Knowing your audience

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

As a speculative fiction writer, I often forget the importance of pandering to my audience.  And by pandering, I mean more than giving them what they want; give them something they don’t expect that resonates with them.

For instance, I am a big, big fan of USA’s original series Psych.  (I also enjoy Burn Notice…but that’s a different post.)  Everything about the show resonates with me.  I often (at least once an episode) have to pause the show so I can finish laughing hysterically and catch my breath before continuing.  Shawn (the fake psychic and main character) is my age, graduated high school the year I did, and says the things I’d never say myself but would love to if my wit was half as quick as his.  Gus (his best friend and partner) and he have some of the wittiest dialog (banter, really) I have ever heard.  The female detective is hot without being imposingly so.  Heck, Shawn dated the chick from the movie She’s All That. As wonderful as this stuff is, it’s become what I expect of the show.  I expect witty banter and low-key sexual tension.

This week, I got a nugget.  Out of left field, the aforementioned hot female detective asks Shawn what he’s done all day.  Shawn’s response: “Well, I watched some Phineas and Ferb, then…”  Pause.  Laugh until I can’t breathe.  Why is this so funny?  I watched no less than four episodes of Phineas and Ferb today.  (I do have a three year old).  P&F is also hilarious.   (Perry the Platypus versus Dr. Doofenshmirtz…but that’s another post)  The writers watch P&F.  They decided that their fan base would enjoy P&F if they had opportunity to watch it.  They knew it would resonate with me.  It did.

It’s not just that.  At his high school reunion, Shawn replaced his own name tag picture with one of Judd Nelson.  They throw references to 80s movies into every episode (maybe not so much of late, but the first couple seasons were packed.  It averages out.)  Some zingers miss me, others smack me in the head.  Pause.  Laugh.

I want to do that with my stories.  Not all of them, but some.  I want my target demographic of readers to feel like they just got something other people missed because I wrote it just for him/her.  It doesn’t have to be a joke.  It could be a character name that’s a allusion, a character quirk that they get because they’ve lived it.

This is hard to do.  I get it occasionally when I read, but not often.  Dumbledore’s name is an allusion to little moth creatures in Lord of the Rings.  I’m reading a detective novel where the character has realizations and observations I would make.  A Phineas and Ferb reference would be a tough score in a story, but I guess it could work.

I often find that I cut my clever quips and references because I doubt that the editor will get it.  I have had editors/beta-readers/etc. tell me I should cut those things.  Maybe I shouldn’t listen.  After all, my parents don’t really like Psych.  Why not?  They didn’t graduate in 1995.  The humor isn’t aimed at them.  Oh they’ll get most of it, but not the stuff that’s golden, the stuff that makes me want to watch it the minute I see Psych on my recorded list (bless you, DVR).  I am in their demographic.  Somewhere out there, an editor will be in my story’s demographic and that quip the other editors didn’t get will be what sells it.

There’s a lot about my style that could resonate with some people while others consider it nails on a chalkboard.  (How often do you see chalkboards anymore?  I have three in my classroom for graphing, but I don’t even use them.  I digress.)  See, that’s one there!  Did you miss it?  My parenthetical commentary.  If I wrote stories like that, I’d have editors coming to my house to pry the 9 and 0 keys from my keyboard.  I like parenthetical comments.  I teach with them (verbally), I blog with them (obviously), why not write with them?  I could get away with it in flash fiction most likely, and I concede that a novel written this way would be exhausting, but there’s a place for this.  (Yes, Shawn Spencer on Psych makes his share of aside comments in similar style, another thing that endears me to the show.  Or does it endear the show to me?  I can never remember which way it goes.)

Anyway, I want to reach out and poke people with little bits that work for them in a very personal way without getting in the way of the story.  Or sometimes getting in the way.  I have done this, to an extent, with my story TWHDotGMP (title redacted…there’s a post about that somewhere on here).  For instance there is reference to “…a group of Klinons that were barely dodging copyright infringement as it was…”  Not the most incredibly unique or obscure reference in the world, but it’s there to make a reader pause, reread, spot the difference, and chuckle.  Too many of those and the reader can’t get any inertia for all the stop-and-go reading, but a few peppered in can make a story that much more enjoyable.  TWHDotGMP is out on submission as we speak to IGMS; Strange Horizons already said no thanks.  But it’s early in the life of a short story and I really want this experiment in farcical humor to succeed, mostly because I want to know there are readers out there as wacky as I am, people for whom my humor resonates on a personal level.  And I want to get paid.

Hands, Teeth, and Pitchforks

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I know I’ve said it before, so I guess this makes be-five; I dig zombies.  I’m not generally a horror guy.  Never got into Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th or Halloween.  Not much of a vampires versus werewolves enthusiast.  Hauntings and demons freak me out.  But I dig zombies.

