Blog Tour and Pitch Poll

First up, sorry the pitches weren't up when the previous post went up! They're up now.

NB: Sadly, the gadget doesn't allow me to change the colour of the text, and of course, the default colour is BLACK. Oi. I'll have to get my html monkey to play around with things and see if this can be fixed, but in the mean time, you can read them - you just have to highlight them with the mouse to read them o.O

Of course, they're also posted below in the same order they appear in the poll, so you could, for example, note that you like sentence #1 the best and click on the first little circle that appears %-)

These are the first three sentences:

• At her father's funeral the people of the sea and the creatures of the forest both arrive to claim the newly orphaned girl as their own - and neither side is willing to let her get away.
• A no-hoper teenage boy finds an abandoned mine, haunted by the ghost of his baby sister. When his family threatens to incarcerate him if he won't keep quiet, he becomes determined to get to the bottom of the family mystery once and for all.
• Torn from his home the night before his wedding, a young man is thrown into the Labyrinth Tower to be one of four that will lead dead souls to the afterlife.

Vote for your favourite in the sidebar! And a note to all you RSSers out there - consider this your official invitation to delurk!


In other news, I've been on a blog tour! Yippee!

On Sunday, I was over at The Innocent Flower with Michelle.
Monday I was obviously here, discussing the contests! Don't forget, you still have time to enter! :)
On Tuesday I headed across to Liana Brooks' blog.
And Wednesday, today, I've been over at Myth-takes!

Wow, I've been busy :D But lots of fun. Please go check out the articles for the sake of the wonderful women who hosted me - they deserve all the traffic they can get! :D

High Concept: What, Why and How?

When I first heard the term 'high concept', my first thought was 'literary'. I assumed, because of the word 'high', that high concept novels were those outstanding literary-style (although they may be genre fic too) books that go on to win prizes, that talk about the deep and meaningful of life, that everyone loves and adores because they matter - the books that become 'literary classics'.

In a way, I was right.

But in another, bigger way, I was wrong. Because the sister assumption to my definition assumption was that there was no way I could write high concept fiction. Not yet. Not without learning a whole lot more about life and people and literature.

Beep. Wrong!

I, as I am right now, and you, as you are right now, can write high concept fiction. Because it isn't actually as complicated as it sounds.

But first, why do we want to write high concept fiction? Never mind what it is - why do we have to care? Well, morals and creative impulses and desire to matter and all that aside, here's one very good reason why you want to write high concept fiction:

Because it's what agents are looking for.

Seriously. It's true. Everyone wants something high concept, because high concept sells.

So, what is high concept fiction? Basically, it boils down to this:

"Story ideas, treatments and screenplays can all have High Concept premises. But only High Concept projects can be sold from a pitch because they are pitch driven. Non-High Concept projects can’t be sold from a pitch because they are execution driven. They have to be read to be appreciated and their appeal isn’t obvious by merely running a logline past someone."

It's instantly obvious, reading this, that high concept is what agents want, and what can make your story stand out to the agents who read your queries. The gang over at Murderati put it this way, in what is perhaps the single best explanation of it that I've ever read, the one that made all these nebulous ideas I had about it click into place:

"If you can tell your story in one line and everyone who hears it can see exactly what the movie or book is - AND a majority of people who hear it will want to see it or read it - that’s high concept. ... Here’s another indicator. When you get the reaction: “Wow, I wish I’d thought of that!” or even better, “I’m going to have to kill you” - you’ve got a high-concept premise."

Isn't that exactly the reaction we all want from agents, editors, publishers and readers?

So, how do we learn which ideas are the ones that will illicit this reaction? How do we learn what a high concept idea looks like? One word.

Practice.

If you read through the rest of that article on Murderati, you'll see that the author learned high concept in a script-writing course where students had to come up with a pitch a week, which they presented to the class. For every pitch that was made, the pitcher added a dollar to the prize jar, and the pitch the class voted as the winner received the prize.

