Oh…THAT Cat

September 28, 2025September 28, 2025 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been writing for about a quarter of a century. While the very first thing I wrote as a writer was a novel (a shameless Harry Potter ripoff that was never even close to publication), my successes have all come in the form of short stories. I’ve tried novels. I’ve outlined them, started them, restarted, started a different one, gone back to rewrite the first one… I haven’t been a novel finisher.

And no, I’m not about to claim to have finished one. I’m on the other end of that spectrum. I just happen to be approaching this one with a seriousness that some other attempts have lacked. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. “This is the one I’m really going to finish.” Surely I’ve never said that about any of those other projects.

As it turns out, writing a novel is a different beast altogether from writing a short story. Part of my novel difficulties has been that, while honing my writing skills in my early career, I had to train myself to get the story out there fast. As such, I grew to equate depth of description as frivolous navel-gazing. This plot has got to move! I need to tell this whole story in 7500 words. Or 5000 words. Or 1000 words. Or 750. Yes, that was a regular target for me in flash contests.

One of the things that accompanies such brevity is the possibility of holding the whole plot in your head at once. This makes story structure an easier thing to mold, at least for me. This week, as I attacked the outline for the LitRPG novel that has captured my imagination (Dungeon Crawler Carl rocked my world), I realized my plot-in-a-nutshell method wasn’t going to cut it.

As I mentioned, I’ve been at this writing thing for a long time. I have no formal training as a fiction writer or any other kind of writer. I didn’t even take any writing classes in college; my ACT score exempted me. So most of what I know is self-taught. Not to suggest that I pulled it all out of thin air. It came from books. Writer’s Digest and Elements of Fiction Writing and Lukeman’s The First Five Pages and Gotham Workshop books, and yes, Snyder’s Save the Cat. I’ve seen more videos and con panels on story structure than any man should ever be asked to endure. But somehow, after umpteen million times, I finally started to wonder if I needed to think about story structure while I made my outline.

Why should I think about it? Don’t I know it by heart? Don’t I live and breathe and eat and poop story structure? Apparently, I do not. Because today, when I created an extra column in my outline spreadsheet to enumerate which story beats were happening in which chapter, the story clicked.

I was struggling to build out this outline, it it occurred to me watch a few story structure YouTube videos. This video from Bookfox ranking structures from worst to best finally got my head moving in the right direction.

Once I got to the “oh yeah, Save the Cat made a lot of good points:” thought in my head, I realized I had trouble recalling what those good points were. Back through YouTube, again finding a gem in this Reedsy, vid summarizing the 15 cat-saving beats. Then I found this handy chart from this article. I’ll tell you what–these percentages really helped!

I locked myself in at 40 chapters. If the actual writing of the story demands 38 or 42, I’ll be flexible, but the plan was 40. That put the Catalyst at the beginning of chapter 5, the debate stretching through chapter 8, the B story kicking off about chapter 9, Midpoint at 21, Dark Night of the Soul in 31-32… I already had ideas of where I wanted the story go, but this more than anything else let me lay the brickwork for the yellow road to the Wonderful Land of Novel. Was it new information? Not really. Now I know how my Precalculus students feel when they factor their 457th trinomial and suddenly understand what they’d been doing in all 456 that came before it. Or in a more relatable metaphor, I felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. Sometimes you need a little framework to nudge the ball back on course.

I’m not counting chickens before I even have eggs. I know I’m on step 3 out of 93 just to get a draft. I just wanted to share the feeling of relief and ease I experienced when I finally applied this structure deliberately. That coupled with my recent trend toward over-writing instead of the short story induced under-writing suggests that maybe this time will be the one that gets all the way to The End. I can’t wait to start putting words to page.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

nycMidnight – Round 2 results are in…

September 17, 2025September 17, 2025 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

After a long wait, the results for Round 2 of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Contest are in. The authors of the top three (3) stories in each group move on to the third and final round. My story placed…fourth. First Honorable Mention. Alas.

Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll put my thoughts together regarding the whole NYCM experience. I want to see the critique and let my mind settle before I attempt that. Check back if that’s something that interests you.

Avast, matey!

In other news that I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about, I sold a story to an anthology! Very soon, Raconteur Press will be releasing their pirate anthology, Planks & Plunder. They’ve asked that we wait for all versions (ebook and print) are available before pushing out links, but I’ll have them soon.

My story is called “The True Stone and the Faux Blade”. It’s a classic Caribbean-pirate tale (not space pirates, though I have an old one of those you could read/listen to on Escape Pod. Click here to check out “Leech Run”) with plenty of fantasy elements. Driven by vengeance, a girl joins a pirate crew captained by a collector of magical artifacts. But is she part of the crew of part of the collection?

This is the first story sale I’ve made in a long time. A looong time. Long enough that I can’t bring myself to type it. If you look in my bibliography, I guess you can do the math yourself. Some of that I can chalk up to decreased output, but that doesn’t make the hiatus any less frustrating. So it was a huge relief when I saw the congratulatory email. I’m using that boost to fuel a surge in my submissions so I can maybe get another one picked up somewhere.

I’ve seen the cover art. It’s nice. But no…I’m going to hold off until I can link you to it. That should be sometime in the next week. Watch for it soon.

On to Round 2!

July 31, 2025 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The results of the first round of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge are in.

The writers of the top 7 stories in each group move on to round 2. There are 88 groups, each with apparently 30-35 stories. In my group, my story came in 6th. Whew.

On Friday, at midnight NYC-time, I’ll be assigned to a new group. Like round 1, we’ll get a genre, a setting, and an object. Then we have 48 hours to write a 1000-word or less story in that genre, set in that place, including that object. Only this time my competition will be people who have already proven their ability to write a decent flash fiction story.

I’m hoping that this round goes a little mor smoothly for me than round 1. Can I get a genre like sci-fi or fantasy or fairytale or comedy? All those were given to some groups in round 1. Political Satire was quite the challenge for me. I think my odds are good of getting a genre that’s a more natural fit for me, but historical fiction and romance are still out there like landmines waiting to blow up in my face.

I was also at my parents’ place for most of round 1’s window. Honestly, the political friction that exists between my folks and me might have helped the genre part of the story, but otherwise it was a big distraction. Round 2’s distraction (as mentioned in my last post) is the start of the school year. Friday is my first in-service day. Fortunately, the writing window is the weekend, so I’m hoping to avoid too much back-to-school distraction. Maybe I can use that atmosphere to my story’s advantage like I did with the last one.

I’m happy to make it to round 2. I was very nervous that I took too many liberties with the setting and object for round 1. I’m going to need a better showing if I want to make round 3. For now, I’m going to polish up that round 1 story and send it out to and editor. I’m supposed to let 10 days pass before publishing the story anywhere, but a 10-day turnaround for a response would be very fast, let alone sub-to-pub. I think there are some markets that “TruthSerum.ai” would fit into nicely. Let’s find out.

Me and NYC Midnight

June 3, 2025 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

NYC Midnight is a series of pay-to-play writing contests. The current contest (which just started May 30th) is flash fiction, which is often a go-to for me. Contestants are grouped and each group receives a genre, location, and object for their prompt, then you get 48 hours to write and submit a story of 1000 words or fewer.

As a general rule, I don’t do fee-based submissions, be that markets or contests. However, I discussed this contest at a con with a writer I respect. She had good things to say about NYC Midnight, particularly about the feedback it provided on every story submission. Being in an incredible sale drought, I thought some feedback might be nice, as might a little validation if I can get through a round or two of the contest. So, on my birthday, I decided to get myself a gift and join the contest.

I consider the fee an investment to help me decide about the contest’s value for myself. Is it worth participating? Is it worth the fee? Is the feedback valuable and/or worth more than a writing group’s feedback? Should I recommend it to people or warn them away? I won’t know unless I participate, so I did.

