BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH - Generally a biography entails a great deal of hard work in research. If a biographer is worthy of the name, he must familiarize himself with all that has been written and printed about his subject, and if his hero died within living memory, he must also contrive to interview all his surviving contemporaries who can supply authentic information. This research may well run into several years of work. In addition to learning all that he can of the man himself, the biographer must understand his background – ~the race, nation, country and customs which shaped his hero.

In gathering such data a great deal of correspondence is sometimes necessary, a great deal of reading - much of it in sources not directly concerned with the subject of the biographer. Thus if the hero was for a time a soldier, it would be advisable to study the campaigns and wars in which he engaged, and read the newspapers and public records which will show the emotional atmosphere and current ideas of the time. Thus a good deal of reading is necessary for a good biography.

This data must be recorded on cards for convenience, notes must be made, documents transcribed, all of which must be Classified and reclassified with cross references and exact quotations. These classifications should be under the various influences which affected the subject of the biographer, and under the various points of view from which his career and character may be seen. It is also well to buy a large book like a ledger with numbered pages, and devote each page to a year of the subject’s life: page one to his first year, page two to his second year, and so on. Enter on each page the calendar year as well as the age of the subject in that year. For example: 1876 – – -52. On each page list sources in the files which have to do with that year in the hero’s life. Thus on page one record facts about his birth, parentage, etc. On page twenty record whatever is available about his twentieth year, and so on through the book to the date of his death. In addition, for each year, historical events should be listed so as to keep these in mind as part of his ‘ background. With such a list of chronological events and pertinent sources, the author can make sure he has not missed anything in his subject’s life from the cradle to the grave.

In interviewing informants it is necessary first of all to gain their confidence and their approval of your enterprise. It is best to work with one informant at a time and have a secretary to take down what he says. After that, a statement may be prepared and signed by him to avoid any later errors made in seeking information by word of mouth. It is advisable to let the narrator talk without interruption, and question him only after the interview is over. The interviewer – listener would be a better word – may keep a pad at hand on which to note down matters to be cleared up later. Then, if possible, it is wise to question the informant at length. But your questions should not be leading questions; they should give no hint as to the answer you expect.

Finally the biographer will find it useful to visit the scenes he describes and look at all the available photographs and pictures of his subject and his subject’s background. It is unlikely that you will describe a battle well, unless you have gone over the battlefield. The more you know first-hand about the conditions and the people your subject knew, the better your book will be.

Biographers must travel. This consumes time and money and demands careful planning beforehand. For the travel must be completed before the book can be written. The time and money spent on this necessary part of research must be included in the writer’s calculations when he is negotiating a contract with his publishers.

Of course, a man’s life has many facets, and all these must be considered before the finished portrait is complete.

If you wish to attempt a biography, you might do well to study the methods of James Boswell and to read the paper by Harold Nicolson, “How I Write Biography,” which may be found in What Is a Book? – a collection of essays by Various writers, edited by Dale Warren.

In assembling your data and integrating it as a basis of your interpretation, a great deal of patience and time must be consumed, for no interpretation which does not take into account all of the facts, will stand the test of time. The author should become so familiar with his sources, the hundreds or thousands of notes taken, and the documents in his files, that all these become a part of his conception of his hero’s character. Unless the writer is so familiar with his materials, he cannot do a good job. He must be endlessly curious about his subject, and before he undertakes to write, he should feel that he is the foremost authority on his subject – or at least on that phase of which he writes.

But it is not enough that a biographer find the facts, and arrive at an adequate interpretation. He must also write a readable book. He must present his hero and his hero’s adventures in proper order and in due proportion within a reasonable length.

To achieve this, a good method is to write a brief d5,000 wor(1 version of the “Life” at top speed, and without reference to notes or authorities. Such a version might be completed in three days’ time – provided the author knows his subject well enough to be writing at all.

This brief version will “hit the high spots” and give the essential things more space and better position than it gives to those of less importance. By writing it, the biographer will learn what is essential to his story, what order and proportion he Should strive for. He will also gain a certain mastery and confidence in handling that material which will later be invaluable when writing the book itself.

In Chapter III, under the heading of RESEARCH, I have given advice as to writing the Chapters of a book. Those suggestions apply to biographies as well. But some additional remarks may be made here:

A good biography must be sound – as true as the author can make it. And this implies in the biographer a vigilant scepticism that never sleeps. He must not take anything for granted, he must question and verify everything offered in the way of evidence, whether document or word of mouth. He must assume that his first three interpretations of a given fact or event will almost certainly be false or inadequate. He must dig like an archaeologist, study clues like a detective, and listen and listen, and read and read, continually revising his conceptions in the light of new evidence and new understanding.

In such research, even the tales of liars will be very helpful – for a liar is a weakling who covers up something for his own advantage. If you let a liar talk long enough, you will discover what he is covering up – and that will be a truth, or a fact which can be useful.

It frequently happens in doing research for a biography that the author unearths a good deal more material than can be used in his book. Such material may be worthy of publication, and some of it may be cast into the form of articles. Thus these by-products may be used to pay expenses for research for more ambitious undertakings.

This is a matter of some importance, since research on some subjects may amount to a great deal in expense. In that case it may well be that the author’s royalties from the sale of his book will hardly reimburse him. of course, it is for this reason that writers whose work requires extensive research, seek grants and fellowships from the various learned societies, foundations, colleges, universities and other institutions. If every author had to provide funds for his research from his own pocket, a great many worthy books would never be written, as certain kinds of writing do not pay their way.

In all ages patrons of one kind or another have been needed to foot the bill of artists and writers in certain fields. The writer of non-fiction who is not writing primarily for money should make it a point to find out what the various foundations have to offer in the way of fellowships and grants. He may then make application for assistance where he is best able to Obtain it. of course, foundations like to feel that their money is well spent; that the project is a worthy one which will reflect credit upon the donors. Generally they require some evidence that the author has already done some work on the project and that there is some chance of publication of his results.

In this world of writing the less commercial you are, the more mercenary you have to be. This great truth is illustrated in the careers of many impecunious writers.

THE MEMOIR

The memoir is one of the most popular and engaging forms of biography. It is defined as a history or narrative composed from personal experience and memory: especially an account of one’s life or episodes in it, written by oneself – often written without special regard to completeness.

The value of the memoir lies in its truthful account of actual events by an eye-witness and participant. As a rule the memoir is Objective, dealing with facts and events, giving sensations as they were felt and words as they were spoken, so that the reader shares the experience of the author. The memoir is far less subjective than the autobiography proper, and ordinarily is better suited to recording the deeds of men of action than the reveries of dreamers or the reflections of thinkers. In short, the memoir takes its stand on memory, and paints the thing as it was. Some of the best memoirs have been written by men utterly lacking in imagination.

Of course, a memoir does not necessarily cover the whole of a man’s life, as it is not a chronicle. But it deals only with a series of related events – such as a campaign, a voyage, or the like. Often the interest lies in first-hand accounts of people whom the author met or of events which he witnessed.

There is a great wealth of memoirs of all kinds. French literature is particularly rich in these racy and convincing records. It has been well said that death gains an added sharpness from the fact that it must come to a man before he has had time to read all the good French memoirs.

Nearly everyone with a good memory has material for an interesting memoir. The difficulty is to get these transferred to paper in a readable form. Sometimes the man of action is also a writer, and of course in such a case there will be no difficulty; but such men are all too rare. All too often the man who has a story to tell becomes self-conscious when he sits down to write, and “takes his pen in hand” with sad and astonishing results. He simply murders his material; first by getting everything out of order and out of proportion, and then by using confused and unnatural diction that clouds and distorts all that he has to tell.

There are three ways of getting around this difficulty:

(1) A “ghost” may be employed to write the memoir, which is afterwards published under the name of the man who supplied the material. “Ghost” writing is a profitable branch of non-fiction writing – indeed often more profitable than any other kind, for in these days every prominent man is continually being asked to give his views on various subjects. As a rule he cannot, without losing face, refuse, though he has neither the skill nor the time to write the thing himself. So a “ghost” is called in, and the article or book appears under the name of his employer.

Of course a “ghost” writer takes pride in his work and is likely to wish to make the most of his materials. Since these materials are second-hand, the results are likely to be second-rate--unless the writer by temperament and common background is at one with his employer. The memoirs of an old cow-hand can hardly be written by a “ghost” who has spent his life in New England or Europe. More than once I have had Old-timers show me the books “ghosts” had written for them, unhappily pointing out all the passages where the writer had misinterpreted their recollections.

(2) The second method of writing memoirs is much like the first, though in this case the writer publishes under his own name as well as that of the memoirist. In this case the writer assumes the role of a collaborator, and the book or article is usually published under the formula “by so-and-SO as told to” of the writer. The result is commonly more satisfactory than when a “ghost” is employed, perhaps because in such a case the writer feels his prestige more at stake and because his interest is not entirely limited to the check he gets for the job. This method is best adapted to presenting memoirs of men who are fairly well able to express themselves, and who know what they want to tell. Here too, of course, the writer must be sympathetic and know something of the background of the man whose memoirs he is trying to present.

(3) There is a third method which is preferable to the other two, though perhaps not so profitable to the writer; however, it requires far less effort on his part. By this method the memoirist is made to tell the story in his own words, but not allowed to write it. If he enjoys talking of his past, it will not matter whether he has a command of standard English, since his natural speech will be the ideal style in which to present the material. The trick is to get this natural speech onto the paper. This, of course, is done by employing a first-rate stenographer to take the man’s words down as he utters them. The stenographer must be quick and accurate, so that no interruptions or questions will occur. But it is not desirable that the memoirist should dictate his story to the stenographer. It is much better if a third person – - – some good listener congenial to the memoirist – be brought in. Let the memoirist talk to him without interruption.

The stenographer should sit to one side and preferably out of sight of the memoirist where he will not be noticed. It is preferable that the stenographer should be of the same sex as the memoirist, so that there will be no inhibitions interfering with full and frank expression. of course, the writer himself may sit in, if his presence does not disturb the narrator.

If the old-timer will spend two or three evenings a week narrating his adventures, the writer will find that the material for a book will pile up within a Short time. Most people can spout one hundred words a minute without effort, so that in a three hour session, 20,000 words may be readily accumulated. Thus after five or six meetings enough material may be available for a lengthy manuscript.

Then the writer’s work begins. His task is to check the work for accuracy, to verify all dates and names, to cut out whatever is irrelevant, to break it up into chapters, and to arrange the parts of the story chronologically or in some other pattern that will give it continuity. He should beware of rephrasing any part of the work, as a rule, since it is easily possible to destroy the authentic feeling of a memoir by dressing it up in a language which the memoirist would never use. A good memoir is not the place for a polished style. A good memoir keeps its feet on the ground, and its voice is the voice of experience.

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BIOGRAPHY – THE WRITTEN HISTORY OF A PERSON’S LIFE – offers the most difficult and the most rewarding task in all non-fiction. It offers more and demands more of the author.

The interest of our readers can be maintained only by a continuous and judicious mixture of the strange and the familiar. The best subject for a writer will therefore be that one which provides:

(a) the maximum of the strange and unexpected, with

(b) the maximum of the familiar, and

(c) unity.

These three essentials are found in human nature, in a person. F or human beings abound, and no two are precisely alike; thus Man gives us plenty of the strange and unexpected. Moreover, the readers are all human beings themselves, and so find human nature more familiar than any other subject. Finally, every human being is a unit, and so provides a subject that will give the author that continuity of interest that will keep his public reading.

Accordingly, a book which deals primarily with people offers an author a great Opportunity; while a novel or a biography (the story of one person) offers the competent author the best of all possible opportunities.

The novelist must write so that his imaginary characters will be strange enough to be interesting, and plausible enough to be convincing. But since the novelist’s characters are known to be imaginary, he must stress plausibility – often at the expense of novelty, of interest. Moreover, the novelist can rarely deal with one character alone, and therefore is in danger of some loss of unity – and so of continuity.

The biographer escapes these three dangers, to some degree, because

(a) his hero is known to have lived – he is not imaginary. This fact allows the biographer a certain freedom from the demand for plausibility.

(b) his hero was probably chosen because he was different from other men – unusual in some way or other – and so more interesting.

(c) his hero is one man, and so gives the book unity – which is all to the biographer’s advantage, in that continuity is assured. Moreover,

(d) a biographer is free to employ all the techniques of the novelist, as well as those of the writer of non-fiction.

Good biographies also enjoy a prestige and a lasting vogue denied to all but novels of the first rank. For nearly everyone reads biography, whereas many people care nothing for novels.

With all these advantages in his hands, it is hardly surprising that the biographer counts himself fortunate among writers.

But his difficulties are as great as his opportunities. He has the hard task of understanding a real man, and of making him real to the readers of his book. He must catCh the man he is after, and bring him back alive. And, needless to say, it is just as hard, often far harder, to imagine men and things as they are, than to imagine these as they might have been. The truth is never simple.

Life is so much richer, deeper, larger and more complex than the experience of any one author can possibly be. And so, Since the novelist, like everyone else, can only imagine what he has experienced, his fiction is likely to seem rather thin gruel compared to reality.

