"Think visually? I can see that happening."

Once In a Lifetime

Talking heads do more than pop on the radio to burn down the house and be taken to the river once in a lifetime.  They sneak into our work and dull down a story into submission.

Why are they so attention-draining?  That's because talking heads do nothing ... nothing but talk.  Duh!

But they're so easy to write.  Imagine getting into a typing rhythm as you "hear" the dialog in your head as it happens between your characters.  I wish I could say my knowledge of this was strictly academic.

These are not the Talking Heads you're looking for.  Move along.

Movements (and I'm not talking classical music)

So much of what makes comic books and movies and stage plays work is movement.  Dialogue tickles the intellect, but movement captures the eye.  This is especially useful when the writer gets to "speechifying."

A recent webinar I recently attended on social networking discussed selling to a listener and how we all can get into a habit of sorts where that person is asked again and again to agree to something -- an offer, a concept, a set of jokes.

Take a look at people around you when you are in a restaurant or coffee shop or supermarket or book store.  No one simply stands in place and speaks.  We gesture.  When our feet are tired, we might lean or swap from side-to-side.  We scratch, we grimace, we never remain still.

When reading prose, the eye tends to speed up during dialogue.  Perhaps it's because we don't have to interpret the descriptions into movement inside our mind's eye.  We "hear" the words and don't give a lot of conscious thought about the characters' environment.

It's like reading MAD Magazine where there's something in the foreground that commands our attention, but behind the speakers, there's this world of activity and practically another story altogether taking place. 

You'll find that inserting movement breaks up the rhythm and adds life to the scene.  No matter if it's on stage, on the screen, or held together with two staples, movement helps add color to a scene.

In comic books, taking heads can bring a story to a screaming halt. Thanks to great artist/storytellers like Jack Kirby, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin, and the like, the reader comes to expect activity on the printed page.  In the still-educational How To Draw Comic Books the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema, the team spends a couple of pages where even the talking heads can be made more interesting by changing the angle of the reader's point of view or by allowing them to pose more dramatically than standing with their hands in their pockets.

For myself, if more than three lines of dialog occur without my adding some sort of movement, then it's because I"m not paying attention.  For a play for the stage or screen, I'll let a page and a half -- which amounts to about  90 seconds -- slide by before I add some movement whether the scene needs it or not ... which it will.

When you write, play what you write in your mind like a movie.  When your own tolerance for non-movement is reached, make the talking heads do something.  Why should YOU be doing all the work?

Sorry for no blog post last week.  We had some consultation to do, one involving an upcoming book from Freelance Words, the other with a new business that will make you feel like a super-hero.  More on that as details firm up.

If you have an insight into the creative process, you are cordially invited to pitch a guest blog.  Drop me some e-mail with some details.

As for contacting us, we are almost omnipresent!

E-Mail: bkmorris56@gmail.com
Website: www.freelancewords.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FreelanceWords (be sure to give us a LIKE)
Twitter: @BrianKMorris, 
LinkedIn:http://linkedin.com/in/morriskbrian 

We are entering a time when we would do well to remember that all isn't lost.  We still have things to be thankful for, people to appreciate, and folks who appreciate us.  Remind someone how important they are, okay?

I am thankful to those of you who let me know you enjoy this blog and that you're getting some useful information from it.  I'm also thankful to those of you who subscribe via Amazon.com and by filling in the box in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Please have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving as well as a safe and thrifty Black Friday weekend.

Until next time, be good to yourself, be good to each other, and keep on creating!

Kelly Edwards on the E-Publishing Revolution

There is a revolution happening, dear friends.   

 It's not being fought with guns and hated, but with computers and sheer creativity. 

That revolution is happening in the electronic publishing field. 

One of the people on the frontlines is Kelly Edwards.  She's a Super Friend, a terrific writer, and she's just released a great book for the Kindle called Scorcher that this Freelancer highly recommends and hopes you'll pick up.

