GENREALITY

One key to having a great protagonist is their arc of change throughout the story.  As I’ve mentioned before, if you take your protagonist as she is at the beginning of the book and thrust her into the climactic scene, she should lose to the antagonist.  A key portion of the story is her growth into a person, that by the climactic scene can defeat the antagonist.

Change isn’t just thinking differently, but the 1st step of change is to think differently.  As a writer, though, you must show change, not just say change has occurred.

Change requires three things to happen . .
1. Moment of Enlightenment
2. Make a decision
3. Implement Sustained Action

Moment Of Enlightenment
The character experiences something they never experienced before.  Or they experience something they’ve experienced before, but it affects them differently than ever before for some reason.  The MOE is basically the classic ‘’light bulb going on’.  However, by itself, an MOE is not change, just a momentary awareness.  Denial often blocks MOEs.  Angers stops MOEs when it is actually an indicator of an MOE.  Bargaining dilutes MOEs.

Decision
Because of the Moment of Enlightenment, the character makes a decision.  Remember, it is not necessarily a good decision and often, in fiction, it appears to be a foolish or poor decision.  Was Frodo particularly smart to make the decision at Rivendell to continue as the Ring Bearer?

The character is then either:
Stuck with the decision (externally imposed change) or
Sticks with the decision (internally motivated change)

Still, by itself, a decision is not change, just a fleeting commitment.  Again, bargaining can dilute a decision.  And depression can cause a character to give up on a decision.

Sustained Action
Because of the decision, the character changes their behavior.  The changed behavior is sustained long enough to become habit.  As noted under profiling, most of what we do is habit.  Thus to change themselves, our character must change their habits.  In the military, this is called training.  Sustained action leads to change.

The Emotional Stages Of Change
(Also known as the editorial process)

These are the stages your character will go through as they walk the path of change:

Denial:  There is no problem and no need to change.  Things are fine the way they are.

Anger:  How dare someone say I need to change?  Maybe you need to change.

Bargaining:  Okay, maybe I need to change some, but not as much as you seem to think I do.

Depression:  Crap.  Yes, I really need to change.

Acceptance:  I’ve changed.  Acceptance is not easy—the character’s reality has changed.

How Do We Know When A Character Has Changed?
We see it. They act differently.

1.     The Verdict Moment of Enlightenment.  Paul Newman is a down and out lawyer who is just supposed to settle the only case he has.  He’s on his way to the settlement meeting with the archdiocese and stops to take some photos of his “client”.  It’s the first time he’s ever seen her, since the sister actually hired him for the case.

http://www.whodareswinspublishing.com/Char_5_%20Verdict_MOE.html

2.     The Verdict Decision.

http://www.whodareswinspublishing.com/Char_6_%20VerdictDecision.html

Showing change: Early in the movie Charlotte Rampling meets Paul Newman in a bar.  They become lovers.  Unknown to him, she is working for the other side. At the end of the movie, this is the resolution.

http://www.whodareswinspublishing.com/12VerdictResolution.html

Do we see how he is different through action, or rather, lack of an action?

Do you have arc to your protagonist?  How is she going to change?

I’m going to pick up the interview right were I left off from the post two weeks ago. I will post the last part of the interview in two weeks.

Randy: Tell me more about Who Dares Wins.

Bob: We started it to get my backlist out in eBook and POD. Once we went through our learning curve, we realized we could expand and have slowly been doing that.  Taking on other writers.

Randy: How does your acquisition process work?

Bob: Right now, it’s mainly authors who have rights to their backlist. Most authors think they can do it themselves, but it’s not as easy as it appears.

Randy: No kidding. There is a learning curve on the formatting of an e-book. And most e-books need cover art because they can’t use their old covers from the original book.

Bob: And we’ve done a book that needed to be out right away on social media for writers.  A traditional publisher would have taken a year to get it out, which would have made it obsolete. Cover art requires an expensive program and expertise.  Has to pop in thumbnail.

Randy: Meaning that a 100 x 150 pixel cover is a whole different game from a 600 x 900 pixel cover.

