S.N.Arly

Something Familiar – Updated Cover

With It Sounds Familiar coming out in the next month, Something Familiar needed a wee update to include the series name (A Familiar Story).

Combat Stuff Writers Frequently Mess Up

As a karate instructor, novelist, and former journalist, I like to keep my combat damage accurate. I worked with physicians for 19 years, and they were always great about answering questions for the crazy writer. Rather than making up more myths, I’ve checked with people who’ve taken care of patients who are on the receiving end of this kind of stuff, so you don’t have to.

The one arm back choke

Some writers seem to think this is the pinnacle of all attacks, and that there’s no way to get out of it. This is, of course, rubbish. I know several ways to escape this hold, depending on where in the attack I react. The first throw I ever learned was against this attack. If you have a character who has trained in combat, she should have a response for this attack (yes, Babe of Nine, I am scowling at you).

Here’s a video with three defenses.

The next problem with this attack, or hold, as many writers use it, is that most people don’t understand how it actually works. This particular attack has the potential to be fatal, very quickly, and about every other year you’ll hear about a bouncer or police officer accidentally killing someone while restraining them with this hold (which actually makes it a poor choice for a hold). There are two ways this choke works.

If the attacker puts her forearm against your windpipe, at the front of your neck, your air supply is cut off. You have about as long as you could hold your breath before you lose consciousness. This varies from person to person, but it’s not unreasonable for someone to go more than a minute without breathing. If the hold isn’t as tight, you can get enough air to stay conscious. Also worth noting, the human body generally needs more oxygen if it’s been active and if it’s pumped up on adrenaline from activity or fear.
If the attacker’s forearm and upper arm are against the sides of your neck, squeezing your neck between, with her elbow in front of your windpipe, the pressure is on your carotid arteries. In case anatomy isn’t your forte, this is the oxygen supply to the brain. Fully obstructed, you have ten seconds or less before loss of consciousness. Since this seems too fast, most people think that the person being choked is faking, and they don’t let go. Without oxygen, brain cells start to die off pretty fast.

Here’s a video showing the mechanics of both versions of this choke.

Palm heel/punch to the nose

Who grew up being told this was a potentially lethal attack? Yeah, it’s okay. I did, too. This will not actually shove bone shards into the brain of the person who gets hit. If, your protagonist happens to be a super hero, with super strength, it is theoretically possible to have a some skull shard and brain interaction, but because this is the frontal lobe, there’s pretty good potential for recovery, especially in our modern society. It would count as a traumatic brain injury, so the recovery may or may not mean returning to exactly the same state (personality or functionality) as before.

Throwing random knives

Most knives are weighted appropriately for use in the kitchen and suck for throwing. Grabbing a random knife and throwing it makes a great distraction, but odds are good it will miss the target or hit it with a non-stabby part (the handle, the back or side of the blade). Knives designed for throwing tend to be small and made of solid construction. They look incomplete or highly utilitarian.

You can balance a throwing knife on your finger at it’s middle point. Having equal weight at both ends means it will throw evenly. On a side note, there are two dominant philosophies on knife throwing. The one that shows up most often is that you hold the knife from one end to throw it, and it rotates through the air before plunging pointy end in at the target. The other option is to hold the knife from the center and throw it straight, with no rotation, like a very tiny javelin.

Being pinned under an attacker

Like the one arm back choke, many writers think it’s impossible to get out of this position. To be fair, this seems to get taught less, so it’s forgivable if a character who can fight doesn’t have an option for this. That said, most people with training have options for when they don’t know a technique for a specific grab. That’s what loosening moves (punches, kicks, elbow and knee strikes, and biting) are great for. A person with no training may still be able to get out of this, but our media frequently pushes the message that it’s impossible, and it can be tough for some people to break that conditioning in a crisis.

Here’s a video showing two forms of this attack and a good counter response.

