Tag: Science Fiction

Adventures with Advertising

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

With Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine coming out June 30th, I’ve decided to try to get the word out. That’s harder than it sounds. My social network footprint is tiny. (You finding your way here is a blessing. Glad to have you!) My skill for talking myself up is…questionable at best. So How do I let the world know the greatest steampunk fairytale retelling ever is about to drop from yours truly? (See…that felt weird to say.)

The answer: TikTok

Allegedly.

Not just TikTok, but that has been my primary medium. I’ve poked at a YouTube short and will likely do at least one more before release date. But mostly I’ve been following the advice of Katie Wismer (a.k.a. Katesbookdate) as presented in this video. I’ll give the rundown of my interpretation, but let me start by explaining why I took Katie’s advice over others. (I’ve never spoken to Katie directly, so if she is alerted to my existence via Google Alerts or something: Hi Katie!)

Why This Advice

First off, I have scoured the internet (mostly YouTube) for advice on advertising a new book. And yes, there are a lot of voices out there, many saying similar things: establish a presence on social media, interact with the communities that overlap with potential readers, let people know you have a book coming out, and let people know a bit more about you. That’s four items that sound like A LOT of work. Where do I start? This is going to take how long? You mean I have to talk about myself?

Katie’s advice was titled “The one book marketing strategy you NEED to be doing”. Yeah, a very clickable title for me. She goes on to lay out a strategy that felt manageable. I can do that! She also wasn’t pushing a course to take or anything like that, just an advertising tool that has been successful for her. I’m not putting all my eggs into this basket, but it’s the basket I’m filling the fullest.

What am I doing?

If you didn’t watch Katie’s video already (heck, I linked it twice), I’ll give you my version of her advice. I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted parts and overlooked important nuances, but you can get the full breakdown from her.

  • Make carousels (slide shows) on TikTok. These are images with text.
    • The first slide is a hook/attention grabber
    • The last slide is a direct quote (passage) from the book
      • She seemed to suggest you hint at the excitement without giving too much away
    • Use a trending sound that fits the theme of the book/passage/hook
    • Make sure your profile page does a good job of promoting you and the book. (This is my weak spot; I’ll get to why.)
    • Oh, and make sure you use good hashtags!

This felt like a process I could handle. No fancy equipment to buy or awkward performances required, just post some images with text. So I made some.

Okay, I didn’t follow the recipe perfectly. My carousels have a one-slide hook, the next slide starts a quoited passage, the last slide has the book’s cover.

The first carousel I made had the whole passage on one slide. Depending on the size of your phone and the mightiness of your eyes, that could have been tough to absorb. My next few had the quote spread out over 2-4 slides, their text posted either over faded images or carefully curated around the images.

About half the hooks are the same or very similar with very similar images: a cloaked figure with a metal skull for a head with something along the lines of “When a man who was more metal than flesh entered her father’s shop, her life changed forever.” Others get more thematic to the excerpt/images. One scene takes place at a wedding, so the hook is “What better place for an ambush than a wedding?” You get the idea…

Music choices have been a battle between my preferences and TikTok’s preferences (mostly represented by my 18-year-old offspring). My first choice was George Michael’s “Father Figure” which has been hot on TikTok, though that song seems to accompany a fairly specific trend that has nothing to do with books. (My kid also thinks it might suggest the book is spicier than it is.) I made a couple with songs that had been used in a few thousand posts each. I made sure to swing big with a couple of the songs (uses in the millions and the tag “popular”). I have a mind to make a video or two with sounds that aren’t songs, but I haven’t made that leap yet. Are they helpful? It may still be too early to tell.

Alas, the profile page is the weakest link. Speaking of links…TikTok won’t let you have links to external sites (a.k.a. a link tree) until you have one thousand followers. So I’m only 998 followers away from that goal! Yeah, I’ve had a TikTok account, but I was only consuming until this past week. So right now, potential readers will have to find Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine by searching Amazon or even the whole internet for it. Suddenly, that wordy title is starting to seem like a better idea. (I also think it sounds steampunk-y.) This is why I feel like it was important to end with my cover image.