Bob: Yes.  Simple is better.  Contrast is important.

Randy: But on the plus side, the cover will appear in RGB format, not CMYK. Which means that certain colors that simply can’t be done on a paper cover will work on electronic media.

Bob: We just did a blog on cover art and some things we learned.  We’re still learning. Also there are six different eBook formats right now, so that’s a lot of work.

Randy: Do you automate the process of putting out all the formats? SmashWords uses their “meat grinder” technology to produce them all from one Word file.

Bob: Right now, the other half of my company, Jen Talty, does all that.

Randy:  The 70% Amazon royalty is huge for authors. That makes the game reasonable.

Bob: What no one talks about is 100% royalty.

Randy: Meaning?

Bob: We’ve formatted all our books for the various devices. When someone buys an eBook directly from our web site, we don’t have a middle man.

Randy: Right, but you still have credit card charges, which amount to about 14% of the price on a $2.99 book. Roughly.

Bob: We use Paypal right now, and I think their % is under 5%.  And we’re uploading a new web site this week that will take credit cards directly and allow people to store their information securely on the site.

Randy: It is, but they also charge a $.30 base fee, which is about 10% on a $2.99 book. Both PayPal and credit card charges work out about the same, when all is said and done. I love PayPal, by the way. But on small ticket sales, there’s a hefty fee as a percentage of the sale.

Bob: Yes.  Still, a 90% royalty is very nice.

Randy: Yes, it’s much better than 8% from a major publisher. Which gets paid 9 months after the purchase. With a percentage held back for fear of returns.

Bob: Yes.  I earn more in one month from a book we publish than six months from my traditional royalties.

Randy: I’m not surprised. Speaking of returns, do you think the industry is going to change the return policy in the future? I’m astonished that it’s still in place.

Bob: Yes.  Because Print On Demand is the future.  Once the price point on the Espresso Machine gets low enough, they’ll be no more shipping of books to bookstores.  They’ll be printed right there. We use POD to supplement our eBook sales.  We find that for non-fiction, readers often want the physical book.

Randy: I agree. For fiction, I always get the e-book now. But for nonfiction reference books, I still like paper. You don’t think brick and mortar bookstores will die, do you?

Bob: Sadly, I think brick and mortars will die.  They already are.  Unless they specialize.  Do what Starbucks is doing. The trend is to go local.  Local authors, local books.  Hold more events.  Use the Espresso Machine as an income source by letting people print their own books right there.

Randy: But local has the disadvantage that it doesn’t scale. An author can only be in one place at a time. Whereas the web never sleeps.

Bob: True.  And with social media an author has a much greater reach than ever before. I think it’s an exciting time to be an author.

Randy: It’s a GREAT time to be an author. You’ve got a book out on social media correct? By one of your authors?

Bob: We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media by Kristen Lamb.  What’s key about her book is she focuses on content BEFORE worrying about getting on social media.  Most authors are using social media poorly without a plan. For example, authors using their book cover or their pet as an avatar is wrong.  Unless they’re only going to write one book or sell their pet.

Randy: A lot of authors try to just promote themselves, rather than promoting ideas.  Content is still king.

Bob: Content is King.  But I’ve had to accept promotion is Queen.

Randy: Promotion is a whole lot easier when there’s content to back it up.

Bob: Most writers hate promoting.  Author is INFJ on Myers-Briggs.  Exact opposite, ESTP is promoter.

Randy: Right, I’m an INTP myself. So maybe I’m a half and half.

Bob: Yes.  Always have to have great content.

Randy: One thing established authors have is name recognition. Like David Morrell, one of my favorite thriller writers.

Bob: Yes.  Being a Brand. Morrell just bypassed traditional publishing.

Randy: Right, and I bet he’ll do extremely well.

Bob: He will.  Along with his backlist.

Randy: That’s one thing people don’t talk about much with e-books, but it’s huge — backlist. When you discover a new author and he has a big backlist, you can get it all. Instantly.

Bob: I’ve got 18 titles from my backlist up and it’s great to watch the money roll in.

Randy: I just started reading Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. I started with Book 15.