Kelly's got some great thoughts about creativity, how to create the best book you can, and the game-changer that is electronic publishing.  So without any further ado, here's Kelly Edwards:

 

When I first started writing, there was a stigma surrounding self-publishing. The belief was that any author worth their salt had to know that self-publishing houses were over-priced vanity presses and that the only customers to be had by going that route would be the author and perhaps the author’s parents.

Times have certainly changed and are continuing to change. The invention of the e-reader has made it so much easier for writers to directly reach their target audience. Unfortunately, this means that the market is even more saturated.

So what does that mean for aspiring authors?

Well, I personally believe it means that your destiny is what you make of it. It is a lot of work to self-publish and do it successfully, (and of course, there is certainly some element of luck involved as well) but it is certainly possible. In fact, as one of my friends said awhile ago-you now have the choice to spend years trying to stand out from the slush piles that clutter the desks of agents and publishing houses, or you can spend that time writing, promoting, and building your audience.

So what steps can you take to stand out from the crowd and help facilitate success?

1. Write a book that you can stand behind. Keep working on that book until you feel you’ve done all you can and you feel it’s ready. Make sure that you’re passionate about the book because after it’s published, you’re going to spend a lot of time talking about it, promoting it, thinking about it. You will be living and breathing that book, so give it all you’ve got. 
2. After you’ve given it all you’ve got, tear the book apart in the editing process and give it all you’ve learned since the first draft. Lather, rinse, repeat. Be sure that you get as much feedback as you possibly can during this stage. Be sure that this feedback comes from people who aren’t afraid to tell you when things aren’t working. Beg for constructive criticism if you don’t have to, or better yet, find people who aren’t emotionally connected to you, if at all possible.
3. Prepare yourself for the idea that not everyone will love your book, and that’s okay. Entertainment is subjective. You will get bad reviews. You might have slow months, years, etc. If you’re in this business for the positive reinforcement, you are in the wrong line of work. Just remember that this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.
4. Once you’re sure that the contents of your book are solid, make sure the package is pretty and user-friendly. Cover art is crucial to whether or not readers will even take a second glance at your book, and formatting can very easily turn off a reader if not done well. If you can afford to hire someone for these things, great. If not? Look at as many books as you can. For covers, think about what’s attracted you, and what’s repelled you. For formatting, there is a wealth of information out there about standard formatting (I found mine via createspace.com’s resources) and when it comes to formatting, you really do want to make sure it’s invisible for the most part. The reader shouldn’t be thinking about your cool fonts or interesting visual arrangement. In fact, that sort of thing will distract from the story that you’re trying to tell and will in turn distract from the reading experience as a whole. While the cover is meant to entice and draw readers in, the formatting is simply meant to be easy to read and the best display for your story.
5. So you’re good to go with steps 1-4? Now you will get into an entirely different type of work: promoting. At this point, the best thing you can do is build a web presence. Carve out as many corners of the internet as you can reasonably manage. A website, social networking sites, etc. If potential readers don’t know about your book, there’s no chance for them to read it. Aside from web presence, don’t forget the value of actual face-to-face networking. Tell your friends, tell your family, and tell that person that you just met who happens to have similar interests to you. Get the word out however you can. From there, if you’ve done the first four steps correctly, word of mouth should eventually take over.
6. Go back to step one and write your next book. After all, that’s what got all of us into this in the first place. The more you write, the more you will improve on your craft and the more chances you will have to reach potential readers.

The great news is that there are more chances today than ever for up and coming writers to follow their passion. The market is currently in an exciting state of innovation and readers are being granted a wider variety of stories than ever. Now is the time to write that story you’re passionate about and get it out there to whomever your niche is!

If your book was this good, you'd be proud too.  Kelly Edwards shows off her first novel.

 

Kelly Edwards is the author of Scorcher, a superhero action/romance that’s available on Kindle now and will be released on paperback on November 15^th. You can find her on twitter here: https://twitter.com/dreamsofnever (keep an eye out for giveaways!) and you can find Scorcher here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NOIGB4

I hope you enjoyed Kelly's first guest blog here because she has a standing invitation to contribute more.

