Category: Interviews

 
 
Story Pitch is in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle, a collection of a dozen books on writing. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, a non-profit group created by the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle. This bundle is only available through the end of November 2018.

Meet Scott!

Scott writes fiction, non-fiction, and is a game photographer. He produces an annual calendar that highlights board and other hobby games. He really, really likes coffee.

Story Pitch

Struggling to start your story or lost in the middle? You need a Story Pitch.

A standard pitch is meant for marketing and selling, but a Story Pitch is a powerful tool meant to be used when pre-writing and writing. It can help you jumpstart your novel, screenplay, comic, or whatever type of story you are trying to tell and it can be used as a corrective measure if you get off track during the writing process.

In this book, you’ll learn:

• The key elements to story
• How those elements are connected
• How to construct a Story Pitch
• How to use a Story Pitch for outlining
• How to use a Story Pitch to fix character problems
• How to use a Story Pitch when lost during writing
• How to use a Story Pitch for writing book blurbs

If you like honesty, no bull, a bunch of humor, and tons of examples in your writing guides, then you’ll love Scott King’s Story Pitch.

Excerpt

A pitch is a description of a story that a person uses to sell it. In Hollywood, it might be that a writer is pitching a screenplay to producers, hoping they buy it. In traditional publishing, it might be an author pitching a novel to an agent who would then pitch it to one of the big six publishers.

Anytime you meet someone and they ask you about what you’ve written, whether it’s a novella, short story, or full-blown three-hundred-thousand-word epic, what you say back to them is a pitch.

Pitching is part of a writer’s world. No matter how much you might hate giving one, you can’t escape it. Book blurbs that appear on the back of a novel or on a retailer website are also pitches. They are carefully crafted descriptions meant to sell the story to a potential reader.

You can use a Story Pitch to create all the pitches I described above, but the main goal of a Story Pitch isn’t to sell the idea of your story to someone else. A Story Pitch is meant to be a tool you can use when pre-writing, writing, and re-writing your story.

Whittled down, a Story Pitch is a synopsis that introduces the key elements of your story, serves as a guide post while writing, and creates enough interest to hook the listener so they’ll want more.

– from Story Pitch by Scott King

The Interview

You write both fiction and non-fiction; do you enjoy one over the other?

I enjoy them equally but for different reasons. Fiction is my way of having fun. It’s creating worlds and characters that readers care about. I use it to offer escape, fun, and to touch upon themes that I think are important. In a different time of my life I was a college professor and doing non-fiction scratches that teaching itch. It’s not working one on one with students, but I still get to feel like I’m helping people.
 
 
The books in your Writer to Author series are all connected to fiction books of yours. Why did you decided to link your fiction with your non-fiction?

One of the biggest advantage to taking a class in writing versus reading a book about writing is that you get to see the mistakes that other students make in their writing and how they go about fixing those mistakes. By tying my non-fiction books to my fiction books it allows the reader to go on a journey with me. When I screw something up they get to see first hand how I fix it. My book on outlining doesn’t just teach how to outline, but shows how I outlined an actual novel. Want to know how a Story Pitch can be used to fix a problem? I use it to solve a major problem I was having in the original draft of my dystopian thriller Resist Them.
 

 
Why make the the tone of your non-fiction books so non-traditional?

I like coffee and poop jokes. I’m not stuffy. That shows in my books. They aren’t written in an academic style. They are written as if me and the reader are hanging out in a cool coffee shop and just talking shop about publishing and the craft of writing. It allows me to write the books in my natural voice which means I get to focus more on content than presentation.
 
 
How did you come up with the idea for your book Story Pitch?

I had previously published Finish The Script! and The Five Day Novel. One of the most popular subjects covered in both books was how to write a pitch. Since the interest seemed to be there, I decided to flesh out the concept into a full book, with a focus not just on how to write a pitch, but how to use it as a tool for pre-writing and re-writing.
 
 
What are the basic building blocks when writing a Story Pitch?

The core of every pitch has four things: Character, the Character’s Want, an antagonistic force preventing them from achieving their want, and the stakes, which is what happens if the want isn’t achieved.

So looking at Avengers: Infinity War it would break down something like this:
Character: Thanos
Want: To put together the infinity gauntlet (so he can wipe out half of all life forms to prevent overpopulation and the lack of resources)
Conflict: The Avengers are trying to stop him from doing so.
Stakes: If he fails the universe is doomed.

Things like genre, voice, and themes can all impact a pitch too, but this should give you an idea of what basic elements are and how they might fit together.
 

 
 
How can an author use a Story Pitch?

If you talk to most authors, they think pitches are important for selling a book. You pitch to an agent via a query letter or you pitch to a publisher. Then you might pitch to a potential reader via the synopsis on the back cover or the description on an online store. A story pitch is great for those things but it can also serve as a guide when writing or as a test when pre-writing.

When I was a college professor, I needed some sort of gauge to measure a student’s story before they started writing it. I had them write pitches, just so I could make sure they had a clear goal with the story they wanted to tell and I realized in doing so that it helped them stay on track through the writing process.

That’s where I think a Story Pitch really shines, helping writers shape their idea before writing. It’s also a great test when rewriting because you can compare your current draft to your original pitch. Doing so allows you to see where an element might have gotten off track or gone wrong.
 
 
Why might an author choose to write a Story Pitch for each character in their story?

Story Pitches are centered on individual characters. If a story has multiple POVs or a writer is simply struggling to understand a supporting character, writing a Story Pitch can help clear things up.