I don’t know if anyone has chased the book down yet. It doesn’t launch for another 5 days. It’s available for presale on Kindle, but that’s it. Either it’s impossible find out how many preorders there are or I don’t know how to figure it out. I guess the third option is that there have been none, but that would be knowing how many (zero is a perfectly good number, just not preferable in the wallet).

What am I definitely doing wrong?

I may be making several mistakes that I don’t realize, but there’s one I’ve definitely fumbled. Katie say to get a few “burner accounts” to post from as well as your main account. I haven’t done this, mostly because I don’t quite understand what the nature of the account should be. If the profile page is important, then what’s on the profile page of my burner? Some fictional reader that is allegedly posting fan-art for the book? Are they all supposed to be new vids or should these burner accounts be reposting the originals? I couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I haven’t made that leap. I’m 48; this is already a little overwhelming for me.

Am I reaching people?

Not as many as I’d hoped, but maybe more than I legitimately expected.

My first carousel (the one with the whole excerpt on one slide) has the most views and the most likes (261 and 7, respectively). Most of those were in the first couple hours. None of the others have topped 200 views.

The least-viewed is the wedding one, which has a female cover of “In the Air Tonight” that has been used over 100k times. I had expected the most interest in that one. My intention is to make some adjustments to that one and try posting it again (may change the song, but I like the fit). My research has suggested that there are a lot of variables at play for how many people see any given post, so reposting duds is a fair strategy.

These numbers don’t sound like a lot. They are well below the ones Katie cited in her video. I think established accounts have better reach. That’s why I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet. I’m hoping the needle will move by the end of July.

What else have I tried?

I mentioned that I dipped a toe into YouTube. What I really did was post my one outreach video as a Short.

Yes, I did make a video for TikTok that wasn’t a slideshow and wasn’t an ad for the book. This was a “What is Steampunk?” video. Please hold for my great shame: I made the video with PowerPoint.

Hey, I’m a teacher and I am very good with PowerPoint. Use what you know. I promise, my kid has thoroughly skewered me for it.

Anyway, this video analyzes steampunk as both an aesthetic and a literary genre. It’s about a minute. (I had to speed my voice up a little; noticeable but not terrible.) I do need to improve my audio recording skills; there’s a slight echo. The video ends with the book’s title and release date. There is a link to the Kindle preorder in the video description.

So was this little video popular? Not on TikTok. It’s neck-and-neck with my wedding carousel. On YouTube however? Just over 2000 views, 18 likes. (That’s almost 1% like-age…not sure if that’s good…doesn’t sound awesome.)

What’s next?

For now, I’m going to keep working the system. I’ll either pull some more passages from the book or repackage the ones I’ve used with altered hooks, songs, and/or images. Every time one gets 100 views, that’s more eyes (some new, some repeating) that see the book. The repeat views are possibly the most important since I heard somewhere recently (might have been Katie?) that it takes 8 exposures to a stimulus before someone takes action.

I’m also going to experiment with turning some of the carousels into videos (still the slides but they cycle for you). TikTok is a largely passive platform, so maybe it will hit differently. Remember the one video I did post didn’t get many views, but it also didn’t have a viral sound attached. This way I can also hit YouTube with them.

I’ll put some of this on Facebook too. I’m not an Instagrammer, so I’ll avoid that.

Is it worth it?

The labor end of things has been fairly mild (picture hunts were consuming but also fun). Honestly, I’m hoping that being in a niche subgenre like steampunk will help this book along. And If someone is looking through steampunk books and sees a cover they recognize, that could be the difference between them buying my book or someone else’s. Maybe something like this will help get enough of a bump to make a dent on the Amazon top sellers list for steampunk. Or maybe this whole exercise will just help me grow my TikTok footprint enough that the next publication’s ads (and there will be more) will have a little more reach.

Oh, don’t take my word for all this. Make sure you check out Katie Wismer’s video. And please, if anyone here has experience with this kind of advertising that could help me or others, please share it in the comments!

Cover Letters

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

It’s been a while since I freaked out over a cover letter.  It’s just a quick, “Hi, read my story, I’ve sold stuff before, thanks,” and that’s all it’s really supposed to be.  But yesterday I found myself slightly frantic on the subject the way I was when I started out ten years ago.

