Writer Resources – The Red Pen of Doom

The Greatest Synopsis that Ever Lived

September 6, 2013August 3, 2021Posted in 4 Writing Secrets WednesdayTagged ALIEN, AOL, elves with lightsabers, Jedi, literary agents, Manhattan, oprah, publishing, queries, query letters, series of tubes, sins, Star Wars, Stephen King, synopsis, WordStar, Writer Resources, Writing10 Comments

Dear Agent Sir or Madam,

This is a follow-up to my querying letter about a million-word fictional novel trilogy. You can read that letter anywhere on the planet by firing up AOL and clicking on this World Wide Web thingy here: The Mother of All Query Letters.

Maybe you haven’t gotten to reading it yet, seeing how you’re busy selling my trilogy to Warner Brothers for one million dollars (I figure a dollar a word is fair). My niece Daisy has a library card and her nose in all kinds of books, not just Twilight, and when I told her about my fictional novel, she said I need to send every agent and editor in Manhattan a synopsis.

Now, “synopsis” sounded Latin and possibly dirty to me, so I asked whether that word involved sins, and Daisy said, “That’s a good way to look at it. List all the sins you commit in that book of yours.”

So here’s my list of the sinful things happening in each book of the trilogy, with each novel coming in at 333,333 and 1/3rd words apiece.

Book 1: I KNOW WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED, DARTH SAREK OF VULCAN

A grave-digger falls into a grave and hits his skull on a fat hunk of rock, then wakes up on an alien planet to find he’s six inches taller and half-ninja, half-Jedi, half-Vulcan.

First off, he’s bound for alien slavery on a pirate ship, and I believe slavery to be a sin, despite what Uncle Will says about the War of Northern Aggression.

Second, he kills bushels of aliens, and killing is a sin, though he does it to win his freedom from slavery, so I figure those sins cancel each other out.

Third, our hero does have relations outside of marriage with an alien princess or three, plus an android on a planet run by robots and an evil super-magneto computer made by Bill Gates himself after he bought up an entire Best Buy and started soldering stuff together.

Book 2: LOST IN SPACE AND TIME WITH A GREEN LASER SWORD AND A PURPLE ALIEN PRINCESS

The robot king and his super computer can plug you in, like that Matrix or that Tron video game they had at the 7-Eleven on third street until some pansy replaced it with Ms. Pac Man.

The robot king makes our hero think he’s waking up in that grave, and that nothing in the first book really happened, kinda like that season of Dallas before J.R. got shot and such, and let me tell you, I’d shoot that man myself with my grandpa’s Colt and proudly do whatever time a judge handed down with the bang of his mighty gavel.

Back to the story. After learning kung fu and how to bend more spoons than Yuri Geller, the hero busts out of the fake holodeck world of the robots and uses his laser sword to cut Bill Gates and his super-magneto computer clean in half. Murder is a sin, but he says his prayers and gets forgiveness from his maker while the aliens rejoice in their freedom and put him in charge of their army of spaceships and purple alien princesses.

Book 3: MASTER OF OUTER SPACE,INNER PEACE AND DESTROYER OF SUNS

There’s peace in the galaxy with the hero running things, so he studies his Jedi and his Vulcan to learn the secrets of immortality, raises generation after generation of his young ones with the purple alien princess who’s his queen, and teaches the purple alien army how to be kung fu ninjas — but a new threat arises.

See, suns are alive. That’s right — they’re born, they live, they evolve and they die, with new baby suns arising from the dusts of their supernova. And they see themselves as gods, seeing how they create all the elements in the universe and provide all the heat and light and such. They’re mad as tarnation and they’re not gonna take it one second longer.

I see this third book as a tale of redemption, seeing how the hero starts out committing all kinds of sins in books one and two. Now he’s married and living right, unlike my second cousin Nellie, who’s on her fourth divorce and odds are she’ll hit number seven before we wheel her into the Willapa Valley Nursing Home.

Back to this book: Our hero flies right up to the face of the biggest, maddest, meanest sun and finds a way to communicate, but the solar gods are hell-bent on war and destruction, and they start frying alien planets like eggs on a hot grill with a fine sheet of lard already melted on top.

As a last act of sacrifice at the age of 984, the hero mind-melds with the suns and hypnotizes them into calmness by bringing them into his memories and dreams, which lands himself into a coma for a spell until I figure out the next trilogy of 1 million words, which I figure has to involve the only thing bigger, badder and more amazing than killer suns: black holes with father issues not even Dr. Phil can solve.

So, that’s a full-on synopsis of the first trilogy, with book one attached as an encrypted WordStar document and also available on 5.25″ floppies. Though like I said in that querying letter, I’m running out of those floppies, so make it snappy.

