Publetariat

This post, by Moonrat, originally appeared on Editorial Ass on 8/4/10. Though it’s over a year old, it’s still pretty on-point.

The other day, I received a sad email from a reader who has decided to go the route of self-publishing. This person wanted to know why I–and others in New York publishing–had so little respect for people who chose to self-publish.

When I got this note, I realized we had some clearing up to do. I haven’t talked about self-publishing much here lately, so perhaps that is the origin of the confusion, but I personally have nothing against people who self-publish, nor against the self-pub industry. In fact–if you can keep a secret–I freelanced for a large self-pub company for a long time, helping authors polish their books, etc. I know a lot about who chooses to self-publish, why, and what advantages and disadvantages they have. I also know the huge amount of work they undertake. But certainly I respect their choice, and respect the people who make that choice.

But publication is a choice–if you’re in the throes of the submission process, this is sometimes hard to remember, but do remember you always, always have a choice whether or not you publish. You also have a choice how you’re going to publish, and what kind of publication to pursue.

So I’ve compiled this list of the pros and cons of each of several publishing options (and trust me, each has pros AND cons). I have worked, as you now know, at big companies, small companies, and self-pub companies, and thusly declare myself a creature without bias (or pretty darn close). Of course, every publication experience is different. These are just generalizations culled from the best and the worst of my observations.

I have, rather snobbishly, lined up these options in the order of what (mostly) everyone starts out hoping for, then what they hope to settle for, etc. But I hope this pro/con list illuminates that all such distinctions are relative.

BIG HOUSE PUBLICATION
pros:
*Huge, powerful sales force. I put this first because it’s perhaps the most important quality of a big house, whether consumers realize it or not. The reason most bestsellers come from big houses is because big houses have the most comprehensive and powerful sales teams, which have the best marketing sponsorship and thereby the biggest laydowns (first printings) and sell-ins (stocking numbers in national chains). So by default, they also have the best track records for numbers of copies sold–book buyers tend to buy what they see in stores. So chicken-egg-chicken etc. If you want your book to be a bestseller, your best bet is the big house route.

*Money, money, money. The big houses are giant corporate cash cows, often with private company or bajillionaire overlords (::cough Rupert Murdoch cough cough::). This means a lot of things:

*The possibility of a substantial advance (although these aren’t universal, so don’t get your hopes too far up).

*More personnel, so more people working on publicity, marketing, production, etc, with all the benefits that come from crack specialist teams.

*These personnel are usually paid more than their indie counterparts, which means (in theory) they may be the top of their game.

*Bigger possibilities for publicity and marketing budgets.

cons:

Read the rest of the post on Editorial Ass.

In Mike Duran’s post How Do We “Glorify God” in Our Writing? I discovered I wasn’t the only person asking if you can write a Christian story without specifically mentioning God.

As Mike points out, it seems most Christian writers (and I would say most Christians) think you absolutely must include God specifically in a story in order for it to be Christian:

…And, sadly, that’s what many folks mean by glorifying God in their writing. For most Christian writers, glorifying God is all about their message. It means not backing away from the Gospel and not avoiding references to Christ in their novel. It means developing content that is virtuous, redemptive, and spiritually uplifting.

Which leads me to ask: Can only writers of explicit “Christian content” glorify God in their writing?…

IF NOT — if only Christian writers can glorify God in Christian stories — then how can a Christian ever hope to “do all to the glory of God”?

IF SO — if Christians can glorify God in whatever kind of story they write (or task, service, job they perform) — then how is glorifying God in a Christian story any different than glorifying God in a “secular” story?…

This is a question I’ve struggled with for years. I enjoy reading secular fantasy. I’ve tried reading Christian fantasy, but found it lacking (although I really enjoy Christian thrillers like This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti). My natural inclination is to write secular fantasy, but I feel compelled to follow the path writing greats like C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien have blazed. They wrote what they wanted to read because what they wanted wasn’t already abundantly available.

I want to write Christian fantasy that I would want to read, which may or may not explicitly mention God. But would it be considered Christian if I don’t get explicit about the Gospel?

So, what do you think? Should writers mention God in order for their work to be considered Christian, or can a Christian writer “glorify God” without getting specific?

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

This will probably be the last index published until late September/early October as I have a pretty busy schedule  coming up over the next two months. I suspect as we move closer to the financial quarter four for 2011, there will be quite a number of changes with a the companies I include in the index. There are one or two publishing services that I don’t expect to see surviving into 2012, and there are also a few at the bottom I am considering removing because of their poor showing, lack of foresight and development, and output.