But, you will say, the biographer is no superman; he too can imagine only what he has experienced. True. But if he is serious, he will have to grapple with the experience of his hero also. He will have to accept and imagine facts and situations and persons quite alien to his own experience. He cannot omit anything real because it does not happen to fit into his present conception of life. He will have to enlarge his conception to make room for the facts he has discovered. In short, the biographer is just ready to begin where the novelist stops.

It is this necessity which makes the writing of a biography such a worth-while experience. When the biographer has gathered, sifted, and written all that can be known of his subject, he finds that he is more than he was – that his sharing of the real life of another real man has, as it were, added another room to his house of life. He has built himself a more stately mansion. He is a bigger and a better man than he was before.

For he cannot rest content with anything less than a rounded synthesis that will contain, integrate, and interpret the life of his hero. And this is an arduous and exacting discipline which would be well worth while, even though the book were never published.

CHOICE OF SUBJECT

The choice of a subject for a biography should be made with consideration. There are so many people of whom you might write, and so few whose lives make good subjects. The man whose life is an excellent subject for one biographer would be a bad subject for another. A novelist will necessarily invent a character out of his own experience, and so have a hero whom he understands and with whom he is sympathetic. But an honest biographer cannot invent his hero: he must find a real man who meets these tests. For, unless the biographer understands the man he writes of, his account will be false; and unless he is sympathetic and temperamentally in tune with his subject, he cannot win or hold the reader’s interest.

One may choose the subject of the biography:

(a) because it is timely, as, for example, when the country is about to celebrate the centenary of the birth or death of the subject, or of some great achievement in which he had a part. Some biographers make it a point to check the calendar for years ahead in the hope of taking advantage of such celebrations.

(b) because the subject is new, as in the lives of living men or men recently dead who have become suddenly famous.

(c) because the standard biography has become “dated” - – – that is to say, out of tune with current ideas of the reading public. ’

(d) because the subject is representative of a time or place or intellectual atmosphere or way of life which the reader may feel to be important.

(e) because the subject is a striking figure.

(f) because new data has been discovered about an old subject, which makes a new biography desirable.

(g) because the subject is one whose life presents a pattern which provides an opportunity for brilliant literary treatment.

(h) because the subject is so well known that a fresh treatment is always welcome.

(i) because so little is known of the subject that it offers a fresh opportunity for interpretation.

Naturally, with so many biographers about, good subjects are not easily found. Oftentimes the author has to be prompted by his publisher, his literary agent, or by some friend who suggests a subject suited to his peculiar talent and temperament. Thus, a soldier may write of soldiers, a lawyer of jurists, a literary man of poets, and do it better than others could.

Of course, not every life offers an equal opportunity to the author, even when his talent and temperament point to it. Some men of only one great achievement in a long career begin their lives in obscurity and end them in dullness, and this sort of person poses a stiff problem for his biographer.

Now, since a book must catch the reader’s interest at the start and raise it to a climax near the end, it follows that a man who began dramatically, lived an adventurous life, and died a violent death is an ideal subject for the biographer. A hero who ran away as a lad, fought and caroused through life, and died defiantly at the hands of his enemies makes an excellent subject for a biography, especially if he stood for something, or was representative of his community and time.

But the publisher wants more than this; he wants a subject who, like Lincoln or Mohamet, is known to millions – and yet one on whom no good biography has ever appeared. Try to find a subject like that!

PATTERNS

Biographies may be cast in one of several forms, from almost pure fiction to bare chronicles. The subject may be treated fictionally in what is called a novelized biography. This sort of treatment may be very popular, but is not satisfying to a reader who prefers to have the facts imagined as they were. Such a reader will not be happy with a biography in which the dialog is invented, and the psychology made up to fit a story. He does not believe that real life falls into the artificial pattern of a plot. When he wants a plot, he turns to fiction.

Again, a biography may be written for a purpose, as in laudatory “lives” of kings or statesmen; as a sort of glorified obituary or tribute which tells us only that the dead man’s family wishes to do him – ~or themselves – honor. There are also biographies which attempt to “debunk” overrated heroes. Both of these are fictionized to a degree, even though the facts are there, since the emphasis is biased and false.

There are biographies which attempt to give an author’s general impression of a man rather than to present all the facts and details. Some biographers offer us little more than an interpretation, while others cling to truth and established facts, letting the reader arrive at his own interpretation.

The most popular and satisfying biography is probably that in which the author forms an opinion or interpretation of the character which reconciles and integrates all of the many and often contradictory facts of his subject’s life.

There is a kind of biography for every attitude which a writer and his readers can assume towards his hero.

But in all good biographies certain elements are constant:

(a) facts

(b) interpretation of facts

(c) sympathy

For “good biography, like the good life, is based on knowledge and inspired by human sympathy.” - Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux by Stanley Vestal

The interpretation without the facts is implausible. The facts without the interpretation are vain. And neither the facts nor the interpretation will be understood without sympathy; the author must put himself and his reader in the hero’s shoes. He must try to see things as the hero did.

The biographer must, of course, be master of the techniques of fiction as well as of non-fiction. He will have to write narratives, scenes, dialog, characterization, and understand the use of fictional devices used in projecting emotion.

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We’ve been building up a serial novel from earlier short stories that forward a common theme. This was from the idea that my earlier “pantsed” books can be treated as first editions. I chose an anthology which had singular story arc that continued straight through. In this, I had to cut characters and rewrite sections to ensure it flowed as a single story arc. At last, we’re ready to start the serial in earnest - and I have a beta-version of the entire book now.

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.)

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Did the serial graphic (above).

And removed another character (Maestro - although may show up in an updated lore book during the Kickstarter release.)

I removed the existing chapter dividers and replaced them with more useful ones - which show up every 2000 words or so. Conveniently, I only needed to stop where there was a natural unfinished loop. Continuity is king, after all.

Again, I want to keep you updated with the overall novel progress as we go.

For now, here’s your most current revised copy of what I’m working with now, compiled into a decent order:

Walkaway Idylls Serial Robert C

636KB ∙ EPUB file

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Walkaway Idylls Serial Robert C

1.48MB ∙ PDF file

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This is still the pre-release beta, but if you’ve followed along and gotten the earlier non-promoted freebies, this now updates them all.

I’ve quit working through Google Docs, as I started losing updates. Now I just keep everything in its LibreOffice master (which is organized though my Calibre backend.)

Downloa

When We Last Left Our Story

Generally, I work with 2000 to 2500 word chapters. But a scene cuts out where it needs to. Chapters are split for pacing and needed breaks. Like a big brother to paragraphs.

This then gives us ample opportunity to stay within the original framework as far as cliffhangers/continuity.

In this installment framework, I renumbered the installments and kept the chapters titles as organization the same as the original short story. What that will do is to break up the story into sections, but still make sense for people who drop in at any time.

We’re still under 70K words, just barely. So it’s a decent-sized paperback.
The serial has 38 installments at this point.

The point of a serial, any serial, is to build audience.

By the end, the point is to have supportive paying fans that I can encourage to become superfans. So the book needs to be ready by the end of the series, even though I plan to release the serial by sections all along. Then follow the whole thing up with a Kickstarter - somewhere in January next year, or maybe a bit after the gifting season.

Meanwhile, I start another serial and keep promoting my Kickstarter from this one with every episode. Kickstarter now has late-arrival bonuses available, so those ads then become evergreen.

The Kickstarter will have a collectible deluxe hardcover. And lore books. Maybe other merch.

Taking the long view, I have some seven more serials to produce, so leapfrogging these to each promote the Kickstarter for the earlier one just adds to the momentum of superfan building.

As well, I’ll update my “Writing Serial Fiction in the Real World” book somewhere in this, based on what I’ve relayed to you here on Substack.

Mechanics of a Substack Serial

This is all on top of reworking/updating your Substack site itself (see related post). The below are what show up on every episode:

• Graphic - a touchstone for the entire series, can be updated. But graphics attract.

• Last episode | Table of Content | Story start links

• Story question (Will protagonist in situation overcome opposition to achieve objective in climax?) Not just a tag line.

• Story so far where we last left our main character and team.

• Subscribe request

• Current episode - which promises things to come.

• Survey to ask reader input.

• Comment/Share/Subscribe requests

• Get the app button.

• Special add-on’s for paid subscribers (below paywall).

You can simply duplicate your last first episode to drop in the next one, updating your “Story so far” section.

By getting ahead on your posts and pre-scheduling, you’ll be able to keep your fans engaged.

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Here’s his approach to writing serials, based on his own experience and those of his students, added to his studies of what worked then - and still works now:

THE OWNERS OF MAGAZINES DESIRE a large and increasing circulation for their publications. One of the devices invented in order to encourage readers to buy successive issues of a magazine is the publication of long narratives in serial installments. Such serials now form a regular feature of a large number of magazines, and competition in this field is keen.

The writer who can turn out a serial which attracts and holds a large number of readers is in an enviable position, and every writer who has succeeded in selling short stories and novelettes hopes and usually tries to sell serials.

A single serial in a magazine of large national circulation will reward its author with a small fortune. Yet the serial has never been made the subject of a book on the technique of fiction.

This is unfortunate, for the serial offers a rare opportunity—the opportunity always afforded a real artist by a popular form which has not achieved its full artistic development, its full dignity as a literary form.

THE FIRST PROBLEM of the writer of a serial is the creation of something that will attract the reader and then hold his interest from one installment to the next. Like the short story, the serial must have an attractive beginning. Like the novel, it must have an effective ending. But in addition to these requirements the serial must have such a quality and employ such devices as will insure readers reading each issue week after week or month after month.

Situation.

In magazines which publish plotted stories of action, reliance is placed chiefly upon situation. Each installment, in addition to presenting a rounded incident with all the parts and developments of the short-story form, must leave the readers burning with curiosity and interest with regard to what will happen next. This method has been irreverently referred to as ending every installment by shoving the heroine off the cliff. Dependence upon situation is effective, in the juvenile especially. But as readers become more mature and sophisticated, the value of such devices steadily declines, and in the pulp magazines there is a decided preference for stories “complete in this issue.”

This is partly due to the fact that very few readers subscribe to pulp magazines. Another fact is that not every reader of pulp magazines is in a place where he is able to purchase all the issues containing a serial. He may be a sailor, a soldier, a traveling man, a hobo or a business or professional man, under periodical pressure which prevents him from visiting the newsstands or finding time to read the next issue of his favorite pulp magazine. Therefore he is likely to prefer magazines in which serials do not occur. Instead of the serial, he prefers to have his favorite character presented in a series of short stories, novelettes or novels complete in one issue.

Mystery novels should be put in a class by themselves here.

The interest in the puzzle, a desire to solve the enigma, gives an added strength to the reader’s curiosity which is lacking to the novel of situation. The adult reader has difficulty in remaining for thirty days or even seven days in a state of anxious suspense as to the fate of a hero or heroine who (if past experience is any guide) is certain to come out all right in the end. He cannot remain anxious as to what will happen next under such circumstances. But the mystery story remains a puzzle and attracts him again and again to successive issues of the magazine.

Character in Serial.

The adult reader, then, generally prefers character to plot as the main attraction of a serial novel published in installments in a magazine. And he who wishes to succeed as a writer of serials will therefore do his utmost to create a character whom the reader will wish to meet again and again. This applies as well to the pulp magazines as to the slicks and quality magazines. Only the juveniles can depend wholly upon situation and suspense to keep their readers interested. Naturally any story in which situation is so stressed at the expense of character will have to deal chiefly in typical and social traits of character.

On the other hand, serial novels written for adult readers, while making the most of situation and plot, will be more successful if they rely chiefly upon character. Flat characters may be introduced in installments, but it is safer to rely upon round characters and to stress human and individual traits, rather than typical and social traits. The author who can create a winning, amusing character possessing human traits with which the reader can sympathize may count upon a loyalty in his adult readers denied to the mere master of plot.

We may therefore lay it down as a rule that the creation of a popular character is the surest path to success as a serial writer.

However, it occasionally happens that an author able to create a popular character finds his best medium in the short story. This is particularly true if the character created happens to be a flat one, so that it cannot easily be exhibited over a long novel without loss of reality. In such a case the author, though barred from selling serials, may still appear in successive issues of the magazine he writes for by presenting his flat character each time in a short story plotted to exhibit it. It sometimes happens that an author who can do this outlasts those who write serials, makes just as much money, and appears just as frequently during his vogue.

Since the problem of the serial writer is to maintain interest in the reader between installments, it is obvious that it would be easier to write serials for a weekly magazine than for a monthly, a quarterly or an annual magazine. In fact, annuals, so far as I know, never use serials. Human interest does not last so long. Of course if one can write serials for a weekly market, one can reap a greater financial reward, since the weekly appears so much oftener than the monthly magazine.

The mere creation of a character, however, is not in itself sufficient for the serial writer. He will be aided in his work if he can provide an interesting setting in which the reader likes to imagine himself, interesting adventures which the reader delights in sharing. But the special problem of the serial writer lies in the fact that, however attractive his materials, he must usually begin each installment with a fresh statement of his theme, his setting, his situation, and his characters. The traits and tags of the persons of his story must be brought to mind anew. Of course the reader who has missed a previous installment may begin with the current one after reading the digest usually prefixed to the latter by the obliging editor under the heading, “The Story Thus Far.” But this digest is not really sufficient as to such details, and even the reader who has read the previous installment may require some freshening of his memory if he is to continue the story with enjoyment.

Cutting.