The bipedal roughly human-sized attacker is too big/heavy to throw

No. Just. No. Well designed throws are actually easier when your opponent is taller and heavier than you. The hardest person to throw is one who is shorter but heavier. I can’t speak for judo throws over the back or shoulder, but for many forms of martial arts, throws involve getting under someone’s center of gravity and tipping them over. This can be done by sweeping someone’s feet out from under them (leg sweeps), getting in close and compromising their stance, or by pulling them off balance (the one arm back choke throw above is an example of this).

Head injuries

Head injuries are so badly handled in fiction. A concussion is what happens when your brain bumps against the inside of the skull hard enough to bruise it. It’s considered traumatic brain injury. The severity of a concussion is based on the symptoms following the injury, not how severe the injury initially seemed. Loss of consciousness isn’t necessary for a concussion, though this is usually associated with more severe damage to the brain, and often more severe symptoms. Post concussion syndrome consists of an enormous list of symptoms. Your exact symptoms may seem random, but are related to the part of your brain that was injured. Post concussion syndrome can last anywhere from a few days, to a few months, to forever, regardless of the initial perceived severity. Some effects of a concussion don’t show up for months or years, and a recent study found that some visual changes (specifically refractive errors) may occur up to two years after a concussion.

My son hit the floor with his head in first grade. He never blacked out. He remembers everything. He ended up with blurred vision for a couple of weeks and seven weeks of post-concussion syndrome that consisted of random and uncontrollable anger outbursts (that scared him), general irritability, fatigue, and headache. It’s possible that the amblyopia he developed a year later is a result of the concussion.

If your character can go from knocked out to perfect fighting form in minutes, you need to have a justification (Buffy had amazing healing powers, Hobbits are resilient to head injuries, etc), so your reader doesn’t think you’re an idiot.

Snapping spines

This would be the rapid head twist that we have all come to understand as breaking someone’s neck. It shows up in movies and TV a lot and tends to be accompanied by a bone crunching sound. This bugs me less than other things on this list, because the end result is pretty much accurately portrayed. It’s just that this doesn’t break someone’s back or neck in the way most people understand it to. This severs the spinal cord at the base of the brain stem, the same mechanism for the fatal single punch incidents that show up in the news. As my doctor friends have explained, you’re dead before you hit the ground, because the body is no longer receiving any communication from the brain. Spinal cord damage lower down the neck or back is survivable because the body still gets the message to breathe and keep the heart beating.

All this said, it’s still okay for a character who should know what she’s doing to mess up on a defense. In life threatening situations, we don’t always make our best choices, and I don’t believe in victim shaming or blaming, even for fictional characters.

However, if your character realistically should know a way out of a situation, but doesn’t use it, you’ll need to address it in some fashion for the character to stay believable. It could be something as simple as she felt off or the adrenaline was too much and she wasn’t thinking clearly. It could be that she was taking the safety of others into consideration. It could be that her opponent knew a counter and was faster at executing it. There are lots of great excuses that allow you to address this without it becoming a major plot coupon. Use one and move on with the story.

Speed Writing #13 – Summer Vacation in Terra Norma

Laura was sitting in the mid-level branches of the oak tree when she heard the garden gate creak open. From her vantage point she could see Aster’s entire garden, a formal European design in extremely rural Minnesota. She recognized the blond-haired teen walking along the path, cobblestones that had been placed with liberal use of magic when Laura had been away two summers ago. She placed a marker in her book and considered calling to Jason, but decided to see how long it took him to find her.

He started by knocking at the back door. Aster answered fairly quickly, and Laura briefly wondered if he’d come to see her. Though her grandma had lost the ability to do magic, she’d been highly trained and could still serve as a valuable resource. Aster waved her arms around a bit, as if indicating the garden, but Laura couldn’t hear her voice. They had a brief conversation, then Aster went back to the kitchen and Jason turned away from the door and looked around.

After a moment, in which she was sure he was considering all the options, he walked the path to the bench nestled in a thick patch of lily-of-the valley, right beneath the oak tree. He took a seat, then looked up and smiled. “Hello, Laura.”