As a member of Codex Writing Group (a speculative fiction writers’ group for writers with professional sales or major workshop experience), I get to take part in a flash fiction contest every January. I’m up against writers with significant writing chops and accomplishments there. I usually hold my own. I’m hoping for similar results in this contest, but I’m not holding my breath for prizes.

So how’s it going so far? It’s been interesting. I have written and submitted my first story. The submission format was a little odd, requiring a title page and synopsis instead of a more typical manuscript format. It took about 30 minutes to be sure I was doing it right. And Now I get to wait until the end of July for results and comments. I guess I should have looked at that closer, because that seems like a long wait. The Codex contest, by comparison, had a similar prompt-to-submission window and gave only to the end of the week to judge. In the early years, that could be a lot of stories to read, rate, and comment on. Now they’ve made groups (not unlike NYC Midnight’s) so it’s more manageable, but still 12-20 stories to handle. The groups for this contest are reportedly about 35 stories.

I don’t want to give away my prompt completely since I’m not sure what the privacy rules are (I looked at them but don’t recall), but I’ll tell you my genre: Political Satire. Yeah…I’m a sci-fi/fantasy guy. Their examples of political satire included 1984, Wag the Dog, and SNL political sketches, the first of which definitely gave me permission to do something science-fictiony. The location and object kind of felt like they were steering toward a specific type of story, possibly with a specific political slant. I didn’t really take the bait on that.

I found this story challenging to write, a fact not helped by being at my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s 75th birthday while I wrote it. I had 3-4 false starts before getting an actual story written. I didn’t like it, so I wrote another full story. Of course I didn’t like that one either, so I went back to the first full. At this point I had maybe 2 hours to the deadline.

I monkeyed with the story for a half hour or so before I started to feel confident in it. Then I went and looked up the submission process and checked the FAQs. Yeah…my order could have been better.

The FAQs were the scary part. The story is required to have the prompted location as its primary setting. Okay, I had noticed that part earlier, so I had written it so that the physical setting used was indeed the one in the prompt…unless you consider an online application a setting, because that was where the story was really happening. So maybe that was a stretch. What did the FAQs say about that? That my story might be disqualified if I didn’t use the location sufficiently. Ooh boy. And what else did they say? That the object in the prompt has to be physically in the story or referred to in a story-in-a-story kind of way (like a bowl of porridge if a character recited the tale of Goldilocks). Did I do that? Well…not exactly. I took liberties with both setting and object. The object was part of the title and came up repeatedly, but was that prompt-object supposed to be physically present in the prompt-location? No. And that’s another story-might-be-disqualified offense, depending on the generosity of the reviewer.

So yeah, this might be a big fat DQ for the bargain price of $58 (I missed the early registration window). Did I get a marketable story out of it? Maybe. I definitely know of a couple markets that I could send it to, but it may or may not fit their preferences. It’s a weird little story with a very weird format, basically designed as if interacting with an A.I. In my world, stretching the limits of the prompt is a positive. We’ll see if NYC Midnight lives in that world too.

Now I wait to see how this went. Did it get disqualified? Did it pay off setting it in a future with a crisis that isn’t actually a current or even predicted crisis? Were they impressed with my creativity? With my writing at all? Check back and find out. For now, all I can tell you is that the contest format was a little different than I’d anticipated and the rules are making me a little nervous. But at least I wrote a thing. (Technically two things, though I disliked the second), and that ain’t nothing.

free stuff from my past

April 12, 2009 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I dug through a file on my computer called “sold stories” and found some gems that will not likely be sold as reprints unless I make it big or need filler for my own anthology. Not to say they were bad stories — they sold, didn’t they? — but they aree clearly from my past.