Serials as written are frequently much longer than when they appear in the magazine. The editor may cut out as high as thirty per cent of the wordage from the manuscript in order to meet market requirements. This means that the writer can rarely know in advance just where each installment is to end. He is therefore compelled to provide a number of possible stopping places, so that the editor may find these and cut accordingly. If the author knows precisely where each installment is to begin and end, he can introduce tags and traits and reminders as to setting and situation at the beginning of each installment.

It is because of the necessity of these devices that serials, when published in book form, often prove so unnatural and displeasing. These repetitions bore the reader and produce an effect like that of a book of short stories all about the same character. The first three times the character does the same stunt and exhibits the same tag, the reader can endure it, but on the tenth repetition he is likely to throw the book on the floor.

In this difficulty, as in all others, the writer of serials will depend heavily upon character. If this dependence is to be justified, the character must be extremely winning and human and, on the other hand, individualized enough to maintain the element of surprise throughout the story.

Endearing Your Readers

In addition to character and plot and technical devices, each successful writer of serials will have some quality which endears him to his readers. Thus the kindly humor and tolerance of P. G. Wodehouse would make him beloved regardless of his humor and his characters. The humanity and sympathy exhibited by Kathleen Norris would make people love her work even if it were less competent than it is. Some writers are admired for their wit and worldliness, others for their understanding of current problems, still others for their knowledge of a particular kind of life.

Naturally no formula can be given for the creation of a living character, but as in everything else in fiction the two basic principles will be interest (surprise) and plausibility (recognition). The human traits are familiar to every reader and always evoke his sympathy. These should be stressed heavily. The individual traits provide the unusual and surprising element and should be pointed rather than profound; that is to say, the main structure of the character should be richly human. The individual traits should stand up here and there like minarets from the main building. If the character appears frequently, the individual traits will also become familiar to the reader and will require to be supplemented or seen from new angles if the element of surprise is to be maintained. Of course, after a character has been taken into the hearts of the public, familiarity becomes more important than novelty.

Readers prefer to hobnob with an old friend rather than to be startled by oddities in his character.

The Essentials Of A Good Serial

...may be listed as follows:

A good beginning, which may go farther back into the past than would be the case if the same situation were to be handled in a short story.

An interesting second installment.

An effective ending.

A series of developed crises occurring at convenient points, where the manuscript may be cut. Each one having the character of a “Yes, but...”

A strong emotional suspense; the reader must feel, not merely follow.

A glamorous setting.

Devices to remind. the reader, at the beginning of each installment, of the characters and situation. These should be clear but not cumbersome.

An author who knows how to make the reader feel that he is a qualified conductor, that he knows what he is about and where he is going.

To these it might be added that the middle and penultimate installments of the serial should be, if possible, reasonably interesting. Too often they are not. The difficulty lies apparently in the fact that, as the story progresses towards its climax, the reader sees what the end is to be, and suspense flags. One way to avoid, or at any rate ameliorate, this condition of affairs, is that followed by Shakespeare in the fourth acts of his plays: for example, by providing alarumis and excursions. When the reader and the author are both fainting and interest flags, bring in action, thrills, horrors or what have you: the corpse in the closet, the roar of the bombers overhead, the breaking of the dam, in short—disaster! Or a chase. But plenty of serials get printed which fail miserably to prevent this slumping in the penultimate installment.

The serial field is not overcrowded, while book novels come a dime a dozen. If the same talent and effort were expended on serials, magazine fiction might provide an avenue for many writers now hard at work elsewhere. This would not only provide some of these with a better opening, but might raise the serial in public and critical estimation, and add something fine and lasting to our national literature. Why not? Dickens wrote serials.

One rule may safely be stated here: to write the best serials, one should frankly lay aside the hope of book publication for serial novels. Only then can the form achieve its finest artistic development.

Marketing serials offers some difficulty

(a) because no magazine can publish more than a few in any given year;

(b) because every editor knows authors who have provided him with satisfactory serials before, and hesitates to gamble on an unknown author’s work;

(c) because, as a rule, editors have rather definite notions as to just what they are seeking in the way of a serial—notions which the beginner can rarely know about;

(d) because advertisers are more likely to contract with the business manager of a magazine for space alongside the work of a “big name” than if the serial comes from a little-known pen;

(e) because serials are often written on assignment, or planned in the editorial rooms between author and editor.

On the other hand, every editor groans to think of the price he must pay for a whole serial by a “big name,” and would willingly use work equally good by any other writer, except when putting pressure on advertisers for a new contract. The author who has a serial in mind for a specific magazine should therefore approach the editor and talk things out, or have his agent do that, before he sets to work. Or he should take great care to study the magazine and the serials which appear in it before he goes to work.

Sums paid for serials in magazines of large circulation are so large that no trouble in meeting the market demands will be too great for a writer who wishes to express himself in this way.

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We’ve been building up a serial novel from earlier short stories that forward a common theme. And an outline has shown where scenes and even whole characters need to be cut, and those areas revised to make the whole work unified, congruent, and preserve continuity. Now we’re deep into the woods, approaching the muddled middle, more or less…

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.)

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With the overall outline in place, now I started over the last week to get these existing stories segmented into 1500-word installments (episodes) so that they will give an unbroken experience to newsletter readers. We’re avoiding having these readers click to see the rest of the story. Any forced interruption means that reader may not come back.

Of course, you could also put a cliffhanger right there, but we want to produce an installment that is the same in the newsletter and the Substack app. Again, I want to keep you updated with the overall novel as we go.

For now, here’s your most current revised copy of what I’m working with now, compiled into a decent order:

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.57MB ∙ PDF file

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Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.1MB ∙ EPUB file

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After today’s discussion, I’ll need to update this, as I have done these adjustments each on their own Google Doc. But you have the stories in their order, at least, and some improvements to the first, second, and last chapters.

Downloa

First Actions

I’ve gone through these texts and roughly worked out how to shrink them to 1500 words. Sometimes longer, some shorter. The Maestro originally started out at 1589 words. That would probably fit - knowing that we have to bring the reader up to date at its beginning, and have several links to subscribe, buy the original book, or a coffee, and leaving a comment. All these require other characters (not the imaginary kind, but the digital ones) both visible and in the code. So when an installment comes in at 1700 words, I won’t know how to adjust it until I actually drop it into the Substack editor area and see what alerts I get. But what I found on doing this preliminary adjustment is that I already wrote it with spaces between the scenes, and usually several scenes per chapter.

This then gives us ample opportunity to stay within the original framework as far as cliffhangers. My original scenes all still have their original built-in continuity already, even though some of these may be adjusted to sink that hook deeper, depending on how much of a cliffhanger is required - like a simple scene break within that newsletter compared to getting the reader to look forward to next weeks installment.

In this installment framework, I renumbered the installments and kept the chapters titled the same as the original short story. Those are then our chapter titles. So I spent a few frigid winter days sorting these down into their respective 1500=word increments. And here’s what they look like now:

• Maestro (as edited and expanded) - 2

• Case of the Walkaway Blues - 3

• Walkaway Mary - 3

• Ghost Hunters -3

• Case of the Cruising Phantom - 5

• When Death Lives Twice - 3

• Doppel - 8

• The Case of the Walkaway Diner Redux - 8

• The Return of Walkaway Mary - 11

• Coda - 1

This makes 47 installments, or about 70K words. So, we’re right in the ball park for building and shipping a complete novel in a single year’s worth of pre-scheduled installments.

Again, that year’s worth of writing then builds an audience who will be interested in having a print copy for their shelves, and otherwise, a full ebook version (or both). Time permitting, it would also enable a Kickstarter to be run that would give a deluxe collector’s hardback edition. All so this book can then repay its costs and encourage this author to continue writing fiction. And all this depends on how we outline to ensure our later work in writing doesn’t set us up for failure.

Mastering the Muddled Middle

According to the more recent instructors at the OU Professional Writing School, the middle is where everything breaks down. Now, if you have followed my advice and looked up Jim Butcher’s solution to this problem, then you’ll see he gives several techniques, while his instructor and mentor Deborah Chester has more about solving middles in her book and blog. In short: any difficulty with the middle is fixed by rebuilding the outline.

Our outline takes this into account. A few weeks ago, I went through the Ghost Hunter canon to select stories that should have been included in the original collection - so that we’ll have all the elements and these add up to what a good story needs.

Here’s the simple breakdown:

1. Maestro - introduces the main character, John, and the villainous possessed Ouroboros ring, who had earlier influenced the cult that John escaped from. This sets the theme for the book - choice and love.

2. Case of the Walkaway Blues - introduces Mary, who is our tragic heroine and a red herring to John’s successful romance later. This story also points out she’s a bit unstable and gullible.

3. Walkway Mary - has the failed effort of both John and Mary to reconcile their differences. Mary continues on as part of a corporate cult, while John decides to take up the offer to move to the Midwest and write Midwestern mysteries.

4. Ghost Hunters - establishes Sal (his inevitable true love) and her randy sister Jude (as a comic sidekick and counter-point.) John decides to join the Ghost Hunters and meets their crew.

5. Case of the Cruising Phantom - we meet Mary’s great aunt (GA), who is nominally a ghost, but continues on after Ghost Hunter John solves her mystery, as a spirit guide.

6. When Death Lives Twice - Sal brings John back from the dead and they fall in love. (Jude also gets a true love out of the deal, a shifter.)

7. Doppel - this explores the Ouroboros ring problem, establishes the villainous opposition as still active. This also introduces the idea of alternative time lines with doppelgangers. At its ending here, the ring escapes.

8. The Case of the Walkaway Diner Redoux - GA Mary has to rescue John from a time loop where villainous henchmen influenced by the Ouroboros ring, is trying to ensure John doesn’t make that decision. (Spoiler alert - GA Mary doesn’t succeed, and forgets John ever existed.)

9. The Return of Walkaway Mary - John is spirited away to an alternate universe by niece Mary, who is wearing that Ouroboros ring, and crazy because of what she had to survive in order to escape the cult. Here’s where some major re-writing happens: Sal, Jude and the Library itself escape to another alternative universe to solve John’s own mystery - locating him in an infinite number of alternative universes, then rescuing him despite force fields and that crazy niece Mary. (Spoiler alert - John and Sal have a happily ever after, young Mary is healed of her insanity, and gets a job on GA Mary’s restored cruise ship and starts playing the field to find her own true love, as John has set a high bar for her.

10. Coda - GA Mary returns to the original diner and gives the Maestro a one-time chance to make things right (or face eternal Hell if he doesn’t.)

The Middle here is now scripted as almost impossible to solve, and has everything at risk. You can see that by following the Climax formula in Butcher’s blog, we now have the hero now isolated from everyone else, and at the mercy of a psychotic gal only out for revenge. If he fails, he’ll die alone in the middle of nowhere. High stakes.

You can see that I’ve used additional story arcs, as well as big scenes through this book, so solving the Muddled Middle. In the South Park parlance: THIS STARTS WITH, the guy telling off a villain, turning around to meet a gorgeous gal. BUT he and the gal don’t end up getting together - BUT that is great, because he bounces back with another flame. AND THEN we see him succeed with his new job, AND SO meets another character. BUT he nearly dies after that and finds his true love. MEANWHILE the villain is up to no good , and John’s love deepens. BUT John gets trapped in a time loop so he’ll decide not to join the Ghost Hunters - BUT Great Aunt Mary fails, and John is kidnapped to another time-space continuum. BUT John’s lover Sal manages to sacrifice everything to get him back and save the day (with his help). AND SO redemption is possible for everyone except the real villain. Lots of twists.

What I ran across today is about how to make these story endings result in increasing tragedy - something I couldn’t do in the original series. But now, GA Mary can fail, and be unable to even give clues to what happened in that diner when she does. No help is apparently possible in the rescue efforts.

As a note to self - I have to ensure the introduction of the supporting character Tess in Doppel comes off smoothly - without bringing her origin story clumsily in at that point. Doppel is already one of the longest stories in this collection, so is ripe for cuts and re-writes.

Index Cards, Revisited

I didn’t have to do these for all the scenes and sequels. Mainly because my original stories have decent scene and sequel structure in them. When they don’t, I work a rewrite in. Like I did with Maestro and Case of the Walkaway Blues. The next few seem to be running right along as I re-read them - all the pacing and rising tension seems fine. Although, I’m only 11 installments in…

The real breakthrough on that rising tension happened today, when I realized that GA Mary has to fail so badly that John is then kidnapped and trapped so thoroughly by niece Mary that he can’t contact the surviving Ghost Hunters Sal, Jude, & Co to help them find him. There’s an upcoming twist right at the end of that Redoux story, which segues right into Mary’s Return.

Also that strips out a great deal of other machinations and some characters I had to add in so I could make that particular story work when I wrote it a few years ago. (Again, hindsight is 50/50.)

At that point, we can truly build that climax against Butcher’s formula and make it succeed.

Some Problem Plot Points

Of course, the solution creates other problems - but I would have run into these anyway, I’ve just come up to seeing them.

When Mary takes John to another space-time continuum, in an effort to prevent him from joining the Ghost Hunters, that would have erased all his efforts. So his books would disappear from existence, and all the ghosts he helped would also never have joined the Library’s team.