Earlier I used the example of Thanos from Infinity War. Although he is the “villain” in many ways he is the main character of the movie. He has the biggest wants. He is the most proactive of all the characters. He even has a slight arc in weighing what he is willing to sacrifice to gain his deepest wants.

Writing a Story Pitch centering on him makes sense, but the movie was an ensemble piece. It has a huge cast. Going back and writing addition pitches for the other characters would aid in fleshing out those additional story lines and themes that a writer might want to touch upon.
 
 
In Wrath of Dragons, the first book in your Elderealm series, you do some interesting and unexpected things with your dragon characters—especially with Doug the dragon. What inspired you to write about a dragon turned into a human?

There are a lot of fantasy novels where dragons are shape shifters. That’s not a new trope. What I did that was a bit sneaky is play a bit with expectations at the start of Wrath of Dragons. I set the story up so that readers would think dragons were non-intelligent beasts, because that is the view one of the POV characters has. Within the first two chapters that changes and the readers along with the POV character realize that there is more going on than they realized.

Doug’s whole story in the not just the first novel, but the series as a whole is that he is someone trying to learn how to connect with others. He’s an outcast as a dragon. He is trapped in human form. He has no family. He is simply looking for his place in the world. Although this is a fantastical setting, I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to. It’s probably why he has become one of the fan favorite characters of the series.
 
 
With so much working having to go into all stages of publishing as an indie author, do you still have fun writing?

Heck yeah. I’m a story person first. Money is great, and I’m lucky enough to make a full time income doing what I’m doing, but as things are now I make enough and I don’t need to push to make more. In a way that gives me a bit of freedom with my writing. Instead of fast tracking the next book in a series to push for quick releases, I can take a break and write a novella, non-fiction book, or whatever I want. Writing what I feel I NEED to write next instead of what I SHOULD write next keeps things fun. It lets me feel like I am prioritizing story of business.

And to be clear, there is no right or wrong reason to write. I know a bunch of authors who write and it’s a job to them. Their main goal is providing for their family or they are trying to earn a hire Amazon rank. Those reasons to write are just as legit as my reasons.
 
 
In addition to being an author, you’re also a board game photographer! What do you enjoy most about this type of photography?

People are the worst when it comes to photography. People have things they don’t like about themselves… maybe an old scar, the shape of their jaw line, the thickness of their eyebrows, or whatever. In photos they want whatever that thing they dislike to be hidden or minimized. As a photographer I like to capture things as they are and sometimes if you are photographing a person that means photographing something they don’t want. This can lead to cranky humans because you took a real portrait showing who they really are instead of what they want to appear as.

Because people can be a pain to make happy, I gravitated toward non-people photography, mostly food and landscape. That eventually lead to board games and to be honest, board games are great because they don’t have opinions of themselves. Plus publishers and designers are happy when you take real photos of their games. It’s a win-win!
 
 
You co-wrote your newest non-fiction book, Learn How to Write a Novel by Reading Harry Potter with Clark Chamberlain. What led the two of you to write this book?

Clark had done a Harry Potter class and approached me about teaming up for additional courses. Courses are not my thing, but it gave me the idea of teaming up for a book, and this book is what we decided to do!

Basically the book breaks down as a 101 class in how to write a novel and it uses Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as the example for all the lessons. In a way it’s a layered so that someone who knows nothing about writing could come in and read it and leave with an understanding of what it takes to write a novel. On the other hand, if someone already has multiple books under their belt and knows what they are doing, Learn How to Write a Novel by Reading Harry Potter is a great re-read companion. The book is structured by chapter so you can read a chapter of The Sorcerer’s Stone and then read a chapter of Learn How to Write a Novel to see an analysis of that chapter!
 
 
What story (or stories) are you working on now?

Soooo much. It’s been a strange year.

I cranked out the first draft of Unchained Shadows, the next book in my Elderealm series. It was supposed to only be about 100k, but is pushing 200k. I’m super excited about it. It’s GOOD, but messy because my first drafts are always super messy so it needs a heavy polish and I will wrap it up by the end of the year.

I have half a dozen short stories I’m shopping around. I also have a sci-fi short story I’m turning into a novella. It’s strange and more literary than mainstream. It will probably be out sometime next spring.

Then this past summer our dog, Winchell passed away. He was raised and trained to be a seeing eye dog. It was very hard and still is for both myself and my wife, Lisa. Lisa raised him from a pup and only though a weird quirk was she able to get him back from The Seeing Eye. As part of the grieving process, I wrote a 40k sci-fi novella based on his story. The first draft is done and it needs a re-write. I’ll probably tie it into my next non-fiction book which will be about rewriting. That should also come out sometime next year!

About Scott

Scott King, an international best selling author, was born in Washington D.C. and raised in Ocean City, Maryland. He received his undergraduate degree in film from Towson University, and his M.F.A. in film from American University.

Until moving to follow his wife’s career, King worked as college professor teaching photography, digital arts, and writing related classes. He now works full time as an author.

Find Scott

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Lance Bush is President and CEO of The Challenger Center for Space Science Education. Challenger Center and its global network of Challenger Learning Centers use space-themed simulated learning and role-playing strategies to help students bring their classroom studies to life and cultivate skills needed for future success, such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication and teamwork.

A portion of the proceeds from the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle goes directly to benefit the Challenger Center. This bundle, put together by Kevin J. Anderson, is an impressive collection of a dozen books on writing that will be inspirational, helpful, maybe even provocative. You can get all of the books for as little as $15. This bundle is only available through the end of November 2018, but you can always donate directly to the Challenger Center!

Meet Lance!

