Writing for Young Adults

Want to write stories for Young Adults?  Hard to blame you.  It’s a large market, and some authors have become successful in aiming for it.  If you, like J. K. Rowling, happen to write a YA story that also appeals to adults, then your story’s market is that much bigger.

Perhaps your purpose in writing YA stories is more complex than a direct desire for money or fame.  One web commenter has suggested writer Robert Heinlein wrote YA (then called ‘juvenile’) novels to shape a young audience, to prepare readers for later buying his brand of adult novels.  If true…wow!  That’s thinking ahead!

Whatever your reason for wanting to write for it, the YA market is an interesting one.  It took until about 1900, several hundred years after the first printed books, for the following confluence of events to make a YA market possible:  (1) the price of books dropped to be within a teen’s budget, (2) teen buying power rose so they could afford books, and (3) teens weren’t working so long and had available time to read.  Once the market emerged, authors began aiming for it.

What are YA stories like, and how do they differ from other genres?  Young adults, as an audience, are leaving the comfortable world of childhood and ready to experience adulthood.  They’re curious about it, anxious to try things.  Fiction gives them a safe opportunity to “try” things in a vicarious way.  They’ve grown beyond simple, moralistic tales.  They crave stories with identifiable, strong but vulnerable characters–complex characters who aren’t all good or all bad.  A good, solid plot-line is more important to them now than it was in the children’s books they no longer read.

In short, YA stories are very similar to those written for adults.  I thought I’d read once where Robert Heinlein had said writing for juveniles (the old term for YA) was just like writing for adults except you take out all the sex and swearing.  I can’t find that quote now, but it would need amending anyway.  Notice Heinlein had no problem with violence in YA stories, and that remains true.  As for sex, it’s probably best to leave out graphic descriptions, but don’t pretend the act doesn’t exist.  As for swearing, it’s my guess that mild swearing is acceptable in YA literature these days.

How do you write for the YA market?  I think it’s important to think back to your own teen years and pull what you recall from those experiences.  Remember when the world was new to you, when all your emotions were intense ones, when you longed to be accepted and wondered if there were others like you, wondered if you’d find even one special person for you?  Pick a protagonist who is aged a few years older than your target audience, either in the late teens or early twenties.  Don’t talk down to your readers; they’re old enough to look up words they don’t understand.  Don’t set out to write a moralistic story of instruction; teens are quick to spot a lecture and, frankly, they get enough of those from their parents.  They’re not about to shell out good money and spend their time reading a sermon from you.

My own reading as an early teenager focused on the Tom Swift, Jr. series published between 1954 and 1971.  After that I primarily read Jules Verne and other science fiction authors, mostly those writing hard science fiction.  Now as a writer, I think all my stories should be acceptable for the YA audience, though I haven’t consciously aimed for it.  My tales have very little swearing.  There is a sex scene (of sorts) in my horror story, “Blood in the River,” but nothing too graphic.  However, none of my published stories feature a teen protagonist.

Good luck with the YA story you’re writing.  If this blog post has helped in any way, or if you take issue with what I’ve stated, please leave a comment for–

                                                    Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

June 24, 2012Permalink

Can’t You Stick With One Genre, Steve?

Today I’ll explore the reasons why some authors write in only one genre, and why others don’t.  If you’re a beginning writer, most likely you picture yourself staying in your favorite genre.  Don’t be too sure things will remain that way.  When I started, I never imagined I’d write a horror story, or a romance.

Here’s the list of the genres in which I’ve had stories published, along with the stories that apply to each (and yes, some stories reside in more than one genre):

Science Fiction “Bringing the Future to You,”  “Seasteadia,” “The Finality,” “Target Practice”
Alternate History “Leonardo’s Lion,” “Alexander’s Odyssey,” “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” “The Vessel,” “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai”
Steampunk “Within Victorian Mists,” “The Steam Elephant”
Clockpunk “Leonardo’s Lion”
Romance “Within Victorian Mists”
Horror “Blood in the River”
Fantasy “A Sea-Fairy Tale”

Consider things from a reader’s perspective.  With limited funds and little free time, they’re forced to be selective.  They tend to prefer reading in one or two genres, and if two, the pair of genres are often related.  Readers seek good, consistent, and dependable authors.  Once they discover an author they like, they stick with that one for a time.  Readers do not like surprises from authors, either in quality or in change of genre.