I just finished (a couple nights ago, while on vacation) Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  It’s been mentioned in my sidebar for a while and in an old post or two.  It’s YA (young adult) and very much centered in the mind of a female teen.  Had I been less motivated to get into the book, I might not have.  Why?  I’m a man in his thirties, hardly the target demographic.  Had I not met Carrie and been so impressed with her at ConCarolinas, I never would have picked the book up.

I’m glad I did.

TFHT is set well after the zombie apocalypse has occurred, so much after that the characters don’t know a life before.  Stories still exist; those paired with a pheromone-driven kind of love are the driving force behind the characters and hence the plot.  Oh, and some desperation.

I spent way more time inside the main character’s head experiencing her very narrow selection of emotions and topics.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since I do work with teen girls and they seem to have very limited catalogs as well.  It was, for lack of better terminology, a bit more “angsty” than I usually prefer.  (Is that a word?  No; no it’s not.)  This is angsty in the Twilight style.  Ooh, I just did the unthinkable, comparing a book I liked to Twilight.  Maybe I should say it’s ansty the way Twilight should have been.  The angst did drive characters to act rashly and lose focus and do things a normal person might not do, but no one ever became even temporarily stupid.  Sentimental, yes.  Paralyzed, yes.  But never stupid.  (Thank you for that, Carrie.  I get enough stupid elsewhere.)

The plot arc starts out complicated and gets much more linear in the end; again, not a complaint, just a necessity of the way it’s written.  Actions had consequences and consequences required action.  It was a plot that moved and the characters sometimes pushed the plot and other times were swept away by it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the zombies themselves.  Excellently devised and explained.  The zombies, you see, are outside the fence; people are inside.  So what do the zombies do?  Go after the fence, of course.  This leaves their fingers broken and cut and hideous.  It was a well that was visited often, but the descriptions were always graphic.  Besides, if the fingers are what penetrate into your world, that’s what you notice.  Their fingers are like sharks’ dorsal fins that way.

Will I read the sequel, The Dead-Tossed Waves?  Eventually, I suspect.  What better endorsement could there be?  I guess I could be typing furiously on Amazon to get it, but the book’s just a little too far from my zone to be that enthusiastic.  If you like zombies or teen angst, you will likely enjoy this book.  If you like both, you’ll love it.

So what did that have to do with the pitchforks in the title?  I also watched (the new version of) The Crazies.  Zombie movie?  Eh, close enough for me.  And it rocked.  A lot purer a science fiction movie than most zombie films, it was sufficiently disturbing and violent without being ridiculous.  The whole pitchfork scene was very disturbing, more from a stress and anticipation angle than anything else.  And the notion that the crazies are not undead, just…well, crazy, made the plot that much more credible.

Oh, the plot had faults, but not too many.  It might have been better if the words “stay here” had been purged from the script.  And let’s discuss the foolishness of wasting ammo.

Sufficiently scary.  I still have to take the dogs out tonight, so we’ll see how freaked out I ended up.  If there’s a human outside, I’ll surely scream like a little girl.  In my defense, I can’t see any neighbors from my house so no one should be out there.

Galleys

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 6 Comments

Hi folks.  Back from vacation with no writing to show for it.  I had fun, though, and I’m largely refreshed.  That should help.

I did receive my very first galleys while I was gone.  My second ones, too.  Galleys (the term my WotF colleagues have been using) are really just page proofs for the parts of the publication relevant to the author, in this case me.  We need to be sure my name is spelled right and no formatting errors crept into the story. I got my Zero Gravity galleys on Tuesday (I think) and my WotF galleys Thursday. Both were pretty darn good.

I also got a rejection from Daily Science Fiction for S.R.  I shaved the story down about 100 words to get to the point quicker and sent it back out, this time to Apex Magazine.  That’s a long shot because they deal in dark SF; S.R. has some darkness to it, but maybe not enough.  I had intended to hit Lightspeed with this story, but they’re having submission system issues and remain closed until they are remedied.  If Apex passes, we’ll try again.  This story will sell somewhere; I just need to find the right market.  I haven’t hit any of the big 3 with it yet; a fact that surprised me a bit.  I don’t usually send snail mail subs during the summer since it’s harder to get to the post office, but school starts in a couple weeks and I’ll have them on my list again.

I’ve lost all momentum on all my projects.  That probably means I have late mistakes to fix.  I’ll troll for them tonight.

Good to be home.

Against my will

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

I hate it when this happens.  When writing projects conspire with each other and mutiny against my schedule, demanding at gunpoint that they be written in their own preferred order.  I hate it.  But I have submitted to their demands.

I have a vampire funeral story (yep, you heard right) that has been demanding to be written.  With the coming of Halloween anthologies, I gave in.  Ah, the story needed the Halloween tie in.  Damn, I’ll never be able to work on a deadline.