Lance Bush started his career at NASA as one of the chief engineers designing the next generation space transportation. He managed the International Space Station Commercial Development program. He also co-founded and served as the Chairman of the International Space Station Multilateral Commercialization Group comprised of the five partner space agencies (Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States) and 16 countries. He has led the growth and expansion of Challenger Center, including the development of a simulation-based program that can be delivered in the classroom. Under Dr. Bush’s leadership, Challenger Center was recognized with the National Science Board’s Public Service Award for its work to promote a public understanding of science and engineering.

The Interview

While I see that you have programs for all ages, your focus has been on middle schoolers. Why did you choose to focus on that age group?

Middle school is a crucial moment in people’s lives. In middle school, approximately half of students decide not to pursue a math or science-related career path. We have success in engaging students in programs that bring science and math to life, igniting their potential and providing inspiration that helps students develop a love of learning and further pursue studies and careers in STEM subjects.

Why does the Challenger Center feel it’s important to have learning centers where kids can interact with hands-on equipment, especially since it would be less expensive not to install special equipment?

A Challenger Learning Center is a place where students from all backgrounds can come together and interact while learning important life skills. Our Centers are not only designed with hands-on simulators that provide an incredible STEM experience, but the Centers also create an environment where students practice critical 21^st century skills, like communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Your organization has built Challenger Learning Centers not only across the U.S., but across the globe. How does that fit in with your mission?

Our mission is to ignite the potential within every student possible. We want to open their eyes to new skills and ideas that can prepare them for success in their careers and lives. Our Centers across the globe help us to reach these goals. We have already reached over 5 million students over the last 32 years and we look forward to reaching many more in the future.

You are developing a series of Classroom Adventures that use a “simulation-based” learning model. What does that mean when you are in a regular classroom rather than one of your fully equipped learning centers?

We understand that not every student can visit a Challenger Learning Center, that’s why we have developed Classroom Adventures. We want to bring the essence of a Center Mission to the classroom where teachers can deliver the program. Similar to a Mission at a Challenger Learning Center, Classroom Adventures use simulations that are delivered via a computer and include hands-on labs and activities. The program is designed to accomplish the same thing as a Mission — increase students STEM engagement, career awareness, and 21^st century skills. Classroom Adventures can be designed for any age group and any STEM topic.

What kind of feedback do you get from kids? Do they have a clear favorite?

We are currently piloting our first Classroom Adventure – Aquatic Investigators — and the students love it! They get to work together with their fellow classmates to help save the Hawaiian Monk Seals.

In a similar vein, what do teachers say about the programs?

We’ve worked with over 2,000 students and their teachers rated student engagement at 4.73 out of 5, and 87% of the teachers wanted the chance to continue using the program. Both Center Missions and Classroom Adventures are effective and provide options for students and teachers to experience engaging STEM subjects in the classroom. Challenger Center programs expose students to a variety of careers, real-world experiences, and skills — teachers love that!

Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space, was a high school Social Studies teacher. A more obvious choice might have been a science teacher, especially since she was selected from more than 11,000 applicants. How do you think she stood out from the crowd? What were her greatest strengths as a teacher?

I believe Christa stood out because she had a great passion for teaching and I believe that’s the greatest strength any teacher can have. Christa wanted to share her lessons with students around the world; she understood the importance of STEM subjects, discovery, and exploration. These too were characteristics shared with other applicants and her backup, Barbara Morgan, who later flew as the first Educator Astronaut. Barbara Morgan helped create Challenger Center and serves as our Chair of the Education Committee on our Board of Directors.

The Challenger Center is now sharing the “lost lessons” that she developed and had planned to teach while on the mission. How have those lessons been received?

The lessons have been well received not only by students and educators, but also by the public. This was a great tribute to Christa and the crew and it came to life when two NASA Educators Astronaut, Ricky Arnold and Joe Acaba, asked Challenger Center if they could complete Christa’s Lessons. It was tremendous teamwork and after nearly 33 years, we are fortunate to complete and share Christa’s lessons and to continue the legacy of the Challenger STS-51L crew.

There have always been those who argue that we need to focus on the problems we face here on earth first, before we pursue space exploration. How would you respond to that particular view?

Space exploration can help us solve some of the problems we face here on Earth. Thanks to space exploration, scientist and engineers have developed new technology and research. Most importantly, space exploration promotes science education. The Apollo Missions inspired my generation to grow up and become scientist and astronauts – the Apollo Effect. Not everyone ended up working in the space program, and many went on to solve other issues in areas like transportation, food development, energy production, and so much more. A Mars mission will inspire a whole new generation of STEM professionals.

Is there anything I haven’t asked about that you feel is important for folks to know about the Challenger Center and your mission?

Today’s students are tomorrow’s innovators and it’s crucial they don’t lose interest in STEM subjects. That’s why our Center Missions and Classroom Adventures are developed to build students’ confidence in their own abilities and demonstrate the power of teamwork. We want to spark a passion for learning that will last a lifetime.

Find Challenger Center

Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

 
 
You Must Write is in the is in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle, a collection of a dozen books on writing. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, a non-profit group created by the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle. This bundle is only available through the end of November 2018.

Meet Kevin!

Kevin is an amateur astrophysicist whose hobbies include sailing, constructing medieval armor, and swinging both steel and rattan swords at his friends. He wrote his first short story at age seven, and his first novel in 2008 during NaNoWriMo.

You Must Write

No five lines of advice have built more successful writing careers than Robert Heinlein’s five rules for writers.