With that kind of motivation you learn pretty quickly what works and what doesn't.

So, as of today, I'm giving us all an opportunity to practice coming up with high concept pitches. If you look over in the sidebar, you'll see there's a poll. Those are this week's sentences: three pitches for three brand new ideas I invented off the top of my head this week, just for this purpose.

Each week there will be a new three sentences, and every forth week I'll post the three previous winners to come up with a 'grand winner' for each almost-month.

How does this help you learn? Well, you can learn simply by observing which sentences win - but I'm also giving you the chance to participate. At any time, you can email me at blot.of.ink(@)gmail(.)com with a pitch - or several - and I'll put it in the queue of sentences to appear :) Please include the word 'pitch' in your subject heading - and remember, a pitch is one or two sentences only!

As an interesting addendum, while I was creating these sentences I learned something very important: like creating The Sentence (a very similar concept to the logline, only a bit stricter in its parameters), it's not just the idea, it's how you phrase it. Take the first sentence for example. The original version was:

A newly orphaned girl sets out to determine whether she belongs to the tribe of the ocean or the age-old forest, but discovers the answer is much larger than either.

which I think we can all agree is a lot more boring. Why? Because the focus is on a passive conflict, not an active one. The key verbs are determine and discovers. However, in the new version:

At her father's funeral the people of the sea and the creatures of the forest both arrive to claim the newly orphaned girl for their own - and neither side is willing to let her get away.

the focus switches from her decision (totally internal, potentially very boring, and at the very least cliched) to the fight between the clans for her (external, potentially exciting, a lot less cliched; after all, not every girl is fought over by the ocean and the forest ;)).

Here's to high concept pitching, and to learning how to grab agents' attention! :)

PS - Love this quote from an excellent related article:

"Forgive me as I shrink a few inches, apply some lipstick, don a print dress and look at you from over my glasses as I mix a bowl of cookie dough. Yes, I have become your mother, in order to say this: 'It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man.'
Meaning: It's just as easy to be passionate about a story with some known elements as it is to be passionate about a story with no known elements."

What do you think? Should we be choosey about which ideas we fall in love with? Or is it art for arts' sake?

That Sentence, and Farewell to Feb

So, to round off last week's post on The Sentence, here's my crit of Anette's proffered goodies:

Estranged from her people, Pearl, a predator by nature, adopts an abandoned prey whelp and holds onto this unnatural relationship, despite that it may starve them both to death.

It's not bad as it is, but the syntax is a little inverted, which makes it hard to follow. Eg, 'despite that it may'. It could also stand to be a little snappier. So this is my take, knowing nothing about the story, or the characters, or any of the other possibilities for things like antag, need, protag, etc :) Forgive me, Anette, if I totally mush the story o.O :)

Even though it might mean death by starvation - never a pleasant way to die - Pearl goes against her predatorial nature and adopts an abandoned prey whelp, holding onto the unnatural relationship in an effort to stave off the loneliness estrangement from her people has caused.
(Too long).

Pearl is a predator cut off from her pack. What she needs is to survive. What she does is adopt an abandoned prey whelp, clinging to the relationship (why??) even though it might spell death for them both.

Okay, it occurs to me at this point the problem I've been having with this sentence: Who are the antagonists? What are their needs? There's no sense here of what Pearl is up against, and I think that could make this a lot stronger than it presently is. Anette, if you're out there (:)), give me some feedback in the comments and we can keep bouncing this around if you like :)

As for February, blech. Didn't really get as much done as I hoped, but nonetheless broke the 30k mark on Jesscapades, which is nice :) I'm getting a better handle on the shape of the story, and have plotted it out past halfway. I also finished up the 33 Worst Mistakes About Dogs book (in store soon!), for a total of 13,655 words for the month. Not outstanding, but definitely less than terrible :)

Sharpen Your Claws

So, although a lot of you expressed the intent to write Sentences, only one did: many thanks, Anette :D Anette also wrote a fabulous post on her own attempts at the sentence; go read it, it's very informative :)

Here's the sentence Anette offered up for us to crit:

Tonight I Hunt: (short story)
Estranged from her people, Pearl, a predator by nature, adopts an abandoned prey whelp and holds onto this unnatural relationship, despite that it may starve them both to death.