From the author’s perspective, there are two needs to satisfy–the reader and the muse.  Many authors seek to make money from their writing, and the only way to do that is to delight a lot of readers.  Other authors write for their muse, their creative mind.  That often causes these authors to dabble in several genres, since the muse is fickle and easily bored by sameness.  Since authors are aware of the preferences of readers mentioned earlier, they will sometimes use pen names when they write outside their main genre.

As you might have suspected, I’ve been writing for my muse so far.  How have readers been taking to my stories?  I get some data from Amazon, but even so it’s hard to tell.  Several of my stories are combined with other author’s tales in anthologies, so sales of these anthologies do not necessarily indicate readers like my stories.  Only a few of my stories are sold as ‘books’ in their own right.  Further, I’m unable to get sales data from Amazon on two of my stories–“Bringing the Future to You” and “Target Practice.”

With the data I was able to gather, I decided to rate my stories by number of sales per year rather than total sales, to account for the different publication dates.  Here’s the list, starting with the best-selling:

Story Genre
“The Finality” * science fiction
“Blood in the River” * horror
“The Steam Elephant” * steampunk
“Within Victorian Mists” steampunk, romance
“A Sea-Fairy Tale” * fantasy
“The Vessel” * alternate history
“Alexander’s Odyssey” alternate history
“Leonardo’s Lion” clockpunk
“The Wind-Sphere Ship” alternate history
“The Sea-Wagon of Yantai” alternate history
“Seasteadia” * science fiction

* published in an anthology or magazine

This suggests I should be writing more science fiction, horror, and steampunk if I want to maximize sales.  However, sales do not always equal income.  The anthologies all paid a single advance, so my earnings from them do not reflect sales.

Still, I’ve decided to continue to follow my muse, and to keep writing under my own name rather than under a pen name.  I’ll keep track of story sales as I go.  If stories in one genre really take off, then it makes sense to keep riding a winning horse.  What do you think of my strategy?  What will yours be?  It might be very different from that of–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

June 17, 2012Permalink

How Do Writers Exercise?

Writers exercise like everyone else, I suppose–when it comes to their physical body.  Today, though, I want to consider how writers exercise their writing skills.  Early in life we learn the secret to getting better at any skill–long hours of practice and exercise.  Sadly, writing is no exception to this.

1.  The first step in a writing exercise program is to identify your weak area, or areas.  You can get a feel for these from your critique group, from any comments received from editors as they reject your manuscripts, or from honest self-assessment.  By area I mean some aspect of writing such as characters, plot, setting, the hook, thinking of story ideas, tension, pacing, active vs. passive verbs, conciseness, etc.  Chances are, there’s at least one aspect of your writing you wish to improve.

2.  Next is to assign yourself an exercise, and do it.  The point is to focus on your weak area and just try different things, explore different solutions.  You’ll be writing just for yourself here, so there’s no pressure; give your inner editor the day off.  If your problem is weak setting descriptions, for example, you could write a description of your neighborhood or describe a setting from a picture, or re-describe a setting from literature.  Then write several other descriptions of the same setting, but using different tones.

You get the idea.  This is your creative mind at play.  The time spent counts toward the 10,000 hours you’ve got to put in.  Permit me a strange metaphor here.  Imagine you’re shoveling manure from a truck and spreading it on a field.  The field is vast and the trucks keep coming with full loads.  You do this all day, then many days, then years.  At one point you pause, leaning on your shovel’s handle, and gaze out at the field and see a single plant, a flower, growing in the field of manure.  The rough ground beneath could never have supported that flower–it could only grow after all the shoveling you did.  That’s writing.  The manure represents your exercises and early stories.  The flower is your first successful publication.

As you do your exercises, don’t critique yourself at first.  Give your writing free rein.  Use the brainstorm technique.  Consider using mind-maps.  If the weak area lends itself to this, practice many (say ten or twenty) solutions to each problem.   If you like some of your solutions, feel free to alter, refine, or hone them.