Whether you are new to writing or the author of many books, Heinlein’s Rules will help you bring your craft and career to the next level. This book delivers the rules in a series of practical lessons, each with exercises designed to help writers build the Rules into their own work-flow. Unlike most “writing rules”, which tend to stifle creativity, Heinlein’s Rules are focused on unleashing the most creative elements of our minds, combating our deepest and most crippling fears, and driving past the greatest obstacles most writers face to reach success.

In this book you’ll learn:

• What Heinlein’s Rules are, and how they can fit into YOUR writing career.
• Tools for better engaging your creative mind and shutting out the editorial voice while writing.
• Methods for identifying and facing down fears that block your way.
• Chapters on practical application, with examples drawn from the author’s own thirty-two-book career as a bestselling novelist.

Excerpt

The ideas in this book challenge many preconceived notions about the writing process. What you read here will fly in the face of some things you have read or been taught elsewhere. This wasn’t an easy book to write, and I expect it won’t be a simple one to read either. But it will be valuable.

There’s something about being taken outside our comfort zone which helps us to grow. Enables growth, even. It’s what we talk about in the Hero’s Journey, after all: the idea that the protagonist must go beyond their “normal world” – their comfort zone, if you will – in order to become the person they are meant to be.

I’m going to be asking you to do that inside these pages. Some of what you read here will make you uncomfortable.

But none of it is false.

If you read something that feels off to you, consider why. Think about that thing for a while. Ponder it. Try the methods suggested here. You may well find an ability to grow in your own writing practice by stepping outside your comfort zone.

There are many ways to write a book, and none of them are wrong if they eventually lead to a good book that will educate or entertain readers. In these pages I talk about one method, but I want to stress before we begin that this is only a method – not THE method. As we say, there are many roads up the mountain.

This book contains everything you need for one route. It’s a guide to reaching success as a writer that has worked for hundreds of professionals over the last seventy years. There are many ways to reach the summit – but this is a great one.

– from You Must Write by Kevin McLaughlin

The Interview

What are Heinlein’s Rules, and why do you consider them important for writers?

Heinlein wrote down five fairly simple rules for writers to follow, saying that if adhered to they would result in a successful career. Those rules?

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you start.
3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4. You must put it on the market.
5. You must keep it on the market until sold.

But we’re living in a time where common advice passed along over the years argues against this method. We’re told that revision is essential; but most of the professional writers before the advent of computing did not revise heavily, if at all. We’re told that it’s OK to write only when the muse is with us; but most writers who have achieved great success did so based on a strong work ethic.

That doesn’t mean these other bits of advice are always wrong. But neither are they always right. It’s important to have both sides of the story, so that we can learn which practices work best for us as individual writers.
 
 
Why are Heinlein’s Rules hard for most people to follow?

Mostly because fear is a difficult thing to overcome.

It’s fear which holds us back and keeps us from writing, most of the time. It might be fear of success or fear of failure, but it’s almost always fear. Then it’s fear which keeps us from finishing a work we’ve started. It’s not actually that the new idea is any better; we’re afraid that if we finish the book, we might find out it’s actually no good (or too good, for fear of success). It’s easier to never finish and therefore never face that fear.

It’s fear that causes us to revise over and over; because again, if we say ‘it’s done’, then we have to send the work out into the world, and what if it isn’t good enough? What if people laugh at us? What if they don’t, and they expect us to do the same thing again next book?

It’s fear which keeps us from putting our work out there where people can buy it and read it, fear which causes us to give up after a few rejections or a tiny handful of sales when indie publishing.

Fear is a harsh master to live under. The rules require we throw off that yoke. That’s what makes them hard to follow.
 

 
Rule #2 is “You must finish what you start.” Often, a writer will be working on a story, and then get so excited about an idea for a new story that they start working on it and never finish the first one. What tips do you have for dealing with this type of situation?

First off, just don’t do it. (chuckle) Easier said than done, I know! Oh, I get those random ideas all the time. I think most writers do. Every book I write, I seem to have at least three new ideas for something else churn up into my mind, demanding my attention.

What I used to do was write the ideas down. I’d take a notebook and put as much as I could brainstorm of the idea down onto a single page. Then I’d set the notebook down and get back to work. By writing the idea, I was telling my subconscious that I understand this new thought is important, too. That I will get to it at some point. Just not right now.

These days, I don’t even do that much. I’ve become much more ruthless about my ideas. If I have an idea for a new story in the middle of my work, I make a mental note of it and then continue working. I know part of my subconscious keeps working on the idea anyway, so I let it go. I generally have my next three or four books lined up at any given time, so if the idea is still there and still sounds exciting in a couple of months, I’ll probably slot it into my schedule somewhere. If I’ve forgotten it, then the idea probably wasn’t very good anyway.

It’s very rare that I’ll bump an idea into the middle of an existing schedule. I did it recently with the first book of a new series (“The Quantum Dragonslayer”) because I came up with the idea in part to address the trademark silliness going on in the writing community. But it’s also a really cool idea that I’m having fun with. Even then, I still waited until my current work-in-progress was completed.
 
 
Which of the Rules is the hardest one for you to follow personally, and how do you try to manage this?

The first one is the hardest for me. I suspect it is the hardest for most people.

I write pretty fast. I’m cruising along at something north of a NaNoWriMo a month, and working on getting faster – which actually means ‘spending more time hitting keys’, of course.

It’s getting there and hitting the keys that can be the hard part. It’s shutting down whatever cool science fiction TV show is attracting my attention, avoiding Facebook (the bane of all writers!), not playing silly video games on my phone, and actually getting down to work.

I erased all the games from my phone. I erased all the games from my computer. I removed all the social media apps from my phone. I installed internet blockers on my laptop, and then I go out to a coffee shop or the Boston Public Library to write. Even with all of that, it still gets hard sometimes to do as many words as I’d like!