Love conquers all, though, so John and Sal would just get together at a different point in their timelines. Still, we want it to look impossible to solve. However, as niece Mary finds out, she and John never become a couple at all. The trick is that the non-canonical stories can come to the rescue. We have the stories written by John’s “cousins” - C. C. Brower, especially, since this book takes place in her universe of the Hooman Saga. There’s also J. R. Kruze’s stories of the Lazurai and the Autists - who actually were the ones who masterminded John’s rural retreat to write, and were also behind the Lazurai clinics being formed.

This theory then comes around - that certain events are going to happen, regardless. Tess is brought in during Dopple to solve that story. And probably, an alternate story line is built that Tess was the one who got Sal and John together - because it was always going to happen. The Autists (and Lazurai) got John into that writing cabin anyway, and his joining the Ghost Hunters just took place later. So when John finds his own stories on that ship, they start off with several adventures with Tess as a principle other. And she recruits him for the Ghost Hunters - TA-DAAA!

And that then preserves the recorded history across timelines. Also, this then enables that diner couple in the back booth (Autists - see “NaN”) — who, of course, are in the right place at the right time.

All this works out because of my huge backbench of stories that already interlock in several crossovers.

And we’ll have to let this be “explained” by one of the Autists (probably Abe Smythe — who’s in that diner booth with his life-partner Stefi.)

So the book is hugely complicated. And with my work this year on Substack, I hope to build a fan base who love to sleuth out the details of all these characters I created in this huge book universe.

Upcoming Plans

Once the first run-through polishes are completed, then I’ll restudy the book and make notes what has to go where to ensure the reader invests completely in John as their own family, and so is filled with stress about his predicament until their catharsis arrives when John solves his own mystery and reunites with Sal. (How he does that, I’m not sure, only that he does - somehow.) I have great confidence in my own inspiration, having practiced with it for so long.

I’ll start scheduling and releasing the earliest installments/episodes at that point and asking for feedback. And then split the book up into several-chapter parts where the fans can become paid subscribers to get a sneak peak at what’s coming out - even though the final edit may change the text in places. Meanwhile, the existing (revised) collection will then be made available for pay-what-you-want at my Gumroad site, as well as given away for free to paid subscribers.

New Writing Outlets

I’ve started up with Flash Fiction February, hosted by . As he’s offered, I can do anything with these stories I want. And so, I’d like to explore the universe of John and his troops through this. They’ll become add-on flash fiction or be integrated as scenes to push this story along.

Now, I won’t be limited to the last story (Mary’s Return) but can also wind up in any of the earlier stories, where I need more color or character development. This looks to be exciting, but it requires me working every day of February to produce another flash fiction. (As if I didn’t have enough to do - but it will still be cold, and writing late into the night is still an option…)

Contributions Welcome

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

And discover more about this story as it grows…

The simplest way is to like/heart this article and, as always — leave your comment:

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And we gratefully accept financial contributions as well:

You can purchase the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets at pay-what-you-want author discount.

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Writing in public. Including you in it. Requesting your feedback. About my serialized novel, building from a collection of short stories. And this base grows, now.

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.)

One of the advantages to carrying a smart phone is having an e-reader to read reference books aloud as I do my farm chores. My farm work becomes my fiction-writing research. And listening brings up bugs as I bounce out of the story.

I found myself overall dissatisfied with this overall story again. Mostly as the characters were so milk-toast. So I went back to my scraped version of Jim Butcher’s livejournal blog. (Yes I have ebook versions of Dwight Swain, and Deborah Chester, in addition to Walter S. Campbell and Foster-Harris. Amazing what you can carry around in a little chunk of electronics playing from a spare pocket.)

Butcher hit me with the need for characters who were larger than life.

That led me back to my earlier concept that this was, at its outset, a tragic romance. So I had two main characters. Now, in a novel, you get a chance to develop the characters more fully. Even the villains. The villain in this piece is a possessed Ouroboros ring. And I’d written about this a couple of times before. Looking this up, I saw that adding one of these stories to the mix might work. And while I was at it, I needed to punch up the relationship between John and Sal. So the original “Ghost Hunter” story would do that. However, the real point to their relationship was that story where she saved his life. Three stories to add in.

In doing that, now the emphasis of this story changes. It becomes about John and his decisions, as reflected by two loves in his life. The first one turns out to go stalker-crazy on him later. But he proposes to the second one. And all characters here (excepting that villainous ring itself, who escapes) were given a chance at redemption.

Here’s your revised copy of what I’m working with now, compiled into a decent order:

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.55MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.13MB ∙ EPUB file

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The Secret of Index Cards

I’d left last week with needing to get Sal better introduced. And it turns out that I could use additional story arcs as a device to handle the 2nd Act. While Sal was introduced at the end of the 1st act, I develop her character by adding two additional stories that weren’t canon to the original collection.

The Ouroboro’s ring villain was fleshed out with yet another story where John was solving a mystery involving it.

And all this means is that John has to show a bit more emotional involvement - or explain why he’s able to remain so apparently detached, even while surrounded by appealing young women who are attracted to him physically.

Now we have a single main character to hang the bulk of this story on. Romance is now a sub-arc. Yes, Mary is a tragic character, but winds up in love at the end. This also tends to solve having her and her great aunt as dopplegangers through this story.

The core material is now over 80K words. Lots to work with (and cut).

I got out the index cards and started puzzling this out.

They did the trick. Because, I had to realize that the first two stories in this collection weren’t scenes, but sequels — meaning they were built on reaction.

That gives us a different model than Deborah Chester’s SPOOC (situation, protagonist, objective, opponent, climax.)

Instead this gives us Jim Butcher’s RAAD (reaction, analysis, anticipation, decision). So I then filled out card using that acronym and the story then had it’s parts in order to tell. I had the story question, which was an internal soul-searching by the villain and the main character.

And I also saw the second story was also more a sequel than scene.

We’ve seen this before, in the Dissection of Max Brand’s Dan Barry’s Daughter. There, I considered that the purpose of this scene was to get information, not a lot of action there.

Similarly, in The Maestro, Main Character John is trying to get information about his former nemesis, who is willingly telling how horrible his current life in, as he discloses that the immortality he has earned requires him to stay in this diner (spoiler alert).

We want to introduce the villain overall (which has to wind up with the Ouroboros ring on the Maestro’s hand). If you look this over carefully, the ring is the one trapped in that time-looped diner, so it can’t get out to cause more villainous mischief. (Just saw that, myself. Nice reversal. I’ll have to write it up that way.)

I wrote up another exploration of the sequel that the Maestro should have. And posted it earlier this week, in a poetry format here.

But the index cards, and use of them as sequels, now opened up the story for writing. The work I did this morning has John recovering from the actions of the Maestro and no longer a dupe to anything that former cult-leader could say. He wised up. And is now smiling, ready to meet his next challenge — the young secretary Mary (and her hangover).

The plans then are to continue the index card work on the subsequent stories, and then start to write these into their new editions. In other words, the serial may be ready to start.

Practically, I need to get several installments ahead to the flow is continuous and uninterrupted. Those installments will lead into these Pro Writer notes as a resource.

Contributions Welcome

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

And discover more about this story as it grows…

The simplest way is to like/heart this article and, as always — leave your comment:

Leave a comment

And we gratefully accept financial contributions as well:

You can purchase the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets at pay-what-you-want author discount.

Or, buy me a coffee..

Or, upgrade to paid or Founding Member subscription.

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Read more

Writing my serial novel in public. Including you in it. Requesting your feedback. Building from a collection of short stories, based on my updated craft knowledge.

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.)

I’ve started following (and others’) writing prompts, as a method of polishing my skills in short-form posts. Because Gmail has something like a 1500-world limit, after which they start truncating the text. Which also includes images and invisible code.

Again, as I’m having my ereader speak my text out, I get dissatisfied all over again.

The main points are, as always: unity, coherence, and continuity.

All this dithering around invites the reader to simply quit. Cut out the fluff, I say.

So, what is fluff? Anything and everything that doesn’t directly add up to answering the story question. Again, that question is: In this situation, will the protagonist achieve their objective despite opposition and deliver a climactic/cathartic resolution? (Dorothy Chester’s SPOOC)

This problem came up while I’ve been working with Ramsey’s most recent post about a vampire trapped in a lighthouse. The great part of this is that you’re given some elements to work with, and use this to excite your imagination. Much like I’m doing with this edit of those years-old stories that I’m now editing into shape.

The story of this one is that I got a great idea for the twist, and then wrote it all down in my own style, in the Ghost Hunters universe. But it was over 4K words long. And my target was just 1.5K, to fit in the email limits.

I finally had to pare it down and re-write portions of it. And became very familiar with writing drafts. By the third or fourth draft, I had something presentable. It won no prizes, but the feedback was very useful. And that’s the point of these. Attaboys are worth everything.

Here’s what I worked with, and contains most of those drafts. (PDF format)

Walkaway Add On 03

152KB ∙ PDF file

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Compare the final with my typical output and you can see quite a difference.

What I had to cut out was any character or action that didn’t directly contribute to answering that story question. So the original three-person team became s solo adventure. And all the original scene of the lighthouse was cut down to just John arriving at the end of a winch line.

And some other background descriptions and action was pared down to only what was needful and vital to the story.

Applying this to our Walkaway Blues work then gives us a new approach, one older than history.

When out on my pasture walks, I re-listen to the original stories. This is somewhat frustrating, as I get into editing mode, but I’m hundreds of yards away from my computer to work these up. So I have tons of mental notes.

At least with these writing prompts and a self-assigned word limit, I can devote my time to working up the scenes and core material, paring down and rebuilding as needful.

I’m pretty happy with the overall layout now. This outline fills the overall structure well. And the additional story arcs I’ve added now fit well to eventually wind up answering the overall story question.

Here’s your revised copy of what I’m working with now, compiled into a decent order:

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.55MB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.13MB ∙ EPUB file

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Download

This outline below updates that collection somewhat.

The Overall Outline

The Maestro

Needs some work to tie in the emotional angst this guy must be feeling. And set up the stage for John to move on.

A prompt to write poetry gave me an option to write a sequel for the Maestro, from his viewpoint. See that poetry here. What is still missing is the sequel for John, where he finally decides to move on from all the emotional baggage he’d accumulated and get on with his life.

In that poem, you see that he does, but not from his viewpoint - and since the story is all about him, this is vital. So that’s upcoming.

I’ll keep nibbling at the sides of this until I’m ready to crank it all through. But stay tuned and you’ll see it being built. Piece by piece, then all in a single flow.

Index Cards Still Needed

I’ve covered using index cards. According to Jack Bickham, I am to do one color for scenes, another color for sequels. Maybe a third to denote where chapters start and stop. Then comes dividing them by Acts, and probably kept organized with binder clips.

The scene card has the Chester SPOOC model there (Situation, Protagonist, Objective, Opposition, Climax) - same as the overall story. because you want to know your scene question.

The sequel card has Jim Butcher’s RAAD laid out there (Reaction, Analysis, Anticipation, Decision.) This then gives you right over to the next scene.

Added Story Arcs

You can see from the overall collection (above - it’s that free download) that we roll this out with several story arcs. This is really three big scenes.

The Maestro - introduce the villain and hero, establish the overall theme.

Case of the Walkaway Blues - introduce the first female character, and her flaw of easily getting duped.

Walkaway Mary - get these two thinking they are in love, but are on different paths. She walks away to her corporate job, and he moves to his Midwest writing cabin - and meets he true love there.

Ghost Hunters - Involves John with his lover Sal (and her oversexed sister) to solve a series of mysteries about ghosts who won’t move on.

The Case of the Cruising Phantom - where Mary’s doppelganger great-aunt is introduced. And John helps her solve her own mystery death - but she decides to stick around as a spirit-guide on that cruise liner, with the option of becoming a Ghost Hunter team member if she wants, later.

When Death Lives Twice - Sal saves John from death, and her sister finds her own true love.

Doppel - the Ouroboros ring is highlighted as a a villain. An alternate universes with body doubles are established. The villain escapes.

The Case of the Walkaway Diner Redoux - Great Aunt (GA) Mary is employed to save John from a time loop, as he’s too successful in his Ghost Hunting. They figure if he never gets that job in the Midwest, the Ouroboros ring can get their own evil done easier. A goon in that diner is possessed by the ring.

The Return of Walkaway Mary - Mary, from an alternate time line future, is possessed by that ring, and kidnaps John back to her own dystopian reality. Sal rescues him once John gets the ring off her finger and sent somewhere else. John finally proposes to Sal, and niece Mary gets a job on her great-aunt’s cruise liner, with the promise of lots of young men to court and find her own real true love.

Epilogue - GA Mary returns to that diner and gives the Maestro a way out of his own time-looped immortality.

So - now we have a nicely complicated series of events where the hero finally finds the true love of his life, despite the machinations of a former lover and a space-time-bending, brainwashing villain.

Now I have a good story question and answer. And story answers for each of those story arcs in the collection above.

Now I can simply start cranking these out from the beginning and post them weekly.

Yes, first steps will be those index cards, but then the work will flow from these.

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( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.)

One of the advantages to carrying a smart phone is having an e-reader to read reference books aloud as I do my farm chores. My farm work becomes my fiction-writing research. And listening brings up bugs as I bounce out of the story.