3.  After you’ve done some exercising, review, reflect, and analyze what you did.  Which techniques worked?  Which didn’t?  This assessment should reveal whether you’re on the path to improvement or not.

4.  Last, what do you do with all the residue from your exercising?  Keep the flower; discard the manure.  Chances are, you’ve got something beautiful there you can use in a story.

I can hear some of you objecting to this technique already, before you’ve even tried it. Steve, you’re saying, we beginning writers are always being told to write, write, write.  Now you’re saying to take a break from that and do these silly, and time-consuming, exercises?  Don’t the exercises take valuable time away from writing stories?

Yes, they do, in a sense.  They take time away from story-writing in the same way sharpening a saw takes away time from ‘sawing’ with a dull blade in the Stephen R. Covey example.  Think about that. You’re saying you don’t have time to learn to write well because you’re too busy writing garbage that won’t sell.

So conjure an image of the roughest, most dedicated coach, gym instructor, or drill sergeant.  Hear that image yelling at you to exercise, to give him more push-ups, to run another lap?  What are you waiting for? You do want to improve your writing, don’t you?  Try exercising, then whether you believe it worked or not, leave a comment for–

                                                                             Poseidon’s Scribe  

 

June 10, 2012Permalink

Book Review – The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Writers should be versed in the classics of literature to some extent, and I had never read The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, published in 1831.  So I read it.  I just completed listening to all 19 CDs of the Recorded Books version narrated by the incomparable George Guidall.

It would be easy to do a straight review and give this monumental novel a rating of 5 seahorses.  Hunchback well deserves my highest rating for its universal themes and timeless characters.

However, you can find those sorts of reviews anywhere in print and online.  I propose to do something different here.  Since the purpose of my blog entries is to tell you things I wish someone had told me when I was beginning to write fiction, I’ll do a different sort of review.  I’ll analyze the book as if it had been written today for English-speaking readers.  If an author tried to market this book today, what would editors say?  I know this is very unfair to Victor Hugo, and I apologize, but I believe this sort of review might be more useful to you, a prospective writer.

So here goes, and I’ll start with a few positives.  Hugo has crafted a work with well-drawn, tragic characters, and then proceeded to put each of them through hell.  Quasimodo is a deaf and grotesque cripple who (1) feels an understandable but undeserved loyalty to the Archdeacon who saved him, (2) loves a woman who could never love him back, and (3) is forced to defend a church alone against an irate mob.  Esmeralda is a beautiful young girl raised by gypsies who searches for her parents and loves a soldier who does not return her love; moreover, she is accused of witchcraft and is both tortured and condemned to die.  Archdeacon Claude Frollo is tormented by his love for Esmeralda to the point of insanity.  In addition to these vivid characters, Hugo’s language–his style and use of metaphors and similes–survives even the translation from French to English.

On the other hand (and again I’m reviewing the book as if it were a submitted work in English today), the novel has an unsatisfying hook.  It gets off to a slow start and it’s not clear near the beginning what the central conflict of the story is.  Moreover, the pace is slow throughout; much of the text could be tightened up.  The long section on architecture, where Hugo compares books to buildings, could be either eliminated or cut way back.  In general his descriptions of things are two long.  There is no need for the narrator to periodically address the reader (“With the reader’s consent,…” “Let the reader picture to himself…”  “Our readers have been able to observe…”).

If Mr. Hugo would hope to get this manuscript published today, he would have considerable editing left to do.  As it stands, I would have to give it a rating of three seahorses.

All right, quiet down out there, Victor Hugo fans.  You’re asking (in loud tones) how I dare to give this colossal work of literature a mediocre rating. I believe I explained that.  My aim, as always, is to help beginning writers–those who hope to get published early in the 21st Century.  I reluctantly had to downgrade Hunchback, but I only did so to aid budding authors.  Even so, I’ll take legitimate comments from anyone about this review.  So go ahead and (figuratively) heave down your timbers and your stones, pour down your molten lead upon–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

June 9, 2012Permalink

All Depends on Your POV

Every story has a point of view, and because POV is a basic element of story-telling, it’s important for beginning writers to understand the term.  There are some choices to make, and you’ll want to select the one that maximizes the reader’s enjoyment of your story.