You lot have at it first, and I'll wrap up with my own crit in the comments when you're done :)

I thought it might also be beneficial for you to see the entire process of creating 'The Sentence', which, coincedentally, is just what Liana and I did this week for one of her wips.

It all started with her complaint: [I have] no clue what a tagline or query is for KnK. It's.... grr... um... Enemies become friends to stop a friend from taking over the universe? I have no @%*#$( clue!
*head in hands* Blah. I have a hook for other books. I have tag lines for other books. But the one I'm actually working on? Nada.

Naturally, this was my suggestion: so worry about it after it's, you know, written? *eyebrow*

Alack, this was not satisfactory: Um, it's 3/4 done and soon to be edited. I want to ... query by July so it would help if I had a freakin' clue what the theme was, or who the real MC is *head->desk*

What could I say? It most certainly is a good idea to know things like that before you query, and how could I refuse a friend in distress?

So, a long discussion ensues about who was actually the main character: Kit or Khal. In the end, we voted Kit, because although the POVs are split roughly evenly, Khal's actions are all about Kit - and Kit's actions are all about Kit. So clearly she's our girl.

As Liana so succintly put it: She's the center of my warped universe.

At this point, I take a moment to remind Liana of the basic formula of The Sentence:

Sentence = protag w a need + antag w a need + interesting things, interesting place + twist

Tada! Logline, Sentence, and first line of query :)

So Liana attemps: Kit Marlowe returns to army life in an effort to escape her homocidal uncle only to wind up as a prisoner of war relying on her enemy for survival. When she finally escapes she returns home with thoughts of revenge, only to find the enemy isn't who she thought it was

My utterly charming response: Um, hello? Log LINE? As in, 30 words MAX, dear child!! *presses buzzer* buh bow. Try again.

At which point I felt I might have been just a little mean, so I prompted: Okay. So. Kit is the MC. What's her driving need? Her most pressing compulsion? What makes her tick? One phrase.

Liana: Survival. That's it.
Me: Great! Excellent!
Liana: friendship?
Me, in my own world: Kit, who needs to survive. Right, now, who or what is her main obstacle?
Liana: she cares about other people and wants to survive
The ever-sensitive me: Blah, enough on kit! Obstacle!

Liana: Everyone wants to kill her, because she's first an impediment, and then a witness; she knows who is trying to start a war.
Me: Who is everyone? Everyone is not specific enough. 'Everyone' will not engage ppl and cause them to be interested.
Liana: Everyone is her family, the Troian government, the Dovinian government, the council of worlds, a stalker....

Great, I say. And generally, their pressing need is to have her dead to protect themselves, yes? Great. So. In ONE or TWO phrases, give me the most distinctive aspect/s of your setting.

Liana: um... setting? Space and the Troius Cluster... three planets sharing a single orbit around the sun.
Me: And that's where the whole story takes place?
Liana: um, the majority of it...
M: Oay, good. Right. ONE OR TWO of the MOST interesting things Kit does?

Interesting things about Kit:
* Kit is a special forces pilot, a lyracist (pop star), she falls in love with a guy who is supposed to kill her, and she's a POW at one point

Great. So I ask for Kit's main story arc in one sentence, and Liana gives me:

Rearrange the universe so no one wants to kill her?