Bob: His first book, Killing Floor, is classic.

Randy: Then I went back to Book 1 and started buying the whole series. That’s a whole lot easier to do with e-books than with p-books.

Bob: Yes — people who read eBooks buy more books. That’s a glimmer of hope if publishers will embrace it. But they haven’t yet.

Randy: E-books are always in stock and they’re available at 3 AM on a Saturday night in Ulan Bator.

Bob: And they tend to be impulse buys.

This is a good place to take a break.  The final post will be in two weeks.

Character Templates:

Instead of inventing from scratch or using people you know, you can use templates that professionals have developed.  There are three ones I suggest considering:   Profiling; Archetypes; Myers-Briggs.

Profiling: Was invented by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit to track serial killers.  They went and interview every living serial killer in jail and recorded their traits and started seeing patterns.  I book I recommend is  John Douglas’s MINDHUNTER where he describes how they did this.

The key is that you can profile anyone, including your characters, particularly your protagonist and antagonist.  Remember, 99% of what people do is habit.  Now habit can be very boring and you rarely put it in the book (ever notice the day to day things that characters never seem to do in a novel?).  But by knowing your characters’ profile, you can begin to predict their behavior so they’ll act ‘naturally’.  Habits are behavior patterns.

Profilers examine results and work backward, much like an author might want characters to do certain things, so we see what results we want, and develop a character that will give us those results.  This is one way to develop characters, especially if you are writing a story where the plot might be bigger than the characters such as a thriller.

Some things you might play with: What is your protagonist’s profile for a normal day?  What is your antagonist’s profile for a norm day?

Archetypes– Gender Differences

I find archetypes useful for looking at gender differences.  The same types of person are listed side by side, but notice how they have different labels.  There is a difference between men and women and you can use this to your advantage as a writer.

Female                        Male

Boss                                    Chief

Seductress                        Bad boy

Spunky kid                        Best friend

Free spirit                        Charmer

Waif                                    Lost soul

Librarian                        Professor

Crusader                        Swashbuckler

Nurturer                        Warrior

Myers-Briggs

Many of you have probably taken the Myers-Briggs.  It was developed in 1943 during World War II when there was a need to slot people in certain jobs that fit them.  It’s not a test, but an indicator, so there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ labels.

There are four areas, with two possible orientations to each, equaling 16 character ‘types’.  So this gives you a broad range of characters to put in your novel.

Area One:

Block A                                                                        Block B

Act first, think later?                                                Think first, then act?

Feel deprived if cut off from                         Require time to get energized?

interacting with the outside world?

Tend to be motivated by the                         Tend to be internally motivated?

outside world?

Get energized by groups?                                    Groups drain your energy?

Area Two:

Block A                                                                        Block B

Mentally live in the now?                                    Mentally live in the future?

Use common sense for                                     Use imagination innovative solutions?

practical solutions?

Your memory focuses on detail                         Your memory focuses on patterns and context?                                                                                                and facts?

Don’t like guessing?                                                Comfortable with guessing?

Area Three

Block A                                                                        Block B

Search for facts when making             Focus on feelings when making a decision?

a decision?

Notice work to be accomplished?            Focus on people’s needs?

Tend to provide an objective                         Seek consensus and popular opinions?

analysis?

Believe conflict is normal part                         Dislike conflict and avoid it?

of relationships?

Area Four

Block A                                                                        Block B

Plan detail before taking action?                        Are comfortable moving into action without a plan?

Focus on tasks and complete                         Like to multitask & can mix work with play?

them in order?

Keep ahead of deadlines to avoid             Work best closer to deadlines?

stress and work optimally?

Field marshallSet targets, dates?            Avoid commitments that might interfere with your freedom?

