Writing Australia Tour

By PD Martin

Last weekend saw the final part of a writing tour I’ve done this year for Writing Australia. While some authors get to tour a lot, and probably too much for their liking, that’s not generally the lot for us mid-list authors.  So my last interstate dash was met with the excitement of someone who doesn’t get to travel for work much, if at all.

At the beginning of the year, Writing Australia (via Writers Victoria) asked me if I’d take part in a tour, where they’d sponsor my airfares and appearance fees so that other state writing centres could access a range of teachers. In this case, me!

It’s been great fun…I’ve done a weekend course in Canberra, a whole weekend of activities as part of the Salisbury Writers’ Festival (blog about it here) in South Australia, and this weekend I took a one-day workshop in Hobart on wrting crime fiction and popular fiction; and a one-day workshop on crime writing in Sydney. 

All the centres have been wonderful hosts and the tour was expertly put together by the Director at Writers Victoria.

I’ve received excellent feedback from all the attendees at my workshops and I’ve had a blast! I mean what’s not to love? Downtime at the airport – great time to fire up the laptop and get a few hundred words done over a glass of wine or beer. A hotel room to yourself, TV in bed, and time to myself. I think the latter is something many parents (and dare I say it, mothers) don’t get much of, so when we do it’s appreciated. Of course, I missed my two munchkins enormously, but I also think I lapped up the ‘me time’ and also made sure I made the time productive, where possible.

I’ll give you a sample with a breakdown of this weekend. Cab to the airport in the afternoon. Wasn’t a whole heap of time at the gate, so I read on my Kindle. Love my reading time! Arrived at the Hobart airport and then onto the hotel. Decided to treat myself to a good-quality steak dinner and delicious wine – Kindle in hand. Then back to the hotel room where I eyed the bath and noticed that not only was it deeper than ours, but I didn’t have to clear a million bath toys to get into it. Hot bath, bit of TV in bed, more reading. Heaven. 

Then there was the course (great fun) followed by two hours to kill before heading to the airport. Cheese platter, glass of red wine, laptop out and some writing time. Gold.

Arrived into Sydney late, so didn’t do any more work but I did read for half an hour or so before it was sleep time.

Next day was the course (great fun again) and then my hour at Sydney airport was spent writing with a beer.

Like I said, who can complain about touring??

I have to confess, while I first took up teaching to add another income stream, I LOVE teaching. I love talking to eager students, I love seeing their faces light up when something clicks or excites them. I love watching them leave the venue at the end of a day with their heads spinning with information but also feeling inspired. 

So, Murderati. What courses have you taken part in recently, as either teacher or student? What makes a course ‘good’ to you?

Writer financial survival 101: multiple income streams

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Lisa asked this week if I would blog about my financial (read: survival) strategy of building multiple income streams. Well, okay, but I think it’s going to have to be a series!

The principle we’re talking about is like the financial strategy of a balanced portfolio.  A lot of people derive income from just their job, and so it’s devastating if anything happens to that job – as we’ve seen all over the country and for so many people we know since the financial crash four years ago. But there are other financial philosophies that would caution strongly against having income from just one source (and to cultivate as many sources of passive income, like investments and royalties, as possible.)  And the very interesting thing about consciously cultivating multiple income streams is that these don’t have to be massive rivers of cash to support you. Every stream is meaningful, and every stream will probably wax and wane.  If you’re invested in the stock market, you know sometimes a stock is up, and sometimes it’s down. But if you spread your investments over a wide range of KINDS of stocks, or sectors, and also have some of your savings in cash, and some in bonds, then it doesn’t matter so much if one sector is down, because your other sectors will cover the loss until that troublesome sector picks up again.

This works with this concept of income streams, too.

This week I’m going to talk a little about one of my income streams – the teaching, since I’m coming up on what may be my favorite teaching gig, the West Texas Writers Academy, at Texas A&M University.

This was not something I ever expected to be doing. But when sold my first novel and got involved in the conference circuit, I saw an opportunity to create an income stream that would be a no-brainer and actual fun for me.

The occasional teaching gigs I have, which are a very welcome income stream, I get because of my blog and because I go to conferences.

