Subgenres, Microgenres, & Series (Mark H. Phillips)

Like many readers of genre fiction, I am a full-bore biblioholic, constantly desperate for my next story fix. And though I’ve read my share of literary fiction, once I got a taste of the black tar heroin that is pulp fiction, there was no going back. I want plot, suspense, action, adventure, and wonder. And when I read something that gives me what I crave, it’s like a Dorito chip. What I want most after eating one chip is more. I want the next bite to be exactly as delicious as the last. I’m loyal to the writer who can supply me with a fully replicable, reliably enjoyable experience far into the future.

Genre fiction attempts to satisfy a particular need. Having read a book I intensely enjoy, I want more of the same. I want it to be new and different, but I want it to push all the same buttons. How do I find the right product? Word of mouth from like-minded individuals on social media, Amazon’s AI recommendations, Goodreads’ Listopia, The What Should I Read Next website, and the Literature Map.

Let’s suppose the book I’ve just read is Storm Warning, the first in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. The genre and subgenre of this work is fantasy, specifically urban fantasy, particularly occult detective urban fantasy. Genre, subgenre, and series all operate to get me more of what I need. I know that the next in the series is going to give me more of the wise-cracking cynicism of a tarnished hero, the intrigue, the action, the magic, and the world-building I crave. All seventeen entries in the series will be recognizably and reliably similar; all approximating to a formula, yet not so formulaic as to bore me. There will be narrative twists, shocking revelations, and cliffhangers to keep me reading the next and the next. All follow pretty much the same rules; all push pretty much the same buttons deep in my psyche that addicted me in the first place.

The problem is that if I read one Dresden book a week and start on January 1st, I’m going to be in serious withdrawal by the end of April. Readers of subgenre fiction are often addicted to the subgenre. If I’ve devoured the Dresden Files, I’m not going to shrug and move on to psychic animal cozies or romantic westerns. While Jim Butcher goofs off taking another year or two writing the next Dresden novel, I will probably read six more urban fantasy series. There are 451 books listed in Listopia’s category “Best Occult Detective Fiction,” though if you reduce that to just the different series or authors, it’s considerably less. Go on, Butcher, take another year or two to crank out the next installment of The Dresden Files; I’ve got other suppliers. I need my fix. And I’m not alone. Because writers write so damned slowly, there’s plenty of room for multiple purveyors of similar products to share the market. And all these authors are targeting the same basic core audience.

Each year about four million new books are published, more than half of those self-published. But the average book sells about two hundred copies per year and about a thousand copies over its lifetime. Why? Because the average reader of genre fiction doesn’t sort through four million titles looking for something to read. Almost all those books are about things they have absolutely no interest in. By Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of what’s out there is crap anyway. Most readers of genre fiction sift through a relatively minuscule selection of books almost identical to a handful of books they really liked, and they rely on a very small tribe of like-minded individuals (or their AI simulacra) who restrict their attention to a tiny subgenre of fiction.

As a genre writer, how do you get your book on the radar of the reader most interested in purchasing your new novel? Understanding the function of subgenres, microgenres, and series can vastly increase your chances of reaching full market saturation. One way is to concentrate your marketing on just those readers most likely to want your book. You must find, join, and positively interact with your tribe. Find the reviewers of your latest favorite subgenre book on Goodreads, join their communities, enter discussions, and post reviews. Go to the websites and blogs covering the subgenre and post comments. Bond with your tribe. There are maybe a thousand people you must make aware of your book. Out of all the millions of readers in the U.S., you have to get the word out to a town about half the size of Kemah, TX.