The index takes a great deal of time to put together, and it involves following and analyzing not just the 70 companies included here, but a further 50+ on the edge of entering the index. As always, I would ask companies to keep me updated on what they perceive to be improvements to their services, but again, as always in my correspondence with them; don’t spam me with correspondence about actual books. I am not interested. The Publishing Index was set up to review your company services and it is not a device or platform to promote your authors or books. What matters to me is the value of your services, experienced by your authors.

Let me once again thank the authors and companies who regularly feed me back with updates, experiences and information which all goes into producing the Publishing Index chart every month. Your input is invaluable and always welcome.

Beyond my own reviews on each company (which plays a small part in each company’s index evaluation), all the data gathered is entirely subjective and based on positive and negative correspondence and formulaic analysis. I deliberately avoid making my own comments when the chart is produced and published each month, in so far as highlighting movements of significance in the index. It should speak for itself if followed closely. The companies in the top 20 are there for a reason, because they follow and respect the core values a good self-publishing service should offer. If you want to know what those vales are then you’d best go here to read the book I published on self-publishing, or here, to read the articles I have written on the values I believe should exist in self publishing.

For now, here is the [publishing service] index for August [2011]…

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney’s The Independent Publishing Magazine.

My apologies for things being a bit quiet on this front lately. I’ve been overwhelmed by general life things when I’d much rather have the time to post here and write more. But that’s ever the way. The life of the writer is a combination of rejection, poverty and distraction, in varying quantities.

[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump]

But we soldier on, burdened as we are with the un-fucking-shakeable need to tell stories. Because every once in a while we reap the rewards.

It’s all justified when we get that acceptance letter from a publisher, that incredible high when someone with no bias, no knife pressed against their fragile carotid artery, actually wants to buy something we’ve written. There really is no feeling like it and we all dream of the day when that kind of acceptance is enough to pay the bills and put food on the table. It doesn’t happen for many, but it does happen. And we’re all bloody-minded sons(and daughters)-of-bitches, refusing to give up on the dream. I firmly believe that equally important with talent is determination.

The successful people in the world are the ones who never give up. They have the dreams, but everyone has those. They have the talent, but anyone can learn that. Of course, there will always be those people with a natural gift. They’re the writers other successful writers envy. Some people are just too damned talented for their own good, but anyone can get good. With practice, with a desire to learn and a determination to succeed, people get talented. But the really successful people also have that old donkey stubborness. That “fuck you if you think I’ll quit” attitude. Dreams, talent and determination – that’s almost the formula for success. Almost.

You need to liberally add the essential spices of help from friends and luck. None of us get anywhere without those things too. It’s all very well to say that you only have to believe hard enough and anyone can reach their dreams. That’s bollocks. You need luck. But I’m also a fan of that other great proverb: The harder I work, the luckier I get.

Dreams, talent, determination, friends and luck. Put all that in a cauldron and stir it up with a heady stew of hard fucking work. That’s all there is to it.

But life does get in the way. During the process, other shit happens. You all know life, you’re living it with me. Shit’s hard, people die, nothing is fair. That’s life in a nutshell. It needs to be dealt with, decisions have to be made, money needs to be earned to pay bills and buy groceries. We’re often distracted from the real stuff by life. Because life isn’t the real stuff – it’s the essential stuff. The unavoidable, no choice stuff. The real is the dream. Make your dreams real, remember that? What’s it all for, the struggle to survive, if you’re not chasing something? Whatever it is you feel the burning need to do, whatever moves you like writing moves me, has to be the real thing for you. The thing you’re living for. The rest is existence. The dreams are living.

So life gets in the way. I’ve been a bit burdened by it myself lately. But will I give in? Hell, no. Old donkey stubborn, that’s me. Still working hard. So if things go a bit quiet around here from time to time, don’t worry about it. I’m too determined to quit.

The Formula:

Dreams, Talent, Determination, Friends, Luck
____________________________________
Hard Fucking Work

Never give up. Go on, you can do it!

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

This article originally appeared on the Missouri News-Leader site on 7/26/11. [Publetariat Editor’s Note: sadly, censorship is alive and well in American schools.]

REPUBLIC — Two of the three Republic High books singled out in a public complaint last year will now be removed from the school curriculum and library.

Shortly before 9 p.m. Monday, the school board voted 4-0 — three members were absent — to keep Laurie Halse Anderson’s "Speak," an award-winning book about date rape, and remove Kurt Vonnegut’s "Slaughterhouse Five" and Sarah Ockler’s "Twenty Boy Summer."