I love it :D But it's not terribly specific. So we continue:

Me: and the single biggest action she takes in order to acheive that is...? Give me plot. Give me concrete actions. 'She attacks a naval officer' or something. What does she actually do?
Liana: um... hmmm... She organizes a rebellion against the council of worlds and signs a treaty without them after removing her uncle Edward from power and taking over the Troius Cluster and Dovinia? It's a polite rebellion. She gets people to agree to leave the council and drop the treaty of New Madrid so they can arm their ships. The council is inciting wars, then moving in as a "police action" and taking over planets, so they are no longer ruled autonomously and the council is the only group allowed to have larger than individual fighter plane weapons, and--

Me: okokok!!! The first para was enough :D (remember, folks, if you're still reading, short and snappy is what counts with The Sentence. We Don't Need Background!!)

So we moved on to the last question: What is the single biggest twist in kit's plotline, without giving it away?

I guess that it's that she has to confront the family she's always run from and trust a man who scares her. She doesn't like big males, she was abused, although it doesn't come out until later the how and why. That and yeah, she's supposed to be dead

Me: That's pretty twisty %-)
Liana: Everyone thinks she's an idiot. No one knows anything but her public persona, and it's kind of like Paris Hilton joining Mensa or something for her to step out of her playgirl persona and become a real person... that's difficult.

At this point I'm shouting for joy. We have all the elements, and we have the potential for a really great sentence here.

Let's quickly recap:

* A protagonist with a compelling need: Kit, who needs to survive. Check.
* An antagonist with a compelling need: Her family, the Troian government, the Dovinian government, the council of worlds, a stalker - everyone who wants her dead. Check.
* Interesting things: special forces pilot, pop star, falls in love with the guy who's supposed to kill her. Check.
* Setting: The Troius Cluster. Check.
* Twist: Various, but there's definitely stuff to work with here.

So, I pull out all these pieces, and start playing with them. And here's what I came up with. Yes, I cheated a little in that most of them are two sentences, not one, but they are all between 30 and 40 words - short, snappy (heh, hopefully!), and succint.

1) A special forces pilot in the Troius Cluster, Kit Marlowe falls in love with the man who's supposed to kill her as she organizes a rebellion against the council of worlds - who also want her dead. (36)

2) Her family, the government, the council of worlds - everyone wants Kit Marlowe dead. Everyone except Kit herself, special forces pilot and pop star, who is determined to disappoint everyone. Again. (30)

3) It's hard to organize an interplanetary rebellion when you're supposed to be dead, but for Kit Marlowe, leading a double life comes naturally. Finding out who she really is, and falling in love - that's hard. (35)

4) Kit Marlowe, special forces pilot and famous pop star, is desperate to survive, even if that means confronting the family she's always run from, trusting the man who scares her most, and starting an interplanetary rebellion. (36)

5) A special forces pilot who needs to survive confronts the family who want her dead, and organizes a rebellion against the governments and council who also want her dead - and falls in love with the man supposed to kill her. (40)

6) Although everyone wants pop singer and special forces pilot Kit Marlowe dead, she's determined to disappoint - even if it means interplanetary rebellion, and trusting the man she fears most. (29)

7) Special forces pilot and pop star Kit Marlowe has her work cut out for her: not only must she confront the family she's always run from and raise an interplanetary rebellion, she has to trust the man she fears most - and do it all while playing dead. (47)

Note that you can either go the dry, formulaic approach (number 5), which is not recommended, or you can spice things up by adding in that magic quality: voice. Numbers 2 and 6 got Liana's and my votes for that reason: they have voice. They show Kit's attitude.

Note also that you don't need to mention everything in the sentence. Not all the sentences include all the elements you have to work with - and that's okay! Your sentence, your query, and even your synopsis are not a promise to the agent or editor that this is absolutely everything that happens in the book: they're a teaser designed to get them interested in the book - or, in the case of a synopsis, purely and simply to prove that you can bring your main storyline to a satisfactory and logical conclusion.

You never, ever, ever have to include everything. Not even in the book itself ;)

Now, go! Shred Anette's sentence, and I shall sharpen my claws to do the same! Bwa ha ha ha!!