For most authors who aren’t Stephen King, there are optimistically between two hundred and a thousand potential readers out there who would buy your book this year, if they only realized it existed. Jim Butcher’s last full novel in the Dresden Files series sold about 3,084 copies (both paperback and e-book) this last year. Here are the numbers for the most recent novels in similar series in the same subgenre:

o The Nightside series by Simon R. Green—552
o The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch—936
o The Laundry Files by Charles Stross—324
o The Sandman Slim books by Richard Kadrey—600
o The Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson—96
o The Greywalker series by Kat Richardson—120

The important thing: many readers who bought one of these series have bought some or all the other series. And all of that is for a subgenre as popular as urban fantasy/occult detective. If you can focus on an even more specific sub-sub-genre, or microgenre, with comparable addiction among its core devotees, the competition for market share is greatly reduced. I recently became interested in horror novels featuring lost or cursed movies. On Goodreads’ Listopia, this microgenre is listed as “Lost Films and Cursed Movies.” Here’s a representative subset:

o Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia—2,724
o Experimental Film by Gemma Files—204
o Night Film by Marisha Pessl—744
o Midnight Movie by Tobe Hooper & Alan Golsher—24
o Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell—120
o Ring by Koji Suzuki—118
o Horror Show by Greg Kihn—60

There were 451 items on the “Best Occult Detective Fiction” subgenre list on Listopia. There are only thirty-one items on the “Lost Films and Cursed Movies” list. If a connoisseur of this microgenre reads one of these books per week starting on January 1st, they will be jonesing for your similar masterpiece of terror by early August. There just aren’t that many books of this specific type out there, and my tribe really wants to read more. Some people belong to multiple tribes, while others are addicted to just that one subgenre. I’m currently addicted to New Pulp, classic pulp, steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, capepunk, cyberpunk, retrofuturism, hard SF, alternate history, Cthulhu Mythos, noir, hardboiled detective, disaster, spy, technothriller, weird western, and Pynchonesque maximalist novels. But most readers are quite focused on just one or two tribes.

What are your favorite subgenres and microgenres? How do you go about finding more of what you like? If you are a genre writer, what are you doing to connect to your similarly addicted tribe? My latest genre stories are “Gutshot Straight”, a classic pulp noir, and “The Dybbuk vs. The Crime Cartel”, a New Pulp costumed crime-fighter tale. Look for them both in The Final Twist’s newest anthology We Were Warned, is now on sale.

Hook Your Reader by Regina Olson

How many times have we heard that the first line of your story or novel needs to hook the reader? What does it mean and what makes for a great opening line?

I attended a class once where the instructor said the best opening line she’d ever read was, “I knew it was time for him to die.” Wow! That was a story I wanted to read.  I was hooked. Why? Because all sorts of questions and scenarios were firing off in the synapses of my brain. My imagination ran off to the races and required I came along.

What makes that line a great beginning? It has the power to cause the reader to ask questions – lots of questions. Why does he need to die? Is he sick and suffering? Is he rich and she wants his money? Is he inherently bad and the world would be better off without him? Did he wrong the protagonist and revenge is required? Did he commit some atrocity? Does he abuse her and she’s taken a beating for the last time? Why does he need to die?

If you asked any of these questions, you were hooked – or at least curious. A brief analysis of the opening line reveals why this is, and what makes it a great first sentence.