Wesley Scroggins, a Republic resident, challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.

"I congratulate them for doing what’s right and removing the two books," said Scroggins, who didn’t attend the board meeting. "It’s unfortunate they chose to keep the other book."

Superintendent Vern Minor said the vote brings a conclusion to the complaint filed a year ago. Scroggins told the News-Leader he has yet to give any thought to pursuing this further.

In making a recommendation to remove the two, Minor explained that "numerous individuals have read the three novels and provided their feedback." He conceded there wasn’t always consensus about what step to take.

"We had some differences of opinion, I’ll be honest with you," he said.

Read the rest of the article on the Missouri News-Leader site.

This post, by Roni Loren, originally appeared on her Fiction Groupie blog on 6/17/11.

So this year I’ve been diligently working on the draft of the second book in my series, MELT INTO YOU. This one is tentatively scheduled to release sometime next summer, but the manuscript is due to my editor at the end of this month.

Well, I finished the draft a couple of weeks ago and sent it to Sara to get her feedback and to make sure I hadn’t suffered from the dreaded second book syndrome. *shudders* Luckily, Sara liked the book and only had a few changes she suggested.

A few. But one was a biggie. She suggested I cut the murder mystery subplot and replace it with something different. Not a huge change in word count, but a very significant change with regards to the story’s plot. Hence began my journey through the Stages of Revision Emotions. 

Okay, so in the list of revisions, there is usually one, maybe two, shockers. Your favorite scene needs to be cut or something you thought was vital gets the ax. But most of the time with Sara, her suggestions resonate with me in that "Damn, why didn’t I see that?" way. Or she picks out things that were niggling at me but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. That’s the gift of having someone with an editorial eye. They can see things you can’t because you’re too close to it.

This is when you get excited. Things don’t look so hard or too bad. You just need to change A B and C and you’re golden. La dee da, I’m the kickass writer girl.

You actually sit down to make those seemingly innocuous changes and WHAM! you’ve just blasted your manuscript to swiss cheese. Plot holes are bleeding on your pages, threads with loose ends are flapping in the breeze, your characters have been flattened to road kill.

You’ve hit the denial phase. This can’t be done. If I make this change, I’ll have to rewrite the whole book from scratch. My agent/editor must be crazy to think I could change this. It’s impossible. I’m just going to leave it the way it is and turn it in. I am the writer, so I get the ultimate call on revisions anyway, right?

Read the rest of the post on Roni Loren‘s Fiction Groupie blog.

This post, by author Courtney Milan, originally appeared on her site on 7/26/11.

I wrote a very long blog post last night. In fact, I’m not done writing it. It was so long, I’ve split it into two. This half is still pretty darned long. This is the less technical half, the shorter half (gnn, yes, really, sorry!) and it’s the half that I’m going to address to agents.

I want to be clear about one thing–while this is an open letter to agents in general, the agent I’m not addressing this to is mine. She and I have had several conversations about this new world, and I know we’ll have more. What has impressed me about her response is that when I’ve gone to her with a concern, she has thought about it, talked about it with others, and come back to me with a response that tells me that she gets where I’m coming from, that she respects me as an author. This shouldn’t be taken as a passive-aggressive dig at her; everything here I’ve already told her, and then some. If I ever need to tell her something, I’ll send her an e-mail or give her a call, and I know she’ll respect and listen to what I have to say. 

{Edited to add the next morning: Please see my mea culpa here.}

So, to every agent in the world who is worried about the new world in publishing, except Kristin Nelson:

You want to know the number one question that authors are asking me about my self-publishing venture? Bar none, it’s this: “How are you dealing with your agent?” I can’t think of a single published author who wanted to ask me questions about self-publishing who has not asked that question, and wanted to talk about it at length. The ratio of questions about my agent to questions about everything else that I’m doing has been about 15:1. I’ve talked to other agented authors who have self-published, and they are also fielding questions about their agents, I suspect at approximately the same ratio.

Agents, I don’t think you have any idea how much your writers are talking about you right now. Seriously. I don’t think you have any idea. I am getting multiple e-mails every day from writers who are worried about what their agents are doing, and who are worried about how to handle agents, and who want to be fair to their agents but also don’t want to pay them a percentage when there’s little to no work involved, and/or the agent handles little of the risk.