RESULTS

1A= Extrovert (E)                                                1B= Introvert (I)

2A= Sensing (S)                                                            2B= intuition (N)

3A= Thinking T)                                                3C= Feeling (F)

4A= Judging (J)                                                            4B= Perceiving (P)

Myers-Brigs Types

INTP= Architect                                    ESJF= Seller

ENTP= Inventor                                    ISFJ= Convservator

INTJ= Scientist                                    ESFP= Entertainer

ENTJ= Field Marshall                        ISFP= Artist

INFP= Questor                                    ESTJ= Administrator

ENFP= Journalist                        ISTJ= Trustee

INFJ= Author                                    ESTP= Promoter

ENJF= Pedagogue                        ISTP= Artisan

Extroversion vs. Introversion: This is how we view the world.

Extroverts are social.  Introverts are territorial.

Extroverts prefer breadth and a wide variety of personal communications.  Introverts prefer depth and one on one.

Extroverts tend to be externally motivated.  Introverts tend to be internally motivated.

75% Extroverts 25% Introverts.

Intuition vs. Sensation: Innovative vs. Practical.

This is how we think.                        This is the greatest source of misunderstanding between people.

25% Intuitive   75% Sensation

Thinking vs. Feeling: The thinking part of our brain analyzes and decides in a detached manner.

The feeling part of our brain analyzes and decides in an attached manner.

Impersonal vs. personal.

This is how we make decision and act.                        Logic vs. emotion.

50% Thinking  50% Feeling but . . .More men are Thinking and more women are Feeling.

Judging vs. Perceiving. Closure vs. Open-ended.

This is how we approach our endeavors.                                    Results or process?

50% Judging  50% Perceiving.

Looking at the above, what MB type is your protagonist?

Which is your antagonist?

How does this bring them into conflict?  What will they agree on?  What will they disagree on?

Also, consider what MB Type you are?  This is something I get into in Warrior Writer as an author must understand what they’re capable of, and more importantly, what they aren’t capable of.

I had a Skype conversation with Randy Ingermanson. Randy earned a Ph.D. in physics at U.C. Berkeley and is the author of six award winning novels and one non-fiction book. He publishes the world largest electronic magazine on the craft of writing fiction and the FREE monthly Advance Fiction Writing E-zine. The interview is long, so I broke it up into sections. Here is the first portion of the interview.

A dialogue on publishing between Randy Ingermanson and Bob Mayer

Randy: Our subject for today is “New Directions in Publishing”. This is wide open, of course. Nobody has any clue what’s going on. Except the few people who do, and nobody knows who they are.

Bob: Reality is going in a new direction — I’m not sure publishers are. My take is it’s pretty much business as usual in NY.  But the retail end is changing, which means they have to change or die.

Randy: It looks like the wheels are coming off of the publishing industry. What’s the current status of the business, as you see it?

Bob: Confusion and fear.  Traditional publishers want to hold on to the hardcover and mass market paperback.  They say that eBook sales are 10%.  If true, that’s a 300% increase from the beginning of this year.  I think they’re ‘juking the stats’ because every author I talk to says their eBook sales as reported on royalty statements are 40-60% of total sales. The immediate effect is that publishers are dumping their midlist and going with the 10% of their authors who make 90% of the profit.

Randy: Which means that a lot of midlist authors are suddenly finding things a tough go. And they don’t have any idea what to do next.

Bob: To an extent.  If the author is established, they have more opportunities than ever before.

Randy: What I see are two groups of midlisters: Those who say, “Oh no, the sky is falling!” and …

Bob: And those who see opportunity! The Big 6 held a stranglehold on distribution.  That’s no longer true.

Randy: Talk to me more about the Big 6. What’s been their market share in past years? And how is that changing?

Bob: The Big 6 Publishers control 95% of print publishing. Starting in 1995, the print business began contracting. The decline of the book chains is the biggest problem for traditional publishers.  Borders will soon be gone.  I believe Barnes and Noble won’t be far behind.  This means the selling of print books will fall more and more to places like Target and Walmart (besides the growing digital market).  To me this means midlist authors are in an even worse bind than ever as far as print, because those places are only going to rack Brand Name authors.  We’re going to miss Barnes and Noble’s huge shelf spaces.  On the bright side, the eBook market is wide open. There are only 300 indie bookstores left and they’re dying off too.  10 years ago there were 4,000. 7 out of 10 books printed by the Big 6 lose money. 10% of their titles generate 90% of their revenue. Those two facts indicate a reality:  the focus for the Big 6 is going to be more and more on the Brand authors and less on midlist.  The problem is:  where are the next generation of Brand Name Authors going to come from?