I decided to post one of those stories here, despite mixed opinions from my readers. The story I’m posting (right now) is “Blood of a Soldier”, my 5000-word military-vampire story. It’s probably more science fiction than it is horror, but it does get a touch graphic. I am more disturbed by some of the amateur flags I flew throughout the story (watch for my not-too-blatant “said bookisms”). Still, there are a few well-turned phrases and a lot of my preferred direct style. Surprisingly there is little in the way of dialog; I feel I’m usually strong with dialog and fill stories with it because of that.

Anyway, this is where I’ve been. Stories like this got me this far. Depending on its reception, I mayreplace it sometime in the future, but it’ll be here for a while. I don’t have a trunk of pieces I’m ready to fling around for free…at least not yet. Maybe someday. For now, enjoy.

Catching Up on Reading as I Drive

February 22, 2009February 22, 2009 ~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Often I hear of urban dwellers using commute time to do their reading: on a train, bus, or subway. I drive. There aren’t a lot of options here. But I still like to spend that time catching up on good books. Thank heavens for audio books. Let’s face it, listening to a book is not the same as reading it. It’s a close second, though, particularly an unabridged version. It can, however, reveal some of your favorite authors’ faults the same way that reading your own work out loud can reveal flaws in your stories.

I have listened to the first five Harry Potter books on tape or disc, though it’s been years. I wanted to reread them but couldn’t justify the time away from my perpetually growing reading list that I already neglect far too much. A coworker had the HP audios and I borrowed one. The performance by Jim Dale is awesome. His voices are great and his delivery is spot on for the wizarding world. I consider his performance the industry standard. If you haven’t heard him, get one of those books and listen. If I find other books he reads, I may get them just for his voice. Of course I haven’t gone looking…yet.

More recently I listened to K-PAX by Gene Brewer. If you’ve seen the movie, you got the gist of the story. There were differences, but the movie was well done, as was the book. The novel’s style lends itself well to audio performance. It was no Jim Dale, but it was good.

At the same time I purchased K-PAX, I bought Michael Crichton’s Next. Both were in a discount bin at the local bookstore. I guess I’m about halfway through it. I’ve never really read Crichton. I hope his other books are better. Considering that every version of Next (hardcover, paperback, and audio) were marked way down, I assume it is a sub-par example of his work. It’s extra tough as an audiobook; I keep wanting to flip around to make sure I know which character he’s talking about. It took five of the thirteen or so discs to get to the main plot. I’ll keep this example in mind as I write my own novels.

I also bought a book off iTunes, intending to listen on my iPod but it found its home on my school computer. The book is Dune. Yes, I am a SF heretic that has never read Frank Herbert’s classic of classics. I have good reason. I had a college roommate who watched three different movies EVERY night as he fell asleep: Dune, Waterworld, or The Muppet Movie. Muppet nights always led to better dreams. What was more, I married a woman addicted to the David Lynch film. Just looking at the title sent images of Brad Dourif and Sting. It was a borderline phobia.

Anyway, the audiobook was a safer approach for me. The book is (obviously) much better than the film, though the movie does color many of my mental images. I’m glad I’m “reading” it this way. Numerous voices lend their talent to the presentation. I just absorb a chapter or two while I grade tests or homework during my planning period. It’s nice, relaxing, efficient.

I love audio performances. The new Amazon Kindle 2 reportedly has an automated “read aloud” option. Not the same. I don’t know that I could take more than a page of robo-speak. Reviews I have seen call the Kindle’s vocal technique “serviceable”. I’m looking for a voice that adds to the telling, not detracts. Still, as a writer (even one far from audio contracts), I am concerned what the auto-read will do to audiobook rights. Will licensing a book to Kindle reduce the value of the audio rights? Infringe upon previous rights? There is a fair amount of discussion out there already about this, most writers groups preferring Amazon include an option to block the audio feature. Sounds like n inexpensive solution to me, especially if it causes problems with the Kindle acquiring key authors. Maybe Oprah could get behind the writers’ initiative. Anyway, I love audiobooks and would hate to see anything inhibit their continued production.

-Oso

Good for reading, but do you want it reading to you?