So I’m mid-stream of editing my second novel and I realize all the ‘tricks’ I’ve learned over the years come from two places: ThrillerFest writing coaches and a book I purchased about 6 years ago – Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King.
If you can’t attend a high-profile conference in NY like ThrillerFest, a good second place would be to look through this book. It helped me immensely. Renni Brown also started a business called “The Editorial Department” or TED for short. They provide a wide-array of editing services and all other types of author support services like book design and marketing help. It’s been around since 1980, so it is not a run-of-the-mill editing service. It’s an establishment.
I’ve personally used their editing service in the past.
But if you’re stuck with a piece of writing that just doesn’t feel right, or your critique group is just faking a smile when they hand it back to you, check out this little book for help. It’s a great value for the money.
Heck, I’m still getting my money’s worth years later.
Check it out:
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Posted: October 27, 2014 in WritingTags: Dave King, New York City, Renni Brown, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, ThrillerFest
How do people get new ideas?
Posted: October 24, 2014 in Life, WritingTags: government, Isaac Asimov, missile defense
I found this article that posted a previously unpublished document written by the late but prolific Isaac Asimov. I am a huge fan of his writing. It was revived by an old friend of his that found it stashed away.
Apparently the post WWII U.S. government put together a think tank to put together out-of-the-box ideas for a missile defense program. Isaac was offered a seat, but ultimately declined because it had the potential to curtail certain things he could write about in the future.
But like the ‘Breakfast Club’, he wrote a letter concerning his thoughts about the subject. It has more to do with how one thinks outside the box than any specific idea.
If you’re a fan, it’s certainly worth checking out:
How do people get new ideas?
The sensation of not being able to turn away
Posted: October 23, 2014 in LifeTags: car crash, flames, haunted, intrigued
I’ll probably get chastised for posting this video, but it really haunts and intrigues me. Driving home from work one night, I saw this enormous ball of fire on the road. Something told me to get out my phone and video it. As I drive towards it, I finally realize it’s a couple of cars, smashed together burning intently. I never do this. I never film things like this. But something made me.
I get closer and closer and we’re all driving around it cautiously. The fire is intense. For some reason I was not able to turn away. I had to see what happened. As I approached the car, I’m two lanes over. The heat is coming right through my window. It negated my air conditioning in a flash.
And then, just when I come up along side it, something tells me to put my phone down. Unconsciously I oblige and then witness a sight that sticks with me almost every day. There’s a body in the car, on the passenger side. Belted in. It’s moving back and forth. There’s no way someone could still be alive in there. It had to be moving from the heat. But I swear I saw it clawing at the seat belt, rocking back and forth. Horns beeped behind me breaking me from the trance. I drive on.
I was certainly haunted by seeing such a gruesome sight. And yet I’m so intrigued as to why I felt I had to film it, and then stop at a particular time. I’m not a religious person, but it certainly felt like something outside the norm.
One person in that crash died that day. Traffic had them at a stop when another driver, not paying attention to the road, crashed into them with such a force the car burst into flames. The cars were interlocked and wouldn’t separate. The flames rose quickly and three out of four passengers were able to escape. But the fourth did not. The fourth one died while I watched.
I remind myself, ‘nothing bad every happens to a writer, it’s all material’. Great adage, but somehow doesn’t replace the sick feeling of not being able to turn away from human peril.
What Americans fear most
Posted: October 22, 2014 in WritingTags: conspiracy, fear, Government surveillance, Science Daily
To keep on the subject of translating scientific study or advancements for the backdrop of a good novel, I found this article in Science Daily about what Americans fear most.
Granted the survey was done with a small population of 1,500 people, but it can still add to the effect of your story if you’re touching on one of the many fear factors posted in the link.
I honestly thought there’d be a little more conspiracy fear at the top. Instead the lonely ‘fear of Government surveillance’ made one of the lists.
Do you concur with any of the items on the list?
Clinical death…
Posted: October 16, 2014 in WritingTags: clinical death, near death experience, Science Daily
I tapped into a few articles from Science Daily and wondered what kind of stories I could twist them into.
In one article (dated about a year ago, but still pertinent), researchers found high levels of brain activity during the early stages of clinical death. This was in parallel to the “near death experiences” we’ve all read or heard about. But what if we found that this activity was sort of like the shutting down of a computer. It had to clean up a few processes and make itself ready for the next phase. And most especially, we don’t know what that phase is. But we do know that those people whose brains don’t get to shut down properly don’t go there. How sad that would be. So sad in fact that death by head trauma or anything that causes the brain not to finish its shutdown becomes the worst criminal offense. Laws are changed. Society is changed. Why? Because it’s one thing to take a person’s life, but another to kill them forever…
Here are two articles I read that helped lean me into this story idea.
Check ’em out: Electrical signatures of consciousness in the dying brain
Near-death experiences? Results of the world’s largest medical study of the human mind and consciousness at time of death
How to write techno thrillers part 2
Posted: October 14, 2014 in WritingTags: Genetic Impulse, science, techno thriller
I’ve posted a sample of what I feel is a dramatic scene that demonstrates a bit more of a useable story for fiction writing than the National Geographic article. My idea was, what would it feel like to be this baby Australopithecus aferensis? And you sadly will never know that the early and tragic death you have to endure would open doorways for a species you’ve never seen. The fact the A. aferensis lived on this earth four times longer than any other bipedal human ancestral species on this planet amazed me. So I had to find an angle that made the death of this innocent baby an important to me and my story.