I found myself overall dissatisfied with this story again. Mostly as the characters were so milk-toast. So I went back to my scraped version of Jim Butcher’s livejournal blog. (Yes I have ebook versions of Dwight Swain, and Deborah Chester, in addition to Walter S. Campbell and Foster-Harris. Amazing what you can carry around in a little chunk of electronics playing from a spare pocket.)

Butcher hit me with the need for characters who were larger than life.

That led me back to my earlier concept that this was, at its outset, a tragic romance. So I had two main characters. Now, in a novel, you get a chance to develop the characters more fully. Even the villains. The villain in this piece is a possessed Ouroboros ring. And I’d written about this a couple of times before. Looking this up, I saw that adding one of these stories to the mix might work. And while I was at it, I needed to punch up the relationship between John and Sal. So the original “Ghost Hunter” story would do that. However, the real point to their relationship was that story where she saved his life. Three stories to add in.

In doing that, now the emphasis of this story changes. It becomes about John and the loves in his life. The first one turns out to go stalker-crazy on him later. But he marries the second one. And all characters here (excepting that ring itself, who escapes) were given a chance at redemption.

Here’s your revised copy of what I’m working with now, compiled into a decent order:

Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.55MB ∙ PDF file

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Walkaway Blues Robert C

1.13MB ∙ EPUB file

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The Return of Walkaway Mary

A lot of these stories have a data-dump that needs removing. This short story is another. And I was pretty happy with a nice sequel I wrote for it, after I was dissatisfied with the scene re-write.

Here’s the sequel.

And below here is that new scene to introduces it:

Escape

“You write, I’ll talk.”

John sat there, didn’t move. He looked around the Captain’s quarters of that derelict freighter. “No keyboard here.”

I drummed my fingers on the small desk and rolled my eyes. “Something about being trapped in another space-time on an abandoned cargo ship in the bottom of a blast crater with no crew remaining you didn’t get?”

John just looked at me, a frown wrinkled his forehead. trying to understand me. “OK, that’s fair. Got a legal pad?”

I started going through the desk drawers, going top to bottom. Manuals, bills, reports. A personal log book, mostly filled. Nothing really useful. Then I got down to the last, bottom drawer.

Yellow ruled paper on a pad. I pulled it out into the weak port-hole light. Several pages missing, the top one only used for scratch-testing a pen. And most of that was blank. Ruffling through the rest of those pages, it seemed untouched.

“Here.” I handed it over to John with a brusque gesture. He took it and looked around. Then stopped and gestured past me to a cup-holder on the captain’s desk. Several pens were sitting there, upright in a chipped china coffee cup. I reached over and pulled a couple out, laying them on the desk blotter.

He scooted across the bunk toward its end, but those pens remained out of reach. Since I was sitting in the small cabin’s only chair, I snatched up those two ballpoints and swiveled back to his outstretched hand. He accepted them from me and tested them each on the top page. One was a dud, the other worked.

His eyes found mine and that old cozy, cared-for feeling came back. I’d really missed him.

That gold band on my right ring-finger stayed quiet. The jeweled eyes in those tail-eating snakes didn’t glow now. It was listening to my thoughts, as usual. No pain this time. I touched it with my thumb, rotating it a bit. Still no response.

John saw me looking down at it and I crossed my arms, hiding both hands under my sweaty pits. “Well, now you can write. Ready?”

John gave a soft smile and a slight nod, holding his pen and pad balanced on one knee.

I leaned back in the chair, looking up at the dingy ceiling and started telling him my story. “It was before the Rising, before the great city ‘Cagga rose up with the rest of the metro areas to get into temporary orbit in the sky.”

- - - -

I already told you how I was blacklisted because I wouldn’t put out for any of my boss’s higher-ups. How he’d been “promoted” to a new job that didn’t require any pretty assistant to answer his phones and write his reports.

That left me back in the typing pool, unable to get many assignments there. And I had to move into a much smaller apartment, about the size of this cabin. My pay was so low, I’d sold my fancy clothes and jewelry at fire-sale prices to make ends meet.

And how I’d taken up programming spreadsheet add-ons, selling these to other secretary-typists to make their job easier. Still, I had a lot of spare time, just money was tight. Then they shifted us off salary over to a piece-rate system, so a lot of those typing pool residents went back to entry-level warehouse jobs again.

I was still blacklisted, among the few of us left. No real work – so I started hacking into the mainframe to find out who was running this dark ops on me. Then I found out lots of secrets in their inter-office messages.

Yes, that trail led right back up to the last high mucky-muck I’d turned down after he got too handsy under the table at an off-hours “business” meeting. But he was also privy to the upcoming plans for relocating the city core into space.

Most of that was common knowledge, except the actual blast perimeter. Those fusion drives were going to lift that chunk of concrete and rock, and scorch everything else for miles around. Meaning, everything out living thing inside that zone was going to be in. The suburbs were going to be toasted.

Worse than that, everyone inside their new city-ship was going to be a prisoner. When we got to the moon as a first staging point, we’d all become miners for the minerals there. Society would be elites and their immediate servants, the enforcers, and miners. New classes.

Since I was no longer in a “servant” category of work, I looked down at my manicured fingers and simple pantsuit and decided. I was going to have to escape before that final blast.

- - - -

John adjusted his position on the bunk. And stretched his hunched shoulders, made his writing hand relax.

I could feel pity for for him, but shrugged it off. He was there to transcribe my own story. Nothing else. Not even a boy-toy for me. Not until I got done what my Ring wanted from me.

I uncrossed my arms to free up that hand and glanced down at it. The golden snakes stayed quiet, jeweled eyes dull. John saw this look, but said nothing.

A frown crossed my own face, and my eyes glared at him briefly. “As I was saying...”
- - - -

On the final countdown day, I was sitting on my duffel bag at the back storage area in the last transport rail car. We were nominally taking the terminally ill out beyond the city limits to their care-giving contractors.

When the shuttle finally stopped with a lurch, its doors opened, the lights died. No one came to greet the ill as they made their own way onto the rail platform.

As I pulled my own duffel behind me, I could see that the crew of this rail shuttle had shut down the power to the cars behind the engine, and were in the process of disconnecting them. Shortly, they climbed back on and revved the engine, taking off with a lurch and screaming down the rails. Away from the city and their passengers.

They had the same idea as me. Escape.

All those on the platform simply sat on the commuter benches or went back to sit in those still, quiet cars to wait. They had no energy to move further. And no idea where they were or how to find their missing caregivers.

I just started walking. I didn’t have days to find a building that was impervious to the blast, just hours.

Fortunately, I’d earlier found the city’s layout hidden in that mainframe, and was able to locate a condemned and abandoned clinic that was formerly a human trials area for pharmaceuticals. Blueprints of that building showed thick-walled vaults to secure their pricey drugs. I memorized the path to get there and where their vaults were inside.

A few precious hours of walking had me arriving at it’s gated perimeter fencing. Gangs had long ago broken in and looted anything of value. But they couldn’t take the vault doors.

I wrestled my duffel into the opening and dropped it, kicking it out of my way so I could mostly close that massive vault door. In that darkness, I heard broken medicine bottles scritch and tinkle out of the duffel’s way. Lord only knows what used to be in them. The smell was chemical, not antiseptic. But my focus had to stay on that door.

Even without electricity to power its movement, the design was such that any average person could, with some effort, get it opened in an unpowered emergency state. So I assumed correctly that with a bit of sweaty tugging I could get it closed against that blast.

That proved to be so. And the light on my watch showed I had only hours left, when I at last shut that massive vault door and muted the warning klaxons to an irritating, repeating whine. Anyone who could hear these was likely already dead.

I kicked my duffel over to where I knew the wall was and sat down on it, exhausted. The plastic bottle of water in my Army surplus jacket pocket tasted sweet and lukewarm. But I only took a sip. It was going to have to last me.

I’d read up on these fusion drive aftereffects and was somewhat relieved to find the landscape underneath them wasn’t going to be radioactive afterwards. But surviving thousands of degrees of heat blast was the first hurdle. I had to hope that my research had led me to one safe spot on the extreme edge of that blast perimeter. And that my luck would hold out.

In that dark vault. Alone.

Then the rumbling happened, and the dull roaring sound of flames like rockets taking off.

So I laid down on that duffel bag and covered my head. All I had left was hope.

- - - -

Index Cards Needed

I’d left last week with needing to get Sal better introduced. And it turns out that I could use additional story arcs as a device to handle the 2nd Act. While Sal was introduced at the end of the 1st act, I develop her character by adding two additional stories that weren’t canon to the original collection.

The Ouroboro’s ring villain was fleshed out with yet another story where John was solving a mystery involving it.

And all this means is that John has to show a bit more emotional involvement - or explain why he’s able to remain so apparently detached, even while surrounded by appealing young women who are attracted to him physically.

Now we have a single main character to hang the bulk of this story on. Romance is now a sub-arc. Yes, Mary is a tragic character, but winds up in love at the end. This also tends to solve having her and her great aunt as dopplegangers through this story.

The core material is now over 80K words. Lots to work with (and cut).

Next is again going back to index cards, or a digital equivalent. The physical version allows me to move them around.

Hopefully, in my few daily writing hours this week, I’ll be able to dig into this and crank these out. One color for scenes, another color for sequels. A third to denote where chapters start and stop. Dividing them by Acts, and probably kept organized with binder clips.

Contributions Welcome

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

And discover more about this story as it grows…

The simplest way is to like/heart this article and, as always — leave your comment:

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You can purchase the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets at pay-what-you-want author discount.

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Writing in public. Including you in it. My serialized novel, being built from a collection of short stories.

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.)

And this newsletter was delayed for writing a scene. And some farm errands - but mostly that scene. I’ll polish and release it soon. Right now, this continuing work on outlining…

Last installment, we went to the ending and laid out a redemption arc to match the opening scene. Now we return to the beginning to solve character conflicts. In Part 1, I gave you the original text we’re working from. You may need to review this to follow what I’m solving this week.

Case of the Walkaway Blues

Given that we will need to touch up the opening “Maestro” story, it needs to be followed with an (unwritten as yet) sequel where the main Character John Earl Stark shows his emotional reaction to the pitiful state of that cult founder he discovered in a back booth of a Sunset Boulevard Denny’s.

This differs from the earlier arrangement of his coming in all bouncy and upbeat to cheer up a morose, hungover secretary who’s trying to lose her post-election blues in some apple pie a la mode.

In this new workup, John has his own emotional hangups left over from this cult experiences, but works to cheer Mary up in spite of his own problems. While a lot of this short story has to be cut due to the amount of data dump theory presented, his view of using the structure of fiction to solve real-life problems is to be a recurring feature of his later success in solving ghost mysteries.

This takes place before he moves to that farm and is met by his spirit-guide recruiters, Sal and Jude. So it’s an origin story of sorts. And John has to be both raw from his years in the cult, and also confident in his writing ability. He uses his rudimentary understanding of plots and characters to test this theory of reverse-engineering this area into practical use.

So Mary becomes one of his first test cases. “Case of the Walkaway Blues” begins. Different from the former opening, it’s Mary who comes in and sits down next to him. (And the time-loop later will have to be modified.)

Like any red-blooded, well-mannered male, he has to step in and cheer her up. This then becomes the next scene.

We need to soon take this story into her reactions to this guy - and his openhanded help, as well as rugged good looks, that get her interested in wanting a relationship. Her sequel then has to come as the next chapter. That segues into “Walkaway Mary”.

By the end of that story, Mary is off to Chicago and her new secretarial assistant job, while John packs up everything to move to a rural farm and write part time.

What’s missing here is spicing up John’s interest in Sal, who is the third part to the love triangle here. We want to get these three all established in the first Act. And right now, there’s only a whisper of the attraction he feels when they first shake hands. So he has to turn down her sexier goth sister and focus on her.

This may need me to write a cutaway scene where Jude and Sal are deciding on him as their next human Ghost Hunter. Both of these girls would love a hunk on the team, but for different reasons. Jude’s is physical, and Sal’s is more classic love. I’ll have to do some research to find where I’ve covered this before. And this will allude to the story where Sal saves his life. (”When Death Lives Twice”)

We want those three characters up front. And have them change their lives to enter that new world, as the Story Circle explains the Hero’s Journey. Sal joins John in his new life, while Mary goes off to a corporate cult despite John’s warnings.

The 2nd Act has “Case of the Cruising Phantom”, which establishes great-aunt Mary, and the world her niece will inherit in the 3rd Act. GA Mary then has to go into the time-looped diner to save John (”Case of the Walkaway Diner Redoux”) Technically, GA Mary is young Mary’s mentor and they are dopplegangers. So GA Mary is her Ghost of Christmas Past redemption archetype. The current ending (”Last Piece Missing”) has GA Mary, young Mary, and her beau Chuck - all performing on that dinner cruise liner as the resolution. But we’ll get back to that.

Right now, we need to resolve where the first two acts fit together. We have to have four characters well introduced, along with their foibles and desires.

Technically, there’s a point where GA Mary is introduced in “Walkaway Mary”. So that actually starts to resolve the First Act introductions problems. This particular short story has other problems in continuity. Which will probably solve when I do the index-card scene-sequel review.

More Pointers and Plants.

Sal has to get a foothold earlier than the second part of the 2nd act. One trait I might add in is the ability of Sal to cook. That gives us a conflict when John and young Mary are in that derelict freighter having to live on leftover canned food. John wants to help Mary - and has to - but is reminded of how good he used to have it when Sal was doting on him.

