BiTopia Write up on "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe"

BiTopia asked me to do a write up about "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe."

Fist Impressions - Book Covers!

Fist Impressions - Book Covers!

Been struggling for weeks now to come up with a good cover for my novel "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe." If this had been anything but seriously daunting, my book would have been published already. I admit, I'm a slow learner. Not slow as in dull witted, but slow as in it takes me a while to process, assimilate and digest info that requires an important creative output on my end. I've been doing a whole lot of learning and digesting, and have found some interesting and useful bits of info and advice.
A book's cover is of utmost consequence - it's that all important first impression. This is especially true in today's internet world of massive, quick, and ever-evolving information. In a book store or library, once you've bothered to pull a book off the shelf, chances are you're going to look at the blurb on the back, or read the first paragraph, if the cover is anything less than repulsive. On the internet,  people make split second decisions to move on if their attention is not immediately sparked by the initial image they encounter.
One of the great things about e-publishing is that one can change one's cover easily and relatively quickly if a cover doesn't seem to be capturing an audience. In fact this convenience has demonstrated quite clearly how much difference a good cover can make. I read of a woman whose first book wasn't selling so well even though those who bought it gave it great reviews. She came up with a much better cover and her sales exploded.
With e-publishing size matters. Covers on e-books are only virtual and most often seen in the size of a thumb nail. An author's graphics have to be big enough to be clear in that size. Same with the title. Extra long tittles, like the working title I've had for my second - soon to be finished - novel "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round," end up needing smaller font sizes to fit, and thus become illegible. Which is why I've decided to go back to my original title, "The Man with the Camera."
Color is an issue too because many e-readers show the cover only in black and white. The first option I tried for "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" had a black silhouette on a blue background; the effect was pretty cool in color but didn't work at all in black and white.
Some other useful advice on creating a cover, that I discovered, includes:
Don't depict some profound aspect about your story that isn't going to mean anything to someone who hasn't read it yet.
Figure out what feelings your book is meant to provoke and create a cover that will provoke the same feelings. You can do this by exploring what your book's themes are.
Sex sells, so if you have a lot of sex in your story use it on your cover. Duh; but someone did have to point this out to me. Well I said I was a little slow.
Don't bring your potential reader down. Another thing someone had to point out to me. I had chosen an image of  a sexy guy on a bed looking distressed. Yeah, my character is frustrated a lot, but I don't want those considering downloading my book to think it's a sad story when it's actually quite uplifting.
Anything else anyone reading this would like to add, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm still working on that cover.

Using Humor in Dramatic Fiction

Using Humor in Dramatic Fiction.

I saw the movie Winter's Bone with my mother some time ago. We were quite impressed by the movie but it was super intense and my mother said, "There just wasn't any comic relief."
I had never thought about the role comic relief plays in dramatic stories before. However, I realized that I had been using it all along in my writing and that most dramatic fiction does too. Like a lot of things in life, we act out of instinct or perhaps in reaction to things we've picked up on subconsciously.
My novel "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" is a dramatic tale of a man struggling to be himself in a world that doesn't want to have to accept who he is. After hearing me read many passages from my book, a fellow writer's group member said to me once, "I really enjoy your humor."
I especially appreciated the compliment as the humor in my book, despite being pervasive, is quite subtle. I was glad to see that I was successful in getting it across.
The humor is needed in my book; it's necessary to break up the tension, to prevent the reader from getting bogged down in the character's problems. As my novel is written in the first person, the humor is really that of my main character, Jim. Accordingly, the humor in his narrative also serves to gain the reader's empathy and allegiance. Everyone likes a good chuckle, and if Jim, despite all his problems, can get a little comic relief from the drama in his life, perhaps so can we when the going gets tough.

Using Setting in Dialogue

Using Setting in Dialogue

In real life, conversations usually have a lot of pauses - especially emotionally charged conversations. In fiction, much of the dialogue occurs in emotionally charged situations. A rapid exchange of comment and response will not ring true in this case. Adding, "he paused" or "She thought a bit" is fine once in a while, but that gets over used quickly.
One of the things I do to handle this is have my character's interact with their environment to show the pause or thinking occurring.
In "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," during a very intense scene in a coffee shop when Jim, my main character, reveals he's bisexual to someone very important to him who's homophobic, I breakup dialogue and show his discomfort by having him feel the granules in a packet of sugar. In the same scene I have the person he's talking to stare fixedly at a car parked on the curb. I also show Jim gripping the edge of the saucer at one point, later, he's looking at the cold slosh at the bottom of his cup.
In "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round," I have Bonnie's mother accidentally singeing the blouse she's ironing for work when Bonnie asks her if she'd been a planned child.
The trick is to intersperse dialogue with body language at key moments. This also has the handy effect of creating suspense for the readers - keeping them waiting just a bit for what's going to be said next.