What caused the stress spike?  I guess the recent addition of legitimate credentials, that being my WotF win/sale.  I feel like those words have jumped off the page at some semi-pro editors (never had gotten the time of day from ASIM before).  Not that the cover letter sells the story, but it can predispose an editor or slusher to expect to like the story instead of expecting to reject it.  In other words, the story still has to sell itself, but a good cover letter might move the story from the bottom shelf to the endcap display.  (Too much retail metaphor?)

I’m thinking about it too much.  I know the big magazines seldom buy out of slush, but it does happen.  And it only has to happen once to lend more credibility to my future cover letters.  I’m pretty sure I’ve already written my second pro-sale story.  Is it the emotionally drenched E.E. which is on its way to Analog tomorrow?  Or the satirical T.W.H.D.o.t.G.M.P. I recently sent to Strange Horizons?  T.R.M. is in the Bull Spec editor’s inbox, but that seems a long shot (the story, not the market).

My cover letter for Analog seems a little wordy.  I may change it (he obsessed further).  I seldom include my master’s degree anymore, but a math degree lends a little credibility to my calculus allusions in E.E., so it’s in there.  The WotF win is mentioned, too, (first).  I’ll likely cut the sampled list of semi-pro zines since none are of particularly high notoriety that I am aware (though several are very fine markets).  An ASIM publication (not just a hold) would be noteworthy, or GUD (a very well-spoken-of market I am yet to explore).  If the market name doesn’t make the editor nod knowingly, it isn’t worth mentioning.  The one exception might be the Triangulation anthology since Asimov’s has reviewed it favorably the last few years, but maybe that reference should be saved for submissions to Asimov’s.  Like I said, I’m overthinking.  I need to just take the envelope to the post office and send it.

It’ll be in the mail tomorrow.

The good, the bad, and the oops

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Well, I’ve been at the hotel for my wife’s photography convention since Sunday and I’ve done some writing.  (This qualifies as good.)  I started to look through some unfinished work to see if there was anything I could modify or fix up to submit to the Clarions.  I found a few novel chapters that I had abandoned because it was so tough to write.

The novel was very slow-going because it was a comedy in the vein of Douglas Adams: lots of farsical situations and overblown hyperbole and just ridiculous science.  That’s hard to write, especially at the rate that the jokes were flying the first few pages (jokes, not necessarily laughs).  Well, I decided to try to turn that into a short story.  Hey, I was having trouble transitioning anyway, so why not?

Now the first draft of that story is complete (good!), half of it spliced together from pieces of a few false starts, the other half fresh writing.  And the  count on this draft is…6600 words/35 pages.  Oops.  I was aiming for 6000/30.

I think I can go back and cut and/or shorten some sections (good), but possibly at the cost of some of the jokes (that’s bad–all the story’s got going for it is the jokes).  I won’t be subbing it anyplace until I get some commentary from OWW or even Baen’s Bar (I hear they’re still operating for critiques) as my sense of humor is not reknowned for being universally appreciated.  If this stuff isn’t funny, I’ve wasted my whole writing spree (bad!!!).

I need to let it sit a few days before trying to edit.  I’ll poke my nose back in some other work tonight, maybe try paring down ***** some more for Clarion.  And who knows what else is hiding on this hard drive, waiting to become a 6000-word or less story?

How did I get here? (And where am I?)

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

There are a lot of factors that led me to being a writer of speculative fiction.  The foremost is probably being a reader of speculative fiction.  I look at my daugter and wonder what I can do to foster that same love of genre in her that I have in me.  So I’m tracing my footsteps through life to figure out how to get my little girl to be a geek like me.

I’ve loved reading as long as I can remember.  The first SF author I probably read was Dr. Seuss: Wocket in my Pocket and The Grich and the conservationally mined Lorax.  I read some of that to my girl now.  Of course all the reading I can do with her will help turn her into a reader.  Seeing Daddy read can’t hurt either.

When I started reading chapter books, my favorite was Encyclopedia Brown, really more collected short stories than chapters.  The thinking was great for me, I suspect.  I always loved the ones where he helped his dad with real crimes.  I also read my share of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume.  These days, Harry Potter would just about fit that level, maybe a step above.

The local library had a summer reading program that we took part in annually, attempts to get our paperdoll hot air balloon higher than other people’s.  I always took pride in reading books at or above my level while other kids would read the kiddy stuff and take credit for it…but I digress.  It kept me reading through summers and my mother placed priority on that.  I hope to do something similar when my girl gets old enough (a year or two).

Next came the Choose Your Own Adventure books.  Remember those?  Theyprobably did a lot to guide me into writerdom.  Start at page one, then if you go to the spooky hotel you turn to page 47, if you stay with your weird Aunt Velma and her snoring cats you turn to page 111.  They were good to read over and over without being the same and really turned out to be more short story than they were novel, based on the pages you read.  I had a ton of them and checked out a ton more from the library.  Space opera, high fantasy, straight mystery, you name the genre, I read a CYOA from it.  It helped me find my taste.  I bet I could still find a bunch on ebay…

I think the book that made me a fantasy fan was either The Riddle and the Rune by Grace Chetwin or Castle Roogna, the third Xanth novel by Piers Anthony.  The latter was a gift from my grandmother who heard that was what kids my age were reading.  I still own the first 12 Xanth novels and several scattered others.  I visit Piers Anthony’s website often though I haven’t read any of his books in a few years.  He was my favorite author for many years, funny and a little out there.  There is no doubt he inspired me.  I wrote to him when my first novel was “accepted” by Publish America.  Thankfully he warned me away from them as a scam vanity publisher…but I’ve gotten off topic.

As for Chetwin’s book, I’m not sure where I got it.  It was a great read for a kid, very Harry Potter but more in the linear quest format.  There were three other books in the series (one before, two after) which weren’t quite as good, but good enough.  She also responded to a query I sent her about publishing, since she now publishes her fantasy novels and a few other books by herself.  But again…focus, Oso.

As for science fiction, I recall the Tripod Trilogy being a milestone in my reading.  I may go back and reread those since I’m trying to write a YA sci-fi novel…  Still, I think I ran with fantasy for a long time before discovering Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, of course.  I may have been in college by then.  In fact, I think I was out of college!  Late bloomer.

There were other things.  I subscribed to Analog for several years, but many of those stories were over my head in high school.  Television and movies kept my sci-fi spark alive while I wasn’t reading it.  I read Fahrenheit 451 in for a high school book report, and Piers Anthony’s novelization of Total Recall for another.  I read Narnia books out of order, which made them a little complex to swallow but I still read them.  Of course Lord of the Rings.

But it was when I read the Harry Potter books that I started to think “I can do this.”  I was in college at the time and my mom gave the first three books to me for Christmas.  My girlfriend (now wife) worked in a bookstore (okay, a store that sold a few books) and told me they were kids’ books.  I eventually poked my nose in the first one and was sucked into the world.  By the time Harry was at Hogwarts, I was hooked.  By the time he was in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, I was a writer.

I keep a lot of these books around so my daughter can experience them herself.  Will there be others that get her there instead?  Probably.  Thankfully the Twilight craze should be gone by the time she’s old enough to get into it.  Maybe I’ll be publishing the next craze.  (Wishful thinking.) I just wanted to share books from my journey in case other people need some guidance on their own (or their children’s) journey to speculative fiction geekdom.  You have to start young.

Oh wait!  I can’t conclude a post about speculative literature for kids/young adults without mentioning the magazine Beyond Centauri, specifically because their new issue has my story “Brother Goo” inside.  That’s right folks, Beyond Centauri issue 27.  Go buy a dozen copies.  Or one’s fine, too.

[More links forthcoming]

Odyssey Lecturers Announced

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

As of this moment, I’m not sure if I plan to apply to Odyssey.  If I put six weeks (consecutively and exclusively) into my writing career (and hence away from my family), I’d really like the word “Clarion” to show up on my resume.  Does that make me a snob?  Absolutely.  How many words do I get to impress an editor?  Sure, we’re even talking cover letter words here, but it takes a lot of time and money to get that word.  As a teacher, it doesn’t matter what college I went to.  My brother got out of college and went to law school; the name on the diploma mattered.  Same here.

All that said, Odyssey’s lineup is pretty significant including big-ticket names from both of last year’s Clarions.  The simple fact that I’m thinking about applying (despite that first paragraph) says a lot.  Coalating data.

Odyssey’s Writer-in-Residence (per my understanding she stays the whole six weeks and serves as primary lecturer the final week the entire fifth week whereas the other lecturers stay for about 24 hours…do I have it right now?) is Laura Anne Gilman.

Weekly guest lecturers will be Alexander Jablokov, Michael A. Arnzen, Elizabeth Hand, Gregory Frost, and David G. Hartwell.

Be sure to check out my workshop page for more useful workshop links.

The Rookie

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

TheRookieI recently finished reading The Rookie by best-selling horror writer Scott Sigler.  I discovered the book through Mur Lafferty’s podcast I Should Be Writing.  This was a significant departure for Sigler, not at all a horror story, and he self-published a limited edition.  Mine is number 1122 out of 3000.

Like every writer that thinks he/she read a book before you did, I’m going to write a review.

In a future only a few hundred years away. football has become the intergalactic pass-time of all races.  Teams are composed of players from all races, some fitting certain roles better than others (big races are linemen, fast races are receivers, humans get a lot of the multi-faceted roles).  The book follows rookie quarterback phenom Quentin Barnes (QB the QB) through his journey from lowly Tier 3 ball to a Tier 2 team poised for a shot at Tier 1 (the system works similarly to Europe’s soccer leagues).  Quentin battles his ignorance of and prejudices against the other races as he tries to  earn a starting position and lead his team to the promised land.

To say that The Rookie has a formulaic story is to put things mildly.  Young, arrogant talent comes to the big leagues and discovers he’s not half as good as he thinks he is, then tries to lead the team to victory.  That’s only eighty percent of the sports movies ever made.  But then, I was reading a sci-fi football book.  What should I expect, War and Peace?  The book delivers on its formula right up until the last game where I felt a bit let down.  (I am resisting spoilers since there are two versions of the sports formula: victory and just-missed-but-we’re-better-for-the-run.  This is one of those.)  It wasn’t the result that disappointed me, rather the lack of suspense and mundane events that lead to that ending, specifically events that fail to hinge on the protagonist.  You don’t expect Notre Dame’s success or failure to revolve around Rudy at the last second, but I did expect the Krakens’ to revolve around Quentin.

The alien races were nicely developed.  I particularly liked the speedy Sklorno race that has made football into a religion and canonize exceptional athletes, especially quarterbacks.  The Ki were intriguing but left too mysterious; I wanted Quentin to really connect with them.  Maybe that was asking a bit much of a reluctant bigot like Quentin.  The Quyth were probably the most developed and the least interesting, with an obvious caste system that dictated everything about their culture that wasn’t a criminal enterprise.  And the ruling class of Creterakians was odd at best and distractingly trivial at worst.  All that said, I was amused by the races and the story would fall apart without them.

I had a hard time sympathizing with Quentin in the middle third of the book.  His thoughts were flawed in obvious ways, insisting people were trying to sabotage him when they were obviously trying to help him and getting way too tied up in his own ego.  I like flawed characters, but it was very juvenile.  But then, so was Quentin.  The characterization goal was achieved without the subtlety I hoped for.

Other characters were considerably better sculpted, specifically Donald Pine, the veteran quarterback entering his decline.  His flaws were integral to the plot, too, and their handling was similarly un-subtle — more abrupt than obvious.  While on the subject of likable characters, Denver and Kill-O-Yowet were just starting to be interesting when the story veered away from them.

Now let’s discuss the book as a physical object.  Very nice.  The cover is very nice and the game program inside (with color art of the races, interviews, even advertisements) is awesome.  It definitely helped to immerse me in the story and just made the ride more fun.  The box scores and league updates after every game were neat, but they might have served better in the appendices with all the other excerts.  Sigler’s autograph is nice.  The one thing the book seemed to be missing was professional editing.  Typos abounded, in some sections. one every other page.  Breath instead of breathe, me instead of he, and on…  Distracting but nothing I couldn’t work through.  (It could be worse…someone could have omitted twenty-eight consecutive words.)

All in all, it was a pleasant book that I felt fit a Harry Potter-aged target audience (though Harry’s dilemmas were depicted more subtly).  Simple, straight-forward plot with no major logical holes I noticed (other than the Krakens playing their first playoff game on the road).  Most of the obstacles are predictable, as are the solutions (though not the juniper berries).  Could it have been stronger?  Sure.  The Barnes-Pine conflict could have been less transparent early and Pine’s confession could certainly have used more pressure, and…  It was a light read, but an enjoyable one.

The Rookie

  • Plot: C
  • Individual Characters: C-
  • Character Races: A-
  • Setting: A
  • Packaging: A+
  • Spelling: D
  • Tilt: A

Overall: B

I understand that Sigler offered The Rookie as a free podcast.  I feel like I overpaid for the book, but it’s a collector’s item.  Who knows, it may be worth money when someone makes a movie out of it.  (It would translate to the screen well, animated or live actors mixed with CGI.)

-Oso

Writing uphill through a blizzard

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I am still excited to be finally writing my Festival of the Naked Man story, but progress is taking forever.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided this should be set on an English-speaking planet founded by Japanese with a rich cross-section of cultures represented.  My main character has a Norse name and heritage but his family all believes in the planet’s Shinto-based religion.  The protag’s girlfriend is Chinese and the religious leaders are pretty much all Japanese.  I spent hours just researching the names.  A little slang follows each culture with the Japanese filtering in more than anything due to thir dominance of the population.  Considering the only language I have any background in (other than English) is Spanish, this language thing has been wearing out my Google.  Now watch me end up cutting half of those words in the end.  Grrr…

Even the parts in English are slow going due to my desire to really choose the right word.  I know it’s still a first draft, but I can’t just throw any word on the page.  (I recommend Flip Dictionary for this — an exceptional thesaurus for getting the right word out of a close miss.)

I dare say this will end up novella length, or at least novelette.  My pace is starting slow but there’s a lot to get out there early.

I really think this will be the first of my stories that could fit in Analog magazine.  There’s a lot of “soft science” wrapped in a shell of hard science.  I’m pretty sure I’ve buried some commentary about American organized religion in with my plot.  (For the record, I am a baptized-Catholic who attends a Methodist church where I deliver the children’s sermon each week.  You’ll have to read the story to find the message that comes out of that Christian crossover.)

Mostly I’m just happy to be writing again.  Now if I could just disconnect from all the other stuff I do (video games, television, parenting, teaching, sleeping, eating…blogging) I might have enough time to finish this story before my daughter goes to college.

-Oso

free stuff from my past

~ 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.

Fiction on a blog on fiction

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

A question for all you writers with blogs: is it worth the effort to post a story to your personal blog?  Not a story you plan to sell, obviously, but one you already sold or one you can’t quite find the market for.

I can see the both sides of things.  On the pro side, it gives your blog reade a taste of your writing, turns lurkers into potential fans.  You have control of how long it’s available and can track how many people read it.  As for cons, who really goes to blogs looking for fiction?  It says something about a story’s quality to have the author pimping it him/herself for free.  And of coure, it uses up some rights for the story (even second electronic rights could be worth something).

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a few stories that have vanished from the net that I’d like to get back out there, notably my first sale.  Not to mention my military vampire story, my story for young readers.  I even have a short comedy that can’t quite find a market.  I’m thinking about putting one up here,adding more if it goes over well.

I haven’t decided yet. We’ll see.

-Oso

How I would sell out the Milford Model

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

This post is Jordan Lapp’s fault, him and Locus agazine.  The idea has been swimming through my head for years.  Locus ran an “article” about the fictitious Clarion reality show, Jordan mentioned it on his blog, now I’m posting my old article with a little poll.  Enjoy.

  • ************************************

I am a Clarion Dreamer. Are you?

How many are out there like me? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many people out there want to write? How many out there believe themselves to be writers? How many are waiting for that one break that will make him (or her) the next great genre writer? For me, that elusive break takes the form of a writer’s workshop – Clarion.

Or Odyssey. Or Clarion West or South. Pick your poison, they’re all the same…the same in the fact that I did not attend. Same in the fact that I’m certain that if I attended, my career would take off the very next day.

