Joseph Nassise

Well, as you can see, Storytellersunplugged has a new look and feel. This is our fourth calendar year in existence (hard to imagine we started back in June of 2005, isn’t it?) and we’re still going strong with a marvelous cast of contributors and terrific content. We’ve grown exponentially each year and I hope we continue to do the same in 2009.

You may have noticed we have some advertising space available now. If you have a website or product that you think our readership would be interested in, check out the new Advertising page to see what we’ve made available. Our readers comes from more than 80 countries across the globe and are a widely-read and highly intelligent crowd.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post, actually.

We want to hear from you, our readers.

We want to know what you’d like us to talk about in 2009. What topics would you like to see covered? What questions do you have to ask? What other types of posts would you like to see? Maybe book reviews? Author interviews? Product write-ups? Publishing house reviews? Guest bloggers? Come on, don’t be shy! Use the comment section and let us know what you’d like to read about this year and we’ll do our level best to bring it to you.

Finally, we want to say thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you who come back here day after day, week after week. You’ve helped make this place what it is and I know every single one of our contributors appreciates your patronage.

Here’s to another great year at SU!

– Joe Nassise and Dave Wilson

I wanted to talk this month about Middles and offer some advice on how to keep yours from sagging.

No, I’m not talking about belly fat. That’s a different blog. I’m talking about the middle of your book, the place where you have the greatest chance of screwing up and losing your reader.

Nine times out of ten, if you are going to lose a reader, it will be in the middle of the book, in that long, seemingly endless stretch that ties your terrific beginning to your fabulous ending. Think about it – how often do you put down a book in the first ten pages? How about with only ten pages to go? Not often, I’d wager. But think about all those books that you got a third, or even halfway, through, only to lose interest. You put it down and move on to something else. Why is that? And how do you keep it from happening with one of your own works?

The middle of the book is essentially a series of scenes that ties the set-up you created in the beginning with the result you’ve devised for the ending. It must be designed specifically to keep the reader moving forward inexorably toward that ending. If it bogs down, loses cohesiveness, or otherwise fails to achieve its objective, you run the risk of losing the reader. And that’s a cardinal sin.

What keeps a reader reading, what keeps them invested in your story, is their desire to see the Lead outwit/outfight/outthink the opposition and reach their goal What gives them the emotional experience they crave is the conflict between the opposition and the lead in pursuit of that goal.

The Opposition

The opposition does not have to be a person. It can be an organization, a group, a force of nature, whatever. Nor does it have to be evil. It simply needs a compelling reason to stop the Lead. The more compelling the reason, the harder the opposition will work. The harder the opposition works, the more difficult it gets for the Lead to succeed, which in turn produces more drama.

The Glue

Along with the opposition, the other crucial ingredient is the reason the Lead sticks around, the glue so to speak. If the Lead can simply walk away from the conflict, the reader will wonder why he doesn’t do so. And at that point you’ve already lost the battle. You have to figure out why the Lead (and the opposition for that matter) can’t simply withdraw from the conflict. And you have to make that reason believable.

Writing the middle of your novel will then simply be an exercise in writing various scenes of confrontation, most of which will end up with some kind of setback for the Lead, forcing them to analyze the situation anew and try something else.

But Joe, I hear you ask, how do I keep that from getting boring?

That’s easy. You can stretch the tension, raise the stakes, or do both at the same time.

Stretching the Tension

Simply put, this means to never let a thrilling moment escape with just a whisper. Play it for all its worth. This is one skill Alfred Hitchcock had in spades and is what makes him a master of suspense even now, so many years after this death.

When it comes to stretching the tension, I first ask myself one question – What problem has the potential to lay some serious hurt on my Lead? That forms the raw material of the scene as it gives us something to be tense about. Once I’ve determined that, I can go about stretching it.

James Bell suggests two ways to stretch the tension in his book Plot & Structure – stretch the physical or stretch the emotional.

Physical peril or uncertainty is always a sure fire way to hold a reader’s interest and you can make that bond even stronger by slowing down. Go through the scene beat by beat in your head, as if you are watching a movie. Then write it down, alternating between action, thoughts, dialogue, and description. Milk it for all its worth.

Bell suggests three key questions to ask yourself as you do this:

1. What is the worst thing from the outside that can happen to my character?
2. What is the worst trouble my character can get into in this scene?
3. Have I sufficiently set up the danger for the reader before the scene?

Of course trouble doesn’t always have to be physical. It can be emotional as well. When your character is in the throws of some emotional turmoil, don’t let them down easy! Ratchet things up as much as possible.

To stretch inner tension, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is the worst thing from the inside that can happen to my character?

2. What is the worst information my character can receive?

3. Have I sufficiently set up the depth of emotion for the reader before the scene?

Raising the Stakes

One question any good novelist should constantly be asking themselves is Who cares? In other words – Is this scene I’m writing going to make the reader care about what happens? Is there enough going on to capture the reader’s interest? What does the lead stand to lose if they don’t solve the central problem of the novel? Is that enough? If not, what can I do to change it?