1. This sentence created immediacy. His death hasn’t happened, but it needs to. The death isn’t scheduled for some far-off future time that requires you to wade through pages to start the story. The story starts here because the protagonist said it needed to happen now (implied). Still, we don’t know when now is. Where in the coming paragraphs or pages will we arrive at now? To find out, we must read on.
2. There is suspense. What happened that she came to such a brutal decision? How does she intend to carry out his death? If it needs to happen soon, what’s the plan? Will there be a plot involved? Will his death be subtle, as in a poisoning, or is she angry and the death will be raw and messy. Will she make him suffer first, or will it be quick? There is suspense in the why and how of this man’s death. That suspense is partially created when we wonder if she gets away with his murder or will be caught. Will his demise be carefully planned or carelessly carried out in a chaotic rage?
3. The reason is nonspecific. There are no details supplied, no trail of evidence leading to his crime. All we know is that he’s male and she wants him dead. When we consider this fatal decision, we don’t know what circumstances drew her to this dire conclusion. There are no facts stated in this opening line that we can use to judge her wrong or right. How can we form our own opinion? We don’t know if we would feel so distraught that his death presented itself as the only solution. Would we, could we, follow a different path and a less egregious form of justice?
4. It’s a surprise and a shock. Plotting someone’s demise is not normal. We might be angry with our spouse, boss, friend, the rude person in the store, or the guy who cut us off in traffic; but murder isn’t an option. We might scream, yell, cuss, kick something, or do a middle finger salute – but how bad does it have to be to plot someone’s demise? Maybe we’ve secretly thought about it, even dreamt about it, but sanity brings us back to the reality that we can’t follow through with these thoughts.
5. Emotions have been raised. Should I feel sorry for him, or does he deserve this fate? Should I feel sorry for her, or will a world with him no longer in it bring her peace. Are there others suffering because of him and will they find solace? Who, if anyone will cry at his funeral, or even attend? Will her actions be viewed as heroic or cowardly? Can there possibly be a happy ending for her or will she be forever tormented by what she did?
6. The mood has been set. The opening line sets the reader up for the conflict that’s on the horizon. Will the remaining paragraphs, or pages, be filled with romance, be a coming-of-age story, or an adventure filled with intrigue and gut-wrenching decisions. We need, must, read on to peel back the layers and discover if we would make the same decisions, or tread in a different direction. Her conflict becomes ours, as we are drawn into her conflict and ensuing drama.

This is a lot to ask of an opening line, a single sentence designed to hook the reader. A good opening doesn’t need to give away your plot, but it does need to tease the reader. In the example given above, we have no idea when this thought entered the protagonist’s mind, why, or what circumstances led to this deadly decision?

So, when you draft your opening line, design it to draw the reader into the story – before the story even begins. Make your readers so curious that they can’t resist reading the next sentence, paragraph, page, or chapter. Make it so your readers can’t help themselves, they have to seek the answers.

Regina Olson grew up as the oldest in a family of seven. In this sometimes-chaotic life, she found refuge in books and became an avid reader. As a teenager, she had several poems published in a Christian periodical and this success led her to start writing short stories. She is published in books available on Amazon: Every Beast Has a Secret, Released from Reality, With Music as Our Muse, and We Were Warned. This latest book, We Were Warned, is now available on Amazon in paperback or as a Kindle download.

Come Join us at…

https://www.comicpalooza.com/

Sunday, May 28, 2023

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

George R. Brown Convention Center, Workshop Room 350-B (3rd Floor)

Learn how Flash Fiction became a hot area of writing, how to put the punch into your writing as you gain expertise, and resources for publication and specialized Flash Fiction groups. It isn’t just about a few words, it’s an experience in identifying the meaning and impact of each word, much as you identify each life experience. Topping this off is a writer’s prompt exercise followed by edits from Iona McAvoy, Tasha Storfer, Becky Hogeland, Cash Anthony, and Leif Brehmer.

Hope to see you there!

If you don’t have your ticket yet ……Click the link below.

(FYI: Price increase Midnight May 25)

Tickets – Comicpalooza 2023 – Eventeny

Growing Your *Literary* Garden (Tasha Storfer)

When you write often…

Not every story will come out the way you envision or hope. That’s just life. There are many stories the world never sees because they were vetoed by the author, publisher, or market. Now that more people are self-publishing, authors are put in the “gate-keeper” position that historically went to agents and editors.

A side note about Branding

Before I get into too much detail. I want to mention that a lot of this information is based on an author that is interested in branding themselves. If you don’t have an interest in branding, then this information may not work for you. The other audience that might have an interest is writers that have a goal of an agent/publisher. The market is changing, and it helps to have more than a book to pitch. But then you delve into deciding to keep a platform/brand you create yourself or sell it, and that’s a whole new can of worms and a different fishing hole.

Weed it

You’ve written something. It’s been edited and taken to a critique group. Edited it again. Sent it out for beta reading. Edited it again. You have heard from a group of people you trust to tell you if it’s gold or brass. You’ve sent it to agents and publishers. If you adore it, but the overwhelming feedback is a resounding “meh” –  not just from agents and publishers but from your critique group and beta readers – weed it.