The novel is actually making progress, but not the direction I wanted.  I need a good leaping transition to get past the boring stuff.  Unfortunately I’ve buried myself in a scene that I can’t seem to escape.  That means backtracking and a lot more telling.  I need to squish five pages into three paragraphs.  To do so, I need to step away from the story.  I probably should jump to a later part of the story, like the part I feel rushed to be telling, but the vampire cries louder.  He does not, however, sparkle.

This story shouldn’t take more than a few days.  I hope to be back on the novel by Monday.  I wish I could dedicate more time to it in the next few days, but I have a trip to a state park tomorrow and my wife is shooting a wedding on Saturday.  *sigh*

I’m also going on vacation next week.  Like Nobu, I’m bringing my laptop.  However I don’t have any word count goals for the days we’re gone.  But if I don’t get moving on this novel, my first draft won’t be done before school starts and I sure won’t have a decent draft by the end of August.  I need to get my @$$ in gear.

Cats and Dogs

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Did I mention it pours?  Two more responses today, neither personalized, neither acceptances.  Analog and Strange Horizons, two very tough markets.  The story I sent to Analog (E.E.) had some rewrites that didn’t make it into the envelope because I am an idiot.  I’ll try it — wit the rewriten sections — at Asmiov’s next.  It’s fairly firm sf so it needs a rigorous home.  The Strange Horizons story (T.W.H.D.o.t.G.M.P) is on the other end of the spectrum, sci-fi humor.  Very funny stuff, a little longer than Ed Schubert at IGMS said he prefers his humor, but I may try there anyway.

I just sent S.R. to Daily Science Fiction like I said I would.  Their average response time at Duotrope is 9 days.  Yep, nine.  So I should hear from them soon.

I do still have stories out there.  ASIM is still holding T.O.L., but I’m doubting they’ll pick it up at this point.  Bull Spechas had T.R.M. for more than their average response time and well over their predicted response time.  I’m hoping the long wait is good news.  G.B. is still at Abyss & Apex, too; I’ll expect news from them in about a month.

But that’s it, folks.  I need to get these two back out so I can start waiting again.

Honestly, this has been a very good year for my story sales.  Yes, yes, the Writers of the Future win stands out above the rest, for sure, but it’s still been my most productive year to date.  Four stories will have made print in 2010.  (See my bibliography to know which.)  That’s twice what I had in 2009 and together that’s as much as I had in the eight or so years prior that I’ve been writing.  I need to keep things growing, though a novel would be worth a lot of shorts.  I’m pretty satisfied and I’ll keep at it.  Sewnd more, sell more.  That’s how it works.

When it rains, it pours

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

After a response drought I end up with two in my inbox in two days.  This one (S.H.) was a rejection from IGMS.  It never even made it to Ed the editor (nice guy, met him at ConCarolinas).  Too bad.  Now I need to select another market.  I may try Daily Science Fiction; other Codexians seem to be scoring there.  If not, their response time is only a notch or two slower than Lightspeed or Clarkesworld.

On a bigger note, I have received confirmation that Zero Gravity will be out later this summer.  A quick turnaround is an advantage of a small press, I guess.  It’ll be a trade paperback (size of a hardcover just without the hard cover).  It looks like it will sell at around $15 from Amazon based on Pill Hill Press’s previous anthologies.  I’ll link to it when it’s available.

At long last, a home for “Leech Run”

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment


A sale!

How long ago was I complaining about not hearing any responses, two hours?  I ran out to get a movie (more on that in a minute) and come home to find that the anthology Zero Gravity has accepted my story “Leech Run”!  They’ve had it on hold for a little while.  Submissions closed today and I guess no one managed to bump me.

“Leech Run” has been seeking a home for a long time.  It’s the story that got me waitlisted for Clarion West last year.  Honestly Zero Gravity seems about the perfect fit.  It’s a Pill Hill Press anthology, due out late next summer (I’m finding conflicting dates, so it may be soon and it may be 2011); more waiting before “Leech Run” sees the light of day.  But a sale’s a sale, 25 bucks I didn’t have before.  A credential I didn’t have before.  Being read by people (eventually) that hadn’t heard of me before.

As for the movie rental, I went to a RedBox for the first time.  Efficient, affordable, the way of the future.  I went specifically to get…*cough*…New Moon.  I know, I know.  Not my choice.  The wife needed to see it again before she drags me to Eclipse on Friday.  Two in the same week.  I’m going to have to read some Moby Dick to balance it out.

Count up vs. Countdown

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I have mentioned it before — I hate waiting.  I am bad at it.  Twitchy, impatient, obsessive.  I currently find myself doing two different types of waiting.