These characters have begun living in my mind again, which is a good thing. They are telling me the chess gambits they should be taking to win.

The rest will need more re-writing - but I have to know it’s going to hold together as an outline structure before I commit to much re-writing.

So, there’s my re-work of he story arc and outline so far.

Contributions Welcome

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

And discover more about this story as it grows…

The simplest way is to like/heart this article and, as always…

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Writing in public. Including you in it. My serialized novel, built from a collection of short stories.

( New here? See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

Last installment, we laid out the outline. And you got your free copy of what we started with — the original Walkaway Blues Anthology.

Resolution

Early this morning, I got inspired this to write the final resolution part of this book - as a bookend for the very first story.

This piece has great-aunt Mary confronting the Maestro to offer him some redemption. She realized that the reason he’s hanging around isn’t because he’s “trapped” here. Actually, she realizes something - he’s a ghost himself. Which explains the ever-present solitaire deck.

Of course he denies it. Then she makes the cards disappear. Immediately, another deck appears.

The bottom line is that he’s afraid of going on into what comes after death. Because not all people who leave their corporeal form get a light waiting for them. The other option is pretty dark and dire — torment, pain, all that. And sometimes, just the endless and quiet dark. The ultimate solitary. Forevermore.

Mary tells him it’s not too late. He may have screwed up his life royally, but if he takes his own advice, then he’s got a chance…

Maestro gave her a puzzled look.

She shrugged. “You know — that spiel about taking responsibility for your own decisions, and realizing that you’re mocking all this up.”

The fake smile gone, Maestro now just glared at her. He wasn’t used to having the blunt truth thrown in his face.

Mary continued, disregarding his petulance. “You see, John clued me in from what he learned after he left the cult you created. Something you’ve never really taken responsibility for creating. All these lives you’ve swindled. You mocked up a failed cult to make you rich and it bought you nothing but eternal fear — of what really comes after death.”

She paused, to let that sink in. “The underlying card trick you kept others from discovering was that they didn’t need all your ‘advanced techniques’. They could simply let go after they took your advice. Your huge international cult was built on hot air. And that’s brought you your just reward - this immortal existence.” Her arm gesture swept around the diner. “Take a good look. This is your earned hereafter.”

Maestro then looked over the diner on his own. Taking in all its orange upholstery and Formica counters. His eyes returned a bit misty, his frown softened to just sadness.

Mary leaned in. “Swallow your own advice. Man up to what you’ve created. And let it go.”

He sat back as if hit hard. He looked off into space a moment, then back into her eyes directly.

His hands stayed still, palms down on the table. That card deck remained untouched. “You know this will work for a fact?”

Mary’s face lit up with a grin. “Yup. That’s why I’m still around as a spirit guide these days. I let go of my death and created a new purpose — one of openhanded help.”

Maestro raised an eyebrow at that.

Mary just shrugged. “OK, then, you can sit here forever with your solitaire and bottomless cup of coffee.” Then turned away on that diner seat, toward her exit.

Maestro covered her nearest hand with his. “Wait.”

She paused, mid-turn.

He relaxed now. “After that whole lifetime, it’s hard to believe that I had the real answer all the time.”

Mary nodded, her face serious. But said nothing, waiting.

Maestro looked directly into her eyes, and at last relaxed back against the padded orange booth-back. “Well, I’ll be…” He looked out the plate glass window at the ever-moving traffic on Sunset Boulevard outside. After a long moment, he returned his eyes to Mary, still holding her hand. There was a softer look on his wizened face. “You’re right, though.”

He leaned forward again. “But I’m going to have to have some help - people who won’t take my blarney seriously.”

Mary nodded. “I know some people. They helped me when I needed it most.” She pulled her hand out from under his, then reached into her blouse top to pull out a business card, one with fine print on one side, an address on the other.

Just before she handed that card over, she pulled it just back from his reaching hand above the booth’s tabletop. “There’s one catch.”

Maestro was completely still, his open hand paused in mid-air, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She smiled again. “It’s all on you. One chance. Out of all Eternity. And if you fail this time, there’s no always-on diner to return to. It will be completely over to you to earn that shining light — or that tortured darkness will finally claim you.”

Maestro only nodded, serious.

Mary then slipped the card into his waiting hand, stood and turned to leave. And in the next moment, she saw the Maestro materialize ahead of her, pushing his way out through that diner door with a tightly-held business card in his other hand keping it at eye level, reading it’s directions.

Pausing, she cocked her head, sending a quiet prayer after him.

Glancing back to that corner booth where he used to sit, she watched as the card deck on the center of that tabletop slowly disappeared.

After some editing, this above will get more engaging. All as it could and should be. So, other than the missing first section of this writing piece, it will see more revisions — especially as I get to the meat of the emotional impact of a cult survivor (John) working to liberate a cult follower (niece Mary). who is under direct influence of a cult founder (as he just escaped from.) That might get intense. But its what we as readers want in our otherwise dull lives.

OK, now we can go back to the beginning and edit/re-write that very first story. Once I lay all these stories out by their scene-sequels on index cards…

And yet, a final note:

The length of Substack serial episodes is approximately 1500 words - which includes your intro and any pitch at its end. You’re left with crafting transitions which bridge that gap. So your story episode itself will need to probably fit within a thousand or 1,250 words. And that will then wind you up taking 48 weeks to tell your serial.

This linked article explains a probable publishing strategy you should use. Essentially, write several stories in advance, include opening links to the first story and provide an established TOC post. That way, you update the TOC as the story progresses, since you only get a link to embed once each episode is published.

With a full outline, you begin with the end in mind. Then keep up a dozen or so episodes all re-written and scheduled in advance.

(Small wonder that I was inspired to write the missing and final resolution here.)

Until next week…

Contributions Welcome

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

And discover more about this story as it grows…

The simplest way is to like/heart this article and, as always…

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And we gratefully accept financial contributions as well:

You can purchase the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets at pay-what-you-want author discount.

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Here goes. Another ultimate challenge. Right here in front of you, in front of everyone. I get to do the work. You get to follow along and see my mistakes.

We covered this earlier. Building a novel from a related set of short stories, treating them as first drafts, re-purposing them into an online serial. Now its getting time to put myself and my chosen collection to the test.

(Missed any in this series? Part 2 | Part 1)

As covered, Writing is best done by putting myself in front of a keyboard, behind a plate glass window, on a busy street. Writing in public. Like Harlan Ellison did. But we’ll do this virtually.

The beginning was to chose a collection of stories that were built around a core premise. So I chose one of my collections with the best overall Story Question. It has to have a good situation, protagonist, objective, opponent, climax (SPOOC). These independent short stories have to start holding together into something that can be serialized.

And you’re in luck. I’m going to clue you in as I go, as I make my decisions of what to cut, what to save, what to enlarge. All because we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just pick one that we can make roll smoother.

Here’s the published work that forms the backbone of our work:

And here’s your free copies to see the raw material we’re starting with:

Walkaway Blues Anthology J

1.53MB ∙ PDF file

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Walkaway Blues Anthology J

718KB ∙ EPUB file

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A Good First Start

Open that up and you’ll see it flows, in a rough manner, and that it’s a tragic romance overall. But the girl does finally get her guy - just not the one she wanted originally.

These stories inside it don’t jive together well. We’re need to do our own developmental editing here. Break it all down and rebuild.

On the TOC inside that PDF, you’ll see eight stories there. Lets order them into a better flow (3-Act-wise) and prune anything not necessary.

First off, we need to introduce our main characters.

So, the new Act 1 sequence:

• The Maestro

• The Case of the Walkaway Blues

• Walkaway Mary

That sets us up with the setting, theme, and two main characters. It also gets them up to the first pinch point - just before we start Act 2. John finds his old cult founder in that cafe, doomed to eternal life playing solitaire. More importantly, this opening provides setting and theme.

Mary comes in to that cafe after some comfort food, sour after her candidate lost their race, and still nursing a hangover. John meets her and also tries their trademark pie a la mode. They hit it off. He gives her a copy of his book with his number in it.

She never calls. That book got lost. But they each return to that cafe, only to miss each other several times. And they each do an O. Henry sort of decision-action. She got him a day job to go with her out of town for her new promotion. He has a ring to propose to her and take her to a quiet farm where he could write.

They agree their individual solutions won’t work. So they go their different directions. That’s their mutual first try-fail.

Act II then has:

• The Case of a Cruising Phantom, and

• The Case of the Walkaway Diner Redoux

That introduces Mary’s great-aunt and doppleganger, which John (in his new job as ghost hunting detective, solving spectral mysteries) helps her work out how she died in the 20’s onboard a cruise liner. That takes us up to the midpoint, mostly.

The second story is about that great aunt rescuing John as he’s trapped in that cafe’s time loop. Great-aunt Mary is now a spirit-guide, but will be trapped as a ghost if she doesn’t succeed in freeing him. And she does. However, now John is now himself haunted by the memory of his first love in both stories (although this has to be polished/pointed into prominence.) And there could be a pointer in the first story where Sal (his future one-and-only) gazes wistfully at him while he dances with great-aunt Mary in the first story.

Meanwhile, the ending to this Act’s second story has to be reworked. It currently points to another serialized novel’s ending, in The Saga of Erotika Jones. In the second story, a better ending has Mary walk him safely out of the diner - where Sal is waiting to rush into his arms…

We have to make the point in that diner that John has to decide for himself. This ties him back into escaping from the cult - taking responsibility for his decisions and outcomes in life. Great-Aunt Mary just has to wake him up so he can. It’s another pesky sequel he has to have — which has decision and action at its end point.

Then, Act III takes up with:

• The Return of Walkaway Mary

• The Last Piece Missing

Now that the Ghost Hunter Universe is saved, Niece Mary returns with revenge on her mind, blaming John for her bad career choices. And intends to make his life hell. Which she does, for awhile. Until he helps her solve her own mystery - and removes the hate-fueled villain from the picture. (No, it’s more complex than that, and would give away a spoiler.) The trick is getting her to realize she has a choice of her life, and the results of bad decisions can be overcome.

John realizes he’s already got Sal as the one great love in his life, and proposes to her, not Mary. Mary goes into rehab to deal with the after effects of that cult - and the scene ends with a missing sequel. She not only is wistful, but has a somewhat Scarlett moment where she has to soldier up and find that one true love of her own.

In that last story, Mary winds up in that same diner again, same seat, but finds a guy who’s a perfect match for her. Sings, dances, loves entertaining. She has her own happily ever after. (Yet - I’ve got a better idea for this, which shows up below…)

Why These Choices?

It’s back to the SPOOC in all cases. The two characters who keep getting in trouble are John and Mary. That third main character is her spirit-guide great-aunt, who’s a third wheel. We have to have situation, characters, problems and opposition. Plus one story where there are high stakes - and then all those stories have to have unity and continuity.

That’s why we use Act 1 to introduce those two main characters and their setting. The “Maestro” came first (even though the main character is mis-named Charles in that text above). Because the theme is about cults, and their recurring Groundhog Day of tragedies at every turn. Freedom of Choice vs. Scammers.

So, we say that character is now John and then introduce the missing emotional sequel he has. Otherwise, that story has no real SPOOC worth anything.

Then Mary is introduced and she has that cute-meet with John. Over her bad choice in politics. We’ll have to do some transitions here to explain why he’s so chirpy now, and what that diner has to do with their sudden attraction for each other. (And also, cut back on a lot of that data dump about Cialdini.) He brings up his idea about using fiction writing to solve real-world, in-person problems. And that is recurring through these stories. Like it’s John’s personal objective - or crutch. Mary is given hope.

The third story established their tragic bent. And also has John falling for another blonde at its end. (Who we’ll see later, again.) This story was actually written as a transition to glue several of these stories together, but it needs to come earlier to keep the plot moving.

Fourth is introducing great-aunt Mary as a ghost and spirit-guide.

Fifth is trapping John in that diner, and raising the stakes all around. Of course, that’s solved, but then…

The first Mary returns as a fem female, who kidnaps John to where his network can’t find him. And John figures out she’s been duped and is possessed by a haunted ring. So he has to get her to give him the ring. (Even if it's hamhandedly.) And then he sends it somewhere else. (Although I have another Deux Ex Machina solution to remove and replace here.)

The final story opens on Mary wistfully heartbroken again, having met John’s now-fiancee’. But the current resolution is to go back to that diner and pick up another hunk - one that thrives on singing and dancing instead of writing. But I just realized there is another possible ending for Mary. You see, Hami (the waitress in that diner time loop) has her original diner in the same town as her daughter’s clinic. While Mary is being treated for her post-cult PTSD, she starts visiting Hami’s diner and finds another out-patient there. Very mortal, but loves to sing and dance.

Her great-aunt returns as a mentor, gets her a job on her old cruise liner, and is happy to know she helped each of these characters grow into their own destiny. The ending of that book should now probably be two couples married at the same ceremony…

Which brings us back to what didn’t make the final cut.

Cutting Room Floor and Loose Ends

Walkaway Redemption is too much Deus Ex Machina. This genius-type female shows up in a space ship and extracts John from the diner just in time. Nope. It’s got to be John solving his solution on his own. So that’s going to take some rewriting. So, that story is cut along with any later reference to its heroine Sybil.