Read the rest of the post on Courtney Milan‘s site, and also see this follow-up post about why the author feels it’s unethical for literary agents to act as their clients’ publishers.

Jane Friedman, friend of Publetariat and authors everywhere, indie and mainstream-published alike, has launched her own, dedicated website, http://www.janefriedman.com. Among other things, this is where you can access her Writing Advice Archive. From Jane, on her site:

I’ve been offering writing and publishing advice for a long time.

So I thought it might be time to create a handy archive of what’s available online, especially for those who haven’t been following me since the very beginning.

Click here to browse.

If you know of something wonderful I’ve written that isn’t included here—or if you’re looking for something you can’t find—let me know. I’ll try to remedy!

Thanks so much for providing (and being!) such an invaluable resource, Jane!

We went to see the latest and last film installment in the Harry Potter series yesterday, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The film is pretty good, even if it is pretty much one long action scene. With a story there are normally three acts. There’s a setup, with questions asked and situations created, then there’s some kind of action and usually some extra problems thrown in, and finally there’s resolution. I recently saw something that sums this up beautifully:

I found this via Chuck Wendig’s Tumblr, and I love it so much I want to punch it in the face.

So, the problem, if you can call it that, with the last Harry Potter film is that it’s all the last cup. It’s all resolution, action-packed climax. But that’s okay. Because seven previous films have done all the work of the first two acts.

Say what you will about J K Rowling and the Harry Potter stories, there’s something truly amazing about the achievement. Sure, the stories may be derivative, distillations of so much fantasy that’s gone before. But everything is informed by something. Sure, Rowling may not be the greatest writer on the planet, but she does spin a yarn that keeps you reading, and what more do we really want than that? These aren’t wanky literary explorations of language and word form. They’re rollicking yarns, aimed mainly at young people. And Rowling does have a dab hand at naming things. She comes up with the best names.

I was a bit of a critic at first, especially of the first couple of books. Poorly written, derivative stories that insult the genre, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I’m blah, blah, blahing myself. It’s true to some extent, but Rowling kept going, she created a remarkable world and truly interesting characters. Well, mostly. Ginny Weasley, for example, was always a bit of a glyph. But Rowling got young people excited about books again, and for that she deserves a knighthood or a statue or something. We can forgive the small things in the face of the big achievement.

And that achievement is seven books that sell better than the Bible. A merchandising empire that makes nation states weep. Rowling is worth an estimated £500 million. That’s pounds sterling. That’s a mental amount of money from writing about a boy wizard. On top of that, we’ve got the films.

Never has a film franchise like this happened before. Sure, there have been film series’, though none with a single story that runs to eight full-length episodes. There have been characters who have cropped up way more than seven times, like James Bond. But each of those is a seperate story, and there have been many actors playing Bond. To have a story like Harry Potter extend over eight films, over ten years, with the same cast literally growing up as their characters is something we may never see again.

It would be fantastic if some other great book series’ received the same kind of treatment, but it’s unlikely. Not often does a prospect like Potter come along. Very few stories will guarantee a return on investment like Harry Potter does. It’s beyond mainstream; it’s ubiquitous. Producers and financers knew they could pretty much spend carte blanche on Harry Potter films and guarantee getting their money back several times over. Nothing is a safe bet like that in this world. Rowling created that – a guaranteed massive return investment. And you thought her magic was all fiction. This last installment shattered box office records worldwide, with US$169.2 million in US and Canadian ticket sales over the opening weekend. The opening weekend! And they’ve yet to truly milk it, with the rest of its cinema run, then DVDs, then special edition DVDs, then 8 film boxed sets. Not to mention all the associated merchandising.

Then there’s Pottermore to keep the whole thing monetised. Then there’s always the possibility of more books. The whole 19 Years Later thing at the end of the story is there as some kind of cap, but there are loads of ways around that if Rowling chooses to write more.

Of course, the real test of Rowling’s skill will be to write something else. Amazing as the Potter success is, she’ll always be measured against it and may not be able to write any other stories. I hope not. I hope she comes up with something all new, completely unrelated to Harry Potter and his world of wizards and witches, though I doubt she will.

So, for now at least, it’s over. It really is the end of an era. Children started reading books with the success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. They grew up alongside their favourite characters while film stars grew up playing those characters. I’m glad to have seen it through. There’s a good sense of closure now and the books and films will stand as one of the greatest storytelling achievements of all time.

