Cozies are a subset of the mystery genre in which the author distracts the reader from the PTSD areas of their lives. They’re the gentle hugs of stories, and yet they revolve around some crime, because nothing is as entertaining as gossip. </snark> Cozies actually: Feature a main character you wouldn’t mind going on vacation […]
The post about word count and subplots was getting long, so I’ll break this out here: I think George R.R. Martin is writing parallel novels inside each of his books. There is a main plot and a main character to each book. You can figure this out by counting which POV character has the most
A Song of Ice and Fire: Structure/Word Count Case Study Read More »
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
How Long Should Your Book Be? Read More »
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
Plot Shapes: The Turn of the Screw Read More »
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
Simple Horror Plots, Part 4: The Suckers Read More »
By themselves, books don’t mean anything. They’re code marks on paper. In order to “run” a book-slash-program, a reader has to read it. Hardware for the software. You can’t predict what the hardware is going to do to the software with 100% accuracy. Sometimes it won’t run. Sometimes it runs a mysterious program that you
What Do Readers Mean? Read More »
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
Simple Horror Plots, Part 3: It’s Fine Read More »
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
Simple Horror Plots, Part 2: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Read More »
(A writer emailed to ask, “What makes a book engaging?” I, who am constantly in need of topics upon which to write blog posts, did a little huzzah.) What makes a book engaging? Back up. What does a (fiction) book actually do for a reader? What is this mysterious “entertainment” that writers aspire to? Escape.
What Makes a Book Engaging? Read More »
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
Simple Horror Plots, Part 1: That One Thing We Don’t Talk About Read More »