The Sentence Redux

Alack, again it is Friday, and I am not posting a movie for you to watch. Shall you ever forgive me?

I think, given today's discussion, you might.

Some time ago, I wrote a post on the fabulously useful concept known as The Sentence. Go, read said post if you have not already. (If you are lazy and refuse to click on said link, here is a reminder: The Sentence consists of a protagonist with a compelling need, set against an antagonist with a compelling need, in an interesting place, doing interesting things, with a twist).

The Sentence, wielded correctly, is a mighty and powerful tool. If you do not believe me, read this article. Yes, it is for screenwriters, but last time I checked novelists write query letters too, and Sentences, aka loglines, make a powerful start to a query.

There. Now that you have read it and Been Convinced, let us proceed.

So. Sentence. Important, yes? So, it is important that we work on it, and hone it, and make it shiny. Thus, I have decided that we shall work on it together! Yes, that's right, we shall!

Next Friday, I shall once again deprive you of a movie, and we shall have a lovely destroy-each-other's-Sentences day. I shall offer up one of my own, and if you would also like to offer a sentence so that my sentence does not have to stand glum and lonely in the post, that would be Very Good. Please post your Sentences in the comments of this post, and next Friday, I'll work through them all in the post, and See What Can Be Done.

Hoorah!

The Sentence

So, two weeks ago I did a post on outlining, and how it works for me. We had a lovely discussion in the comments about the pros and cons of outlining, and the lovely Liana (Just_Me) made this comment:

"My other problem with plotting is that I move to the logical next step. Which doesn't always have tension. It's just the step that makes sense."

This is precisely one of the reasons why I love the line-for-scene method of outlining: you can see at a glance where the tension is lacking, and fix it before you write the thousands of words that said scene entails. The techniques I'm about to divulge come to you directly from the Think Sideways course that I love so much :o), specifically lessons 4 (How to Recognise and Build On Good Ideas) and 8 (How to Plan Your Project Without Killing Your Story).

See, the line-for-scene (hereafer L4S) method of outlining uses one very special tool: The Sentence. Not, 'the sentence', which is just a collect of words in approximately the order subject-verb-object, but 'The Sentence', capital letters. The Sentence is a powerful tool at all levels of storying: it makes a killer of an opening to a query letter, and by using The Sentence, you can tell immediately if your story or scene has the necessary ingredients for 'Good'.

So, what are these necessary ingredients?

In the words of Holly Lisle, "a protagonist with a compelling need, set against an antagonist with a compelling need, doing interesting things in interesting places, with something slightly askew."

For a good story, the necessary elements are:

* A protagonist with a need. If there is no protagonist, there is no one for the reader to care about, and if there is no one for the reader to care about, there is no reason for them to read the story. If the protagonist doesn't have a driving need, something that compels their actions, they are likely to be flat, boring, unrealistic, or all of the above. Protagonists do not have to be human, they do not have to be people, and they do not even have to be sentient. Inanimate objects can and do work. Needs to not have to be big, or emotional: a character who is driven by the need to observe can, done correctly, be just as interesting as a character driven by the need for revenge.

* An antagonist with a need. This one gets even more loose in terms of definition: antagonists can be situations, events, catastrophes like a hurricane or a battle. Any object that stands in the way of the protagonist's goal is an antagonist. This means you can be a bit creative with the whole 'need' thing: a storm's 'need' is to be a storm, a battle's 'need' is to be fought and won, etc. The essential thing to remember here is conflict: whatever the antagonists is, and whatever their 'need', it must be in conflict with the protagonist and their need.

* Interesting things in interesting places. Yes, the setting can be contemporary, here and now; in this case the onus falls on the 'things' (the conflict) to bear the weight of the interest. Yes, the conflict can be small, quiet, and seemingly unimportant - if the setting is able to take the weight of interest.