I’m still left with one question unanswered. Why does Harry Potter, or any other witch or wizard, wear glasses? They can regrow bones, for goodness sake. Surely they can fix a spot of myopia. Then again, perhaps it’s good to be left with some questions. Well done J K Rowling, and well done Harry, Hermione and Ron. You all did good.

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Writer’s groups can be quite difficult because sometimes there is more talking than writing. Maybe that’s what you want, but I have been struggling to find a place to write for a while now. When I talked to Dan Sawyer a while back on prolific writing, he mentioned his writing partner Gail, and I felt the need to find something similar. Last week I found the perfect writer’s group and I talk about it below.

The writing group I went to has rules: No talking, just writing, for 2 hours. Then you’re free to socialize. I arrived at the Battersea pub at 6.30pm after work, ready to write, but also jaded from a full day’s work. I was knackered and if I had gone home, it would have been dinner, reading and bed. But there were 4 other writers there and they were diligently at it, so I opened my netbook and started to write. Two hours later I had 2000 words and a new scene for Prophecy, my next novel. Brilliant!I will be going back next week, ready to write again. The positive peer pressure was just what I needed.

So to find the right writer’s group for you – decide what you want to get out of it, and what you are willing to put in. I don’t want to talk at the moment, I want to write. I’m sure I will need a critique group for the next phase of the edits, but right now, it’s first draft which means writing.

Are you in a writer’s group? What does it provide for you?
What do you recommend for others?

PS. This is the first video from my garden in London. It’s under a flight path so it is a little noisy – and I got the camera angle wrong – I do have a body! Let me know what you think. Do you like my videos?

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

I was recently interviewed about tax tips for freelance writers and others by boomerandthebabe.com, a Web site that broadcasts via Blog Radio. Interview of 60 minutes mostly on ways to save taxes for 2011 and gain a head start for 2012. Topics include home-office deductions, how the IRS decides which returns to audit,  amending returns, and whether to do returns yourself or use paid preparers.

Click here to go to the podcast on Boomer and the Babe’s page, and note: the the podcast will automatically load and start playing immediately, so you may want to put some headphones on or wait till you’re alone to follow the link.

Nationally recognized tax expert Julian Block is a syndicated columnist, former IRS special agent (criminal investigator) and attorney, and a member and former officer of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the preeminent organization of nonfiction writers.

As I continue wrestling with my WIP, Apprentice Cat, using Larry Brooks‘ Story Engineering strategies, I’ve suddenly realized it’s not just the writing I’ll need to edit.

Pantsers know (or should know) that they’ll be writing draft after draft in order to get the story just right. Plotters, on the other hand, use different methods to plan out what they’ll write before setting fingers to keyboard. For me, it’s several excel worksheets that include characterization, concepts and, of course, the actual plot.

What plotters may not realize…
As I’ve developed my scenes and placed them in their slots on the plotting worksheet, I’ve done my best to make things move smoothly from one idea to the next. I’m over 2/3rds finished and it just dawned on me: once I’ve filled in every slot, I’ll need to go over it again to make sure it all makes sense.

You would think I could do that as I go along, but sometimes I come up with brilliant scenes and slot them in without considering all the scenes that came before. Therefore, sometimes there are missing pieces. If I want readers to enjoy the story without being jarred out of it, I have to include the information they need when they need it. I can’t just throw a surprise into the work without foreshadowing it.

Enter the pre-writing, post-plotting editing phase…
Now that I know I’m going to have to go back over my plotting worksheet looking for missing details, it makes coming up with good scenes both easier and more difficult.

I’m a perfectionist, so I want to get it right the first time. This makes plotting difficult because, as Roz Morris reminds us in her book Nail Your Novel, the initial phase of plotting is to use broad strokes. These are just the basic ideas and shouldn’t be too detailed.

However, knowing I’ll be going back to put those details in before I write another word, also makes plotting easier. If I don’t get those details in right away, I know I’ll be able to do it before I get half-way through writing the book (unlike what I’ve done thus far ).

I know I’m not the only one who has gone through multiple stages to develop a good book, so I’m very curious what you do? How do you plan your story?

***

On another note…
If you’ve been following The Road to Writing long, you probably know I have another blog called One Servant’s Heart on my web site. After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve decided to begin merging the two blogs. I’ll be posting snippets to TRTW with a link to the full post on my web site for a while longer (probably the rest of 2011) before letting this blog go entirely. If you’ve subscribed to this feed, please go ahead and subscribe to One Servant’s Heart so you won’t miss anything.