I’ve said here before that I started blogging on craft because I was out of things to say about myself.  Well, it’s true. But I also was being asked to teach screenwriting workshops at novel writing conferences, and I would always start those workshops like this:

“Who here lives in LA?”  (Almost never any hands up). 

"Who plans to move to L.A.?” (No hands here, either).

“Then you’re not going to be a screenwriter.  So here’s how you can use screenwriting tricks to write better novels, which is way more satisfying and more likely to earn you money anyway.”

It may sound harsh, but I think it’s despicable how many struggling screenwriters take money for teaching workshops on screenwriting and somehow fail to mention what the actual requirements of the job are. Selling false hope is a crime.  (Of course, if there are people in the workshop under 30 or so, who say they want to be screenwriters, I tell them to move to L.A. if they’re serious. Under 30 you still have a chance to catch that train.)

Well, people were responding so enthusiastically to the techniques I was teaching that I started blogging about what I was teaching, and teaching about what I was blogging, and pretty soon so many groups were asking me to teach workshops that I could never possibly do it and do all of my fiction writing, too, so I started asking for a lot more money for the workshops and choosing only places I really wanted to go. 

And that craft blogging and occasional workshop turned into a really nice double income stream when I wrote my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook and put it out as an e book, and then wrote another and put that one up.... that’s now a very solid passive income stream (the very best kind, because it means the money flows in without me doing a thing) that I can count on every month, and I know I can always do another and create another income stream...

And more than that, it all turned into a kind of calling.

The thing is, I love teaching because it’s – well, performance.  These days I spend most of every day chained to a desk, and I do it because that’s how writing gets done, but it’s very hard for me to sit still and to be alone for such a large chunk of every day.  I spent OH so many years on the boards, or the street, elevators, balconies, wherever, all the world’s a stage...  and I still do the performance thing a couple times a year thanks to my friend, bestselling author/singer/goddess Heather Graham, and her gypsy theater troupe, the Slush Pile Players.  Yes, and there’s the occasional drunken karaoke.  I like to dress up, and sing and dance and have no boundaries with my fellow players. Steve asked last week about our reincarnational hangovers – well, the traveling theater troupe is surely one of mine. When I die you can bury me in unconsecrated ground with the other prostitutes-slash-actors, thank you very much; at least I’ll know I’ll be spending eternity having wild fun with wildly interesting people.

And I think I bring something a little different to the workshop experience for a couple of reasons.  First, I’ve taught dance, which is a very visceral and immediate thing to do.  And more than that, it’s so INTIMATE.  You need to figure out exactly what a dancer’s issue is and correct it on the spot (usually with a lot of touching) so they can do better on the next run-through, or maybe even break through to excellence. Well, that applies to writers, too - alas, without the touching. But one thing I’m really good at from dance is knowing how intimate the process is, and not being afraid to be intimate about it, so the dancer (or writer) isn’t afraid to be intimate, too. Otherwise – how are we ever going to engage our readers’ emotions, desires, and soul?

And then of course there were all those years of spitballing in film development meetings. When my first script sold, my partner and I had about a million meetings in the first two months, but one of the first was with a couple of young hotshot producers who are now film industry moguls, and in that breakfast (I think) meeting, one of them was prodding me to rewrite the script in front of him and I said, naively, that I would have to go home and think about it, and he said, “What kind of bullshit is that?  Tell me NOW.  I want to SEE you think.” 

Total, immediate awakening to what my actual job as a screenwriter was, which was to be creative RIGHT NOW, in front of whoever was asking me.  And be entertaining about it, too, by the way.

Well, so, from dance and from screenwriting, and from theatrical directing too, for sure, I’m very good at identifying the immediate creative problem and solving it right there.  I can do it pretty much on command. Which makes me a good teacher. I LOVE to solve story problems.  Please don’t ask me to play charades or Scrabble or chess, but if there’s a story problem?  I’m your girl.  Even if I’m asleep, the challenge will inevitably wake me up. I’m not unusual in that at all, that’s how creative people are wired.

But I never expected to be doing the teaching along with writing. In fact I resisted anything that resembled teaching for a very long time because my mother, the teacher, was always doing that really annoying thing that parents do with their creative offspring: “You know, you could always fall back on...”

(Personally I think I’m a professional writer because I refused to consider a fallback position.)