So please read both. The writing in the National Geographic article is superb. The prologue I wrote makes my skin tighten just a little by the time I’ve finished reading it. Maybe it’s because I have kids of my own. I don’t know.
But it’s certainly a good way to put strong fiction into a techno thriller from yet-another-science article about something interesting.
Check out my prologue:
Genetic Impulse Prologue
How to write techno thrillers
Posted: October 13, 2014 in WritingTags: Dikika, Genetic Impulse, National Geographic, science, techno thriller
Okay. So I’ve posted a few science specific articles. Some of you may like them, some may not. Some may be a bit bewildered how I can get so excited over this stuff and how you turn it into writing.
That’s cool. I get that. So I want to show you. I’ve posted a link below to an article I read a dozen times. I love it. So interesting it captures me fully. What I want to do is let you follow the link to National Geographic’s website and check it out. Again, some may find it interesting and some may not.
What I’m going to do is post a prologue I wrote a few years ago for my first novel, Genetic Impulse, and show you how you can use these types of science articles to craft great content for your book.
For the most part, you could probably get away with reading the first paragraph, but there are certainly some details you don’t want to miss. I’ll post the prologue shortly. I want to make a few touches it to it because I wrote this a couple of years ago and my writing is better now. So it’s hard not to do a little editing to save my sanity.
Check out the article:
National Geographic’s article on Dikika
Let’s get invisible – for real!
Posted: October 9, 2014 in Science and TechnologyTags: cloaking device, invisible, scientific, University of Rochester, writing
So how can I make parts of myself invisible with a do-it-yourself kit? Easy. Follow the link below. Researchers from the University of Rochester have made this trick simple. Perhaps they’ve just made some Magic secret public, but it sure is fascinating. It’s really a way of aligning several lenses to focus around an area and retrieve the background image unimpeded. But you have to see the pictures and video in the link. In this case the pictures and video are worth a thousand words.
Why do I share these scientific advances? Because in each one of them I find great uses for our writing. In this particular case, what if you built something like this to put in front of a security camera? Would it work? I don’t know for sure, but it would be an interesting and simple way to not be seen by the camera. You wouldn’t have to break into the facility and doctor the tape or put some loop in there to fool the ever-watchful guards.
It’s an easy way to make a cloaking device. I’m sure there are other, far more notorious ideas you could come up with on how to use a device like this. So think about it.
I like how these types of advances can be illuminated by our writing and get into the hands of those who not only like to read a good thriller, mystery or action novel, but actually pick up something on the way. And finding a way to turn invisible? Very cool.
Check it out:
Cloaking device
The Majorana Particle
Posted: October 8, 2014 in Science and TechnologyTags: ettore majorana, quantum computing, science, technology, the majorana particle
I need share with you another side of me. I’m a closet nerd. Well, maybe not closet anymore. I write about science and technology and I’m a senior software engineer in the healthcare industry. So another one of the categories I’ve created to write under is the ‘Science and Technology’ list.
This news caught my eye. Quick aside – when people ask me about what I do when I have writer’s block, I scoff. Writer’s block? With so many new and fantastic scientific discoveries taking place daily, there’s so much to write about, how can you be stifled?
I read about the discovery of the Majorana Particle. This is a particle that is matter and it’s also its own antimatter. How neat is that? The implications are staggering. Like neutrino’s, they barely interact with matter. Neutrino’s pass through the earth all the time because they can. But something that is a little more in between can be controllable. Which is something we humans like.
The Majorana Particle may help in finalizing the quantum computing puzzle. Partly because we could potentially control it.
Yeah, I’m a little scattered in this post because I’m just too excited about this.
Think of possible stories you could build around the discovery, or better yet, if you were the scientist who figured out how to control them. Would you quickly be surrounded by good guys or bad guys? Or a little of both?
But read the article first. Get your own takeaway from what it says.
And most of all, love the science! If we don’t embrace it, the bad guys will….
Check it out:
The Majorana Particle
Robert Dugoni – Creating Plots For Page Turners
Posted: October 7, 2014 in WritingTags: My Sister's Grave, Robert Dugoni, ThrillerFest
This was unexpected. I attended all of Robert Dugoni’s lectures at ThrillerFest 2014. He’s such an amplified and charismatic speaker, that he typically wonders away from the mic and “does his thing”. I took a copious amount of notes during his classes. I’m still going through them. And amazingly, I was able to find the audio CD of one of his lectures. I’m about to order it because everything he said in that class charged lightbulbs in my head. In fact, after this class, I ran up to my room and worked on my own manuscript. There were new things to look for, new things to make it stronger. This is one not to miss.
Check it out:
Robert Dugoni – Creating Plots For Page Turners
And don’t forget – his newest novel, My Sister’s Grave comes out in a few weeks.
Page link: My Sister’s Grave.
It’s a good time to advance order your copy. I certainly will.
Just because we’re authors doesn’t mean we’re not fans too. I have a suitcase of authors I love to read 🙂
Joseph "Peppi" Vecchio 