And that final story, Last Piece Missing, has to be a couple of pages, max. Satisfying, but not drawn out. It’s the resolution, after all. And it’s supposed to leave the reader wanting more stories by that author. So: more cuts and re-writing ahead.

Again, we have to take each story back to its SPOOC and come forward from there. The rhythm seems off. Three one-scene short stories, then a paced adventure with several scenes. Followed by another, then another. Could work. But it points to missing transitions again. We have to develop unity, coherence, and continuity. The overall story has to be rebuilt, scene by scene. Meanwhile, convert this to a serial-ready format. The outline comes first - which is this text you’re reading.

I have my work cut out for me, certainly.

The undeveloped item sticking out is the recurring point of escaping from corporate cults - that’s the underlying theme: freedom of choice vs. slavery. And this needs to be woven better into the underlying story we’re building. I’ve added some notes above where I can do this.

Again, it’s taking up SPOOC as a story tool. And start cutting these into 2500-word installments. Each episode moving the overall plot forward, contributing to the story answer. Contiguous and interlocking scene-sequels. Lots of revamping ahead.

It will start by separating the individual stories into scenes and sequels. Interlock them better with pointers, plants, and tags. And of course, transitions with cliffhanger hooks.

There is also an idea that great-aunt Mary should give some redemption to that Maestro. Or hope of one. That would be a great book-end scene.

Revamping as an Overall Strategy

We go back to the Story Circle as a core basic - a modernized version of the Hero’s Journey. And this collection fits it. Both John and Mary have an opportunity, but it separates them. So they leave their native environment and go out after adventure. Then they have their three fry-fails, each with higher stakes than the last, and finally help each other find their separate true loves. John returns to his farm, with fiancee’ in tow, Mary is bringing her new partner with her to her new job entertaining on the ship - with the mentoring of her spirit-guide great aunt.

We need more emotion out of these characters. John is pretty much an easy going type, despite how Mary consistently dumps on him. She needs to be more appealing. He has to see that his gift, learned from that time spent in his own cult, is openhanded giving and unconditional love. And Mary has to learn compassion.

That first chapter leaves out the emotional sequel of how John deals with finding his old nemesis now trapped in his Faustian bargain. He’s going to have to help Mary out with her own cult addiction, later. For me, that also means installing pointers and plants that integrates and develops that theme..

What We’re Using as a Base

Again, it’s what I’ve been working on this past year - Forgotten Bestseller Secrets, augmented by Swain’s and Chester’s own texts (including Jim Butcher’s blog.) There are updates coming out as my research continues. Like this they are tests in application, based on what works. The search continues for evergreen principles and writing texts that have survived the ages.

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And discover more about this story as it grows…

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There’s a wide gulf of difference between using the classic Hero’s Journey model in fiction and in non-fiction. Because of how you approach scenes/cases in each. You pile grief and complications on the hero in fiction. But that strategy would kill off your non-fiction article or book right out of its starting gate.

Why does this work out this way? We need to go back to Jim Butcher’s approach to scene outcomes. In fiction, each scene has a question — does the main character accomplish the goal within that scene despite opposition? And there are four answers:

• Yes

• No

• Yes, but…

• No, and furthermore.

In all cases, there is a requisite setback for the main character — at least in fiction. Because, this increases the building complications, and in that way keeps the reader wondering how that dire situation is ever going to get solved? Each scene has a question to solve. And each scene question has to add up to answering the story question by the resolution at that story’s end.

Non-fiction is about having the reader (like how-to’s) solve a particular facet of that big problem. While fiction is piling on failures, non-fiction has to incrementally tell the reader how to fix parts of this big problem.

Gripping fiction is mostly answering the scene question, “No, and furthermore” while supportive non-fiction is answering it with a “Yes, but…”

The South Park Model

Both of these story types follow the overall Hero’s Journey. South Park has a model that follows several possible different results, again — action-reaction:

This happens…

And therefore this happens…

But, then - this happens…

Therefore this happens…

and/or

Meanwhile, something happens to someone else — to start another story arc…

(Their structure doesn’t account for scene-sequels, but that’s another story.)

That link above covers how South Park action-reaction causation fits into the Hero’s Journey seamlessly.

Cases Replace Scenes

What we’re covering here is that when you have “cases” in the non-fiction Hey! You!, See?, So… model, instead of scenes, the scene question you’re answering is just one part of the overall story question you’re answering. The cliffhanger has you asking a larger question by increments. Each solved case then leads onto the next, bigger question.

And there is a transition technique called the “dead end” in non-fiction, which acts much like the “red herring” in mysteries. So that’s a parallel technique we can borrow.

Failing to answer a question, or giving a bad result, doesn’t add up to getting the bigger (story) question answered. We’re then looking for incremental wins, and building tension by asking, “Yes, but is this true in all cases?”

Changing the Hero’s Journey

And does this then change the Hero’s Journey? Yes, but just in the tension for the reader. The stakes are still there, but the complications aren’t in the internal changes for the main character. There is now probably a different narrative with a new character for each “case”. Sure, pile on the complications within that case for that character — but as Damon Knight pointed out, “There’s gotta be a hero and the hero’s gotta win.”

Sidebar: Where the main character is in the second-person (“you”) the writer has to be more careful.

Memoirs would be the exception to all that above, since it’s a single character and revolves around their flaws and adventures. And many memoirs are more fictional feelings than fact.

Writers don’t want to give the reader personal losses — or maybe that takes us right back to the incorporating the emotional pathos legends were made of.

So, it’s your choice, then. But take care.

Just don’t make your non-fiction wind up as tragedy. Answer the story question with a result your reader can achieve. There’s the obvious way to destroy your book — a how-to that doesn’t. (Well, it could be a literary plot, I guess — creating a parody of sorts. Not that this would ever sell, either…)

Just a short note today. Even with all the reading I’ve linked to above. We’ve got changes coming up, which will force a “State of Write/Farm/Share” coming up on Thursday…

Meanwhile, if you have a question, or reaction…

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If you want to succeed in writing, you need to study successful writing. And so, this dissection starts a test of the concept that all fiction devices, including the Scene-Sequel method, is just as applicable/borrowable for use in non-fiction. We take up Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret…

The story behind his release of this essay as a recording is found in my Writerpreneur: The Lost Books Anthology, as part of the Book Marketing Breakthrough Series, Chapter 5. There you’ll find how this one essay went viral and made him a millionaire while he was out with his family on a sailing vacation.

Nightingale based most of his own success on applying Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich - he obtained his copy from a bookstore in Chicago when he was 29, six years later, he produced this essay from an inspiration he received, one which woke him up at 4 am - where he rushed to his library and started finding these quotes as mentioned below. It took him a day to write and revise this essay, another day to record it and have it pressed into a few dozen LP’s with an accompanying transcript-booklet.

And then, he left the recordings with his company manager and literally set sail with his family for an extended vacation.

That recording went viral, due to his own celebrity on radio and his existing audience. And the sales of this LP made him a millionaire — a nice surprise on returning to harbor in Chicago.

Needless to say, he quit his day job later that year and went into business for himself with a TV program, getting paid directly by advertisers. He also started a news industry — spoken-world inspirational recordings with Nightingale-Conant, which still continues today.

I thought you’d like the chance to distill this essay for yourself, to find out what he wrote and recorded to see what technical devices he used to craft it. And how that writing craft made it go viral in a time before the Internet, where TV was just arriving, and phones were hard-wired and rotary-dialed. That phrase he developed, the titular “Strangest Secret”, apparently came from Hill’s Chapter 12, The Subconscious Mind.

There, Hill draws a direct relationship between utilizing the subconscious mind in achieving goals. Nightingale later wrote a review of Hill’s book and explained what he found:

This remarkable book helped me decide once and for all how I was to accomplish my goal. It unified my thinking and gave me a straight, clear road to the point I decided to reach.

….

When the last page of Think and Grow Rich is read, the hand that puts the book down on the table is a different hand. The man who then stands up and walks out into the world is a different, a changed man – the possessor of the unique knowledge that will enable him to turn dreams into reality, thoughts into things. So-called fate and exterior circumstances are no longer in command. He who had been a passenger is now suddenly the captain.

The secret behind Think and Grow Rich, the reason why it has withstood the test of time, is because it stands on the foundation of truth: the clear, unchallengeable fact that everything begins with an idea. One may start with nothing but ideas, but ideas are incredibly powerful when they’re supported by Definiteness of Purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into material objects or riches – “riches” being whatever it is you happen to want.

In other words, by controlling your mind, you can control your destiny.

Nightingale’s own life was already a success by any measure. Stumbling upon Hill’s book just supercharged his success. We could easily diverge into that study, but we’re here to learn how non-fiction works utilize fiction technical devices to deliver the goods to their readers.

As a comparative to distilling Nightingale’s viral and perennial-selling non-fiction work, we need to study Walter S. Campbell’s Writing Non-Fiction. There, he revealed a framework we can use:

The Overall Pattern for Non-Fiction

This is covered in Forgotten Bestseller Secrets, chapter 103. The non-fiction story has to have unity, coherence, and continuity. Like Fiction, it has a beginning, middle, and end. Campbell uncovered an ancient four-part formula for composition and laid this out in his 1954 “Writing Non-Fiction” (available from Scribd.com at that link) And Archive.org (find link) for those missing pages:

1. We must first catch the reader’s attention.

2. Having caught his attention we must convince the reader that the matter under discussion is one which concerns him, since otherwise he will not continue to read.

3. Having secured his attention and having made him believe he is concerned, we must then get down to cases and show him we have not misled him, by bringing forward such facts, ideas, or emotions as will hold his interest.

4. We must finally leave him with the conviction that his effort of attention has shown progress. We accomplish this by offering him results, suggesting actions, or improved attitudes — all supported by our presentation.

One of his students shortened this to the memorable: (1) HEY! (2) YOU! (3) SEE? (4) SO!

Campbell explains further:

Every composition, every piece of writing which makes sense contains this formula. Everything you write should integrate it.

This formula represents the actual process or behavior pattern of the human mind, beginning with attention, proceeding to concentration, and arriving at a conclusion.

First, in every case, block out your material according to this pattern. After writing your copy, check that each of the four steps above is present. Then you will feel sure that you can attract and hold the reader’s interest.

Handling these cases brings up several fiction devices. An overall continuity device recommended by Campbell is to ask a followup question before you answer the first:

In fiction, it is a rule never to solve one problem until you have faced your hero with a worse one. In fiction, everything carries through; nothing is cut off short. Now, the same thing is true of non-fiction, though few of the handbooks of composition say anything about it.

In non-fiction, the rule runs, NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU HAVE RAISED UNTIL YOU HAVE RAISED ANOTHER QUESTION, PREFERABLY A MORE IMPORTANT ONE. In that way you create a kind of intellectual suspense.

In non-fiction, as in fiction, “false suspense” is dangerous and best avoided. That is to say, it is bad technique – and bad judgment – to arouse interest in a question that is not going to be answered, or in a problem that is not going to be solved.

As later instructors expanded the scene-sequel technique, a review of this essay shows that Side One of this recorded essay contains the situation, the scene and builds on the need for solving it. Side Two involves the reader emotionally, with the various reactions and feelings they wlll face by implementing this action plan.

Coherence, Unity, and Continuity

Campbell stressed these three elements in his textbook:

Success in writing results from knowing what to do next and doing it as rapidly as you can. Rapid planning is sometimes disastrous; but once your plan is perfected, rapid writing is much to be desired. In fact, one may say that the way to write a good book is to think about it for twenty years and then write it in thirty days. Only a piece of work well-planned can be written rapidly; and that which is written rapidly after being well-planned has an organic quality, a follow-through, a unity, coherence and continuity which other work lacks. This is true whether the continuity be logical or emotional; And continuity is of all things the quality which good writing must have.

Logical and/or emotional continuity. These “cases” Campbell says to apply in the SEE section need to tie together. And so the planning must be perfected before you start to write.

As well, the material has to lead to the next - just as fiction has transitions and cliffhangers between chapters, and often splits his paragraphs with the ones above and following. Logic is the glue to hold these together, per Campbell:

If the author whose book we are studying knew his business and did his job properly, he will have broken his subject up into manageable parts called chapters and paragraphs. He will also have presented these items in a logical and coherent arrangement. Thus each chapter will lead to the chapter following in logical progression, and each paragraph will mark one step forward in the logical sequence within each chapter.

We’ll see this in use in Nightingale’s Strangest Secret found below.

With the premises laid, let’s begin distilling “The Strangest Secret” to see how Nightingale made his career from his one breakthrough recorded essay.

I’ve made notes and included them in a Google Doc here. Unfortunately, these don’t export to PDF readily, so I’m giving you the complete Nightingale transcript below.

The short hand is yes, this essay completely follows the Hey-You-See-So model above. Scene-sequels are simply another version of the “cases” Nightingale uses as part of his SEE steps.

You’ll mostly find that they start and/or end with a question. These then become the “scene question” that Debbie Chester covers in her Fantasy Fiction Formula.

I’ve added separations below where the apparent “cases” start and stop. And this distillation pretty much sets the stage for your own work in deriving craft from any non-fiction work from here on out. The point, as usual, is to turn your reading into an adventure of discovering how that author created their effect — if only by realizing you could improve what they were attempting.

By now, I’ve covered this point well in all these Dissection posts. It’s the key secret that dropped out of all of Campbell’s works. And explains why authors must read regularly - and how they should read. Then in your daily writing, you apply the techniques you learned from your reading.