Think of POV as knowing who’s holding the camera that “sees” the story.  There are three basic types.  First person POV is told from a single character’s perspective as if the narrator is the character–“I walked into the room.”  Second person POV is told from the reader’s perspective–“You walked into the room.”  Third person POV is told from a perspective outside both reader and the character–“She (or Susan) walked into the room.”  There are two kinds of 3rd person POV:  omniscient and limited.  In 3rd person omniscient, the narrator can relate the thoughts and emotions of any character.  In 3rd person limited, the narrator can only get in one character’s head, and can only describe other characters as sensed from that one character’s viewpoint.

In the early years of novels and short stories, 3rd person omniscient was, by far, the most common POV used.  I guess that’s because it’s easier.  Since authors feel a strong need to make the reader understand what each major character is thinking, 3rd person omniscient is a logical, safe choice.  Today, the most common is 3rd person limited, with 1st person coming in second.

Of the types, 1st person is the most personal.  The POV character may or may not be the focal character for the story, but the POV character should have an interesting, engaging personality, and not be just the boring person who happens to be standing there whenever something interesting happens.  The POV character can be an “unreliable narrator,” a person who sees things that aren’t there or thinks things that aren’t true.  The challenges with writing 1st person are to avoid repeating the word “I” an annoying number of times, and ensuring your POV character has a reason to be in all the key, dramatic scenes.  The major uses of 1st person are in horror and Young Adult (YA) fiction.

2nd person is rare in fiction, but more common in songs.  It can really make the reader feel a part of the story.

As I’ve said, 3rd person limited is the most common.  It allows a more objective view of the story.  Some markets accept only stories with this POV.  The challenges with 3rd person limited are (1) choosing a POV character who is intriguing to the reader and has a reason to be right there in every dramatic scene, and (2) avoiding what’s known as “POV wobble.”  POV wobble is where the writer shifts to a different character’s POV without a break in the narration.  This can be disconcerting to readers who suddenly find themselves “in another character’s head.”  This mistake sounds easier to avoid than it is.

For beginning writers, I recommend using 3rd person limited as the default POV for your early stories.  If you find a story not working, you could try rewriting it in a different POV.  It’s amazing how you can gain new insights in trying this.  Leonardo da Vinci invented the idea of various perspectives in art and engineering.  It’s a technique used in engineering drawings ever since.  Artists find that by looking at an object from the front, above, and one side, they understand more about its three dimensions.  There’s an analog there for POV in fiction, I think.

So whether it’s “I’ll conclude by saying I’m–” or “You’ve been reading a blog entry by–” or “He signed off by stating his name as–” the ending is the same…

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

 

June 3, 2012Permalink

Speaking of Dialogue…

Yes, I know I’ve written about aspects of dialogue before, but it’s time I tackled the subject in general.

First, why do fictional works include dialogue at all?

  • The most important reason is because people talk.  A lot.  If you’re writing a story about more than one person, chances are they’ll have something to say to each other.
  • Also, dialogue is a great way to show the reader things about your characters.  More on that below.
  • Without any dialogue, your story would be uninterrupted narration.  Dialogue helps to break that up.

There are several points to bear in mind as you write dialogue:

  • Each conversation should be significant.  It should support and advance the plot.
  • Use dialogue to illustrate aspects of your characters.  Show your readers your character’s wants, backgrounds, attitudes, values, emotions, and thought processes.  Since dialogue requires two or more people, you’ll also show their relationships with each other.
  • Gender can factor into dialogue.  There is a tendency for women to speak horizontally – to use conversation to establish the degree of emotional closeness and, once established, go from there.  The tendency for men is to speak vertically – to discover through conversation where each stands in a hierarchy, and, once established, go from there.  These are just common tendencies, not firm rules.
  • If you write a character’s dialect (the way they deviate from Standard English), be careful not to overdo it.  A word or two in each sentence is sufficient.  Avoid dialect that readers could construe as an insulting stereotype.  If you’re inventing a new dialect for a non-existent culture or world, do it with care so as not to confuse your readers.
  • Speaking of not confusing readers, that’s essential for dialogue.  At a minimum, readers need to know who’s speaking.  Ensure you use separate paragraphs for each character.  Give each character her own “voice” or “tone” identifiable through her word choice to help the reader distinguish one from another.  Use “tags” like ‘Charles said,’ or, better, ‘Charles said as he holstered his blaster.’
  • Dialogue should convey emotion.  People are emotional and fictional people even more so.  Avoid using dialogue just to convey information.  Changes in emotion from mild to strong during a conversation can be quite effective.
  • For more authentic dialogue, listen to real people talking.  In your writing you shouldn’t write exactly the way you hear it, though.  Do include the cadences and the shortcuts based on assumptions about what the other person already knows.  Don’t include the “um’s” or the tangential trivia.
  • Don’t overdo it by making your story mostly dialogue.  That’s just talking heads.  Readers want thought, and especially action, too.