By the way, if you don't own a Kindle reading device, you can still read Kelly's novel on your computer.  Just check out her Amazon page and you can download a FREE e-reader for your computer or tablet.

We'll be having more on e-publishing in the weeks and months to come.  In fact, I'm working on my own, Networking Made Way Too Easy that should be out before the end of the year. 

And if you'd like to contribute to this blog, pitch me an idea at bkmorris56@gmail.com.

To see what we do when we aren't blogging, head over to www.freelancewords.com and see what we might be able to write for you.  Also, check out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/FreelanceWords and follow us on Twitter, @BrianKMorris, and on LinkedIn at
http://linkedin.com/in/morriskbrian 

Until next time, be good to yourself, be good to each other, and keep on creating!

"You Don't Start None, There Won't Be One ... Really!"

If you start something, you should finish it.

I hear a lot of stories as an interview transcriber.  Many of them, I can't repeat in a family blog (hope you all have given up on finding one here).  I mentioned to a publisher that I could take all the libelous material my editors cut from my transcripts and put them into a book, Comic Book Babylon.  My publisher went pale at the thought ... and I can't blame him.

But I can tell one story: In Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur by Jim Amash, Eric Nolen-Wethington and Carmine Infantino (with transcripts by Your Humble Freelancer), Infantino tells a story about artist Mort Meskin and the time they spent together at the Simon-Kirby Studio.  Mort could not begin working on a comic page until someone, often Carmine, drew a single pencil mark upon the page.  Once the virgin paper had been defiled, so to speak, Mort could begin work (and brilliant work it usually was).

Available from your favorite book monger or order directly from www.twomorrows.com

How many of us succumb to what I call "the tyranny of the empty page?"  It's almost as if that blank sheet of typing paper ... or those unmarred parallel lines on the writing tablet ... or that perfectly sterile while screen on your computer monitor ... it should remain inviolate, untouched, unaffected forever.

I feel your pain, brother.  I know what you're going through, sister.  Well, at least I used to ...

A long time ago, I didn't want to really mess up a virgin sheet of paper unless I had enough ideas and words to fill it.  I think it stemmed back to the 7th grade when a substitute teacher burst into tears -- and I'm not talking about just weeping here, but full fledged wailing -- when someone scribbled one line on a sheet of paper before wadding it up and tossing it away.

Well before the environmental movement took ahold of our imaginations and our consciences, this outburst stunned us and our class vowed to be more globally considerate.  Of course our consciences were battered into submission within a week when the daily tirade covered some new international crisis that apparently 30 midwestern school children -- yeah, us -- had created.  We couldn't even drive and somehow, we were a team of evil super-geniusses on the express route to destroying the planet?  How did that slip by our guidance counselors?

Well, I obviously didn't listen to the lady and kept on writing down my story ideas.  In fact, we all swiftly inured ourselves to her caterwaling, being the insensitive whelps we were (and probably still are).  Anyway, as I developed my writing skills, I soon found that I had more ideas than time, something you will also learn to develop as you follow this blog.  Promise.  And I needed to immortalize those creative thoughts because I have the attention span of a mayfly and still do.

As I'd come up with a halfway decent idea, at least one worth thinking about to see if I had the ability to milk it for its full potential, I'd write down the notion and place the paper in my pocket.  Eventually, I trained myself to carry notebooks or at least eventually transfer my notes to those notebooks.  Sometimes, I'd carry the paper with me until I could get some quality computer time and then I'd input the idea and expand upon it as I went.

This knowledge came from the times -- and I wish I could say I'd only committed this sin once -- I'd written down what I thought was a good idea and then dropped my trousers into the wash without checking them as thoroughly as I could.  My ideas and my dreams turned to squishy pulp ... almost a metaphor for life. 

"I Can Remember Everything ... Just Not All At Once."

I didn't realize how long I'd been doing the note thing until a couple of years ago.  I unearthed a box of old letters (for all of you who think a no-number X-Box belongs in a museum of antiquities, this was a means of communication that was quite popular just prior to e-mail and not long after cave paintings) as well as various magazine articles I'd clipped as reference for whatever reason.  I remembered compiling this ephermia with the intent of revisiting it when the muse hit me.  It was also before the Internet so I was probably concerned with losing this data to the ages.  You know, vital things like articles from Time Magazine about the role of hot pants on the Nixon Administration's foreign investments.  Or maybe I just liked the pictures.

