How Long Should Your Book Be?

This is a terrible question.  It doesn’t really mean anything other than “on average, we see XYZ wordcounts in this genre.”  And it says nothing about why. Here’s a better question: When do readers of this genre want to see subplots, and what kind? A novel with one main plot is about 40-50K.  For example, The Stepford Wives […]

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Plot Shapes: The Turn of the Screw

I’ve been studying The Turn of the Screw lately. A group of people are sitting around the fire telling Christmas ghost stories, as you do (this is a Victorian UK thing). Storyteller (Douglas) claims that the story he’s about to tell comes from his sister’s governess, who has been dead 20 years. He sends away for

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Simple Horror Plots, Part 4: The Suckers

There’s always some sucker willing to bumble into the wrong part of town…or some small town willing to host something it shouldn’t. Something’s looking for trouble. Surprise, surprise, our characters are just the suckers needed–wrong place, wrong time, and distracted. Technically, the characters didn’t ask for it, although maaaaybe they tried to get a little something

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Simple Horror Plots, Part 3: It’s Fine

The first signs of trouble were small.  So small that we ignored them.  Ditto the second, third, fourth, fifth… There’s a relatively minor problem. Everyone blows it off (although there might be one person who panics about the situation in an obviously useless, “it’s all in your head” fashion). Until it’s too late to do anything

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Simple Horror Plots, Part 2: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The main character has a dilemma.  It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation–but there’s damnation, and then there’s damnation. The character has a problem, or is called in to deal with a problem. The character has to choose between a couple of craptastic options. They try to avoid choosing. But eventually, they

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Simple Horror Plots, Part 1: That One Thing We Don’t Talk About

For some reason, nailing down horror plots is harder for me than mystery plots, so this is even more tentative than usual. There is a problem. The backstory* is so epic that it dominates the present or real story. Wait wait this problem comes from the epic backstory that we never talk about and didn’t

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Simple Mystery Plots, Part 7: The Frame

Okay, the frame as a narrative device.  Most writers have at least heard of it.  There’s a story within a story.  But let’s look at this from a mystery perspective: A crime happens or is discovered (in the case of a long-past crime). The main action of illustrating the crime happens on another level, for

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