That does not make it unmeaningful. Those words helped you grow as a writer. Look at them. Be your own critic to unlock the puzzle of your best writing and move on. And if you love it, you might discover the key to unlocking its potential. Shelf it, and its time might come later.

Personally, I like short stories for writing growth. The end result is quicker and I can repeat the process and learn at a faster pace than when writing a novel. I can explore and develop characters, refine the setting, and expand the world in small parts before diving into a longer project. But I have a lot left to learn and grow. I expect a lot of weeding before my garden is the way I envision it.

or Feed it?..

What if you don’t hear back from agents and publishers, but you saw your critique group cry when you read chapter 3? Did they glow when they finished reading the last chapter? Did your beta reader call back after binge-reading it with a list of their favorite parts and a manuscript full of smiley faces? – then you have something worth feeding.

Did you love writing it? Do you want to write in a similar way over and over and over? Not the same plot, but the same genre or a series with the same characters and location. Then you might think about establishing a brand as an author based on that story.

When we pick up books by certain authors, we have expectations based on their prior writing. This is something true across the arts. It is linked to voice. But it’s more. It can be writing in a certain genre or style. Creating a brand as an author sets a foundation of expectation. If it is a style of story that you would like to explore multiple times, consider the option of turning one story into a garden.

I hope your writing blooms into something magnificent!

Tasha

Interested in more? My safehouse for book junkies everywhere is found at www.tashastorfer.wordpress.com

Use Constraints to Structure Your Fiction (Mark H. Phillips)

Pantsers need structure too. Constraint is the rigid steel pistol. Creativity is the explosion. Together they produce aimed power and dramatic results. In the tension between unpredictable innovation and self-imposed limitation arises the structure pantsers need. You have something you need to say. Staring at an empty page does no good. Where to start?

Start with constraints:

1. Bind your story within the margins of a detailed historical event. A Gestapo agent with a pathetic remnant of a prewar conscience barely flickering in his breast, suspects that an SS officer is murdering his colleagues and making it look like the work of partisans. Weave your story into the fabric of the final days of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto with a three-way dénouement between the killer, the doomed but heroic militant Polish Jews, and the Gestapo agent in the sewers beneath the city. Thorough research will provide most of the structure you need.
2. Bind your story within the biographical details of real people. My short story, “Conduct Unbecoming,” uses the teenage Bernard Hermann (future composer of cinematic scores such as Psycho) and his friend Abraham Polonsky (future blacklisted film noir director) in a murder mystery at Carnegie Hall. The story relies on getting their distinctive personalities, characters, and foreshadowed destinies to drive the plot.
3. Bind your story within the formulas and tropes of genre and pastiche (I use “pastiche” to mean a faithful attempt to duplicate the style of the original rather than a disrespectful parody of the original). Andrew Kahn defines genre fiction as that which, “offers readers more or less what they would expect upon the basis of having read similar books before.” The same definition applies to genuine pastiches. To get a story going, you could choose the subgenre of the inverted detective story; you start knowing who done it, with the crime laid out in detail, then watch the detective try to detect the villain’s inevitable tiny mistake. Every Colombo follows this pattern.

Pastiche is even more constrained and therefore yields more structural guidance. To successfully write a Star Trek novel you must follow a detailed “bible” provided by Paramount and Pocket Books. The active supervision by a fiercely protective franchise overseer will make sure you do no harm to their valuable franchise. You must weave your story into a future history that
includes every detail of the TV shows, movies, cartoons, and several hundred other novels by dozens of other writers. You are expected to make your characters conform to the speech patterns of the actors who played those characters, know those characters’ entire life stories, and not cause continuity issues with dozens of ongoing and future works. You must abide by all the established scientific norms already in place. All stories have to be in third person with the inner thoughts of the main characters revealed. You must write a classic A, B, C interleaved plot where each thread is thematically linked. The novel must conform to Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic and moral vision.