But it turns out that teaching a workshop maybe once every other month, and writing the Screenwriting Tricks workbooks one blog at a time, has been not just a practical supplement to my fiction writing income, but sort of lifesaving, psychologically speaking, because I’ve realized I NEED that interaction with creative people over creative ideas.  I need to be able to move around a big space and gesticulate wildly and joke with a room full of people once in a while to break the monotony of hunching over a computer.

Teaching opportunities abound for professional writers, and I’ve discovered they don’t have to take up a lot of time. They’re also a great way to have someone else subsidize my rather alarming and terribly expensive travel habit.  One huge upside of the author life is that you get to meet and befriend people from all over the country. One huge downside is that your friends are all over the country and you never get to see them except at conferences. Except now I can take a teaching gig nearby and see people I want to see.  Or even go someplace fabulous, like, well, the Gold Coast of Australia, where I’m doing a Screenwriting Tricks workshop in August.

It’s a perfect income stream for me because of all of the above and because of its infinite flexibility; I can do it just as much as is fun for me and that works into my regular writing schedule. And it’s also automatic promotion for me as an author; there’s always a big book signing attached to these workshops, so I’m selling books and building my readership, too. But now people pay ME to travel and promote myself instead of me shelling out for it, a very good deal.

I don’t need my teaching to pay the mortgage, but it pays for a lot more than I ever expected it to.

So the financial lesson here is – be alert for opportunities to turn what you are doing anyway and love to do into an income stream.  It doesn’t have to be teaching!  There are so many writing-related services that could turn into an income stream for you: designing book covers, formatting e books, social media assistance to the overbooked... the list is really endless.

The question is, what are you good at and how can you make it pay?

So, do you practice multiple income streams, in investing, saving, writing, or whatever? Or is this a new concept that might work for you financially? How ARE people making ends meet in this most definitely improving, but still precarious economy?

And most importantly – do you EXPECT to be paid for doing the things you love, if you are doing them well?  Or have you bought into the idea that artists must starve and struggle?

- Alex

Brave new e world

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Well, Tess said something apocalyptically frightening in her post on Tuesday:

E-book land is going to be a busy, anarchic universe with a dizzying array of great books sold along with bad books, and lord knows how it's all going to shake out.

And hanging over us all will be the one thing that could doom us all.  Piracy.  Once books can be copied and disseminated for free, there will be no way to make a living in the writing profession. I fear that it's only a matter of time before that happens.

And we will look back on this era as the last age of the professional writer.

Thanks, Tess, just what I needed to hear going into a new year.

I guess it’s no big secret anymore that the publishing industry is undergoing a revolution that has us all in shock, awe, fear, or simple paralysis.

One of the components of this revolution is the e reader, as Tess talks about in her post.

At the end of the year, along with my agent, I made the decision to publish Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, the workbook I wrote based on my blog and the story structure articles I’ve posted here at Murderati, at the Kindle store.   It’s now up for sale here.

There were a million reasons.   Well, okay, not a million, I just always like the sound of that number, and I’m a Pisces and can’t count to save my life.

But some of the reasons are –

- I TRULY needed to get the information on my blog into a coherent order, and a blog is not the greatest format for what I am trying to convey.

- I’m being asked to teach a lot, these days, and I can’t possibly take the time anymore to print the workbook at Kinko’s for distribution to my students, and when Amazon started making Kindle books available to PC users, and is promising a Mac version imminently, that made Kindle publishing the easiest instant solution.   And a Kindle or PC version is far cheaper for students to buy than a hardcopy version, about a third of the cost.   That part was just a no-brainer.

- I am constantly adding to the info on my blog and with Kindle, you can republish a new version any time, instantly, without cost.   Now that is cool.

- It’s not huge money, but a LOT more in royalties, comparatively, than other options.

- Publishing on Kindle doesn’t tie up other publication rights – if I am offered a good book contract for the workbook, I can just take it.

- Peer pressure from Joe Konrath, who has a lot to say about Kindle and other e publishing, but you could start here.     

Really, this is a revolution, and while I’m not personally comfortable publishing a novel on Kindle, at least not yet, I am excited to stick at least a toe in the water by publishing this workbook.   Anyone can take the time and click through links on my blog and get a lot of the same info for free, but if you find what I’ve written on the subject is useful,  $9.99 is not such a huge chunk of change to put down to have the whole deal in coherent order.   Plus, you know, supporting an author whose information you are using is good karma.

So this is a New Year’s experiment, which I’ll keep everyone posted on.  So far the only drawback I've experienced is intense complaining from non-Kindle, non-PC (meaning Mac) readers who want the book downloadable or in hardcopy for them NOW.  

In the meantime I’ll keep blogging about craft, because God knows it’s exhausting – if not outright terrifying - trying to keep come up with posts on your personal life. 

So I’ve been teaching another online class these last two weeks.   NOT the greatest time for an online class, actually, because everyone is still so dazed from the holidays and just trying to get back in the swing of things.   Um… especially me.  Still, I am as always finding the teaching completely inspiring  – I love hearing other writers talk about their stories and characters and writing processes.   And new writers have all that, you know - hope.

The discussion so far has completely reinforced my belief that the best thing that you can do to help yourself with story structure is to look at and compare in depth 5-10 (ten being best!) stories – films, novels, and plays - that are structurally similar to yours.

The late and much-missed Blake Snyder said that all film stories break down into just ten patterns that he outlined in his Save The Cat! books.  Dramatist Georges Polti claimed there are Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations and outlined those in his classic book.

I think those books on the subject are truly useful – as I say often, I think you should read everything.  But I believe you also have to get much more specific than ten plots or even thirty-six.

(I also think it’s plainly lazy to use someone else’s analysis of a story pattern instead of identifying your own.  Relying on anyone else’s analysis, and that for sure includes mine, is not going to make you the writer you want to be.)

For example, in the class that I’m teaching now, without giving details of anyone’s plots, there is a reluctant witness story, a wartime romance story, an ensemble mystery plot, a mentor plot, a heroine in disguise plot.   And others.  

Each of those stories has a story pattern that you could force into one of ten general  overall patterns – I guess – but they also have unique qualities that would get lost in such a generalization.  And all of those stories could also be categorized in OTHER ways besides “reluctant witness” or “hero in disguise”.   

Harry Potter, for example, is what you could call a King Arthur story – the chosen one coming into his or her own (also see Star Wars, The Matrix…)  but it is told as a traditional mystery, with clues and red herrings and the three kids playing detectives.   It’s also got strong fairy tale elements.   So if you’re writing a story that combines those three (and more) types of stories, looking at examples of ANY of those types of stories is going to help you structure and brainstorm your own story.

If you find you’re writing a “reluctant witness” or "accidental witness" story, whether it’s a detective story, a sci-fi setting, a period piece, or a romance, it’s extremely useful to look at other stories you like that fall into that “reluctant witness” category – like Witness, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Conspiracy Theory, Someone To Watch Over Me.

If you’re writing a mentor plot, you could take a look at Silence of the Lambs, The Karate Kid, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, An Officer and a Gentleman, Dirty Dancing, all stories in completely different genres with strong mentor plot lines, with vastly different mentor types.

A Mysterious Stranger story has a very specific plotline, too:  a “fixer” character comes into the life of a main character, or characters, and turns it upside down – for the good, and the main character, not the Mysterious Stranger, is the one with the character arc  (look at Mary Poppins, Shane, Nanny McPhee, and the Jack Reacher books).

A Cinderella story, well, where do you even start?  Pretty Woman, Cinderella of course, Arthur, Rebecca,  Suspicion, Maid to Order (I think that's the one I mean), Slumdog Millionaire.

A deal with the devil story – The Firm, Silence of the Lambs, Damn Yankees, The Little Mermaid, Rosemary’s Baby, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Devil’s Advocate.

And you might violently disagree with some of my examples, or have a completely different designation for what kind of story some of the above are…

But that is exactly my point.  You have to create your own definitions of types of stories, and find your own examples to help you learn what works in those stories.   All of writing is about creating your own rules and believing in them.

So I guess that’s what I wanted to say today.   Identifying genres is not enough.   Identifying categories of stories is not enough.   What’s the kind of story you're writing – by your own definition?

When you start to get specific about that, that’s when your writing starts to get truly interesting.

So what kind of story ARE you writing?  Would love to hear some, and brainstorm some great examples.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

- Alex

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Related posts:

What’s YOUR structure?

Meta Structure

Fairy Tale Structure

What is High Concept?