Randy: Right. And my view is that they’re going to come out of the ranks of e-book authors who have an entrepreneurial spirit.

Bob: Right.  And the Big 6 will try to scoop up the successful ones.  Except their royalty rates for eBooks have to increase.  It’s a Catch-22.  If someone is succeeding on their own, why give up 70% royalty for 25% of 70%?

Randy: Exactly. An author would be crazy to do that. I have a theory that authors will e-publish themselves at 70% royalties and then hold onto the e-rights when they sign contracts for p-books with publishers.

Bob: Publishers won’t go for that.

Randy: Publishers will hate the idea. So there’s going to be a period of war before things settle out. But the authors actually hold more power than they imagine.

Bob: The overhead for the Big 6 operating out of the Big Apple is way too high.  Heck, even Who Dares Wins Publishing, which we started up this year and operates out of my office in WA and Jennifer Talty’s office in NY, has overhead.  We could never operate brick and mortar out of a NY office.  So that’s something that’s going to have to be addressed.  I see further major contractions occurring in NY and more out-sourcing of jobs to people digitally.  The acquiring editors will still be in NY with the agents, but a lot of the other parts are going to be out-sourced. We control content. Readers buy content. Everyone else needs to either help connect the two or they’ll fail.

Randy: Right, and with e-books, we can control our distribution to an extent. Do you think publishers are going to lower prices on retail copies of e-books?

Bob: They have to.  They can’t right now because their overhead is too high.  So they’re in a crunch.

Randy: Which is why they’re going to continue shedding people. An author can self-pub on Amazon and do fine at a $2.99 price point. Can a major publisher survive at that price point?

Bob: Actually, what Wylie tried to do, may be the future. Random House blacklisting him, told me how scared publishers are. Agents are going to start wondering why they need publishers too.  Since they are essentially the quality control for the Big 6.

Randy: That raises another issue — the future of agents. Some people think that agents are becoming superfluous. But I’m not so sure.

Bob: I think they could become more important if they change. I see agents sort of merging with smart publishers.

Randy: Agents have been reading the publishers’ slush pile for years. What else will they do in the future?

Bob: They’ll become publishers.  Screen the slush, pick the books they think can make it, then outsource all the editing, uploading, covers, etc.

Randy: An agent is intrinsically a much lighter and more nimble business than a publisher. So they can do that. And authors can be nimble too. But it could make traditional publishers obsolete. The big corporations with big buildings.

Bob: Yes.  We’ve changed our business model at Who Dares Wins six times in just this past year.  A large corporation can’t do that. Agents can.

This is a good place to break up the interview. In two weeks I’ll post part two.

Beyond the two main characters, protagonist and antagonist, we can break the rest of the cast down into two main groups:  Supporting characters and spear-carriers.

Supporting characters are ones you give names to.  They are usually characters who recur throughout the story, not just someone who pops in for one scene and disappears.  When a reader gets a character name, they file it, expecting to meet that person again.

How many names can readers remember?  You should keep a master list of all named character and see how extensive it is.

Names are very important.  You have to decide if you are going to use a character’s first name, last name, title (i.e. the doctor, the captain, etc.), or nickname.  In your prose use only one name for the same character or else you will confuse the reader.

How does a person get a “handle?”  You have the name you were born with.  Michael Jay Porter.  Then you have what you call yourself.  Mike.  Then you have what others call you (with or without your liking it.):  Mikey, Jay, Port, Bud, Skinny, etc.  Then you have your title:  Captain, Vice President for Operations, the butcher.

I saw a great carton from the Far Side once.  It had on the top:  “What we call dogs:  Fido.”  On the bottom it had what dogs call themselves:  “I am Fido, terrorizer of the neighborhood, sniffer of trees, master of all that I see.”  Get the idea?

