. We create whole worlds that never existed before. We control the fates of people in those worlds utterly. And, with the stroke of a pen or the click of a computer keyboard, we’re always able to save the day.

But if we’re going to call any sort of writers super, I reckon the most deserving candidates are all of the indie writers out there. We’re the ones who have to be faster than a speeding publishing industry. We have to leap the tall barriers of the cultural gatekeepers in a single bound. We need x-ray vision to see through all those typos and grammatical errors in our manuscripts. And we’re constantly battling against mega-villains, like The Agent, The New York Publisher, and the Mainstream Media Reviewer.
So to all you indie writers out there – grab a cape, stash on your utility belts, and put your underwear on top of your pants. And lets keep on fighting for truth, justice, and the indie way.

And, just to finish off, and because I want to, here for your enjoyment is that classic Monty Python sketch.