But I persevere. With time, I will get better at this. Practice is everything.
 
 
There are currently nine books in your series Adventures of the Starship Satori. How has the series changed over time? Do you have an ending planned for the series, or do you expect to keep adding to it for the foreseeable future?

Oh, this series has changed a ton! I wrote the first bits of these books years ago when it looked like serial short works might be taking off. Each was about fifteen thousand words long. I launched them just as short serials began tanking (thanks to Kindle Unlimited changing, mostly). Then I got the idea to re-issue them as new books. I merged the first two episodes into one book and the latter three into another, then wrote a third. Now I had three novellas instead of five novelettes, and they started selling.

I made my first four-figure month thanks to those books.

But last November I took it a step further. I’d gotten better at writing in the years since they were first published, and book one was really short. Like, twenty-eight thousand words or so. I took on the challenge of rewriting the entire story, adding entire new chapters and revisiting some of the old scenes to flesh them out more. Then I relaunched them. This relaunch resulted in my first five-figure months of sales.

But wait – doesn’t that violate the Third Rule? I’d say no, for two reasons. First, because I was redrafting large chunks of the book. Redrafting (taking the old thread of an idea and writing a new version from scratch) is still writing in creative mode, rather than editorial (critical) mode. But I’d also learned over the years to split the two up. I went over the book as an editor, noting places it could be improved. Then I went back in as a writer in creative mode and improved those places. In this way I was effectively ‘revising to editorial order’. The editor said ‘make it longer’; the writer made it longer, and the book was much better as a result.

I’m not entirely sure where that series is going. I haven’t discovered yet whether Earth survives the challenges humanity is facing, and if so how. There are going to be at least twelve books before it’s all done, but it could go longer. We shall see what the story demands.
 

 
What’s the most important tip you have for following Rule #4, “You must put it on the market?”

Take the plunge and just do it. Whether you’re planning to submit the work to publishers or publish it yourself, get the work out there where people can buy it. There is a natural hesitation, especially for those first few books. Get over it. That book is not a precious flower. It is (hopefully) the first or second or third of MANY books you will write over the course of your career.
 
 
Why are backlists especially powerful for indie writers?

Well, the Starship Satori series is an awesome example. I’ve repackaged those initial stories twice now. Each time I was able to hit a new and larger audience. In fact, for the most recent relaunch (November 2017) I offered free copies of the new books to my entire mailing list. Hundreds of people took me up on the offer. I felt this was only fair, since many of them had already paid for the stories once. I didn’t want to double-charge fans to read the new versions (even though the new first book was 60% longer than the original!).

Even with the large giveaway, the relaunch was still an enormous success.

Books are evergreen. There’s no reason not to assume I can still be making money from the Satori books a decade or more from now. My backlist is mine to control, to repackage, to relaunch, to schedule push marketing around, and to do whatever else I think will get new readers.
 
 
You co-wrote The Human Experiment with Craig Martelle. What was the most surprising thing to you about the experience of collaborating with another author on this project?

Craig was a good friend who was having trouble with this book. He’d tried working with another writer before me but it ended in failure. I took on the job because the project sounded interesting. Then I ended up getting really sick; our launch was originally supposed to be late December, and it ended up getting pushed back to April. Craig was awesome through the entire time, and I’m really grateful for that.

But the most surprising thing was probably the first chapter rewrite. Craig sent the finished book to some beta readers, most of whom hated the opening of the story. We chatted about it for a bit, trying to figure out how we could punch it up a bit. Midway through the conversation, I told him to give me an hour. I wrote a new first chapter that was a huge improvement over the original and shipped it out to him. He loved the new work, and did the job of massaging the other chapters to smooth it all out.

But without that feedback from the beta readers, the book would have gone out with the original opening. I think the solution we came up with works much better, and the creative process that went into the new first chapter was fascinating.
 
 
How did your hobbies, which include building medieval armor and swinging swords, help you create the setting for your Valhalla Online series?

Well, I like to think I’ve managed to add a few elements of realism as a result! I’ve got a background which includes over a decade in the US Army Infantry, about twelve years of assorted eastern martial arts, and another decade or so of western martial arts (that’s the sword and armor part). Coupled together, I use these experiences to help build realism and believability into my fight scenes and other sorts of combat scenarios.
 

 
What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I’m working on finishing up the fourth and final book of the Valhalla Online series. This book has been a long while coming, and I know a lot of folks are really interested in seeing how things wrap up – especially now that Sam is back in the Ghost Wing books! I’ve merged her storyline into the same universe as the Accord of Honor books, creating one big story arc out of all of them: the Ragnarok Saga. I’m enjoying the story again, which is important for me. And since I have big plans for Sam and her friends in the future (Ghost Fleet, and then other books beyond that), it’ll be fun to see how things turn out in Valhalla Online.

What’s fun about writing, for me, is keeping it fresh. If I’m getting bored, I can pretty much guarantee my readers will be as well. I’m always working to push myself in my craft, to build better stories with each book. That is a challenge, and fun. Telling stories that are fun to create is a great part of this job, too. I think if it wasn’t fun to spin these tales, I’d probably go find some other job that was, instead. Fortunately, I love this stuff!

About Kevin

Kevin McLaughlin is a USA Today bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy novels, with over thirty books published. He is a full member of SFWA, and a professional member of the RWA.

He believes in giving back to the writing community that helped him out during the early days of his career, so he uses his experience and to boost others. He has been a speaker at Boskone, Dragon Con, the Nebula Conference, 20Books London, and many other events. A skilled public speaker with experience in education, McLaughlin sees it as both pleasure and obligation to pass along to others the skills he has learned, so that the chain of people helping people continues unbroken.