Please leave a comment and let me know if this helps you write better dialogue.  Also comment if you think I left out an important aspect of dialogue; I’m certain I did.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this example of dialogue:

“Who’s that handsome and ingenious guy with the excellent blog advice?”

“He calls himself–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe.”

May 27, 2012Permalink

All Your Stage’s a World

Yes, I know Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage,” but my point today has to do with the settings of stories.  The “stage” or “world” or “milieu” of your story is its setting.

The setting includes such things as the physical location, the time in history (including time of year and day), geography, culture, etc.  It includes all aspects of the description of this backdrop for the characters–the effect on all senses, as well as the overall mood.  Setting is, along with Character, Style, and Theme, one of the four fundamental components of fiction.

In my view, Setting is less important to a story than Character, but it’s still vital.  Your readers have a need to see the background, to imagine where the characters are, to visualize themselves in that venue along with the characters.  Without a setting, a story would consist of characters talking and acting in a void, standing before a blank screen.  (That would be interesting if done once, but tiresome if every story was like that.)  Think of the very beginning of almost any movie, just after the opening credits.  The audience is presented with a setting before the camera shifts to the film’s characters.

So how does a writer go about the task of hammering her stage together?  Keep in mind the primary sense for most readers is visual, so you’ll want to describe what a character sees, or would see if the character isn’t present yet.  However, emphasizing other senses besides sight might be more appropriate if a particular character has a keen sense of hearing or smell and you’re trying to work in a little character description, too.  Or if your main character is a dog, for example.

It isn’t enough to provide a neutral, fact-based description of your story’s setting.  This isn’t a news broadcast, so you should imbue your description with a mood or tone in keeping with the story, supporting its theme.  Or you could describe it through the eyes of a character, thus giving the reader a sense of the character’s attitude toward the setting, and how it makes that character feel.

You’re not writing for 19th Century readers, so you don’t get to go on for many adjective-loaded paragraphs describing the setting in pixel-by-pixel detail.  Today you have to keep it brief, and be very selective about the details you choose.  Your aim is to paint a few brushstrokes, as in classical Chinese art, and allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the rest of the world.  One way to do this is to go ahead and describe the scene fully as an exercise (either writing the text or mind-mapping), with all the details, then cut back to a few essential aspects.

You’ll want to place most of your setting description early in the scene, as an aid to your readers so they know where the characters are.  But you can also intersperse brief snatches of setting description throughout the scene.

The setting’s purpose in your story, then, is to form the backdrop against which the characters act.  Don’t fall in love with your setting; stories are about the human condition, and your characters must be in the foreground.  Your setting helps the reader place the characters in a context.  It can also help you bring out the story’s theme, mood, plot, and even introduce some symbolism.

As with all of my blog posts, I could be right or wrong about all of this.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  In this particular place and time, I’m–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

May 20, 2012Permalink

Book Review – A Time of Changes

I’ve enjoyed other books by Robert Silverberg (Roma Eterna, Letters from Atlantis, and Gilgamesh the King) and so had high hopes for A Time of Changes, published in 1971.  After all, it won the Nebula Award in 1972 for best science fiction novel.  I listened to the Recorded Books version, their Sci-Fi imprint, read by Pete Bradbury.

The blurb for the book stated it takes place on another planet where the use of “I” and “me” or any self-referring pronouns is blasphemy.  For me, that brought to mind Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, both novels about civilizations that forced people to think of themselves only as part of a collective, not as individuals.

But that’s not exactly the case with the planet Borthan, where the protagonist, Kinnall Darival, lives.  It’s a bit more complicated.  In most areas of the planet, people live under a centuries-old Covenant which forbids people from sharing personal thoughts with anyone, with two exceptions.  People may share any thought with a “drainer,” a religious authority who is paid to listen; such unburdenings of personal feelings is meant to be cathartic and bring a person closer to the gods.  Citizens may also share thoughts with “bond-kin;” these are a pair of unrelated people of the same age assigned to each person at birth.  People can share intimate thoughts with bond-kin but never become sexually intimate with them.

If this seems complicated, I agree.  But it seems Silverberg has created a world where love itself is cut in two.  People share sexual love with their marriage partners, but not emotional love.  The only outlets for emotional love are forbidden as sexual partners.

Silverberg fleshes out the world of Borthan in a thorough way, complete with geography, history, myths, and socio-governmental structures.  The tale follows the life of Darival as he finds a drug that can allow people to read each other’s minds, and how he falls from being a wealthy prince to a fugitive outlaw.  I found the Darival character well-drawn, as were all the others.  Despite the complicated premise, the novel is easy to read.  Silverberg has a wonderful writing style–flowing and lyrical and yet precise in meaning.  Pete Bradbury does a fine job with narration.

However, I did find the premise difficult to believe.  The colonists from Earth who’d settled the planet centuries before set up the Covenant for religious reasons, apparently.  But their aim in separating emotional from sexual love is not clear.  Nor is it apparent how the Covenant remains in force even when there are occasional visitors from Earth, so that Borthan citizens become exposed to alternative ideas.  The mind-reading drug is available on a neighboring continent, so (despite the population’s strange disinclination to travel) it stretches credibility how Darival is the first person to try to spread new ideas about love.  Also, it made little sense why the technology of Borthan was at the early-20th Century stage (cars and telephones), despite the story taking place about a millennium in the future.  Lastly, I couldn’t understand the taboo against self-referencing pronouns.  Original architects of the Covenant clearly wanted people to think of themselves as individuals–it’s considered virtue to solve your own problems without burdening others.  So why forbid the use of “I” and “me?”

With regret, I’ll give this novel a rating of 3 seahorses.  See the basis for my rating system here.  I do recommend A Time of Changes, but it is not my favorite book by this author.  If you feel I’ve been unfair, please enter a comment for–

                                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

May 16, 2012Permalink

We’d Like to Offer You a Contract…

You’ve sent your short story around to different markets, gotten rejections, but finally one publisher accepts your story.  Hooray!  Then an e-mail arrives with a long, legal document for you to sign.  It’s your first writing contract.  It looks so complicated, and all you want to do is see your story published, so you think about signing that contract without really reading it.

Don’t do that.

At its most basic level, a contract is a written agreement between two willing parties.  Each has something to offer, something the other party wants, so the contract should be for mutual benefit.  The writer has his story and wants both money and a published story.  The publisher is able to ensure books get printed and offered to the public and is willing to pay writers for good stories.  Pretty simple, right?  What could go wrong?

Writing contracts (for short stories, with which I have experience), have a fairly standard structure.  Here are the basic parts, though contracts vary by publisher:

  • Definitions of Author, Publisher, and Work
  • Permissions Author grants the Publisher
  • Rights being purchased by Publisher and the time period (term) of the rights (when they revert back to the Author, both in case the book isn’t published and if it is)
  • Payments and Royalties paid by Publisher to Author, including Author copies of published book.  In the case of royalties, some contracts also state how the Publisher will provide periodic royalty statements.
  • Termination of Agreement – some contracts stipulate how the agreement will be or could be terminated
  • Author Warranties (author owns Work, no other conflicting contracts, Work is original, Work doesn’t defame others, etc.)
  • Author Indemnities – (Author holds Publisher blameless in lawsuits if Author has misrepresented anything in contract)
  • No competing publication (Author agrees not to publish Work elsewhere first)
  • Changes in Text or Title – Publisher agrees not change the work without Author permission (approval of galleys), but usually minor copy-editing changes are allowed.
  • Venue – links the contract to the laws of a specific country or state
  • Signatures

