Ripped From the Headlines - About Self PublishingReal Authors Self Publish
Self publishing is becoming respectable even for "big name" authors. As reported today by M. J. Rose of the Huffington Post.
"In the book world today is news that a traditional NYT-bestselling novelist has turned down a half-million-dollar deal to self-publish. Barry Eisler's going to get a lot of ink.
"That Barry is self-publishing isn't the news. Mark Twain did it. Benjamin Franklin did it. So did D.H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, George Orwell, Anais Nin and Sylvia Plath. Just to name a few.
"What's news is that he's turned down a big traditional deal to do it, focusing on the ebook market and its promise." This is just another sign of many that the traditional publishing industry is loosing its death grip on writers. But despite the steady implosion of the traditional book publishing and distribution industries the big wigs still don't get it. When mass distribution and sales of a book were necessary to cover the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to print, bind and distribute books - traditional publishers had a purpose.
But in this new digital age traditional publishers can no longer justify their existence. They have long been irrelevant to the book buying public and now writers are finally waking up to the fact that they no longer need them either. The King is dead. Long the new King. You can read the rest of the Huffington Post article here.
World Building for SF writers
A very handy chart for SF writers when "world building". Organizational Chart:
Division -1 Art The above is the minimum organizational structure of a community, city, state, nation and/or civilization. The civilization must have a Valuable Final Product, Statistic and Ideal Scene and the activities of each community, city, state, and nation must align with those objectives.
Each Division needs a Valuable Final Product, Statistic and Ideal Scene which aligns with and contributes to the whole. The Organization as whole and Each Division has an Existing Scene. The difference between the Ideal and the Existing Scenes as well as miss alignments between Divisions will be the source of conflicts between characters and the driving force for the "plot" of your story. There are, of course, other applications for this Organizational Chart.
Story Structure
Once the writer works his way through the "Story Conception" process where he figures out the; premise, logline, story statement and synopsis of the story, he's ready to move into the "Story Design" process. The last step of which is to work out the Story Structure. By the way - all of this is done before you start "Story Composition" which is what most people refer to as "writing". Understanding good Story Structure is critical but very poorly understood and virtually untaught. Some people (like this Hollywood director that I know) actually gets very upset at the mere mention of Story Structure. But Structure is what defines a story. Stories are not just a wandering sequence of unrelated stuff that happens and then somehow ends. Obviously there must be some sort of structure; some logical sequence, some rational progression, from the opening to the conclusion. But the nomenclature of the subject has become so confused and clouded with false ideas that aspiring writers are left in the dark. Story Structure is no exception.
For example: We are told that there are 3-Act and 1-Act plays. However this is misleading. The 3-Act story structure actually consists of 5 movements not 3.
Great question! Because the difference is fundamental and critical to understanding Story Structure. If you don't know how to structure your story you'll have a mess. The correct answer is on the website (dictionaries have these two words so confused you'll never straighten them out). And you'll find a wealth of other equally important definitions of the fiction writer's nomenclature on that same website. Learn the words, study the subject, and
Write on... You can always write to me. Your comments and questions are always welcome and very much appreciated. Write on... Richard A. McCullough
"Be the change you want to see in the world." ~ Ghandi
Copyright 2010 - Richard A McCullough is the creator & editor of http://www.write-better-fiction.com the Fiction Writers source for Writing Better Fiction Faster and Selling More of What You Write. - Copyright: you may freely republish this article, provided the text, author credit, active links and this copyright notice remain intact.
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