What's a Quarter Worth?

What's a Quarter Worth?

When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I wrote my first piece of fiction. It was a short story entitled, "A Dog, a Cat and a Mouse." I sent it to my aunt. She was so pleased, she sent me a quarter to encourage my writing career. I don't have the quarter anymore (my guess is I spent it on candy), or a copy of the story, but I do still - after several decades and many, many moves - have the note of encouragement that she taped the quarter to.
Obviously I already had the writing itch within me when I wrote that story, but it's likely that my aunt's encouragement and that first paycheck for my writing had a lot to do with me someday becoming "Novelist, Harrie Farrow."
Is there some wee person in your life who might benefit from such encouragement?

Every Experience is Potential Fodder for a Future Novel.

Every Experience is Potential Fodder for a Future Novel.

If you're a writer, one way to help cope with a bad experience is to realize that it might come in handy someday when you're writing. Years ago, as I was being wheeled down a hospital corridor to go into surgery, I kept telling myself to pay attention. I may want to use this someday in a book. What does this moment feel like? What are the sights, smells, sounds? Of course, the irony is, what I was feeling at the moment was that the moment might someday be useful in a book. Oh well, I guess I can always write about a writer going into surgery and thinking about how that might be a good experience to put in a book some day.
In "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," my main character's parents turn fundamentalist christian when he is a teenager. I use statements that a born-again relative of mine used in conversations with me when writing dialogue Jim has with his parents.
Likewise, in "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round" I have Bonnie's father, Ted, and her mother Karen make some bizarre comments to the mysterious Rachel that someone once said to me.
So remember when things get bad, at least your gaining another tidbit for a great scene in a novel.

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Characters who seem like flesh and blood people to readers is an essential part of good fiction. Mainly this requires that a character is multidimensional - just like real people. A character needs to have a past, hobbies, issues, dreams etc. 

One way to get to know who your character is in-depth, is to imagine him or her in all sorts of scenarios. It can be especially helpful to include situations not related to your story at all. In my novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," my main character, Jim, never once goes to a beach. But when I was on vacation during the time I was writing the book, even though I did not write during the vacation, I took the opportunity to - in my head - imagine Jim on the beach in Mexico. What circumstances would have brought him there? Who would he be with? What would they be saying to each other? What would he like or dislike about that beach? What kind of swimming attire would he wear? What beach activities would he partake in? Would he use sun block? etc.  

Once you have a real grasp on the people you people your novel with, it will come more automatically to you to know how they will respond to the situations in your book, what they will say and how they will say it. 

One of the things the other writers in my writers group use to say to me when I read from "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" is "you really get inside Jim's head!" The truth was, I told them, that Jim really got inside my head. 

Why I Never Wanted to Write a Novel

Why I Never Wanted to Write a Novel
Commitment, commitment, commitment - writing a novel is a long term commitment and there is no guarantee it will payoff. Not only do you not know if it will payoff financially, you don't know if anyone will ever even enjoy it. If you're going to get it done and do it right it takes lots of time away from other things you could be doing or writing. I have not ever taken even a second to contemplate how many hours I put into my novel "Love, Sex and Understanding the Universe." I think I'd get dizzy and faint if I did.
I wrote the book simply because I had no other choice. It was intended to be a short story but the short story, which I really was excited about, would not fit into the confines of that format. My main character, Jim, would not be satisfied with me telling just that one little bit of his life. He wanted the whole thing told, and I could see too that without his back-story the short story did not make sense. Jim was not the kind of guy to get himself into the mess he was in. I wanted to know what happened to get him there and he told me, and told me and told me. But I answered back that this was all fine and well but I was NOT going to write a novel. He wouldn't shut up and even went on to tell me what happens after the slice of time in the story. Finally, I gave up and did as he insisted, and told his story.
So, was it worth it? Do I regret the time - years - I put into that book? Well, of course it was worth it to get Jim to stop his incessant narrating in my head. More importantly though, I love the novel. The few others who have heard parts of it - no one else has ever read the whole thing (YET) - have been intrigued too, and that's very encouraging. However, what's most telling about how I feel about having put that time and commitment into the book is that fact that once I was done I wanted to do it again, and thus, my second novel, "Bonita verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-go-round."