Sincerely,

Sensei George Lucas King

P.S. This is my new pen name, guaranteeing my trilogy sits smack dab next to all those books by Stephen King while appealing to fans of Star Wars and all those kung fu movies, which I figure covers just about every man still breathing, then you got the alien princess love story thing for the women. To write me checks, you’ll need my full legal name, though I’d prefer cash on account of some trouble with the IRS that started in 1997.

The Mother of All Query Letters

August 30, 2013August 3, 2021Posted in 4 Writing Secrets WednesdayTagged elves with lightsabers, literary agents, oprah, publishing, queries, query letters, series of tubes, Writer Resources, Writing68 Comments

Dear Agent Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you, or your agency, to acquire literary representation in Manhattan, Hollywood, London and wherever else such deals are made to publish books and turn them into movies.

Why? Because my 333,333 1/3rd-word fictional novel (Book One of a 1 million-word trilogy) is guaranteed to be bigger than Star Wars crossed with Fifty Shades of Gray with Oprah and Brad Pitt on top, like two cherries on a chocolate sundae instead of the single little cherry they give you at Dairy Queen over on 15th Avenue because those cherries, let me tell you, they taste like rubber mixed with corn syrup.

Now, I know the book world establishment is liable to pigeonhole books, and a person could say I KNOW WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED, DARTH SAREK OF VULCAN is a mystery about an ordinary gravedigger who’s secretly a half-ninja, half-Vulcan, half Jedi and only finds this out on account of him falling into a freshly dug grave on a Saturday night and waking up in a strange world where he’s six inches taller, has pointed ears and a sweet green laser sword.

And I suppose you could say it’s a romantic comedy set in a sci-fi action universe, since this hero gets more action than James Bond himself judging one of them Miss Universe contests, but that would be selling this story short. Who doesn’t want to see ninja Jedi adventuring through space and time with laser swords and starship battles? Also, instead of green alien women, I’ve got purple and orange ones.

It’s got fighting, cussing, dark deeds, giant space battles with starships way out in outer space and new life forms with their own languages and strange ways of fighting, cussing and doing dark deeds.

As for reviews and such, all five of my cousins, my momma and even Grandma Wilma, who hasn’t read a book since she stopped reading Archie’s Digest back in 1963, well, they all say this story sounds like a sure-fire winner, the kind they’d pay full price to see at the drive-in, long as the weather held up.

The full fictional novel is attached as an encrypted WordStar document. It’s also available on 5.25″ floppy disks, and I’m running out of those, so act now. I’ll give the winning agent the password to read it. Also, I’m fixing to finish the screenplay for the first two books before Christmas, so the best agent should also sell a lot of of movies.

Some agents want a synopsis, but reading the story is a lot better than reading about the story, especially the parts after the hero falls into that grave and wakes up.

My cousin has one of those internet phones and says agents want to know about my publishing credits. So listen: I’ve been a professional gravedigger for 23 years and have published 983 stories all over that world wide web on http://www.blogger.com, keeping my site set to private because I don’t want people stealing my ideas. See? That’s how VALUABLE they are.

The only question is this: are you gonna hop on this money train or are you gonna let it pass on by?

Sincerely,

Stefan Kingsley

P.S. This here is my pen name, guaranteeing my trilogy sits smack dab next to all those books by Stephen King, who I figure from looking at his photos is older than Roy Rogers’ uncle by now and fixing to retire or die, whichever comes first. To write me checks, you’ll need my full legal name, though I’d prefer cash on account of some trouble with the IRS that started in 1997.

Banned substances for writers

March 6, 2013August 3, 2021Posted in 4 Writing Secrets WednesdayTagged Literature, Twitter, Writer Resources, Writing6 Comments

Click here to read the whole post at McSweeney’s here, because it is brilliant.

My personal favorites:

CAPOTEX — A vintage 1960s designer drug. Unlike most other banned literary substances, this drug is often used by fiction writers and non-fiction writers alike. Artificially increases prose style and sophistication. May cause speech patterns to be affected. Known to induce cutting, witty remarks in some test subjects. Long-term use can lead to literary irrelevance.

SPILLAGRA — Boosts literary testosterone levels. Known side effects include involvement with femme fatales, consumption of rye whiskey in dive bars, and over-reliance on colorful similes. If hard-boiled dialogue persists for over four hours, contact a doctor immediately.

ORWELLBUTRIN — Regulates and encourages the production of dystopamine in the brain. Developed as a means of social control, but now listed as a “doubleplus ungood” substance by the Ministry of Health. In rare cases, subjects may imagine that they can hear animals talking. Should only be taken after the clocks strike thirteen.