Find Kevin

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Goodreads

 
 
Pulp Speed for Professional Writers is in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle, a collection of a dozen books on writing. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, a non-profit group created by the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle. This bundle is only available through the end of November 2018.

Meet Blaze!

Blaze writes science fiction and fantasy. In addition to his own short stories and novels, he’s the editor of Boundary Shock Quarterly, a speculative fiction magazine with the motto “On theme. With weird.” He also writes non-fiction books for writers. Blaze writes very, very fast!

Pulp Speed for Professional Writers

They’ve told you that writing fast is impossible. They were wrong.

You too can create stories at the speed of the great pulp writers. Not only that, but your craft will actually get better the faster you go. It just takes time and practice.

Come learn the things I discovered as I went from writing at mundane rates to Pulp Speed.

Topics include:

• Where did the term “Pulp Speed” come from?
• What are the classifications of Pulp Speed?
• How does your health and ergonomics impact your speed?
• What is possible?

Are you ready to break loose and start turning out good stories at amazing speeds? Do you have what it takes to go “All Ahead Crazy?”

Excerpt

We should start off by talking about this thing called Pulp Speed. This is another term for Really Freaking Fast. To understand the background, we need to go back to the era of the pulp writers, which is generally from the end of the First World War, give or take, up until perhaps the end of the Fifties. So about a long generation of time.

In those days, there were not a lot of books published in the field we know today as science fiction. The modern paperback novel, as we know it, came about after World War Two, as a result of all the books that the US Government printed for soldiers during the war. That taught an entire generation of men (and women) to read for pleasure.

Before that, what you had were the magazines. Things like Amazing Stories, Worlds of Wonder, The Black Mask, Weird Tales, etc. They came and went frequently, with a only few of them surviving long, and fewer have made it clear down even to the present. Each tended to lock into a particular genre, and then tried to generate enough newsstand sales to get a subscription base going that could keep the magazine solvent. It didn’t always succeed.

For such magazines, they frequently paid a penny a word (US $) for stories in science fiction. Assuming a short story came in at 5,000 words, the story would earn the author $50. For comparison sake, the median US income in 1940 was $956, or roughly $80/month. Mind you, this is median, so just selling a single story in a month would get you a nice, lower-middle-class lifestyle. And if you sold two, you were living high on the hog.

Not every story would sell, but if you hit once or twice per month, you were set. The key was to write a lot of stories, and send them off. Every story we write is not Pulitzer material. And spending a whole month crafting such a story is no guarantee that it will be any better than one you wrote in an afternoon.

Furthermore, a lot of writers were submitting in those days, and some of them just weren’t that good at their craft. The editors had their favorites, people they could rely on to produce good enough work, on theme, on a regular basis, so they could, it turn, fill a whole magazine. But you couldn’t publish three stories by Bob Brown in the same magazine this month.

You could, however, publish three stories written by Bob Brown, and use pennames on two of them, so “Marc Jones” and “Stan Woods” could also have stories here.

What we had was an ecosystem that favored good writers who could produce good words at speed. They wrote a lot of words. Whole acres of them. Because they treated it like a job.

What does that mean?

These days, you generally go to work and are in an office or in front of a press for eight hours, with a break for lunch and smokes.

The Pulp writers sat down and typed for eight hours.

The new writer, just sitting down and figuring out her craft (and typing on a keyboard, rather than longhanding), will quickly get up to a pace of about 500 words per hour. However, she won’t be able to write for eight hours straight.

Writing for that many hours is a skill, as well as a muscle. Treat your writing the same way you would train to run a marathon. Start slow and careful, and slowly push yourself to greater lengths and speeds, rather than trying to do it all at once.

– from Pulp Speed for Professional Writers by Blaze Ward

The Interview

What is “pulp speed,” and where did the term come from?

Pulp Speed One is defined as One Million Words Per Year, or about 84,000/month. It dates back to the Pulp Writers (1920-1960 more or less) who generated an amazing number of short stories each month and sent them off to all the pulp magazines of the day.
 
 
Can anyone learn to write at pulp speed?

You can. It is a muscle, just like any other. True Pulp probably requires that you have a supportive enough spouse that you don’t have a day job any more. I was writing 450,000/yr with a full time job and a long commute. Once I had the time to think. I more than doubled my speed in about three months, and I have held at 100,000 words per month for six months now, with no slacking of pace.
 
 
Does this work better for different types of fiction, or different lengths of stories?

I write Science Fiction primarily. Dean Wesley Smith writes all over the map. I find it works better for longer pieces, because then you don’t have to spend as much time on administrative overhead (covers, blurbs, formatting, etc.) I also like to write short novels (40-50k) because then I’m in a different universe and different characters every two weeks, so it keeps me from dreading opening a file that turns into a doorstop monolith.
 

 
How do Heinlein’s Rules for Writers help writers get to pulp speed?

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Quoted more or less above. I have a different mantra I use for writing, because I’m almost completely indie, so 4 & 5 have different meanings for me. “Sit down. Shut up. Write.”

It has to be interesting enough that you wake up in the morning and say to yourself “Oh My God I get to go make shit up for a living!!!” I cycle while I write and have taught myself to write clean first drafts, so I make a single pass after I’m done and send it to my First Reader.

Don’t rewrite. Don’t redraft. Time you spend writing your novel again is time I’m writing a second (and more) novel. Once it is done, I put it out for publication and go on to the next one. I won’t win awards for pretty words, but I make a living from my writing and most of those award winners don’t.
 