There are three common ways to raise the stakes in your novel. You can raise the physical stakes, raise the inner stakes, or raise the societal stakes.

Raising the physical stakes is probably the easiest. What physical harm can come to my lead? What new threat can be raised against him? What other character can I introduce to make things more difficult? How will this person operate? What will they do to make things difficult for my lead?

Raising the character stakes involves looking at the inner conflict of the lead. This has the added effect of adding more dimension to your novel as well, deepening the story while at the same time raising the intensity. Ask yourself how things can get more emotionally wrenching for my lead? Is there someone the lead cares about that can be brought in and tied into the trouble? What dark secrets from the lead’s past can be revealed here?

The third way of raising the stakes is to examine the social aspects at play. Is there some major issue my lead is involved in? How can I bring that to the forefront? What complications does that issue add to the mix?

Easy Fixes

If you find that your middle is lagging, here are some suggested ways to help you re-energize it:

1. Analyze the stakes – what can I do to ratchet up the tension?

2. Strengthen the glue – what can make the conflict more compelling?

3. Add another layer of complication – how do I make things more difficult?

4. Add another character – who else might have a role to play here?

5. Add another subplot – what other plot thread might shore things up?

6. Push through it – is it the writing or just me?

While suggestions 1-5 are self-explanatory, I did want to say something about #6. There is often a point in writing the novel when you think everything you’ve done to date is just utter crap. For me, that usually happens around page 200 (or 2/3 of the way through the work.) Suddenly the characters suck, the writing sucks, everything sucks. At that point it is time to step away from things and get some perspective – before changing anything!

I’ll usually take 24 to 48 hours off from writing. I won’t work on the book. I won’t look at the book. I’ll even try not to think about the book. I’ll go do something I really enjoy, doing all I can to relax and take it easy. Then, and only then, will I come back and give it another look. Usually by then I’ve gained some perspective. If I still think it sucks, I’ll try to find ways to fix it and at that point my subconscious usually has had enough time to figure out just what needs to be done.

So there you have it, some tips and techniques for helping you deal with a sagging middle.

Good luck and keep writing!

We’re quite happy to announce that the RSS Feeds for our site have been fixed and should now be operational.  Thank you all for your patience, suggestions, and assistance in resolving the issue.

If anyone experiences any problems, please let us know in the Comments to this post.

Best,

Your friendly neighborhood administrators

Welcome to the new look and feel for Storytellersunplugged!

After 2 and 1/4 years of that old plain vanilla, we decided it was time to bring a new face to your favorite writing blog. Some of the changes we’ve made include:

• New style and layout
• Improved search functions
• Better tagging and indexing
• Bookshelves with the latest works by our contributors, linked to Amazon.com and other virtual bookstores, all accessed through their Contributor pages (please note these are rolling out all week – only a few are presently active, so keep checking back)
• Alphabetized contributor pages
• A new blogroll (which we be greatly expanded over the next day or two

Still to come are an improved RSS process, which will not only allow you to create feeds for the site overall (both posts and comments) but also allow the creation of feeds for individual authors or post subjects. (This should be live by the end of the week – the framework is in place, as you can see from the icons, but the mechanics still need some work)

Please let us know of any difficulties you might be having and what you think of our new look!

Best,

The Admins – Joe Nassise and Dave Wilson

Every now and then I use my scheduled slot to give our readers a quick update on what’s happening here at Storytellersunplugged and this week is one of those weeks.

As you can see from the list of columnists on the right, we’ve had a few personnel changes around here. The writing life can by cyclical and sometimes the amount of work that falls into a short segment of time can overwhelm other activities. Such is the case with some of our columnists who have had to step down due to impending deadlines and the want of 28 hour days.

Not to fear, we’ve arranged for an equally intriguing and interesting group to take over right on their heels.

My thanks to Doug Clegg, Kealan Patrick Burke, Brian Keene, Mike Laimo, Jay Caselberg, and Laura Anne Gilman for taking the time to join us over the last several months. It’s the holiday season – go buy one of their books and give it away to a new reader to show your thanks for their participation here!

Starting tomorrow, new columnists will include:

Thomas Sullivan – author of SECOND SOUL and DUST OF EDEN, among others

Justine Musk – author of Bloodangel, now available in your favorite bookstore

Weston Ochse – author of the recently released Scarecrow Gods and the forthcoming Recalled to Life.

And at the end of January, master storyteller Lucius Shepard will also be joining our ranks, something I’m personally looking forward to as Lucius has long been a favorite of mine.

So there you have it, some new faces and new voices to go with the New Year. Thanks again for joining us and be sure to spread the word far and wide that Storytellersunplugged.com is THE place for an inside look at writing, horror, and everything in between.