Why critique groups MUST DIE

May 5, 2012August 3, 2021Posted in 4 Writing Secrets WednesdayTagged Borg, critique groups, editing, Idaho, Michael Bay, Short story, Subaru, Writer, Writer Resources, Writing63 Comments

Every writer gets the notion — from college, from movies, from the Series of Tubes — that they should be in a critique group.

This notion is seven separate types of wrong.

It’s time for critique groups to go the way of the rotary phone — to make way for something better, faster and stronger.

Peoples of the interwebs: critique groups are obsolete

A critique group is useful for certain things:

(a) university professors who want students to break into groups and leave him alone for the next 45 minutes,

(b) writers who really, really like to read their work aloud,

(d) happy writers who like to socialize with fellow writers and talk smack about the craft while drinking bourbon.

Sidenote: Yes, your particular critique group is wonderful, and you couldn’t live without it. No worries. I’m not driving to your house with the Anti-Critique Group Secret Police to disband it or anything. Also, your critique group’s amazing bylaws and secret handshakes mitigate all the typical disadvantages of plain old boring critique groups that are not nearly as awesome.

Reason No. 1: Critique groups take far too much time

During college, sure, you’ve got time to sit in a group, read chapters aloud and debate what Susie really meant by having the protagonist drink a bottle of ketchup in Chapter 2.

Once you graduate from college, get a job, get married, buy a house and have little pookies, THERE IS NO TIME for this type of nonsense. Do I have three hours to drive to somebody’s house, listen to chapters read aloud, then talk about what I remember of those words and drive home? No. I have ten flipping minutes to write silly blog posts.

People who write for monies, full time, do not gather around a table to read their text aloud while fellow writers and editors listen carefully and ponder the words. It does not happen.

Reason No. 2: Editing as a group is dangerous and slow

Anything written by a committee will stink up the joint, right? Writing is a solitary act.

Editing is, too. You write a thing, then you give it to an editor.

Typically, there are different levels of editing: at a newspaper, you ship your text to the city editor, who gives it the first whack and focuses on the big picture. Later, the draft goes to the copy desk for a different type of editing, more of a polish and proofing.

Also, editing is best done on a keyboard, or with a red pen. Not out loud in a social group, where peer pressure and weird dynamics can screw up a draft in two seconds flat.

Reason No. 3: Critique groups can’t handle most things we write today

Short stories and novels. That’s what critique groups are really built to handle.

And they do a bad job on novels. Why? Because reading a novel in tiny chunks every week will (a) take forever and (b) turn the focus onto pretty words rather than structure and story. You need to see the entire airplane before you can say, with authority, whether it’ll fly or not. Peeking at tiny pieces of it all year doesn’t work.

Traditional critique groups are bullocks when it comes to editing blog posts, speeches, opeds, screenplays, newspaper stories, magazine features, obituaries and haikus. That’s right, haikus. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THEM.

Reason No. 4: Because I say so

That’s it.

I could put some bullets beneath here, if you want to make it official. Here you go:

Because
I
Say
So.

Let’s invent something new

Now, there is a place for some kind of thing that’s LIKE a critique group, except better, faster and stronger.

Everybody needs an editor. And the more important a thing is, the more you should hire a professional editor who actually does this stuff for a living. But for a whole bunch of things that we write — including silly blog posts — hiring a pro would be a waste of money and time.

So let’s invent a new Writing Monster that’s better, faster and stronger.

Better

The Writing Monster should be flexible, able to handle the editing of any kind of writing, whether it’s a little blog post, a speech, a short story or a screenplay.

It should also expose people to new ideas and new ways of looking at writing, and inspire us to rip the pages out of stupid pretentious books.

And it should expose us to different types of writers and editors, not just fellow writers who have the same exact skills and writerly prejudices.

Faster

The Writer Monster Thing should use this thing we call the Series of Tubes and travel at the speed of light rather than the Speed of Steve’s Subaru as you carpool to Jane’s house for the critique group and hope that she didn’t make that bean salad again.

Stronger

The Writing Monster should be strong and resilient, living in the cloud and forging connections with writers and editors anywhere, like the Borg’s hive mind collective.

BTW: Resistance is futile.

The Writing Monster will NOT die because Steve moved to Idaho or Jane discovered that she hates Tyler’s novel and, to be honest, his stinking guts.

Also, the Writing Monster will focus more on short, important things like concepts, pitches and structure. Things that take up less than a page. (Kristen the Lamb is onto something with her Concept Critique Group idea.)

The alternative is spending every week for the next year dissecting Steve’s 125,000-word epic about vampire elves with lightsabers riding dinosaurs and Jane’s memoir about growing up on a potato farm in Idaho.