You should try to stick with one name for each character.  Above I mentioned the number of names/titles each of us has.  But if you start using all those various names interchangeably throughout a manuscript you can confuse the reader.  If you alternate using first name/last name for your characters you are doubling the number of names the reader has to remember.  Try to pick one name and stick with it as much as possible.  Of course there will be times then other name/title comes in, such as in dialogue, but in your prose make it as easy on the reader as you can.

Given the above, how do you pick names for your characters?  The phone book is helpful.  Go to the library and wander the stacks and look at author’s names.  High school and college yearbooks.

You do need to consider that the name fits the character.  Many names denote ethnicity.  Think about detectives– don’t they all have hard sounding names like Magnum PI?  That is done deliberately to affect you subconsciously.  When we were born, our parents didn’t know we were going to grow up to be hitman so they didn’t sit and think of a name that would be a hitman, but in your novel, you know who and what your character is, so you can slant the name to fit the person.

Make sure two characters don’t have similar names.  I try to avoid even have names that start with the same letter.  Unless, of course, you did it deliberately, as Tolkien did with Saruman and Sauron.  Given Saruman was the shadow of Sauron, it makes sense.

Spear-carriers are those people who stand on the back of the stage in an opera holding spears.  They don’t have names.  To identify spear-carriers who won’t be re-appearing, use something like:  the redhead; the taxi driver; etc.

What do your characters look like?  You may know, but you will be surprised how many times characters are never really described to the reader.  I felt very stupid when I finished a 450 page manuscript and handed it to someone to read and when they finished, they gave it back and said:  “Very interesting, but what did your main character look like?”

It is important to describe characters as soon as possible; if you are going to do it at all.  If you don’t, the reader will formulate their own vision of the character and then you can jar them three chapters down the line when you finally get around to describing the character and it doesn’t fit the reader’s mental vision.

Try to describe characters in such a way that something about each one should stick in the reader’s mind.  This gets more important, the greater the number of characters you have.

Sometimes, authors choose not to describe their characters because they want the reader to think of ‘every man’ or ‘every woman’ when they think of each character.  That’s fine as long as there is a purpose to it.

Good characters should be:

1.  Heroic:  They struggle to meet every day challenges or extreme challenges.  Either way they show courage and dignity in their battle.  They don’t have to be nice, but they do have to be good.  If you start with a negative character there must be a glimmer of hope the reader can discern that they could change for the better.

2.  Believable:  Give them strengths and weaknesses.  Often it is the latter that readers identify with more.  And you must give consistent evidence of these traits, not just show it once.

3.  Sympathetic:  Readers like characters who make things happen; who actively respond to the world around them instead of constantly reacting.  Readers don’t particularly care for victims unless they have the sense the victim will rise up and conquer.  You truly get to know someone by how they react in a crisis– in the same manner, characters grab our attention when they face a crisis.  Also remember that opposing external traits cause inner conflict.

4.  Memorable.  Think back about your favorite book and what do you remember?  The characters.

So what else do you need to know about a character (I will stay with the female here, no discrimination intended)?  The absolute most important thing you have to know about your character is:  what is her motivation?  Then you also need:

1.  What does she look like?  How does she talk?  How does she act physically?  Any mannerisms?

2.  What is her background?   Where was she born?  What were her parents like?  How was she raised?  Where did she go to school?  What level education?

3.  What is her job?  What special skills does her job require and how will they affect her role in the story?  What about hobbies and talents learned from them?

4.  What is her family?  Husband?  Her relation to him?  Children?  Relation?  Why not kids?  Divorced?  Why?  Why not?

5.  Where is she from?  Did she grow up in a city or on a farm?

6.  Did she have a significant event in her past that shaped her?

Some other aspects of a character to keep in mind:

-movement-dress-attitude-gestures-manner-culture-context-class-values

and beliefs-needs

-motives-dreams-fears-stressors

-1st family, which is the family of origin

-2d family, which is the present family

The list could go on and on.  I highly recommend putting some brainwork into your characters before writing your first page and not make it up as you go along.  In Duty, Honor, Country a Novel of West Point & the Civil War, I spent an entire month inventing two fictional families and getting to know every character in those families and affiliated with them.