Buried in the midst of this was a single lined sheet of college lined notebook paper.  I'd written a single word on it ... I can't tell you now what the word was because I've forgotten the inspiration it carried on that day from shortly after I graduated from college.  Whatever inspired me to take the time to grab a blue ballpoint pen and write down that single word, I may never recall. 

Perhaps that's how the legendary "Croatoan" came about.  The sign was probably a note one of the colonists wrote to themselves to remind them of a great idea.

These days, I have several notebooks going at any one time, at least one of which I tend to carry on my person.  Two are filled with notes from webinars I attend.  A good student takes copious notes, you know, and mine are the copiousest!  Another is filled with story ideas and titles and stage play concepts.  There's one that's just for day-to-day lists of things to accomplish or reminders that will be torn out and tossed away once the event is past.  Still another gets dragged along when I feel the tickle of my subconscious telling me another writing problem is about to be worked through and I transform from author to transcriber. 

There's also a couple of pieces of paper in my pocket at any given time that contains a note or two, awaiting transfer into a larger volume or a file on my laptop.  But whenever inspiration strikes, I'm ready for it.  Or I can use these to develop an idea when I'm not near a computer. 

You may use a fancy journal or a diary or day planner for your notes.  Me, I've been using these 5.5"x4.25 sprial bound notebooks, 200 pages, lined with perforated pages that can be pulled out when no longer needed.  I won't endorse the place where I buy these for a dollar (because this blog gets no product placement bribery, darn it), but let's just say that when I wondered to myself if these would suit my note-taking fetish, I said, "That's easy!"

Anyway, never let the blank screen or the unmarked paper intimidate you.  It is your duty to fill it with your brilliance.

But you also owe it to yourself to add to that first spark.  You need to place it someplace where it will continue to tweak your imagination until you can flesh out your concept and bring it to full life.  Who knows whose life you are denying inspiration or comfort until you get that story or article or poem written?

So don't let that golden slip of paper wind up in the laundry or sit in your pocket so long that you forget why you wrote it down in the first place.  Act upon your inspiration!

THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT: Purchase a small notebook that you can fit into a briefcase, backpack, purse, or even your back pocket.  You don't have to spend a lot on it, but judge this book by its cover and make sure it can take whatever punishment it's dealt.  Train yourself to write ideas, good or otherwise, within its pages.  Revisit the book frequently and expand upon those ideas as soon as possible.

Then see about writing an idea every day into your book.  Read a newspaper.  Watch a television channel you've never watched before.  Go to the park or the public library and imagine a stranger's life story.  Write it down in your journal.

I want to welcome everyone who's now reading this blog on their Kindle devices.  If you would like this humble assemblage of words sent to your blog, go to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009SNG8GA and sign up.  The price is 99 cents a month and you can then claim to be a patron of the writing arts.

And if you want to have Freelance Words pop up in your computer's e-mailbox for free, go to the upper right hand corner of this page and fill in your e-mail address in the appropriate place.

Should you have an idea for a future column, I'd love to know about it.  You can leave your comments below or drop me a line at bkmorris56@gmail.com.  In fact, if your creative ideas cannot be restricted to a mere comment, pitch your idea to me at the aforementioned e-mail address and perhaps I'll let you write a guest blog on what fires your creativity.

And I might be persuaded to write one for your blog, if you're interested.

Currently, I'm working on my first book which I hope to release in early to mid-December.  It will be available on the Kindle reading device initially with a paperback release in late spring or early summer of 2013.  Ignore what your parents and Rick Springfield use to say about talking to strangers ... I know how to take the fear out of the process and so will you once you read it.

And if you have a writing assignment in mind, come on over to www.freelancewords.com.  

Until next time, you have a great one!  Take care of yourselves and take care of each other!