Want to write a new Perry Mason novel? Better use Erle Stanley Gardner’s invariable formula for all 84 of his novels: Mason takes the case of an innocent accused of a crime. The cops and DA build a devastating case. Mason, his detective, Paul Drake, and his secretary, Della Street, investigate. Mason usually risks his career and/or his life in finding, or manufacturing, an alternate explanation. During the trial, Mason flips the damning evidence into a new configuration, often prompting the real culprit to confess.

What happens when you fail to follow the formulas or change the personalities of the characters from established canon? You anger and alienate your most devoted audience. No genuine Dark Shadows fan will ever forgive Timothy Burton for spitting on their desire for a serious film. The major plot twist of the first Mission Impossible movie still pisses me off.

4. Bind your story with what Joss Whedon calls backshadowing. Put a plot teaser in just because it’s cool, play with it a little more over time, and then, if it becomes interesting enough, work it into the main plot. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “The Wish,” Cordelia wishes for a world without Buffy. In this evil alternate reality, Willow confronts a vicious vampire version of herself who is also unambiguously gay. This was well in advance of Whedon’s decision to make Willow a lesbian. In retrospect, it makes Whedon look like a long-range plotter and master of foreshadowing, when in fact it was a bit of backshadowing.

Other examples of this kind of constraint would be Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous four cardboard spin wheels: a wheel of complicating circumstances, a wheel of false trails, a wheel of hostile minor characters, and a wheel of solutions. To keep things varied, Gardner would just spin a wheel; the card constrained what came next. Here’s the wheel of false trails:

1. Witness lies.
2. A document is forged.
3. A witness is planted.
4. A client conceals something.
5. A client misrepresents something.
6. A friend pretends to betray the hero.
7. The villains assistant pretends to betray the hero.
8. A vital witness refuses to talk.
9. False confessions.
10. Genuine mistakes.
11. A witness takes flight.
12. A witness is kidnapped.
13. A witness commits suicide.
14. A witness sells out.
15. Planted clues.
16. Impossible statements.

In the golden age of pulp, the cover art of a magazine was often produced before the stories were written. It wasn’t unusual for an editor to hand a picture of a BEM (Bug-Eyed Monster) attacking a scantily clad space babe to a writer and tell him to write up a story to fit the image by next Tuesday. Our writing group has done something similar to this with our fantasy image writing prompt sessions.

I often write under the constraint of a set piece confrontation I’ve dreamed up, and then I must figure out how to plausibly get there. This can take the form of another kind of backshadowing- as-extreme-in-media-res as with the famous opening scene of Sunset Boulevard when the protagonist is shot dead and falls into a swimming pool; the rest of the story explains how he came to such an end.

Constraint is the focusing mechanism that gets your story going in a given direction. It structures the story, aims it, forces it along. But there has to be the initial impetus. Constraints without the exploding core of the story is like an unloaded revolver. The powder in this simile is theme. You have to want to actually say something. It doesn’t have to be earth-shakingly profound. It can be
as simple as, “The world’s a better place if a dedicated lawyer prevents a miscarriage of justice and exposes the real criminal.” It can be as complex as Tolkein’s theme in The Lord of the Rings: To fight evil requires power, but accepting power risks corrupting oneself into the next evil.

Of course, too much constraint can be bad. Many writers constrain themselves so effectively that they write themselves into a corner. The protagonist’s options dwindle to none, the story becomes impossible to maintain without internal contradiction, and the writer has to resort to desperate deus ex machina solutions. Characters are forced to act in ways contrary to everything that has previously occurred. I refer you to Lost, X-Files, and How to Get Away with Murder. There are two solutions to this pitfall: give up being a pantser and plan things seven years in advance like a Joss Whedon (aside from whimsical acts of backshadowing), or stay a pantser but go back in revision and insert foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is the safety valve for over- constraint. If you later have to have your prim librarian protagonist escape a prison cell by expertly picking the lock, you’re going to have to go back and slip in clues that she has acquired such a skill well in advance of her needing it. Suppose the Gestapo agent discovers that the serial
killer he’s been tracking is actually a Jewish imposter, assassinating those officers bent on the destruction of his people. Suppose the Gestapo agent ends up helping the Jews escape the ghetto and ends up teaming with the serial killer to kill yet another fellow German officer to aid in that escape. We need to have examples of his conscience struggling to throw off the brutal confines of his role and undermine his patriotism well in advance of his apparent volte-face, or it will seem completely improbable. The right foreshadowing can make a sudden turn seem, in 20-20 hindsight is almost inevitable.