I understand that I’m wrong. I realize that these workshops can provide their attendees with tools and techniques that guide the creative process. I fully appreciate that the best an attendee can expect is to replace years worth of rejection slips with a few weeks of tough criticism and sleepless nights. None of this blocks me from my delusion, this mirage of miraculous success that is the Milford-model writing workshop.

Again I pose the question: how many out there are like me? How many writers know they’re better than the bums that go to these workshops? How many are convinced they can spot the flaws in another author’s story despite a depressing inability to correct their own? How many wish they could be at least a fly on the wall at such a workshop?

Writing is an art form, no different from singing or dancing or backstabbing in a jungle or racing around the world. Have I lost you? I’m talking about television. Reality television. Ironically I’m talking about the shows that require no writers (or only concept writers) because a million-dollar prize is a lot cheaper than paying a dozen actors and writers and shooting take after take. People tune in to listen to the recording artists of tomorrow. Or to see if Reuben wins immunity. Or if that obnoxious team can make it to China before the sweet old couple. Or if the guy from Saved by the Bell can dance.

Would people tune in for a chance to see what a Milford-style workshop is really like? Would they log on to read excerpts from that funny guy’s story? Or that hippie chick’s story? Or that arrogant fat guy’s story? Would they vote for the story they liked best?

I confess that what I propose violates one of the cardinal rules of the Milford-model: no spectators. All due respect to the late Damon Knight (Milford’s founder), but maybe the time for privacy has gone. A writer who wants to sell needs name-recognition, promotion. What better way than to throw that writer on the television for seven to fifteen weeks?

Like any show it would need a title. “Who Wants To Be The Next Asimov?” or more succinctly “Sci-Fi Writer”. The latter would work especially well if the show found its most obvious home on the Sci-Fi Channel.

The conference model need not be disturbed. One professional writer would guest-lecture each week, taking part in the critique process as well as providing insight into the profession in general. One would obviously hope to attract big names to this highly public event – names that would bring an audience to the show – but any author with a career substantial enough to warrant a two-minute bio could find a niche. (After all, how many American Idol fans really remembered Peter Noone?)

Could a show this narrowly focused really bring in an audience? Could it really be entertaining enough to tune in more than once or twice? Why not? Are speculative writers any more rare than clothing designers? Chefs? Singers and dancers? Washed up celebrities? If they all get their own reality shows, we deserve one too. In fact I contend that we, the speculative writers, outnumber most of these pigeon-holed reality contestants. How many science fiction readers are there? How many fantasy readers? Horror? How many of them write (or try to write or want to write)? That’s right, most of them. Try it: meet a stranger in the sci-fi section of a bookstore and ask her if she has ever tried to write this kind of thing. Don’t be creepy about it, just strike up a polite conversation. You may want to map out the exits first just in case she insists on telling you all about Druzida, the elf-vampire and her fifteen-thousand-page battle against the evil dragon, Thhrp. Or about the Glxx-ian invasion of Kalamazoo. Bottom line, the people watching reruns of Buffy, Star Trek, Firefly, Xena, or The Twilight Zone are more than likely writers,.

But how entertaining is a Milford workshop? I guess it depends on who goes. I understand that watergun fights and superballs were staples of the Clarion experience for years. So were sleepless nights, stories eviscerated by peers and pros, rivalries, coups against instructors, and priceless tidbits of knowledge. Sounds like good television to me.

So why am I writing this article instead of pitching this show to the big-wigs and becoming the next Mark Burnett? Well, that’s not what I do. I dream big ideas share them with people who might think they’re entertaining. I write, not pitch or produce. Besides, before I could pitch a show I’d have to support the claims I’ve made: 1) people would watch this show, 2) sci-fi fans are almost all writers, and 3) a bunch of geeky writers can be entertaining. That’s where you come in. Yes, you. If you’re reading this then you are likely part of my target audience, so I want to know what you think. Would you watch this show (at least a few times) if someone made it? Would your friends? Would my friends? If you think I’ve missed the mark, I want to know. Got an idea that might make this work better? I’m all ears.

Oh, and if you work for a network that wants to start filming this tomorrow, we really need to chat.