Take Your Writer Brain to Work Day

Me (sitting in an extremely boring meeting): Why am I even required to attend this? I’m in my last ten days at this job, I clearly no longer care, and I have a ton of things I’d like to get wrapped up before I go.

Brain: Since you’re tuning out, why don’t we do some plotting.

Me: Eh. I should probably pretend to pay attention. I’m trying to go out as a professional.

Brain: Given what passes for professional behavior around here, you could fall asleep in the meeting and spend the afternoon looking at porn and still hit that bar.

Me: You’re not wrong. What do you have for me.

Brain: Since you’re about to be unemployed, I took the liberty of developing a writing blog series for you to debut in September. It will give you something to do, keep you out of that disgusting emotional pit you just crawled out of, and further your writing.

Me: This is why we pay you the big bucks.

Brain (shares brilliant idea)

Me (impressed): That’s actually completely awesome. This could be really useful, and fun.

Brain (surprised): You still remember what fun is? I thought you lost that in like February.

Me: I’m pretending. Fake it ‘til I make it, yaknow?

* Later that evening *

Me (sheepish): Uhm. You remember that awesome idea you had during that meeting? Could you go, uh, over it once more?

Brain: No. You know I don’t store ideas. I blurt them out as soon as I come up with them. I forget them as soon as you acknowledge them. It’s totally your job to record them.

Me: So… you have no idea?

Brain (indignant): Of course I don’t! You had a pen and notebook right there, what were you thinking not writing it down. Sheesh.

Me: Dammit

Brain: Seriously. I don’t know why I bother with you sometimes. But since you obviously feel guilty, and while I know it’s no where near as cool, here’s an idea for a Chinese dance superhero. I call her 小星 and she has three primary weapons; a dance ribbon, a set of red fans… maybe pink, and a red handkerchief.

This was written in August 2016, and while I haven’t gotten far with the Chinese dance superhero idea, I’m still planning on using it eventually.

You can enjoy the entire Writer Brain adventure in chronological order here, or tap the #writer brain tag to read it in reverse chronological order.

The Value of Fight Scenes

Fight scenes can do all the same things for a story that sex scenes do; they are actually far more alike than they are different. Through a fight scene, a writer can develop characters, change character relationships, resolve or introduce conflict, defuse or ratchet up tension, and push plot points all while providing action that alters the story’s pacing.

You can really get to know a character by watching her fight, by seeing what she chooses to do, or not do, in a tense or dangerous situation. The character who elects to fight bare-handed is different from the one who draws a weapon at the first sign of trouble. Does the character delight in the fight or grimly acknowledge it as an ugly necessity? Perhaps the character is a pacifist who refuses to fight. How does she react when she’s outmatched and is it different from her reaction when she’s the superior combatant? Does she kill? Does she show mercy? Seeing the protagonist on the page, and understanding her motivation behind use of trash talk or intimidation lets the reader understand her a lot more in a short time. A fight scene gives you the opportunity to address any of these situations, and dozens of others, in character.

It’s pretty obvious that fight scenes can provide conflict resolution, but they can also be a source for introducing conflict. A bar fight could start our heroine on the path toward the end point of the story (however far away it may be). It could be the event that ignites a quest or mission, or maybe she has to skip town to avoid assault charges. Ta-da, conflict. Fights have almost become a trope ending for a novel or series, with the protagonist facing off with the antagonist for one last showdown. The reason it’s done so often, is that it works well, which is also why we don’t complain about the lack of originality in structure. This technique also works for wrapping up smaller arcs that occur within a more layered plot.

Tension is closely related to conflict, so it’s easy to see how fight scenes can influence this. A fight can be cathartic for the protagonist or the story, letting off some tension before a scene or chapter that won’t function properly with too much impending doom hanging over it. Likewise, strategically placed fight scenes can increase the sense of danger. If the characters are well written, the reader will be invested and concerned on their behalf. This can be a huge bonus in longer works and for writers with weaker plot skills, because character and tension together can greatly improve reader interest while masking less developed plot.