First, I am waiting for responses on stories.  Yes, yes, this waiting is perpetual in this business.  It’s been years since I had no stories out on submission, so I’ve been waiting for about three years this way.  Call me masochist.  My most recent submission went out three weeks (21 days) ago.  Not that long, I know, but I haven’t received any responses in those three weeks.  My other stories have been waiting longer: 31, 40, 46, 50, 51, and 74 days, though two of these (50 & 74) have brought in hold requests in that time.  My average is a little under two months.  Two months is not so long a wait, but two months times seven gets tough for me, especially when some of those two months could turn into four or six months.  That’s the first type of waiting, the open-ended waiting, the kind that could end tomorrow or a year from tomorrow.

The other type of waiting is what I’m doing with the WotF workshop: waiting for a target date.  I have 54 days left before I leave for LA.  I’ve already waited since…when did I find out I won, February?  It’s like waiting for Christmas; the days get longer the closer you get to the target.

So which waiting is worse?  I think the combination is melting my brain.

Sleepless somewhere other than Seattle

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 10 Comments

As my long-time blog followers know, I just just barely missed Clarion West last year — I was an alternate but never called to replace anyone.  I followed the progress of the workshop and friends like Jordan Lapp and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz very closely, wishing I was there with them, writing my heart out.  Wishing, but not writing.  I didn’t produce any new writing last summer.  It hurt too much to even think about it, knowing how very close I came to CW and falling short.

This year, again as people know, I fell shorter, not even making the waiting list.  There are a variety of factors that could have led to this (including my inability to count), but I’m home again.  At least I’m writing this time.  While I didn’t get many bankable words typed during my camping trip, I got my novel back on the rails.  Once again I have a chance to finish a draft before school starts.

I am still bummed about not being at CW.  I do suspect I’d be miserable there by the second or third week, missing my daughter.  Six weeks is so long.  So maybe I’m better off here.  That helps.  It also helps knowing that the story that didn’t get me in to CW got me into the WotF workshop (and the anthology).  It helps a little more knowing the story that got me waitlisted last year may have finally found a home (shortlisted for an anthology).  Nothing helps with rejection like success.

I’m happy for Tracie and Sandra and the others at CW.  I hope they learn a ton.  Same goes for the folks at Clarion – San Diego.  I’m still pretty convinced I will not be applying to either workshop next year.  It’s been a real hardship on my family just speculating how we would handle my absence and it would be too much for next summer.  Besides, I hope to get my career on track by this time next year (with an agent for my first novel, a solid draft for my second, three or four more short story sales, stuff like that).  I’m not expecting to be too good for the Clarion workshops, just have enough momentum that I won’t need them as a launching pad.

I’ve said all this before.  This post is probably more for my own catharsis than anything else.  (Hey, I looked it up and used that word right!)  I know there are kindred spirits out there, wishing they were among peers under the tutelage of pros.  I say to those spirits, don’t waste this time.  Write.  Write crap if you have to (we all do sometimes), but write something.  You don’t have to do the Clarion model’s story a week — who has time for that in the real world? — but get words on paper.  It is my biggest regret from last year, that I had nothing to show for that time.

I may not have time to write today (I have a lot of church obligations) but it is on my mind.  It will happen tomorrow and throughout the week.  And the next.  I haven’t updated my novel status bar in a while because I’m in an add-and-subtract place where any count would be false.  I hope to be past that and get it updated in a few days.  I bet the novel surpasses the 50,000 word mark.  That’s not bad as long as I don’t crest 80,000; that would likely be too much for a YA book.  I am excited about writing (not always the case, as you writers know).  It feels good.  The only way to get from those low points (like I was in last year at this time) to these excited points is to write your way there.  So get writing.  After all, that’s what makes you a writer.

Ahhh, indoors is nice

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I am back from camping!  Hooray.  I got less writing than usual done, but I spent a lot of time prewriting.  My novel was stalled and I was unhappy with the depth (or lack thereof) of my characters, so I dropped a few bucks on a novel writing ebook.  I’ll discuss the specifics in another post once I finish with it.  It helped me explore my characters and find new life.  I think I added one chapter, rewrote a bunch, and convinced myself I need to do some massive deletions (from chapters that come later than the one I added–it was a squeeze in).  All in all I call it a productive writing escape.

I also picked up two books from a discount shop.  The one on screenwriting seems to focus more on basic story construction and less on the technique of actually writing for the screen, so I’m bummed about that purchase.  The other book is a re-re-reprinting of a second edition of a military strategy book.  Big score there.  I got through the chapter on the Greeks and was gasping for air by the pace it covered, which is exactly the type of overview I really wanted.  It may be a little light on detail, but I can google the details if I need to delve deeper into something specific.  All in all, four bucks well spent (between the two).

I’m very tired and want to go back to cleansing my DVR.  More soon.  Ah, internet.  How I missed thee.