 
What inspired you to write Awaken the Star Dragon, and how does Fermi’s Paradox tie in with this?

Fermi’s Paradox: Where is everyone?

Jeffries Corollary: We are the most dangerous, psychotic species in the galaxy and they’re hiding from us.

What happens when a crime boss out there decides to abduct a criminal here? The good guys decide they have to recruit a cop.

I write a lot of so-called military SF, and grand space opera. I wanted to write something that was Pulp in feel. I envision my writer voice as standing in 1950, with the state of culture and technology then, and trying to envision the world as they would have, rather than as a modern prognosticator would. It gets silly.
 
 
Boundary Shock Quarterly is a speculative fiction magazine you started in 2018. What inspired you to start this magazine, and what are you enjoying about it?

I have always wanted to do something like this, but your choices were to either do a crowd-funding thing (Kickstarter, Indigogo, etc.) or run up a massive debt on your credit cards that probably never paid off. But the Seventh Indie Revolution in publishing has finally made the tools available to anyone with enough gumption. I wrote down every one of my steps because once I got there, I wanted others to be able to replicate it (See below) and challenge the major genre magazines. There are quality writers out there, just waiting their chance.
 

 
In addition to creating Boundary Shock Quarterly, you’ve written a book about the process: How to Launch a Magazine for Professional Publishers. What’s the biggest lesson you learned from creating this magazine?

That it was possible. That anyone could do it, if they wanted it bad enough to step up. My Syndicate has been a bit like herding goldfish from time to time (cats don’t move in three dimensions) but they’ve also come through with some quality stories that made it fun.
 
 
What have you found most interesting about the complex world-building you’ve done for your science fiction series Alexandria Station?

Inventing a Cavalry (men and women on horses = Hussar) Legion and invading a planet with it. And building outward from several hundred pages of extended universe bible about details and people. I can’t be wrong with my technology, generally because I never explain how it works. I can only be inconsistent.
 

 
What’s your most important piece of advice for authors who want to achieve pulp speed?

See above. “Sit down. Shut up. Write.”

Pulp speed is a factor of how many hours you spend at the keyboard generating words. And you must find the desire to do this. You must want this more than other things.

I sold my last television four years ago, and I don’t “watch shows.” Those are hours I spend possibly goofing off, but more likely working on story and world-building.
 
 
What’s your current pulp speed, and what do you expect is your personal max?

Currently, I have been holding at Pulp Two (100,000+/month) as a marathon pace. My personal best was Pulp Five (150,000/month) pace, except I intentionally took the last three days of the month off to hold it under that. But it is a muscle and I am writing faster now than I did even two months ago, so I might try pushing at some point, just to see.
 
 
What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

I got a request to be in a bundle, with the curator sure I had novels he hadn’t seen. But all I have left in the genre were Book Twos+ (the Ones were already in bundles). But I offered to write something on short notice, as I was just finishing a novel that day, and needing a project to start (the writing schedule is always in pencil).

So I’m generating a new Handsome Rob novel (in the Alexandria Station universe) and it has to be done in two weeks. 🙂

About Blaze

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe as well as The Collective. He also writes fantasy stories with several characters and series, from an alternate Rome to epic high fantasy in the desert.

Blaze’s works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out quarterly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Find Blaze

 
 
How to Write a Novel is in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle, a collection of a dozen books on writing. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, a non-profit group created by the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle. This bundle is only available through the end of November 2018.

Meet Simon!

Simon Haynes is a professional, prolific writer with more than 20 years experience writing fiction. He writes novels in several different science fiction series. His work typically features an underdog fighting for survival against far stronger opponents. He’s a huge fan of Isaac Asimov’s work, in particular the robot novels and the Foundation series. He also enjoys dry, witty comedy, and loves satire.

Simon is the programmer and designer behind Spacejock Software, and is responsible for popular programs like FCharts, yWriter and yBook.

How to Write a Novel

Do any of these sound familiar?

You want to write your first novel, but you don’t know how to begin.

You’ve started writing several novels, but you never finish them.

You’ve written a novel or two, but you want to increase your output and publish more often.

If you answered yes to any of the above, this book might just be what you’re looking for!

I’m Simon Haynes, and I’ve been writing and publishing novels and short fiction for almost twenty years. This guide contains everything I’ve learned about writing a novel, both as an indie and as a trade-published author.

Maybe you want to write a novel which has been on your mind for years. You don’t care how long it takes, you just want to see it through to the end.

Or maybe you see yourself as a career novelist – there’s a real challenge – and you want to write books quickly and efficiently.

I’ve done both, and I cover both approaches in How to Write a Novel.

Excerpt

Okay, we’ve covered plotting and pantsing and there are writers who are firmly committed to each camp, but there is a third choice.

First, let’s recap:

• It can be fun to write without a plot outline, because of the freedom. On the other hand it can take five or ten times as long to write a novel this way, and the rewrites are a big part of that.

• Writing plot outlines can be fun too, because it’s like pantsing an entire novel in a few thousand words. On the other hand, writing a novel from a comprehensive plot outline can become dry and boring.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was another way, where you still had fun but also got your book finished without all that wasted time and effort? That’s where my hybrid method of writing a novel comes in, and if you get nothing else from my book, this next part should be worth the price alone. It’s changed the way I approach my novels, and I’ve gone from writing one novel per year to writing and publishing four novels in the last four months.

They’re not junk, either. The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and they’re probably the best-received novels I’ve ever written.

– from How to Write a Novel by Simon Haynes

The Interview

What inspired you to write How to Write a Novel?