Plot can be pushed forward by a fight scene in much the same way character can be revealed. This can be done in fragments, perhaps with the protagonist gaining insight through banter or bargaining during or after the confrontation. It can also be done in large chunks, with the outcome of the fight directly shoving the protagonist in the right direction.

Any time a scene can do more than one thing for the story, it’s a win for the writer. It allows you to include more layered complexity without going over your word budget or boring your readers. Fight scenes are also a lot of fun to read, which means plotting and writing them can be fun too… if you like that sort of thing.

Speed Writing #12 – A Soggy Start

Morning dawned gloomy and threatening rain. The campground was filled with the nervous energy of people packing up as quickly as possible to beat the weather, or adjusting their tarps and rain flies to tough it out. By the time the first fat drops fell, those who remained planned to see it through.

Chai tossed a book and fuzzy blanket down on the couch of her motor home and went to put on the tea kettle. As she waited for the water to boil, she gazed out into the mostly deserted campground. There were only two tents left and herself. One of the tents was a high end enormous structure that looked well anchored down. The other, closer tent, was a tiny backpacker model designed more for weight and insect protection than severe weather. She frowned, wondering if its inhabitant was ready for a day long soaking which would surely seep through the light rip-stop. There was a green internal frame pack leaning against the closest tree.

Chai settled on the couch, snuggled into the blanket with her tea and book. She loved the low rolling thunder in the background and the gentle pounding of the rain. After a while, she set aside the book and closed her eyes to enjoy the weather.

Non-Binding – Part 6

Need the starting point? Go to part 1. Or go back one post to part 5.

“Hey, you look really happy today,” Simza said as she paused by Adric’s chair before first hour.

His smiles were coming more readily now, and they didn’t feel so out of place. “Yeah. I worked really hard over the weekend, and I’m finally caught up on everything.” He held out his hands as if to demonstrated their emptiness. “So now I’ll only have regular homework.”

“That’s wonderful!” She bent down to give him a quick hug. “Does this mean you’ll be able to hang out when Zin or I ask, now?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I was actually wondering if you guys might want to come over and play video games this afternoon. My cousins have a really nice set up with the biggest TV I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m in,” Zindel said. “But a word to the wise, Cat’s wicked good at first person shooters.”

Non-Binding – Part 5

Need the starting point? Go to part 1. Or go back one post to part 4.

The first day of school established a pattern that worked nicely for Adric for the first few weeks. As soon as he arrived, he met up with Zindel before heading to class. Laurel was absent for a couple days, and when she returned, she went out of her way to ignore him. He walked to journalism with Catriona. He had lunch with Simza’s circle, where he felt welcomed and comfortable. As Zindel shared stories of his art class clay-tastrophes, Adric realized he was smiling for the first time since he’d lost his parents.

Somehow he managed to have one member of the circle in his last three classes of the day, so he was never on his own. Sure, the friendships were new, but they were a start. After school, he settled in at the gate-leg desk that had been hastily assembled in his room, with a promise of something more appropriate as soon as there was time. He spent a few hours on the day’s homework before dinner, and a few hours on catch-up work after.

“Adric, I got a call from your guidance counselor today,” Auntie Sage mentioned one evening as they were finishing up dinner. “She’s really impressed with how well you’re fitting in and catching up.”

Adric nodded, a little relieved even though he’d known there couldn’t be any complaints. “It’s going well.” His cousins went quiet, and while they weren’t staring, he could feel them listening intently.

A Peek into the Indie Writer World – Part IV: A Walk Through the Process

If you’re thinking of going indie, or have already decided to, you may find yourself wondering what steps you need to take. This is a look at the process, focusing on hard copy books and e-books.

The short version, in bullet format for those with very little time:

Write your story
Identify your output product(s)
Copy edit your story
Purchase and/or assign ISBNs
Request PCN (hard copy print only)
Format the story
Create front matter for printed work
Cover art and design
Publish
Market

The longer version with more details:

Write Your Story

There are many different ways to write. Use whatever process works for you (drawn out, under tight deadline, or anything in between). Revise and edit your draft to ensure you have the best possible version you can. Many people like to use critique groups or beta readers, other people don’t. The key is that your content (poetry, short stories, novella, or novel) is the highest quality you can make it.

Identify Your Products and Process

You can start looking at the various products and printers out there while you’re still in the writing stage. As your story gets closer to being ready to print, you’ll want to have some decisions on your starting point, at least. Will it be an e-book with print to follow? Or do you just want to start with the e-book and see how it goes? Your plans will influence some of your next steps.

Copy Edit Your Story

Most people think of this as proofreading, finding and fixing typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical errors. In this case, it also includes ensuring your soon to be published book has a consistent style.

Style is a set of rules that provide a uniform look to a document. This includes things like use of font, font attributes (bold, italic, underline), implementation of flexible or optional grammar (such as the Oxford/serial comma), and the presentation of specialized terms. Most fiction publishers have a house style built off Chicago or AP style, both of which have handy manuals. It ultimately doesn’t matter what style you go with, as long as you are consistent.

In the editing world, style often includes formatting elements, but for the indie writer, some of that formatting will vary depending on the product or products you’re producing.

Things to Watch For

Consistent spelling for names of people and places
Consistent terminology for magic or world-specific details (eg: does the world use shape-shifter, shape shifter, or shapeshifter?)
Use of numbers (phone, age, height, distance) are generally spelled out in fiction
Consistent units of measure (unless there’s a good reason for it, you don’t want to randomly switch between metric and imperial)

If attention to detail and copy editing aren’t your strong suits, copy editing is something you should plan to hire out. You can also just hire someone for the pieces you need done. If you have a handle on your house style, but want someone else to proofread, that’s totally a thing that people do.

Purchase or Assign ISBN

If you’re printing with a company that offers a free International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and you’ve chosen to go that route, you can skip the purchasing step. I personally prefer to have full control of all my ISBNs, allowing me to take them with me if I switch printers or distributors.

Buy your ISBN in advance via Bowker. You will need one ISBN for each product you are producing. A trade paperback needs a different ISBN than a hardcover or audio book. There’s often a discount to purchase multiple ISBNs at one time.

Once you have any needed ISBNs for this project, you’ll need to link the number to a book title, and provide some information on the book and edition (publisher, summary, cover etc). This is a good time to perfect your back-cover blurb or teaser. You can come back and update much of the ISBN information later if you don’t have all the elements at the time you’re doing this.

Request a Preassigned Control Number (print copies only)

If you’re based in the US, you’ll want your book registered with the Library of Congress as this increases the likelihood that it will get into libraries. It also provides some added copyright protection.

You will use the Preassigned Control Number (PCN) process, which takes 10-15 business days. Start this far enough before you plan to complete the publication process, to ensure you have your Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) before you go to print. If you have trouble navigating the Library of Congress’ website for questions (and you probably will, it’s not as clear as it could be), you may want to explore the PCN Manual.

To complete the process of registering, you will need to send a hard copy of the printed book to the Library of Congress.

Format the Story

Formatting your work can fit in with style, especially after you’ve gone through the indie process and have a handle on what you want and need. Many writers will create their draft in the most complicated format they are planning on producing, just so this piece is well underway (and less frustrating later). Once the book is ready for publication, they’ll make copies to reformat for other products.

At this point you need to know how you plan to publish and what company you’ll be using, as different publishers have different formatting requirements. Be sure you read the requirements before you put in a bunch of work changing your novel into a font you won’t be able to use.

Features you need to make formatting decisions on include:

Page size (determined by the product you are creating)
Margins (leave room for the gutter – the inside margin where the binding is)
Chapter heading font, size, and position
Indent (fiction usually indents first line of a paragraph)
Line spacing (look at similarly sized books to choose number of lines per page)
Section breaks (asterism or section sign are both good choices)

A Note on Paragraph Styles

If you’re not already using paragraph styles in your word processor, you need to start now. Styles designate font, size, and text attributes, as well as features like line spacing and indents. When used properly, styles ensure consistency and a professional looking end product. They also make it much easier to reformat the entire document if you need different features for a different product, or if you suddenly need a different font for your text body.

If you are creating an e-book, you must designate title and heading 1 styles at the very least, as these are used for navigation. Failure to designate these will often result in your book not meeting requirements for distribution.

Accessibility

Do not use extra returns and the space-bar to place text where you want it on the page. This makes your digital end product inaccessible to people with adaptive reading equipment. Screen readers will read every one of those spare characters, and no one wants to hear “asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk…” as they wait for the next section. Instead, use your styles to put chapter headings where you want them, and use hard returns (ctrl+enter) to separate chapters.

Front Matter

This is the content that comes between the front cover and the first page of the story regardless of whether it is a print or e-book. The professional standard includes:

Copyright page (including the year of publication, ISBN, and LCCN)
Table of contents (this will be automatically generated for e-books)
Title page (should be on the right page for print editions)

Optional content includes:

Acknowledgements
Dedication

Book Cover

This is your primary advertiser for your book, whether it’s print, e-book, audio book, or a serial. You will use this image everywhere to pitch your work. We’ve all been told to not judge a book by its cover, and we all do it anyway, so expect that this is something that must be done right.

Consider your cover a visual extension of the story. It needs to be appealing while giving your reader clues on what to expect. If your zombie apocalypse story has a cover that feels like a Christian devotional, it won’t appeal to some of your readers and you’ll have gone against the expectations of others. You absolutely do not want your book to look like you spewed clip art at the page, a common new indie writer mistake. A generic cover does you no good either.

It’s okay if you don’t have the skills to create a stunning cover for your book; hiring someone to do this for you may be your best bet. It’s worth paying to get a cover that helps readers decide to pick your story. There are a lot of great artists out there, so look around and find someone whose style is a good fit and who you can afford. That said, don’t whine about prices. Artists deserve to be paid what they’re worth.

Publish

The steps at this stage will vary depending on the company or program you decide to go through.

For most print on demand printers, expect to have to buy a proof before the book becomes available to the public.

Market

This stage will vary depending on your comfort level and opportunities. In general, you should be marketing yourself as a writer at any opportunity. This means participating at conventions, doing readings, and posting announcements on your social media and website. Be careful to avoid giving your friends a constant hard sell on Facebook, though. No one enjoys that. Your social media needs to be somewhat active and should include content not specifically related to a recent book release. Posting teaser chapters can be a great try-before-you-buy option.

While this looks like a lot of steps to take, they are spread out over the course of your process of bringing your story to publication, and many are not that onerous. Most print on demand companies have paid services to help with some of these steps, if they seem too great for you to overcome on your own.

For the first article in this series, check out Part I. Or if you’ve just missed the previous article, check out Part III. For the next article in the series, check out Part V.

For more articles on writing, check out Reflections From the Sol.

Non-Binding – Part 4

Need the starting point? Go to part 1. Or go back one post to part 3.

After his three-hour block of core classes, Adric had a journalism elective before lunch. It turned out that Catriona shared it with him, and she designated herself his guide and mentor. They were wrapping up a feature writing unit, and his western European witch teacher shared a couple of online folders with readings and past assignments as catch up. It was a good thing he didn’t have any after school plans, and wouldn’t for a while. He was going to be spending hours every night on homework, probably for the next month.

Catriona walked him to the cafeteria and pointed out the table Simza’s circle usually occupied before heading to the lunch line that met her needs. As he crossed the room, loud with chatter and clanking cutlery, he hesitated when he heard his name.

“How was your morning?” Tricia asked, catching his elbow under her hand. She was doing her best to sound casual, but he could see her underlying concern.

“It was good,” he insisted, but frowned when he recalled his hostile fae classmate. “Mostly.”