* Something askew, aka a twist. Something in your sentence, your story, your scene, needs to be not quite would the average person would have expected: if nothing happens that the reader did not expect, what's the point of reading?

By using this method of outlining (whether you choose to outline at the outset, part way through, or for revision, and whether you outline all the scenes, most of the scenes, or just a few of the high points) and subsequently dissecting your Sentences, it's dead easy to see where your conflict is - and where it isn't. And for the places where it isn't, The Sentence can be a great tool to help you introduce some.

Some examples, noting that when doing this for scenes you don't need to be quite as intensive as when you're doing it for a story - Holly calls it 'The Sentence Lite' :) The following are sentences I used in outlining The Project.

1) Heather and Andrew search the canyon for people, and can't find anything except a strange flickering movement that only Heather can see.

Protag: check. Heather and Andrew. It's not stated explicitly here, but their need is to find the People.

Antag: mm, iffy. Maybe the canyon, the setting - the fact that it's preventing them from finding the people.

Interesting things, interesting places: and here's where it falls down. What are they doing? Uh, wandering around looking for something. Wow. Great conflict there. Where is it? Well, to be fair, the canyon in slightly interesting, since it's known that something weird it up with it, but as it comes across here - buh-bow. Fail.

Twist: eh, sort of. The fact that only Heather can see this strange flickering movement is a bit twisty, but not brilliant.

2) They break into Angela's office and Heather recognises the fish by the door as her father's electronic fish.

Protag: Heather & co. At this point, following on from the previous scene in the book, her need is to find out who's torturing the People.

Antag: negative. I know that it's both the building they're in (trying to break in whilst avoiding capture, etc is a big barrier) and the person that's responsible for the torture, but an antagonist is completely absent from this sentence.

Interesting things/places: breaking in is pretty interesting. Recognising the electronic fish, in the context of the story, is VERY interesting. So this isn't too bad. It could have a better sense of setting, but it is only Sentence Lite after all.

Twist: this chapter is called 'It's All In The Fish' for a reason: the fish are a very major twist.

I could continue - and, if I were planning to continue with The Project, I would, because it's a very valuable exercise - but for now, how about The Sentence for a full story? A friend of mine was kind enough to donate a sentence she's working on for me to dissect.

A double-crossed CIA agent fights to save himself from terrorists and his own untrusting heart.

Okay. We have a protag: the CIA agent. We have a hint at his needs: he's been double-crossed, and needs to save himself. So far, so good.

We have an antag: the terrorists. There's not really any hint of their needs, apart from the implied assumption that they're after the CIA agent, and that they're terrorists. Not terrible, though.

Interesting things/places: well, it's a CIA agent and a bunch of terrorists :o) Interesting things are bound to happen. There's not really any sense of place, though, other than the fact that we can assume it's a reasonably contemporary world.

Twist: assumedly the fact that what the CIA agent must really save himself from is "his own untrusting heart".

This is a solid basis for The Sentence, but it could be tightened, I feel, in the areas of place and twist - and a sense of the terrorists' motives would be good, too. It's a lot to pack in to one, less-than-30-word sentence, I know - but that's the point. This sentence, as it stands, is fine. You can settle for fine.

But you can also shoot for brilliance.

Here are a couple of my own (not necessarily brilliant!) suggestions to close. Bear in mind I've only read the first few chapters, so I may be way off base :D Please feel free to leave your opinions and suggestions in the comments :)

Deep in the South American jungle, a double-crossed CIA agent fights terrorists for his life - and his mistrust for another chance at love.

Fighting for his life against terrorists in the South American jungle, a double-crossed CIA agent is drawn into a bigger battle: the one for his heart.

His (own) untrusting heart proves a bigger obstacle to a double-crossed CIA agent, fighting for his life in the steamy South American jungle.

Even with terrorists hot on his trail through the South Amercian jungle, a double-crossed CIA agent fights a more important battle against his own mistrusts and (something).