#orsoitseems

[elizapdushku]

#457 The First Person from Or So It Seems by Duet Emmo, 1983 #duetemmo #thefirstperson #orsoitseems #bcgilbert #lewis #danielmiller #mute #musicilove #songaday #0613 https://www.instagram.com/p/CewxklDjwNP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brent-r-gordon]

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A little Norma Jean Wright Disco makes frozen desert traffic nuthin’ #normajeanwright #disco #ilikelove #springisforlovers #orsoitseems

[robblightfoot]

New Post has been published on Or So It Seems... (tm)

New Post has been published on http://www.robblightfoot.com/2014/02/14/wifi-headaches-orsoitseems-sfwc14/

#wifi headaches - #orsoitseems #sfwc14

@robblightfoot

Well… spent the past two hours getting wifi to work off my cell phone again. Something updated and loused up my connection. Love it when that happens… not. Don’t know what to expect in the hotel. I may not be able to connect quite like I’d hoped, so I may be posting at the end of the day rather than along the way. Oh, well.

Here’s a peek at the room I got just down the hill from the Mark Hopkins. Not bad, even has it’s own shower. Last year I had a European-stlye go-down-the-hallway-for-your-shower-and-toilet.

Got to get to bed. Got an early shift tomorrow.

Here’s the conference schedule.

https://sfwriters.org/the-2014-conference-schedule-overview/

[robblightfoot]

New Post has been published on Or So It Seems... (tm)

New Post has been published on http://www.robblightfoot.com/2014/02/14/sfwc14-arrived-late-but-safely-orsoitseems/

#sfwc14 - Arrived late... but safely #orsoitseems

@robblightfoot

Got to drive across the new Bay Bridge. Wasn’t impressed with the design, but it is pretty at night.

Entering SF at night on the new bridge

[robblightfoot]

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New Post has been published on http://www.robblightfoot.com/2014/02/13/happy-valentinesday-orsoitseems-humor/

Happy #Valentine'sDay - #orsoitseems #humor

#robblightfoot

http://anewscafe.com/2014/02/13/or-so-it-seems-an-old-romantic/

[robblightfoot]

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New Post has been published on http://www.robblightfoot.com/2014/02/09/mystery-writing-simon-woods-speaks-orsoitseems/

#Mystery #Writing - #Simon #Woods #Speaks - #orsoitseems

www.robblightfoot.com

#LIGHTFOOTZNOTES

Simon Wood, award winning mystery writer, spoke Saturday 2-8-14 in Redding at the Writer’s Forum. Here are my notes:

Simon Wood – lives in Northern California. He’s a licensed pilot, race car driver, has hiked, skied and surfed around the world.  He was a dyslexic teen with lots of ideas. Now he’s here to talk about the effective use of suspense and twists.

The topic is suspense and he gave us an article he wrote for Writer’s Digest a few years back. He noted that his engineering background lets him construct his work.

Suspense is needed in all genres, but it will vary a bit in your area.

Took him a while to answer the question “What is suspense?” Compared to mystery, it seems close, but they are distant cousins. In a mystery, you start off with a dead body and you don’t know what it is… only at the end do you find out. Suspense does it differently. You know up front what’s up… like James Bond finding a bomb at the outset. Suspense is proactive and mystery is reactive. E.g. A presidential assassination. In a mystery, the president would die in chapter 1. If it were a suspense story, it would be at the end that the assassination was attempted. It’s that kind of thing. The middle is the same crisis.

One you know this distinction, the rest is easier to follow. Mystery is always trying to hide something. You can be deceptive. With suspense, when you’re trying to create the conflict, you give some advance notice. Your hero will only see so much, and the villain is on a different path. Your reader becomes God. They see it all when the characters don’t. It’s like being a spectator on a hill seeing two trains on a collision course. The train engineers don’t see one another until the curve they both round.

He also gave an example of the last 10 minutes in the Space Shuttle, displayed after the explosion. They were unaware of what was going to happen, but you did. You can have knowledge that is excruciating. It could be a meaningless. In sabotage there was a bomb under the seat. You watch the bus, wondering. And Hitchcock will do it. He will “stick it to the reader.” The bomb blew up and killed everyone.

The other thing is time constraints. As in 24. You can use this in any kind of story. It can be romance or a thriller. You can make a job interview thrilling. You can have the car not start, lost the address, the traffic is crappy. All these will build suspense.

There’s the story that the Chinese are selling arms to Iraq. The ship is on the high seas it is under maritime law. Once it is three miles out it falls into territorial hours and can’t be boarded. The beat is the clock, in this case.

This is how time can be used.

There was a kidnap story told in 24 hours, which is the title of the story. The child is kidnapped, and then the parents are kidnapped separately and threatened. They are baby-sat by evil do-doers. This is no the end of the world. The effect is on this family.  If you can pack the conflict in this frame, that’s great.

He invited interruption.

The other thing is to have high stakes. They must matter to your characters. He tends not to use global events. He uses average people. Whatever is at stake must be the most important thing to YOUR characters.

So, whatever is at risk, you must shine a light on it and make it clear. It is better if the audience can relate. It’s better if your character is working under insurmountable odds. E.g. putting out a fire when you know nothing about it. Or, finding someone who will donate a kidney or whatever. It’s easier for the bad guy to do this. The villain can speed; your character is reluctant to do so.

It will seem like the hero has no chance. The villain has too much of a head start. The hero shouldn’t break–we can do that as the audience. But you want to be able to make them bend but not buckle. It needs to be a horrible experience that is making them stronger and better by the end.