Following a formula too rigidly could make your narrative formulaic or cliché-ridden. A reader of new Star Trek, Mike Hammer, or Doc Savage novels wants both a product indistinguishable from a canonic entry by the original creators and to be surprised with something completely new. Impossible task or difficult challenge worthy of your best efforts? I’ve been immersed for the last several months in reading Star Trek novels, and I’m amazed at the quality of the writing, the respect for the integrity of Roddenberry’s vision, and the new depths of characterization brought to supposedly familiar characters.

Although I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience of any films through revealing spoilers, I heartily recommend watching She-Hulk, Attorney at Law. Shakespeare it’s not, but by breaking the fourth wall, by treating the sometimes rabidly misogynistic Marvel fanboys as integral to the storyline, and the self-referential criticism of the MCU’s (Marvel Cinematic Universe) reliance
on overdone plot clichés, the writers have come up with something relatively new and fresh. As for the possibility of being overly constrained by strict adherence to historical facts, I refer you to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tarantino uses historical constraint for the structure he wants, and then blithely ignores it when he chooses to.

Poets and fiction writers have been subjecting themselves to severe constraints for millennia as a way to focus creativity with structure. Writing haiku or sonnets uses syllabic or metric constraints to impose a structure. Writing a novel that never uses the letter “e,” such as Ernest Vincent Wright’s Gadsby or George Perec’s La Disparition are extreme cases of self- imposed constraint. For the pantser looking for an organizing structure without a formal outline, I suggest using historical context, biographical detail, genre and pastiche formulas, and various kinds of backshadowing to channel your inchoate creativity into powerful, structurally coherent works.

Sources:
Karen Woodward: https://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/10/nanowrimo-erle-stanley-gardner-
perry-mason-plot-
wheels.html#:~:text=Erle%20Stanley%20Gardner’s%20Plot%20Wheels,the%20wheel%20of%2
0complicating%20circumstances.
K. B. Owen: https://kbowenmysteries.com/posts/mystery-monday-a-plot-wheel-for-perry-mason/
Jay Sennett: https://authorselectric.blogspot.com/2018/11/erle-stanley-gardner-or-how-to-write-
12.html
Crusoe: https://www.crusoe.la/structure-your-plot-a-b-and-c-stories/
Eric Diaz: https://nerdist.com/article/star-trek-series-bibles-tng-ds9-voyager-enterprise-available-
read/
Jeff Greenwald: https://www.wired.com/1996/01/trek-script/
Trek Writers’ Guild: http://www.twguild.com/resources/starting3.html

https://www.bu.edu/clarion/guides/Star_Trek_Writers_Guide.pdf
Slap Happy Larry: https://www.slaphappylarry.com/types-of-literary-shadowing/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason
Dale Andrews: https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/02/constrained-writing.html
Jeremey Thomas Fuller: http://www.jeremythomasfuller.com/backshadowing-foreshadowing-in-
reverse/
TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Foreshadowing/BuffyTheVampireSlayer

Giving Back

The Final Twist is a Houston-based writers group dedicated to supporting our authors, promoting reading, and giving back to the community at large. 

That last part is something we don’t crow about, we just do it. Usually. Historically, our giving has tended to be live events in support of writing, reading, or literacy, such as hosting NaNoWriMo write-ins and providing sustenance and awards for participants. These last two years have tossed our program to the winds. It’s difficult to hold in-person events in the midst of a pandemic.