Over the years I’ve worked out a pretty good method of delivering a completed manuscript on time. I’ve been applying it to my own work this year, and during the past eight months I’ve written and published seven novels and a 15,000 word novella.

It was after completing the sixth novel for the year that I realised others might benefit from my knowledge, and so I put together How to Write a Novel.
 

 
You often write series of standalone novels, instead of novels where each one is the sequel to the previous book. Why have you chosen to do this for some of your series?

When I was about six years old a well-meaning relative gave me a copy of Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton. It was book two in the series, a sequel to book one in every sense of the word, and I refused to read it until I could get my hands on the first.

Later in life I ended up with two books from a different three-book trilogy. These were re-issues of a 1950’s science fiction series, and the publisher only released the first two books! The front- and back- matter said NOTHING about the third title, which I found out about years later. I ended up having to buy a 1950’s first edition, and they’re as rare as hen’s teeth.

Anyway, I guess the short answer is, I’ve been burned several times by incomplete series and I don’t want to inflict the same torture on my own readers.

(To be fair, missing books is hardly a problem nowadays, thanks to ebooks.)
 
 
If you could go back in time to when you started writing, and could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

I didn’t start my first novel until I was 27, and didn’t write my first proper short story until I was 18. My advice would be to start sooner and write more!
 
 
You began writing Hal Spacejock in 1994, and are working on the ninth book in the series. What do you enjoy about writing these books, and what keeps you engaged after spending so many years with Hal Spacejock and Clunk the robot?

They’re a fantastic comedy duo (trio, if you include the Navcom). When the three of them get together, scenes just write themselves.

But honestly, I can’t seem to avoid these characters. I managed to work Clunk into my new fantasy trilogy, and all of my novels are interconnected somehow, even the middle-grade titles.
 

 
How to Write a Novel contains a section on facing fear. What’s your most important piece of advice to writers who are dealing with fear?

Most of us worry that our first novel will be a pile of unreadable rubbish. Well, I’m here to tell you … it probably will be! Mine certainly was, and not only that, it was only about ⅓ of a full length novel to boot.

Maybe the second novel is another pile of rubbish, but if you find a story to tell, and write about engaging characters facing interesting challenges, eventually it’ll come together.

Like anything, it takes practice.
 
 
What is yWriter, and why did you create it?

I was a short story writer to begin with, and I’d start writing at the beginning and keep typing until I had 2, 3, 4000 words. Then I’d type The End and start posting it off to markets.

When I started on a novel, with multiple plot lines and points of view, I got to about 20,000 words and it all became too much to handle. I knew I’d written a certain paragraph, but couldn’t find it.

As a computer programmer I deal with software code broken up into small, easy-to-handle chunks. I wanted the same thing for my novel writing, and so I designed yWriter to be more like a programmer’s tool than a document editor.
 
 
Some authors outline their novels ahead of time; others write into the dark. What approach do you use, and do you follow the same approach for each book?

Both, and no!

This is a sore point, because this year I’ve written 3 novels to strict outlines, and another 4 which I just wrote any old how. They all turned out fine, it was just a very different process.

So, with my latest I sat down and wrote a 5,000 word plot outline. It only covered the first ⅔ of the novel. And then, as I started on chapter one, Hal and Clunk kicked the entire outline to the kerb and went off on the adventure THEY wanted to have.
 
 
Tell us about the world’s deadliest paper plane!

Oh yes, true story. I made this acrobatic plane and threw it straight onto the neighbour’s roof. (This was in rural Spain.) They weren’t there, since it was a holiday home in the off-season, so I climbed up the stairs to this kind of rooftop patio, and I could see my plane further up the roof, on the tiles. I reached up to climb past this kind of metal wire fence, then froze. The ‘metal wire fence’ was the overhead high-voltage power lines, which were only about three feet above the roof!

Talk about shoddy building standards. They must have built the house under existing powerlines and just left them there.
 
 
Clunk, the robot in your Hal Spacejock series, also appears in your Robot vs. Dragons series, where you’ve stranded him on a planet that doesn’t have space travel. Why did you decide to create a new series that included Clunk, and has this created any challenges for you as the author–or any unexpected opportunities?

Earlier in 2018 I posted a joke cover for April Fools, the title of which was ‘A Game of Clunks’. There was a shield with a cog on it, and a joke about the robot ‘who couldn’t bend the knee, or anything else.’

The reaction was amazing, with people saying I HAD to write it. I was only 10,000 words in when I realised it had just become a dreaded trilogy. I mean, the books have FOURTEEN sub-plots and a cast of dozens. There was no way I was going to wrap that lot up in one novel.
 

 
What story (or stories) are you working on now, and what’s fun about what you’re writing?

Hal 9, Hal Junior 4 and 5, a three-book series featuring a rookie fighter pilot (scifi), and four adult comedy novels under a pen name. The fighter pilot appears in Hal 9, as an older character, which was a deliberate choice. I intended to include her as a cadet, but decided to make her a senior officer in Hal 9, and a cadet in the series. Same thing I did with the Harriet Walsh Peace Force books.

The variety is what makes it fun!

About Simon

Simon Haynes was born in England and grew up in Spain. His family moved to Australia when he was 16.

In addition to novels, Simon writes computer software. In fact, he writes computer software to help him write novels faster, which leaves him more time to improve his writing software. And write novels faster.

Between 2005 and 2012, Simon completed NaNoWriMo six times. He’s still recovering.

Simon’s goal is to write fifteen novels (quickly) before someone takes his keyboard away.

Update 2018: goal achieved and I still have my keyboard!

New goal: write thirty novels.

Find Simon

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads