28 Saturday Jan 2023
Maria Snyder is the Keynote speaker at this year’s Write Stuff conference. She’s also doing two half-day workshops at the conference. Here is an interview with Maria by GLVWG member Donna Brennan. Register for the conference here.
23 Monday Jan 2023
By Sara Karnish
A longtime friend of GLVWG, Job Gibbs will be presenting three sessions at the 2023 Write Stuff Conference: “The Three C’s of Conflict: Part 1,” “The Three C’s of Conflict: Part 2,” and “The Funny Pages.” Here is a complete conference schedule.
Writer bio:
Born in England, Jon Gibbs now lives in New Jersey, where he was Author-in-Residence at Georgian Court University from 2012 to 2017.
Jon is the founder of:
His middle grade fantasy, Fur-Face, was nominated for a Crystal Kite Award. Originally published by Echelon Press in 2010, the second edition was released in November 2022. The sequel, Barnum’s Revenge, was published by Echelon Press in 2013. The second edition is due out this year.
Jon’s latest book, Abraham Lincoln Stole My Homework, is due out this year.
When he’s not chasing around after his children, Jon can usually be found hunched over the computer in his basement office. One day he hopes to figure out how to switch it on.
Contact him at admin@jongibbs.org.
Q: One of your sessions is called ‘The Funny Pages.’ What will we learn during this session?
JG: We’ll be looking at how humor comes in many forms, and how we can use it in lots of different ways, whether it’s to lighten the mood after a shocking or stressful scene, or show us a little backstory, or even to make us like a character we aren’t supposed to – Think the Sherriff of Nottingham in Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Q: Humor is difficult to achieve in writing. What are a few key elements to ‘writing funny’?
JG: I think we all have slightly different ideas as to what counts as funny, but when it comes to using it in a book or story, I’d say the most important thing is that whoever’s writing it finds it funny. Also, consistency is important. Humor is part of our personality. If a story character switches between self-deprecating humor and one-liners to snarky jokes and sarcasm without any obvious reason, it can be jarring (at least, it is for me as a reader).
Q: Can you give us a sneak preview of your ‘3 Cs of Conflict’ 2-part sessions?
JG: Using examples from books and movies, we’ll be looking at some of the many ways to insert conflict in a story, and how we can use it to do more than just provide an obstacle for our characters to overcome. We’ll also be looking at examples from attendees’ current works-in-progress to see how we can ramp up the conflict while also helping to move the character/story arc along.
Q: What does conflict add to a piece of fiction?
JG: Conflict certainly isn’t everything, but without it, any story (and most of real life) would be pretty boring. It doesn’t all have to be car chases and brawling; in fact, most conflict is pretty subtle, but if it’s not there, readers soon start flipping ahead a few pages, or worse, simply put the book down.
Q: You write middle-grade fiction. What are some must-haves for writing middle-grade?
JG: Usually, the main character has to be middle-grade age. Adults can help solve the story problem, but they can’t be the driving force behind it. Aside from that, I’d say the must-haves are the same as any other fiction. Characters the reader cares about, good story, etc.
Q: How is writing middle-grade different than writing for adults?
JG: There are some basic differences, most of which are common sense. The official age range for middle-grade readers is between 8 and 12, so there’s an awful lot of scope for the type of story you can tell (as well as in how you tell it). Across the board, though, really bad language, sex, etc., are definite no-nos.
Book-length tends to be a lot shorter – usually between 20K and 50k words. If there is a romantic interest, it’s subtle – think Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger in the first few Harry Potter books.
21 Saturday Jan 2023
Author and developmental editor Kathryn Craft is one of the presenters at the 2023 Write Stuff Conference
Interview by Sara Karnish
Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, Kathryn served for more than a decade in a variety of positions on the boards of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group and the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference, and was named the 2020 Guiding Scribe for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Kathryn leads the Your Novel Year small-group mentorship program, has served as adjunct faculty for Drexel University’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program, hosts writing retreats for women, and speaks often about writing. She writes a monthly series, “Mad Skills,” at the award-winning blog, Writer Unboxed.
Her debut novel, The Art of Falling, set in the Philadelphia dance world, a harsh microcosm of our society’s celebrity-driven expectations of women’s bodies, is available from Sourcebooks. Her follow up novel, The Far End of Happy, is based on true events surrounding the 1997 suicide standoff that resulted in her husband’s death. Originally meant to be a memoir, she decided to novelize.
Learn more about Kathryn at kathryncraft.com or writingpartner.com.
Kathryn will be facilitating a half-day workshop focused on dialogue, “Say That and More”, on Thursday, March 23. I sat down with Kathryn to talk about the importance of dialogue and so much more.
Q: Can you give us a sneak preview of your half-day workshop “Say That and More” at the Write Stuff Conference?
KC: Dialogue, if used well, can be an incredible multi-tasker. It can build characterization, deliver information, enhance conflict, further the plot, reveal the motivations of non-point-of-view characters, expose hidden loyalties and secrets, and more. In fact, if it’s only doing any one of these things, it’s not doing enough! By analyzing powerful excerpts of dialogue from bestselling novels, we’ll figure out what these authors have done so well, and then give each technique a shot with either prompts or characters from our own works in progress. It will be both fun and eye-opening!
Q: Why is strong dialogue so critical to a novel?
KC: We humans communicate with each other primarily through speech. Imagine speed-dating without it! The first “I love you” will change a relationship, for better or worse. A baby’s first word is joyfully celebrated. Asking for what we truly need can be nerve-wracking. Losing our voice before a speech or performance can be a tragic loss of opportunity. One’s dying words can carry a lifetime of meaning. We can feel lost when someone is desperately trying to communicate with us in a language we don’t know. Since such situations are common to all humans, well-written dialogue can gain immediate emotional investment from your reader.
But equally important to dialogue is what isn’t said. If that first “I love you” is met with silence, we know things aren’t going so well. Same if the baby’s first word is “Da-da” and the mom whisks the baby from “Da-da’s” arms to go down for a nap. By tapping into these universal human emotions through a rich tapestry of actions, memories, and setting, we can invite the reader to add up what’s on the page for themselves. After all, they’ve been reading signals during conversations their whole lives.
Q: Authenticity is key to capturing how characters speak, and sometimes this means writing regional dialect. How should a writer handle dialect, colloquialisms, and “folksy expressions” in a novel?
KC: This has changed a lot over the years as the publishing industry has gotten twitchier. There’s the fear that today’s busy readers will no longer put up with phonetic spelling and dropped syllables, even though doing so brought the series characters of middle grade authors like J.K. Rowling and Brian Jacques to vibrant life. A more recent concern is the fear that trying to write dialect will come off as prejudicial, racist, homophobic, xenophobic—if there’s even a whiff of political incorrectness in the way you’ve presented a character as “other than,”, there’s a possibility you’ll cross a line and lose readers.
One solution is to evoke the sound of the language without full-out transcription. If a young woman says she could listen to her daddy all night long, his dropped syllables making his stories roll like waves, a periodic transcription of his language won’t cause a problem. If you need to convey the speech of a foreigner with minimal English, study the syntax of his native language (lack of articles in Russian, adjectives following many nouns in French) and mimic it.
Q: You’ve drawn on your personal experiences for your novels The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. What are some tips for writers to capture personal experiences—events, even interesting dialogue—and possibly use them later?
KC: I give a separate workshop on this, which was a direct result of all I learned while obtaining my PhD in self from the School of Hard Knocks. Since our emphasis here is dialogue, I’ll share one pertinent story from The Far End of Happy.
After I’d already filed for divorce from my first husband, and within a month of his suicide, he said to me, “I guess you don’t like me very much.”
This line of dialogue was seared into my memory to the point that I wanted to include it in my novel. But when my editor read that line of dialogue, floating as it was within the fictionalized version of real events, it made less sense. “The scene reads fine without it,” she commented. “Just delete it.”
That I couldn’t do. To me it had the feel of an important turning point in this couple’s awareness of what was (or wasn’t) happening between them. So instead of deleting, I went back several chapters to better set up this important moment.
My takeaways: 1) while listening to your editor is important, you don’t have to solve problems in the way they suggest, and 2) just because it was spoken in real life doesn’t confer power to a line of dialogue, and setting it up might be a long game.
Q: Dialogue aside for a second—you are a developmental editor through your business, Writing Partner. How do we maintain the tension throughout a novel and keep readers’ interest?
KC: This isn’t just a whole other workshop; I’m writing a craft book on the topic! Just about all fiction craft can be geared toward sustaining the reader’s interest. The most important foundational concept is what I call psychological tension—the relationship an author builds between the protagonist and the reader. A reader is hooked when a protagonist’s deeply desired goal raises a related question in the reader’s mind that she wants answered (“Can this character achieve his goal, given all the obstacles ahead?”). Now you have the reader looking around every corner to see how it’s going for the protagonist. It’s only once this relationship is created that the author can raise, dash, and reward reader expectation, which is the very definition of a satisfying read.
This year’s Write Stuff Conference runs March 23-25 at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel. Registration is open! www.glvwg.org
17 Tuesday Jan 2023
Author and attorney Michael Ventrella is one of the presenters at the 2023 Write Stuff Conference
Interview by Sara Karnish
Outside of writing, Mike worked primarily as a public defender; however, he also was a lobbyist for the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action (and later served as the Massachusetts chapter President for a year), taught political science courses at Bunker Hill Community College, and was a campaign manager for a state representative. Mike also wrote songs and performed in two prominent bands, Agent 99 and Big House, which played the major clubs in the Boston area and received airplay on local college radio.
Mike also started a magazine about animated films called Animato in the mid-80s which grew to be quite prominent. He was quoted in many publications as an animation expert, including Entertainment Weekly and in the book THE DREAM TEAM: THE RISE AND FALL OF DREAMWORKS by Daniel M. Kimmel.
In 1997, Mike and his wife, Heidi, moved to the beautiful Poconos, where Mike now works as an attorney. Heidi is a Niche award-winning artist whose work can be seen in galleries around the country and in Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museums all over the world, as well as on ABC TV’s To Tell the Truth. They love the pitter patter of little feet (they have five cats: McGonigal, Mrs. Premise, Mrs. Conclusion, Doctor Who and River Song).
Michael writes humorous adventure stories. He has five novels published so far as well as a collection of short stories. He’s edited about a dozen anthologies, including Release the Virgins!, Baker Street Irregulars (with NY Times Bestselling Author Jonathan Maberry) and Three Time Travelers Walk Into… He’s also had four nonfiction books published, including one about The Beatles, two about The Monkees, and “How to Argue the Constitution with a Conservative.”
Mike is a regular fixture at science fiction conventions on the East Coast, where he appears on panels to discuss fiction, animation, and gaming. However, to many people, he’s known primarily as the Guy Who Predicted The Hodor Plot Twist.
I sat down with Mike to discuss his work as an attorney, a writer, and how they (may or may not) overlap, and so much more.
Q: You are a lawyer as well as a writer. How do your careers inform each other?
MV: Morse code.
The advantage of having a writing skill as an attorney is that most attorneys don’t. We’re taught how to do legal research and organize a brief, but not necessarily how to make it interesting to read.
I always teach that the only real rule in writing is “Don’t be boring,” and that applies to nonfiction and legal writing as well as fiction. I’ve won quite a few cases and appeals because I understand how to write well. Judges get lots of boring briefs to read, so if you can keep their attention, you’re way ahead of other lawyers.
Q: One of your sessions for the Write Stuff Conference is called “How the Law Really Works”. I think many writers know it’s important to have a copyright for their work. Can you explain what a copyright is, and just why it’s so important?
MV: It isn’t as important as you think. If you create something, you have the copyright. You don’t need to register it. Just keep your records. I email drafts of what I am writing to myself. That way, if my computer crashes, there’s a backup in the cloud. And if anyone tries to claim my work as their own, I have dated proof that it’s mine. Once you publish it, it is automatically copyrighted.
Seriously, no one is going to steal your stuff. Even if they steal your idea, the way they present it will be completely different than how you would write it. Whether you put “copyright” on the bottom of every page won’t make a difference. It’s not like that guarantees you will win a lawsuit. Evidence that you wrote it first is more important.
If you’re sending stories off, you don’t need to say “This is copyright by me! Don’t steal it!” If an editor likes your work, they’re not going to steal it and deal with a lawsuit; they’re going to say, “This is great! Let’s buy it and get this person to write even more great stuff for us.”
However, to be clear, my lecture won’t be about copyright law, but instead will be about criminal law. So many writers will have their characters arrested or break the law, and then get the procedure completely wrong. I’ll talk about how the detectives do their job in real cases, how the lawyers get involved, and how the system works (and doesn’t work). This particular lecture will provide lots of time for questions so come prepared!
Q: You’re doing another session called “How to Impress an Editor for a Themed Anthology”. What is one of the biggest mistakes an author makes when submitting a piece for an anthology?
MV: Not reading the guidelines and sending something to the editor that the editor doesn’t want. I often get stories that are not what I’m looking for, and all that does is make me mad at you for wasting my time. No editor is going to go, “I know this anthology is for stories about wizards, but golly, this story about baseball is just so good I have to put it in the book!”
I’ll have many more examples in my presentation.
Q: Your third session is “The Biggest Mistakes Made by New Authors”. Without giving too much of your presentation away, what is the single biggest mistake made by new authors?
MV: I don’t think I can narrow it down to one. That session will be a rapid listing of many mistakes (I know, because I made lots of them myself) with the idea that most people will go “Duh, of course, I’d never do that,” but then there will be one or two points that will make them go, “Ah, I never realized that. Good point.”
The problem is that those one or two points won’t be the same for everyone.
Okay, actually, I think I will list the biggest mistake: Not reading. I can’t believe there are so many people who aspire to be writers yet don’t read a lot. You’re not going to improve your work without reading any more than a musician who never listens to music will write better songs. You will learn more about how to write by reading good books and paying attention to how the author accomplishes their goals than by any other method.
Q: What is your best advice for writers at any level?
Force yourself to write even if you’re not in the mood. You’re not going to get better without practice (and this applies to any skill) so even if what you write later gets thrown away, it’s still going to make you better in the long run.
This year’s Write Stuff Conference runs March 23-25 at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel. Registration is open! www.glvwg.org
09 Monday Mar 2020
Kelly Jensen, critically acclaimed and award winning Author, will join us at the GLVWG Write Stuff Writers Conference™, “2020 Vision”, on Saturday, March 14, at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel & Conference Center.
Kelly will facilitate 3 sessions:
Grab the Reader in the First Chapter
Outlining is for Everyone
Worldbuilding
** Scroll Down for Details **
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Biography:
If aliens ever do land on Earth, Kelly Jensen will not be prepared, despite having read over a hundred stories of the apocalypse. Still, she will pack her precious books into a box and carry them with her as she strives to survive. It’s what bibliophiles do.
Kelly is the author of twelve novels, including the critically acclaimed Chaos Station series and the award-winning novel, Block and Strike. She has also published eight novellas and too many short stories to count. Some of what she writes is speculative in nature, but mostly it’s just about a guy losing his socks and/or burning dinner. Because life isn’t all conquering aliens and mountain peaks. Sometimes finding a happy ever after is all the adventure we need.
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An Interview with Kelly Jensen
By Conference CoChair—Umber Rana
Q: Do you have a disciplined writing routine? If so, what does it include? Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down?
Kelly: I do have a routine! I write Monday through Friday from 6 am to 9 am. I aim for 2000 words or a chapter every day. After getting my words down, I edit or work on administrative tasks. But words always come first.
I don’t really have any pre-writing rituals except to eat breakfast. I’m pretty focused on breakfast. I think about it the night before and cook something hot most days. It’s my writing fuel!
Q: Share the strangest source of inspiration for your writing that you can remember.
Kelly: One of my favorite books (To See the Sun) was inspired by a Harlequin Historical Romance set in Montana during the 1800s. It wasn’t a book I’d normally pick up on my own, but part of a judging packet for the RWA’s RITA contest. I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would. Marriages of convenience (arranged, mail-order-spouse) have long been one of my favorite romantic tropes, but it’s not one that works well for gay romance. So I decided to try writing one. I set my story on another planet, and as a nod to this unexpectedly good read, gave my planet a wild west sort of theme: a new colony at the far edge of the galaxy, populated by former miners and terraformers who’d like a companion to share their new lives with. It was a fun book to write, and an idea that might never have occurred to me without that great little historical!
Q: What advice can you give beginning authors in establishing their brand and media presence?
Kelly: Be your most authentic self. I agonized for years over my social media presence and my author brand, only to realize that my blog, my IG feed, and my Twitter and Facebook posts all said the same thing: I was a science fiction nerd who played too many video games, bought too many books, and liked to go hiking. For me, the best part was that I tend to write characters with the same hobbies as mine. So it all fit. I aim to be upbeat and personable without getting too personal.
Q: How do you find the stories and lives that become the subject of your books? How do you research?
Kelly: My stories nearly always start with a single character. I want to write a certain sort of person in a certain situation, and my plot (including the other main character(s)) flows from there. For example, my current WIP is about two men who have recently become empty nesters (like me!). I obviously got this idea while packing my daughter up for college and wondering what I was going to do with all my spare time. And thinking about how much I’d miss her.
For my novel Block and Strike, I wanted to share the experience of how studying a martial art helped me find my voice and become a more assertive person.
The Chaos Station series explores the effects of war on former soldiers, their families, and society.
But each of these books started with a single character. Oliver for my current WIP, who is now home alone wondering who he’ll share breakfast with (told you breakfast was important). In Block and Strike, Max learns to embrace his differences and to rise above the bullying he’s endured all his life. In the Chaos Station series, Felix finally figures out how to leave the war behind, and how to embrace the love of the man he never forgot.
Q: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Kelly: Slow down and take a break. You won’t forget how to write if you take a few weeks or even a few months off. Remember to recharge between books. And, most importantly, remember your process but don’t be a slave to it. Use what works, discard what doesn’t.
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Saturday, March 14, 2020
Grab the Reader in the First Chapter
First impressions last. Hook your reader with a compelling first chapter by learning how to introduce your characters, setting, and plot without giving away every secret in the book. We’ll discuss how to include just enough backstory (not too much), and how to tease your readers into turning to the next page.
Outlining is for Everyone
Don’t let the idea of an outline hold you back. Planning what you need to write every day doesn’t necessarily mean a long list of detail. What it can mean is writing faster and to the point with just a few minutes of planning ahead–before you start the book or a few minutes before you start writing!
Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding isn’t just for fantasy and science fiction. Readers want to know where they are, when they are, and how your story relates to the world it’s set in. Learn how to represent the familiar and create the unfamiliar in a way that won’t overwhelm your story or your characters. This workshop will include an exercise that may be shared with the class.
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You can find all of Kelly’s books on Amazon
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Learn more about Kelly on her website: kellyjensenwrites.com
Follow her blog: kmkjensen.wordpress.com
And her social media links:
Facebook: /kellyjensenwrites
Twitter: @kmkjensen
Instagram: @kellyjensenwrites
15 Saturday Feb 2020
Tags
Creative Logic in Writing, Harrison Demchick, Story First Draft, Writer Courses, Writing, Writing Conferences, Writing Craft, Writing Workshops
Harrison Demchick, Author, Editor, Filmmaker, and Musician, will join us at the GLVWG Write Stuff Writers Conference™, “2020 Vision”, on Saturday, March 14, at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel & Conference Center.
Harrison will facilitate 3 sessions.
Bad Math: How the Right and Left Brains Work Together
It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine
The Blueprint, or Building the Perfect Draft
Biography:
Raised on a steady diet of magical realism, literary fiction, science-fiction, and Spider-Man comics, Harrison Demchick spent most of his formative years inside his own head, working out strange thoughts and ideas that would eventually make their way into stories, screenplays, and songs.
He went to Oberlin College to attain one of modern day’s most notoriously useless degrees, a BA in English with a creative writing concentration, but then actually used it, working for over a decade as a developmental editor of fiction and memoir. Harrison is also an optioned screenwriter, winner of the 2011 Baltimore Screenwriters Competition, and an inaugural fellow of the Johns Hopkins University/Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund. His first film, Ape Canyon, is currently in production.
The Listeners, his first novel, was published by Bancroft Press in 2012. Otherguy, his debut EP, launched in 2018. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his girlfriend and their two cats with a combined seven legs. He’s working on a series of short stories, a couple screenplays, a pair of musicals, a concept album, and whatever else keeps him distracted from the dark void that will one day consume us all.
** Click “Continue Reading” for Interview and Course Syllabus **
08 Saturday Feb 2020
Tags
Editor, Legal Advice for Authors, Michael Ventrella, Pennwriters, Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Conferences, Writing Craft, Writing Workshops
Author Michael Ventrella, will be at the GLVWG Write Stuff Writers Conference™, “2020 Vision”, on Saturday, March 14, at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel & Conference Center.
He will offer three sessions.
How the Law Really Works
The Biggest Mistakes Made by New Authors
What Editors Look For
** Click “Continue Reading” for Interview and Course Details **
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Biography:
Outside of writing, Mike worked primarily as a public defender; however, he also was a lobbyist for the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action (and later served as the Massachusetts chapter President for a year), taught political science courses at Bunker Hill Community College, and was a campaign manager for a state representative. Mike also wrote songs and performed in two prominent bands, Agent 99 and Big House, which played the major clubs in the Boston area and received airplay on local college radio.
Mike also started a magazine about animated films called Animato in the mid 80s which grew to be quite prominent. He was quoted in many publications as an animation expert, including Entertainment Weekly and in the book THE DREAM TEAM: THE RISE AND FALL OF DREAMWORKS by Daniel M. Kimmel.
In 1997, Mike and his wife, Heidi, moved to the beautiful Poconos, where Mike now works as an attorney. Heidi is a Niche award-winning artist whose work can be seen in galleries around the country and in Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museums all over the world, as well as on ABC TV’s To Tell the Truth. They love the pitter patter of little feet (they have five cats: McGonigal, Mrs. Premise, Mrs. Conclusion, Doctor Who and River Song).
Mike is a regular fixture at science fiction conventions on the east coast, where he appears on panels to discuss fiction, animation, and gaming. However, to many people, he’s known primarily as the Guy Who Predicted The Hodor Plot Twist.
25 Saturday Jan 2020
Tags
Crossing Genres, Indie to Traditional, international bestselling author, JD Barker, Writing, Writing Conferences, Writing Craft, Writing Development, Writing Thrillers, Writing Workshops
JD Barker, international bestselling author, will be the headliner and Keynote Speaker at the GLVWG Write Stuff Writers Conference™, “2020 Vision”, on March 13 -14 at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel & Conference Center.
Friday, March 13, JD will facilitate a Full Day Writing Development Workshop.
On Saturday, he will give sessions with From Indie to Traditional; Every Dirty Little Secret You Need to Know, and Crossing Genres – and Why You Should Do It!
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Biography:
J.D.Barker (Jonathan Dylan Barker) is an international bestselling American author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural.
J.D. Barker has successfully crossed over from horror, to paranormal, to thriller, and back again, snatching readers from multiple genres and expanding his audience like a literary Pied Piper. Learn how to avoid the genre box and tell the story you want to tell to the largest possible group.
As a child I was always told the dark could not hurt me, that the shadows creeping in the corners of my room were nothing more than just that, shadows. The sounds nothing more than the settling of our old home, creaking as it found comfort in the earth only to move again when it became restless, if ever so slightly. I would never sleep without closing the closet door, oh no; the door had to be shut tight. The darkness lurking inside needed to be held at bay, the whispers silenced. Rest would only come after I checked under the bed at least twice and quickly wrapped myself in the safety of the sheets (which no monster could penetrate), pulling them tight over my head.
I would never go down to the basement.
Never.
Learn more about JD Barker at jdbarker.com
And in case you hadn’t noticed, JD will be speaking on Friday the 13th.
** Click “Continue Reading” for JD Barker Interview and course syllabus **
21 Thursday Mar 2019
Author Jon Gibbs has been a mainstay for the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ for several years. In addition to his Saturday morning session – “Are Your Characters Right the Part”, Jon will conduct a two-hour workshop – “The Seven Sentence Solution”.
Tammy Burke had a chance to ask Jon a few questions.
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Could you give us a little teaser about your two-hour workshop “The Seven-Sentence Solution” and also a teaser for “Are Your Characters Right for the Part?”
There’s a classic summary-tool used by great story-tellers like the folks at Pixar Animation.
In The Seven-Sentence Solution, I’ll be showing how to apply that same tool to sub-plots and individual characters in a way that can really help bring a book, and the people in it, to life.
In the Characters workshop, we’ll be working through some subtle techniques that can make the people in stories even more memorable/relatable to readers.
If you wrote a letter to your younger self about the writing journey, what would it say and what advice would you give?
There’s always going to be a great excuse for not writing, something that seems more important, more urgent, or simply more enticing. The question is: Would you rather look back in twenty years and have a body of work to be proud of, or a long list of great excuses?
Basically, don’t let your ‘but’ get in the way of your dream.
On your website I see you do Classroom talks with 3rd graders on up and I see one of your talk modules is entitled “Terrific Titles.” Titling for anyone can be challenging in of itself. What are your techniques for titling your works and what advice would you give an aspiring author?
I always start with the title because I suck at coming up with one after I’ve written the story. If you brainstorm titles before you start writing, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to come up with something eye-catching. As an added bonus, a great title can be a huge inspiration for characters and/or plot.
It’s always interesting to learn how other writers juggle writing time with family and work commitments. What strategies work best for you?
I try to get my writing done in the mornings because I have to fit my schedule around my twin daughters. They’re both severely autistic which makes for a lot of unexpected excitement (and plenty of sleepless nights). If I’m not careful, days, even weeks, can go by without me doing much on the productivity front, but I’ve learned to make the most of it when things are going well, and not to beat myself up when I hit a rough patch.
What resources do you use to research? How long do you typically spend researching before beginning a book? And what are you working on currently?
Mostly, I use Google, but I rarely do much research until I have the initial story down. My first drafts are riddled with notes like: INSERT: check this, INSERT: research needed (not to mention INSERT: witty line here or INSERT: write this gooder!).
Currently I have five projects on the go: I’m seeking representation for my middle-grade novel, ABRAHAM LINCOLN STOLE MY HOMEWORK. I’m revising two other novels: DEAD DORIS (MG), and a thriller, WAKING UP JACK THUNDER. For my next wip, I’m bouncing around ideas for two MG novels, GLASS-HEAD, and #MY_SUCKY_LIFE – I’ll decide which one to focus on when I have their outlines finished.
When did the “writing bug” bite you? And what was your favorite genre and/or books at that time. Why?
I was in my 40s when I started writing. Before then, I hadn’t written a word of fiction since leaving school – unless you count tax returns. That changed when I started walking my son, Bill, to his primary school in England. He’d pick an animal, and I’d make up a story about it, with Bill as the main character (I still remember one about a giraffe who was afraid of heights).
I’ve always been an avid reader. At the time, my favorite author was probably Terry Pratchett. I love books that make me laugh, especially when they also put you through the emotional wringer, which Pratchett’s books often do.
And finally, is there anything that you would recommend giving up to become a better writer? Is there anything you’ve given up in order to become one?
I would recommend that anyone serious about writing gives up complaining and/or arguing online. Social media can be a beautiful thing, but if you’re not careful, you can get sucked into the ‘With us or against us’, ‘If you don’t think like me, you’re stupid/evil’ mentality that seems par-for-the-course these days. Some folks love to surf the web, trolling people they disagree with, or reading the spiteful back-and-forth of folks who probably wouldn’t dream (or dare) be so obnoxious in person, but that kind of bile is pure poison for creativity. In this digital age, we all have to get online, but if you ask me, the world would be a better place if the internet had more funny cat videos and less pointless arguments.
When I moved here from the UK in 2004, I made a conscious decision to give up music, and focus on writing stories instead. Before then, I’d been lead vocals and keyboard player in a rock band since the late eighties. As far as fame and fortune goes, we were very much a legend in our own lunchtime, but we had a lot of fun, especially writing and recording songs.
I don’t know if giving up singing has made me a better writer, but I’m sure my neighbors are happier.
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John Gibbs
Born in England, Jon Gibbs now lives in New Jersey, where he lectured on Creative Writing at Georgian Court University from 2014-2017. Jon is the founder of The New Jersey Authors’ Network (www.njauthorsnetwork.com), his middle-grade fantasy, Fur-Face (Echelon Press), was nominated for a Crystal Kite Award. The sequel, Barnum’s Revenge (also from Echelon Press), was published in 2013.
Jon has a website: www.acatofninetales.com and a blog: http://jongibbs.livejournal.com. When he’s not chasing around after his three children, he can usually be found hunched over the computer in his basement office. One day he hopes to figure out how to switch it on.
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Article by Tammy Burke
Tammy Burke, past GLVWG conference chair and president, has published over 400 articles in daily newspapers, newsletters and regional magazines. She is shopping her first YA fantasy manuscript, Hazel Lies, and is revising her second book. In addition to writing, she spearheads marketing for a fire and security systems company, raises a brilliant ADHD middle-grader, fences with rapier swords in the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA), and considers herself a student of the fantastic and mundane.
16 Saturday Mar 2019
Tags
GLVWG Program Speaker, Reader Engagement, Splickety Publishing, Storytelling, Writer's Conference, Writing, Writing Flash Fiction, Writing through Adversity
We introduced Ben Wolf our Keynote Speaker for the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ , March 21 – 23, 2019, in our WordPress Blog – January 14. On Thursday, he kicks us off with Into the Deep: An Advanced Study of Speculative Fiction. On Friday, he’ll engage conference attendees in a discussion on The Three Pillars of Storytelling. Saturday, Ben will conduct seminars on Backstory: Your Secret Weapon to Engaging Readers, and Writing Flash Fiction that Sells.
Don’t miss his keynote speech during Saturday lunch, Writing Through Adversity.
GLVWG member, Joe Fleckenstein, took some time to ask Ben a few questions.
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In an interview with Geeks under Grace in 2014 you mentioned that you very much favored Frank Peretti’s writing and, in fact, you read his book The Oath at least a half dozen times. That’s saying something. What was it, specifically, that you admired in Peretti’s writing that you found so enthralling? Would it be fair to say there’s a similarity to some degree between Peritti’s style and what is to be found in your Blood for Blood?
Frank Perett’s writing captured my imagination at an early age. In part, it was some of the first “grown-up” fiction that I was exposed to, so the level of intrigue, drama, and even violence in his stories grabbed me and didn’t let go. The main reason I read The Oath so many times is that its high concept is brilliant, yet simple, and it is flawlessly executed. I can’t say much more about it without giving away a major plot point, so go read it and you’ll see what I mean.
With regard to my own writing, Blood for Blood did feel Peretti-esque, I think, in some ways. It has a dark feel to it (like much of Peretti’s work does, especially his earlier works), and I think I deal with that darkness in a unique way which is something Peretti does frequently as well. My latest novel (at least at the time of this interview), a sci-fi/horror story called The Ghost Mine, sways less toward Frank Peretti and more toward Robert Liparulo’s style of thriller storytelling. I’d say that in recent years, Robert Liparulo has usurped Frank Peretti as my favorite author.
Splickety, the flash fiction magazine you edited, is scheduled to close down. To what do you attribute the closure? Has the interest in flash fiction peaked? What’s the future for flash fiction? Are you personally finished with flash fiction?
I will always love and continue to write flash fiction stories, and flash fiction has such fantastic value as a tool to learn how to write better fiction. The closure primarily comes as a result of me realigning my priorities in publishing. For years, I ran Splickety to offer new authors a path to professional publication. Those publishing opportunities with Splickety helped me develop a career teaching at writers conferences nationwide and freelance editing for other authors.
Over the last year, I realized that though I had succeeded in the conference scene and in freelance editing, I was doing a poor job of pursuing my own personal dreams of becoming a multi-published, full-time author. So I took a hard look at what I would need to do in order to move toward that actual goal of writing full-time, and I realized that had some considerable changes to make in order to get that to happen. Unfortunately, shutting down Splickety is one of those changes.
Your proclaimed genres are Christian and horror. Christians say “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” How do you rectify these positions with a character bent on, say, using a stiletto on someone’s kidney? Will the real Ben Wolf stand up?
This is a great question, and I’m so glad you asked it. How do Christianity and horror go together? I’ve given a lot of thought and had a great many discussions about this over the years. It’s a complicated discussion, and there is no one right answer, but I’ll give you my thoughts on it as succinctly as I can:
A read-through of the Bible reveals plenty of horrific things happening–both natural and supernatural. People are brutally killed, demons torment humans, God opens up holes in the ground to swallow people whole and sends serpents to bite them and strikes people down for touching the ark of the covenant–the list goes on from there.
Are these “good” things? Not really. But the authors of the Bible included them for a reason: to show how horrific life can be, specifically with the intention of drawing a comparison between a life walking with God and a life separate from God. As I said, this is a huge discussion, and I don’t want to ramble on forever, but suffice it to say that horror as a genre or as a feature in any other genre (I’m working on a dark fantasy series as we speak, for example) is an excellent tool that an author of any stripe can use to their advantage to convey a message and tell a great story. And furthermore, I am not the same as my characters; I have a mind of my own, and they’re fictional beings. So they can stab kidneys with stilettos all day long, but it really gives no indication of who I am as a person.
Sidebar: One of the sessions I’ll be teaching at the conference is an extended presentation on Horror and how to wield it effectively. We’ll have plenty of time for discussion about this topic in more detail there, so I encourage any interested folks to sign up for the conference so we can delve deeper into the darkness together.
At the upcoming GLVWG conference, you may expect to have a variety of aspiring writers in attendance. There will be writers who do explicit sex, a few who do YA, those who do pieces with a religious bent. No doubt, others too. Do you have a common set of recommendations, advice, or taboos you might pass along to this varied group?
Yes. The key thing that I’ve learned over the last year is that you MUST know your audience. You must know what they like to read and what they expect to find in the books they read.
A lot of writing advice out there states something to the effect of “write the story of your heart and find an audience for it.” There’s a counterculture of primarily independently published (aka self-published or “indie”) authors who start by identifying their preferred audience and then writing books that will energize and excite that audience.
Many of those indie authors are making six figures a year writing. I know a handful of them, and I know a couple who are making seven figures a year using this strategy. So if your goal is commercial success, then choose a ravenous target audience in a genre that you’re interested in writing, read a lot of best-selling books in that genre so you can identify what elements readers are looking for, and then craft a story that will satisfy readers’ appetites accordingly.
Every wannabe writer at sometime in his or her life will think about using an agent. What is your experience with agents? There will be agents at the conference. Do you use an agent? The same agent for the different pubs? Experiences with agents are always of interest. What’s yours?
I’ve had two agents thus far, and now I am technically agent-less. A good friend of mine is a top agent in the industry, and he has informally offered to send anything out for me whenever I want him to, but right now, I’m focused on indie publishing because it is likely going to be the quickest and most lucrative path for me.
Please note that this is a decision I came to based on a lot of publishing experience (I spent seven years chasing traditional publishing and not getting anywhere) and working with two agents prior. I’m not at all saying it’s the right path for everyone–some of my closest friends are traditionally published authors who are making a living off of their writing.
The key thing to understand when working with an agent, at least from my perspective, is that no one will ever care more about your book than you. Therefore, you are in most ways the best person to sell it. A good agent should have connections to the folks you want to get your book in front of, and a great agent will have a solid understanding of your genre and the readership for your writing as well as some sales ability. Truly excellent agents are rare, just like top-notch folks in any industry, and thus they’re harder to land.
At the end of the day, the only thing any author can control is the work that they themselves do on their writing and on their career. So work to achieve new levels of productivity, quality, and imaginative storytelling so as to improve your chances whichever route you choose to take.
Tell us about your human side. You write a lot about blood. Does the sight of blood bother you? When you give blood, do you watch the needle go in or do you look the other way? Could you butcher and clean a chicken?
I’m on the fence with blood. A little blood here and there in real life is fine. A lot of blood and I do start to get queasy. I’m not big on needles, but I got a tetanus shot and a blood draw a few weeks ago, and I watched the whole time. In crisis situations, I tend to handle trauma pretty well, so I would think that if someone’s life were on the line, I could probably throw up real quick and then do whatever I could to help the person in need. I also practice Brazilian jiu jitsu, so I’m comfortable choking people and manipulating their joints.
With that said, I’m generally a peacemaker rather than a person who seeks out physical confrontation. Though I can probably hold my own in such a conflict, I would prefer to avoid it. Butchering a chicken doesn’t sound like the worst thing ever, and animal blood doesn’t gross me out quite so much. I field-dressed a pheasant once, and I don’t really eat vegetables, so in the apocalypse, I guess I’d find a way to do what I had to do in order to survive–chickens or otherwise.
We, of GLVWG, will be looking forward to seeing you in person and to hearing you speak about one of our common, favorite topics: writing.
I’m really honored and excited to have the chance to join you!
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Ben is the founder and owner of Splickety Publishing Group, the publisher of three flash fiction magazines. He has edited, written, and/or published over 100 published works and has taught at 40+ writers conferences nationwide.
Ben currently has one novel on the market, The Ghost Mine, a gripping sci-fi/horror novel sure to thrill you and chill you late into the night. Ben has also published a children’s book and will be publishing the first books of a nine-book fantasy series in early 2019. You can find his books on Amazon.com.
You can find Ben at benwolf.com or follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and on Facebook.
Ben and his wife Charis Crowe (who sometimes is his presentation partner) live in Iowa with their children. Charis is also presenting at the conference, and you can read Charis’ interview on our WordPress Blog – February 27.
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Article by Joe Fleckenstein
Joseph E. Fleckenstein, active GLVWG member for nine years and club treasurer for two years, has published over 35 items. The list includes technical papers, online courses, and 22 short stories in ezines and print magazines. In 2015 CRC Press published his technical book Three Phase Electrical Power. His novel The Kurdish Episode will soon be available at Amazon. Additional bio particulars are available at his website www.WriterJEF.com.
Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group 