In November, 2021, we found a different way to promote English literacy in our community and want to share what we found.

First, we learned one of the groups working to resettle Afghan refugees in Houston created a library for the Afghan community. How perfect is that for a group looking to support reading and literacy? While we were discussing how we could help with donations to the library, one of our members mentioned a company that publishes bi-lingual children’s books. What were the chances they’d have English and Pashto or English and Dari? We checked. They had both! While this meant we could do our small part by donating some bi-lingual books to the new library, the real purpose of this post is to share information about Houston Welcomes Refugees and Language Lizard.

Language Lizard is a for-profit business with a unique niche. They offer bi-lingual children’s products in 50 languages. 50! If you check out their website and blog, you’ll see they have a rather nice community outreach program of their own, including free multicultural lesson plans.

Houston Welcomes Refugees is a a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with a stated purpose of “Mobilizing our city to welcome refugees with compassion, hope, and honor as they resettle and start a new life in Houston.” They have a wonderful program that welcomes Afghan refugees, helps to get each family settled in an apartment, and most importantly, teams up the family with a welcome committee that helps with the move-in and stays in touch for six months.

Houston Welcomes Refugees provides many ways for all interested parties to help resettle our brave Afghan friends who aided U.S. soldiers during our time in Afghanistan. Whether you prefer to give of your time or donate from afar, there is something for everyone. If you’ve been wondering about how to help our newest residents, check out Houston Welcomes Refugees.

Character Development for Pantsers

by Mark H. Phillips

My fellow TFT member, Jack Strandburg, gave a wonderful presentation at our last meeting on how to use the computer software, WriteItNow, to build believable characters and integrate them into a complex plot. Jack is a consummate planner and showed how technology can augment his already formidable ability to keep track of myriad strands of backstory and character detail. I realized two things: his technique showed amazing potential, and I would never be able to use it.

I’m a pantser rather than a planner, and I’m too old to change. A pantser dreams up a scenario or two, maybe has a special setting or a character or a bit of action in mind, and just sees what happens. I put pen to paper, play with it, see what spontaneously develops, and fix any problems in revision. The process is akin to lucid dreaming. I’m far too disorganized to create intricate outlines or character backstory ahead of the actual writing. And I’m far too much a Luddite to go through the learning curve of mastering complex software.

So, what can a poor pantser do to create vibrant protagonists and antagonists, quirky secondary players, and have a good feel for how they will behave in any given situation? I see no reason to reinvent the wheel from scratch. Why not just read biographies? I may be a disorganized writer, but I’m not a lazy one. I put in months of research, and that often involves reading countless biographies, histories, and journals. Why invent new people when there are so many fascinating people already out there, meticulously described, psychoanalyzed, photographed, documented, and explained?

An author who perfectly illustrates this technique is Mark Hodder. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been immersed in his wild and brilliant alternate history adventures of the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton and the poet Algernon Swinburne. The first book in the series is The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. The premise is that a time traveler inadvertently causes an 1840 attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria to succeed, altering history radically and resulting in a far more rapid diffusion of technology than actual history details. Repeated attempts to repair history or to exploit the time travelling tech introduce a plethora of wildly divergent timelines where different versions of Burton attempt to deal with the catastrophic consequences. Most of the main characters are versions of real historical people, from scientists Charles Babbage and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, prime ministers from Palmerston to Gladstone, and authors from Oscar Wilde to Bram Stoker to H. G. Wells. Hodder has done his homework. Burton comes across as a fully fleshed out character, because Hodder knows precisely how Burton really did react in a wide variety of stressful and outré situations, from visiting Mecca in disguise to trying to discover the source of the Nile.

Nor is Hodder the first to use the historical character of Burton in this manner. Philip José Farmer used Burton in his Hugo-winning Riverworld series, along with versions of Samuel Clemens, Hermann Göring, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Tom Mix.