The dilemma makes it even better. It’s the social, emotional or physical challenge that makes this horrible. The one that he likes is the Spiderman about 10 years ago, a crappy but a great example, when his girl is one car and a crowd of strangers in the other.  He wants to save both, but it’s the choice–a Sophie’s Choice.

The other thing is that this is not just one thing. It is the worst day of these people’s life. Raising money wasn’t enough. There was extra on top. In the book the girl was diabetic, and the kidnappers didn’t know this. The girl going into diabetic shock. So they had to navigate this problem–and the girl was in the care of a dim-witted guy. The other problem with the president is adopted, yet he is in a prison in China and the villains want him broken out.

This is like a boxing match. You have to think about what you’ll do for round two. It’s like keeping all those plates spinning.

This will make it more exciting and entertaining.

The other thing is that this should be unpredictable. Your story should not happen in a bubble. The problems must be more than just the kidnappers and the family. There’s a whole world out there. You bring in the world. You bring in the environment.

There’s a bomb-diffusing team that has a bomb diffusing team that is taking out a bomb when, in LA, there is a small earthquake that sets the bomb off.

When you see two people running down the street, the question is who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Who do you knock down? Life can T-bone them while things are going good and put the story in a totally different way.

Don’t think about this in the purest terms of what is your plot line.

Question: So when you lay out the plot, do you plan the insertions.

Yes. I have spreadsheets and maps all along the hall. But it also will occur as you write.

He likes to walk or cycle along the route looking at how to kill people or build suspense.

“It’s hard. You just can’t kill people the way you used to.” Finally, he came to Fort Mason and saw there were very few people around. So he had a bat with a cat sound on it. Then he climbed up a tree… and let off a shot sound. He saw people glance and just move on. He then knew he could have shot someone behind the three.

“I do always carry bail money.”

He says he does need to know how it works, and that’s the engineer in him.

For any conflict to work, you do need a new villain. With suspense you’re with the villain for as long as you’re with the hero. So, he’d better be bloody-well interesting. You can’t use a moustached cutout putting a damsel on the railroad track.

Remember that villains feel justified in their own minds. They have their reasons. You need to think that they are just as much a hero in their own head. You can see where they are coming from, even if you don’t agree with it.

Pacing – He tries to keep every scene the same length. Whether it is a romance beat.  Should all be the same word count? You may need to fix this in rewrite. The real fast-pace authors may have a 250 word scene length. In his work, it may be 1,000 words through much of it. Then, near the end, it will be down to 900 words. This emulates the psychology of how we get tunnel-vision. But he color-codes everything whether it is hero; sub-plot, bad guy, and he can see whether he’s mixed this stuff up.

So, if he has 100 scenes of 1,000 words. And he likes to color code. Half should be with hero, maybe 1/3 with villain, and the secondary and third-level characters will have a lot sell.

It gets hard and confusing to juggle this. It may still get past you, but if you have a clue as to where the story is going, you can write with a bit more confidence. This helps a lot.

For every good bad guy you must have a good hero. It can’t be an anemic person. He loves Batman as a hero. He’s mentally scarred. When you examine his life he should be in a home. Jack Barrow–a drug addict, got a tattoo, got electric shocks by the Chinese, his wife gets capped. He believes in protecting America and the Western world. This is fantastic. It can all have a great impact on your story to make it interesting.

Question: What about a series?

He is working on this, and his planning is 7-8 books. He has to know where it’s all going. In one, for example, he loses his house. This prompts changes. It releases him. In each book he gains something, and he loses something. He is changed.

He writes all this, including the titles. This impresses publishers. You don’t want to set there with a blank face when asked about your next book. That keeps you, too, from dropping a key fact in that should have been rolled out in book 1.

It’s tricky to have a series when you have a reader drop in on the 3rd book.

He did his back to front. He wanted to talk with different, people and scenarios.

He came to use a pen name because he was writing in many different genres. People get confused. People buy a book and expecting a particular experience. He wasn’t building an audience. He did it not to hide behind it, but to make it clear that it was going to be a different experience.

Question: Romance authors being asked to do three books. Is this true in suspense?

Answer: Yes, it is always “yes.” He wants to be prepared to do this if the opportunity arises.

He literally had a spare book written, and it sustained him when he had a bike accident as was laid up for a year.

He also said he had a cover with a Teddy Bear shot … there was nothing at all about this in the book. He still got Teddy Bear hate mail. It’s funny what people pick you on. He created a pier. There is no Pier 25 in SF, but no one has called him out on it. They will notice that the brand a character prefers changes with no explanation.

[robblightfoot]

New Post has been published on Or So It Seems... (tm)

New Post has been published on http://www.robblightfoot.com/2014/02/01/proofing-party-kindle-pdf/

Proofing Party #kindle #pdf

I’m looking for a dozen or so people to proof my latest book. I’m assigning chapters. So you need not read it all. I’ll give you mention in the book and an autographed copy if you wish. You can get a Kindle copy, too.

Contact me at [email protected] and I’ll get you a PDF.

[robblightfoot]

Proofing Party #kindle #pdf

Proofing Party #kindle #pdf

I’m looking for a dozen or so people to proof my latest book. I’m assigning chapters. So you need not read it all. I’ll give you mention in the book and an autographed copy if you wish. You can get a Kindle copy, too.

Contact me at [email protected]…

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