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

Publetariat’s staff will be off from Sunday, 7/3 through to the morning of Tuesday, 7/5 in observance of Independence Day here in the United States. No new content will be posted to the site until the evening of Tuesday, 7/5, but members will still be able to post to their blogs on the site and use the member forum. [No need to click through – this is the end of the post]

This post, by Kristen Lamb, originally appeared on her blog on 6/24/11.

Today, we are going to talk a bit about failure. All writers who dare to dream seem to have this same fear–FAILURE. It can seem larger than life and everything fades away in the face of this looming beast. I want to let you in on a little secret. For many years I was the best, the Big Kahuna, the Big Gal on Campus. I was positively THE most successful person…at failing.

A little about me…

I was a high school drop out at the age of 15, then again at 16. I worked as a waitress, but was a really bad waitress. I lost my job and returned to school. I finally graduated high school at the age of 19. No one figured I would make much out of my life since it’s highly likely I graduated last in my class. I think by the time you get a GPA as low as mine was, they just start listing you alphabetically.

I came from a military family, so I decided to enlist in the Army…only I got sick in the middle of the physical and failed. Doc gave me a medical disqualification (DQ).

Great.

So, I dusted myself off and attended junior college. I figured I’d go to school and try the Navy. I come from a family of Squids, so that wasn’t so bad. I put in all my paperwork…then they found out about the Army. Sigh. Apparently a medical DQ lasted two years.

No Navy for me.

Back to the drawing board (school). I knew the medical DQ would run out, so I worked really hard and ended up winning a full military scholarship to become a doctor. I didn’t really want to become a doctor, but this was the best scholarship and I was broke ergo not picky. I transferred to T.C.U. and began pre-med. I swore in to the Air Force (yes, I made my rounds of all the branches) and pledged my life to serving my country as a future military doctor.

Two years in, I was a shining scholar with a 3.79 average. Then, in March of 1995, Fort Worth was hit with an ice storm and T.C.U. refused to cancel classes. On my way to class, I slipped and fell and hit my lower back on a concrete curb…and fractured it.

Bye, bye military. Bye-bye scholarship. Bye-bye medical school.

I returned to school a semester later. I had to use a cane for eight months as my back healed and there was no such thing as handicapped access to anything in those days. It seemed every class I had signed up for was on the third floor, too. But I did my best and took it one class at a time.

I didn’t want to be a doctor if the DoD wasn’t picking up the tab. Didn’t have the money. So I changed majors because I could no longer afford to be on a medical track. This was all well and good except that it set me back. Instead of being a junior, I was back to being a sophomore.

Felt a little like high school.

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Lamb‘s blog.

This post, by Roni Loren, originally appeared on her blog on 6/22/11.

A while back I talked about the TSTL character in a Lifetime movie I was watching.  Well, unfortunately (or fortunately–considering it provided fodder for two blog posts), the crappy plot devices did not end there.  The You’ve-Got-To-Be-Freaking-Kidding-Me moments continued.  But this time in the form of contrived coincidences.
 

Contrived Coincidence describes a highly improbable occurrence in a story which is required by the plot, but which has absolutely no outward justification

When we left our heroine in the previous post, she was under suspicion for murder.  So, she had decided the best course of action was to break in and search the crime scene (leaving DNA-laden hair and fingerprints in her wake no doubt).  Well, she doesn’t find much over there (although the killer does stop in the house briefly–at the exact time she’s there–she hides under the bed, seeing only his feet).  But, that my friends, is not even the silliest coincidence.

Our heroine goes on and continues her search for evidence in different places, but doesn’t turn up much.  However, she strikes up a friendship with the local coffee barista who tells her how every townie takes his or her coffee.  Well, fast forward, and Ms. Brilliant is being followed all around town by a mysterious black mustang (the car, not the horse, although that would have been better).  Because that’s what killers do, they show you their car and follow you in broad daylight.  But anyhoo, a few days later her own car is vandalized and she needs to go buy another vehicle.

Well, lo and behold, as she’s searching the used car lot, she happens upon what?  You got it.  The black mustang that’s been following her.  Oh, and what’s that you say Mr. Salesman?  The car was just dropped off yesterday and IT HASN’T BEEN CLEANED YET!  Well, hot damn!

So she buys the car and what is laying neatly in the floorboard of the car?  A receipt for coffee with the very order of one of the people the barista told her about.  Killer identified!

Seriously.  I’m. Not. Kidding.  That’s how they wrapped this thing up.

Read the rest of the post for some concrete tips on how to avoid contrivances and coincidences in your writing on Roni Loren‘s blog.