Brain Storm: Lightning Across The Teeth

 25 brainstorming techniques you can use to break out of the usual crap and get some life into the plot of your story.

Some Twitter Basics

Some Basics of the Book Process

Self publishing

Just off the top, Identifying the "Ideal" reader is NEVER a good idea before you finish your novel. In fact -- it is just about guaranteed that you won't ever finish your novel if you start in that manner.

Other Than being So basic as to be useless, this looks legit. huh?

Beta-Readers aren't listed in that graphic, and I highly recommend using at least three after your second edit.

Catch Glenn on Twitter Noir Writer

And Check out the new site for Noir Stories -- Noir Street -- Tales of Shadow and Lust

How Important is an Emotional Connection

Are you old enough to remember Baby Jessica? 

When you write without an emotional connection, it comes across like News.

Eighteen people died when a train collided with a stalled bus on the tracks just outside of Hong Kong this morning. The reported counts of  injured passengers continue to rise. Last report was over 100 and many of those are in critical condition with life threatening injuries. Volunteers are searching the wreckage. Officials working on the scene are handling this catastrophe with expertise, but have admitted they expect the death toll to rise….

I am emotionally affected when I read stories like this one, but not connected.  First of all, I don’t know any of the victims. That  sounds  cold, I agree, but we react stronger to events when we personally know people who are involved.^[i]I also don’t have any names, and that is another detail we react to. People we are personally concerned about, have names.^[ii]

Propaganda - Description and Feel

PROPAGANDA IS EFFECTIVE BECAUSE it works on an emotional level. Most of our decisions are based on a combination between the perceived results of previous experience, the emotions we experience regarding the current situation, and logical analysis of the problem. Inside that mess is also perceived estimations of our skills, probable success, and evaluation of the forces and elements against us, if any.

What motivates us is not logic however, but emotion.

The propagandist uses symbols, attitudes and morals that are embedded in the target audience to control and limit the emotional state of his target. This is desirable because the emotional response is deep, powerful, long-lasting -- and not controlled by rational awareness or evaluation of the situation. An intellectual, rational response is not desired and is not sought.

There is a novel, one of my favorites by Philip K. Dick, We Will Remember It for you Wholesale, which posed a question -- If you remember spending six weeks as a Billionaire touring Europe and socializing among the world trenders. If it is a pure memory, wired into your matrix, did it happen? Did it? -- if it did, if the vacation could be authored, crafted by experienced and expert travelers, and tailored to your preferences and desires, would not that experience (which you could acquire in only a few hours, rather than six weeks) be more appealing than real travel to foreign lands with its reality of bungles and lost luggage and missing reservations, menacing dark streets, and weird toilet paper in the bathroom?