A brief survey on Amazon yields multiple detective series that exploit historical figures as main characters:

• Bertie and the Tinman by Peter Lovesy launches a series based on the Prince of Wales.
• Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth launches a series featuring the famous author and wit.
• These Honored Dead by Jonathan F. Putnam launches a series featuring a young Abraham Lincoln.
• The Murder of Patience Brooke by J. C. Briggs launches a series with Charles Dickens as the central character.

The advantages of using historical figures as characters is that all the work of creating a detailed back story and consistent character profile has already been done by their biographers. I would suggest that there is an ethical mandate to do your research thoroughly and make your portrayal of the historical figures you’ve appropriated as accurate as possible. In no way is my suggested method easier or quicker than Jack’s technology assisted method. Meticulous and thorough research of both the person and the time period is required.

Of course, you can invent new characters by just appropriating parts of the historical biographies and building anew on top of the existing facts. Suppose I want to write a murder mystery set in the wealthy mansion of an egomaniacal newspaper magnate, with the main amateur detective a woman servant already prejudiced against her wealthy employers and harboring revolutionary secrets. I’ll create new names and alter the facts as much as I please, but in my own mind I’m writing about William Randolph Hearst, Emma Goldman, and La Cuesta Encantada. I’m not constrained by real history, but I’ve got all of the essential character traits and backstory I might need.

What about secondary characters? You don’t want to do months of research on a relatively minor character, but you still want them to be memorable and consistent. Here I take advantage of my addiction to watching classic movies. The Hollywood studio system had whole stables of contract character actors, skilled at playing a particular type. When Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, or Elisha Cook, Jr. walked on screen, the audience knew them quickly and efficiently because they were used to seeing them playing essentially the same type in many previous films. You don’t have to tell your reader what you’re doing, but when I need a prissy, sarcastic, functionary, I picture Eric Blore. Once I’ve got that actor in mind, my character is going to behave consistently throughout my story based on my seeing him perform the same character in dozens of films. If I need a fuzzy-minded bumbler, I’ve got Nigel Bruce. If I need a crazed fanatical scientist, I’ve got Patrick Magee. If I need a cynical, world-weary police chief with a bad attitude, I’m going to imagine Simon Oakland. I essentially cast my stories like a producer or director would. Two of my go-to writing resources are David Quinlen’s The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Movie Character Actors and Quinlan’s Film Stars.

If you’re a planner and comfortable with tech, by all means check out a program such as WriteItNow. But if you are a pantser who wants to just start writing and see where the story goes, try reading up on some historical figures, select a few character actors to round out the cast, and throw them all into some stressful situations. I’m often amazed at what my subconscious produces.

Mark H. Phillips is the author of The Ness & Guthrie Blues, Resqueth Revolution, and a plethora of short stories. He’s also co-author of the Eva Baum mystery series.

Just Released: The Ness & Guthrie Blues

Colussus

Members of The Final Twist are learning to make video book trailers. Posts for the next few weeks will showcase our results.

Released from Reality , the newest anthology from The Final Twist, contains sixteen short stories featuring mysteries that take unexpected directions in science, technology, sports, history, medicine, physics, and space exploration–plus original fairy tales and other fantasies. Colussus is one of those stories. Take a look on YouTube.

Rube Waddell

Members of The Final Twist are learning to make video book trailers. Posts for the next few weeks will showcase our results.

Released from Reality , the newest anthology from The Final Twist, contains sixteen short stories featuring mysteries that take unexpected directions in science, technology, sports, history, medicine, physics, and space exploration–plus original fairy tales and other fantasies. Rube Waddell Beats the Devil is one of those stories. Take a look on YouTube.

Rosa Red’s Jewel

Members of The Final Twist are learning to make video book trailers. Posts for the next few weeks will showcase our results.

Released from Reality , the newest anthology from The Final Twist, contains sixteen short stories featuring mysteries that take unexpected directions in science, technology, sports, history, medicine, physics, and space exploration–plus original fairy tales and other fantasies. Rosa Red’s Jewel is one of those stories. Take a look on YouTube.