For several reasons, you might be tempted to sign your first writing contract without reading it:

1.  All those unfamiliar legal words are intimidating.

2.  I’m anxious to get published.

3.  It’s probably one of their standard contracts, anyway.  A lot of writers must have signed a contract just like this.

4.  Most publishers are above-board and honest, aren’t they?

If if all are those are true, read the contract anyway.  But suppose you do read it and there are parts you don’t understand.  Communicate with the publisher and ask him or her what those clauses mean.  If you’re still confused, you can hire an intellectual property lawyer, but that shouldn’t be necessary for most short story contracts.  Don’t sign the contract until you understand the terms and agree to them.

It’s a truism that contracts favor the party that writes them.  You can attest to that, I’m sure, from other types of contracts you’ve seen which always spell out in detail what you’re supposed to do and what bad things will happen if you don’t, but gloss over the expectations and penalties for the other party.

Remember–a contract is an agreement between two willing parties who each give something and get something.  So you can negotiate terms.  If there’s something you don’t like in the contract or something missing, negotiate to make it right.  Walking away from a bad deal is always an option–right up until you sign it.

Feel free to let me know what your experience with short story contracts has been.  But hereinafter in consideration of the mutual covenants herein contained, the party of the first part shall be referred to as–

                                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

May 13, 2012Permalink

Book Review – Unbroken

Every once in a while, I’m reminded how little I have to complain about.  Go ahead, do as I did and read Unbroken, a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand and see if you can whine about something going wrong in your life.

I listened to the Random House Audio version © 2010, read by Edward Herrmann.

This book is a biography focusing on the life of Louis Zamperini.  The man is so fascinating that his life would not require a skilled biographer to result in a great book. But Hillenbrand is a skilled biographer.  Zamperini was quite a scamp in his youth, then channeled his energy into running.  He ran well enough to compete in the 1936 Olympics.  When World War II broke out, he joined the Army Air Corps and became a bombardier in a B-24 Liberator aircraft.  When the plane got shot down, Zamperini and two others endured weeks in a tiny, leaking raft with insufficient supplies.  Though one man died, Zamperini and the other aviator survived 47 days until they were finally picked up…by the Japanese.  Sent to various prisoner of war camps, Zamperini barely survived the torture and degradation until the end of the war.  Following his release, he experienced a slow collapse of his life until becoming a born-again Christian.  Hillenbrand’s choice of the word ‘unbroken’ for her title refers not only to Zamperini’s indomitable will to survive, but also to some of his high school and college track records which remained unbroken for years.

Hillenbrand must have done considerable research for this book.  I liked how she would occasionally deviate from a strict chronological treatment to explain some point that made Zamperini’s life easier to understand.  She sidetracked in this way to explain B-24 bombers, American life rafts from that period, the experiences of other WW II POWs, and several other things.  Even with these asides, she never strayed too long from her main focus.  She didn’t shy away from some of the rougher language the men used or some of the hideous tortures the prisoners endured.  This book is not for the faint of heart.  Although it must have been tempting, while writing such a book, to try to psychologically analyze the subject, Hillenbrand resisted that for the most part, only lightly touching on some of his more obvious personality traits to explain behavior.  Edward Herrmann did a fine job with the narration of the book.

I have few negative comments, since the book really blew me away.  I think, at times, Hillenbrand “fell in love” with her subject too much.  It seems to me she strayed from a more objective approach.  Since she most likely interviewed Zamperini himself while researching, it’s hard to know who is responsible for exaggerating one of the more unbelievable scenes.  Did an exhausted and malnourished man really wrestle and kill sharks leaping into the raft?  I have not read Zamperini’s own memoir, Devil at My Heels, and it would be interesting to compare the two accounts.

I’m giving Unbroken a rating of 4 seahorses using my trademarked book review grading system.  It is an outstanding biography and I strongly recommend you read it.  I understand someone’s making a movie from the book and that could be well worth watching.  Compared to Louis Zamperini’s life experiences, my own life has been a breeze, for which I’m grateful.  Sitting here in a very uncomplaining and non-whiny mood, I’m–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

May 10, 2012Permalink