The other third of your day is to then run your Writerpreneur business.

So, I’ll leave you to Nightingale’s Essay. Print this out with wide margins and make your own notes. That linked doc just has my own take (your mileage may vary.)

THE STRANGEST SECRET

by Earl Nightingale

- - - -

Side I

I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU about the strangest secret in the world.

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter,”Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. But since it’s here, we pretty much take it for granted. We are particularly fortunate to live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth ... a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

- - - -

But do you know what happens? Let’s take 100 people who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. If you would ask any of these if they wanted to be successful, you’d find out they did. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke.

Know what will happen to 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, and who believe they will be successful? By the age of 65, only five out of 100 will make the grade!

- - - -

Why do so many fail? What happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What became of the dreams, the hopes, the plans ... and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

When we say about 5 percent will achieve success, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find:

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

If a person is working toward a pre-determined goal and knows where they’re going, that individual is a success. If they’re not doing that, they’re a failure. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

- - - -

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called “Man’s Search for Himself”, and in this book he says:

“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice... it is conformity.”

And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity – people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

Now think of it, today we have millions of people age 65 and older. And most of them are broke. They’re dependent on someone else for life’s necessities.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known.

Why? We conform! And the trouble is – most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group – the 95 who don’t succeed.

And why do these people conform? Well, they really don’t know. These people believe their lives are set by circumstances, by things that happen to them, by exterior forces. They’re outer-directed people.

A survey was made one time of a lot of working individuals and they were asked, “Why do you work? Why do you get up in the morning?” 19 out of 20 had no idea. If you ask them, they’d tell you everyone gets up in the morning, and that’s why they do it – because everyone else is doing it.

- - - -

Now let’s get back to our definition of success – who succeeds? The only person who succeeds is the person who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal. It’s the person who says, “I’m going to become this and then progressively works toward that goal.

• A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what she wants to do.

• A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream – that’s what he wanted to do.

• A success is the sales person who wants to become the top-notch sales person in his company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

• A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a worthy predetermined job, because that’s what he decided to do ... deliberately.

But only one out of 20 does that! That’s why today there really isn’t any competition unless we make it for ourselves. Instead of competing, all we have to do is create.

- - - -

You know, for 20 years I looked for the key which would tell you what would happen to a human being. Was there a key, I wanted to know, which would make the future a promise – something we could foretell to a large extent? Was there a key which would guarantee a person’s becoming successful if they only knew about it – and knew how to use it?

Well there is such a key – and I’ve found it.

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

- - - -

The difference is goals. Some have goals, some don’t. People who have goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple.

Think of a ship leaving a harbor, with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship – just like the first – only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm.

Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach – a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being.

Take the salesman, for example. There’s no other person today with the future of a good sales person. Selling today is the world’s highest paid profession, if we’re good at it and if we know where we’re going. Every company needs top-notch sales people. And they reward their sales people – the sky’s the limit for them. But how many can you find?

- - - -

Someone once said, “The human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing.”

Any economy today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire economy is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security”, if that’s what a person is looking for. But we do have to decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

But let’s get back to the “Strangest Secret” and the story I wanted to tell you today. Why do people with goals succeed in life and those without them fail?

- - - -

Let me tell you something that if you really understand it, will alter your life immediately. If you understand completely what I’m about to tell you, from this moment on, your life will never be the same again. You’ll suddenly find that “good luck” is just attracted to you. The things you want just seem to fall in line, and from now on you won’t have the problems, the worries, the gnawing lump of anxiety perhaps you’ve experienced before. Doubt, Fear, they’ll be things of the past.

Here’s the key to success – and the key to failure:

WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement.

Listen to what Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this:”Everything comes if a man will only wait ... a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson said this: “A man is what he thinks about, all day long.”

William James said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He also said,”If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. If you wish to be good, you will be good – only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

In the Bible, you read in Mark 9:23, “If thou cans’t believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “This is one of the greatest laws in the universe. Fervently do I wish I’d discovered it as a very young man. It dawned on me much later in life and I found it to be my greatest discovery outside of my relationship with God. The great law briefly and simply stated is: If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.”

“That is the simple fact”, he went on to say, “which is the basis of an astonishing law of prosperity and success. In three words: Believe and Succeed.”

William Shakespeare put it this way, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? And every person who discovered it believed, for awhile, that he was the first one to work it out.

- - - -

We become what we think about.

Now it stands to reason that a person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about – and we become what we think about. Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will become what he thinks about. His life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing ... he becomes nothing.

How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I’ll tell you how it works – as far was we know – but to do this I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.

Suppose a farmer has some land – and it’s good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision.

Remember, we are comparing the human mind to the land, because the mind, like the land, doesn’t care what you plant. It will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant.

If the farmer plants two seeds – one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the land, plants both seeds – one corn, the other nightshade. He covers up the holes, waters, and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Invariably, the land will return what’s planted. So up come the two plants – one corn, one poison. As it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants – one corn, the other poison.

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant ... success ... or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal ... or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant must return to us.

- - - -

You see, the human mind is the last, great unexplored continent on Earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant. You might say, “Well if that’s true, why don’t people use their minds more?”

I think they’ve figured out an answer to that one, too. Our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on.

Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free – our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing – we can never replace.

The human mind isn’t used because we take it for granted. Familiarity breeds contempt. Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones.

Universities have proved that most of us are operating on 10 percent or less of our abilities.

- - - -

So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

What is it that you want? Do you want to be an outstanding sales person, an outstanding worker at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company ... in your community? Do you want to get rich? All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law – like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down – you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible.

• Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way.

• Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal.

• See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

- - - -

Ours has been called the “phenol-barbitol age”, the age of ulcers and nervous breakdowns and tranquilizers. At a time where medical research has raised us to a new plateau of good health and longevity, far too many of us worry ourselves into an early grave – trying to cope with things in our own little personal ways, without learning a few great laws which would take care of everything for us.

These things we bring on ourselves, through our own habitual ways of thinking.

Everyone of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want to be – whether we’ll admit that or not. Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow – next month and next year – will mold your life and determine your future.

You’re guided by your mind.

- - - -

I remember one time I was driving through eastern Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it – a tremendous, incredible machine – and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it. As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind.

Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch? Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat.

You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword. We must control our thinking. The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of – that very same law can lead them into the gutter. It’s all in how they use it ... for good or for bad.

- - - -

This is the “Strangest Secret” in the world! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people who have learned it understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

I believe that you could go out and walk down the main street of your town, and ask one person after another what the secret of success is – and you wouldn’t run into one person in a month who could tell you.

Now this information is enormously valuable to us – if we really understand it and apply it. It’s valuable to us not only for our own lives, but the lives of those around us – our family, employees, associates, and friends.

Life should be an exciting adventure – it should never be a bore. Everyone should live fully, be alive, they should be glad to get out of bed in the morning. They should be doing jobs they like to do because they do them well.

- - - -

One time I heard Grove Patterson – the great, late editor of the Toledo Daily Blade – make a speech. As he concluded his speech he said something I’ve never forgotten: “My years in the newspaper business have convinced me of several things. Among them, that people are basically good. And that we came from some place – and we’re going some place. So we should make our time here an exciting adventure. The Architect of the Universe didn’t build a stairway leading nowhere.”

And the greatest teacher of them all, the carpenter from the plains of Galilee, gave us the Secret time and time again, “As ye believe, so shall it be done, unto you.”

- - - -

Side II

Now I want to explain how you can prove to yourself the enormous returns possible in your own life by putting the secret to a practical test. I want you to make a test that will last 30 days. It isn’t going to be easy, but if you give it a good try, it will completely change your life, for the better.

Back in the 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton – the English mathematician and natural philosopher – gave us the natural laws of physics, which apply as much to human beings as they do to the movement of bodies in the universe. One of these laws is that, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Simply stated, as it applies to you and me, is that we can achieve nothing unless we pay the price.

The results of your 30 day experiment will be in the exact proportion to the effort you put forth. To be a doctor, you must pay the price of long years of difficult study. To be successful in selling – and remember that each of us succeeds to the extent of our ability to sell: selling our families on our ideas, selling education in schools, selling our children on the advantages of living a good and honest life, selling our associates and employees on the importance of being exceptional people – to, of course, the profession of selling itself. But to be successful in selling our way to the good life, we must be willing to pay the price.

- - - -

Now what is that price? Well, it’s many things:

First, it’s understanding emotionally as well as intellectually, we literally become what we think about. We must control our thoughts if we are to control our lives. It’s understanding fully that, “As ye so, so shall ye reap.”

Second, it’s cutting all fetters away from the mind, and permitting it to soar as it was divinely designed to do. It’s the realization that your limitations are self-imposed – and that the opportunities today are enormous beyond belief. It’s rising above narrow-minded pettiness and prejudice.

Third, it’s using all your courage to force yourself to think positively on your own problem –

• to set a definite and clearly-defined goal for yourself,

• to let your marvelous mind think about your goal from all possible angles,

• to let your imagination speculate freely upon many possible solutions,

• to refuse to believe there are any circumstances sufficiently strong to defeat you in the accomplishment of your purpose, to act promptly and decisively when your course is clear, and

• to keep constantly aware of the fact that right now you are at this moment standing in the middle of your own acres of diamonds as Russell Conwell used to point out.

Fourth, save at least 10 percent of every dollar you earn.

It’s also remembering that no matter what’s your present job, it has enormous possibilities – if you’re willing to pay the price.

Lets go over the important points and the price each of us must pay in order to achieve the wonderful life that can be ours. It is, of course, worth any price.

1. You will become what you think about.

2. Remember the word “Imagination” and let your mind begin to soar.

3. Courage – concentrate on your goal every day.

4. Save ten percent of what you earn, and

5. Action – ideas are worthless unless we act on them.

I’ll try to outline the 30 day test I’d like you to make. Keep in mind that you have nothing to lose in making this test and everything you could possibly want to gain.

- - - -

There are two things that could be said of everyone: each of us wants something, and each of us is afraid of something.

I want you to write on a card what it is you want more than anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family. Each of us wants something.

• Write down on your card specifically what it is you want.

• Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day.

• Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for – something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

• Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

• Look at the abundance all around you as you go about your daily business. You have as much right to this abundance as any living creature. It’s yours for the asking.

- - - -

Now we come to the difficult part. Difficult because it means the formation of what is probably a brand-new habit, and habits are not easily formed:

Stop thinking about what it is you fear.

Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. And there will come times when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively.

That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

- - - -

For 30 days, you must take control of your mind. It will think about only what you permit it to think about.

Each day for this thirty-day test, do more than you have to do. In addition to maintaining a cheerful, positive outlook – give more of yourself than you’ve ever done before.

Do this, knowing that your returns in life must be in direct proportion to what you give. The moment you decide on a goal to work for, you are immediately a successful person.

- - - -

You are then in that rare and successful category of people who know where they are going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five.

Don’t concern yourself too much with HOW you’re going to achieve your goal – leave that completely to a power greater than yourself.

All you have to is know WHERE you’re going. The answers will come to you of your their own accord, and at the right time.

Remember these words from the Sermon on the Mount – and remember them well. Keep them constantly before you this month of your test:

“Ask, and it shall be given you.

Seek, and ye shall find.

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

For every one that asketh, recieveth.

And he that seeketh, findeth.

And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

It’s as marvelous and as simple as that. In fact, it’s so simple that in our seemingly complicated world, it’s difficult for an adult to understand that all he needs is a purpose and faith.

- - - -

For 30 days, do your very best. Go at it as you’ve never done before.

Not in a hectic fashion – but with a calm, cheerful assurance that time well spent will give you the abundance and return you deserve and want.

Devote your thirty-day test to completely giving of yourself without thinking of giving anything in return – and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes in your life. No matter what your job, do it as you’ve never done it before – for 30 days.

And if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.

Dorothea Brande, the outstanding editor and writer discovered it for herself and tells about it in her fine book, “Wake Up and Live“. Her entire philosophy is reduced to the words: “Act as though it were impossible to fail.” She made her own test, with sincerity and faith – and her entire life was changed to one of overwhelming success.

- - - -

You make your test – for 30 full days. Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. You see, by being persistent, you’re demonstrating faith. Persistence is just another word for faith. If you didn’t have faith, you’d never persist. If you should fail in your first 30 days, by that I mean if you should suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts, you’ve got to start over again from that point and go thirty more days.

Gradually, your new habit will form. Until you find yourself one of the wonderful minority to whom nothing is impossible.

And don’t forget the card – it’s vitally important to this new way of living. On one side of the card, write your goal, whatever it may be. On the other side, write the words we’ve quoted from the Sermon on the Mount: “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

In your spare time during your test period, read books that will help you – inspirational books like the Bible, Dorothea Brande’s “Wake Up and Live”, “The Magic of Believing” by Claude Bristol, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, and other books that instruct and inspire.

Nothing great was ever accomplished without inspiration. See that during these crucial first thirty days, your own inspiration is kept at a peak. And above all, don’t worry. Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. The only thing that could cause worry during this test is trying to do it all yourself. Know that all you have to do is to hold your goal before you. Everything else will take care of itself. Remember also to keep calm and cheerful. Don’t let petty things annoy you and get you off course.

Since making this test is difficult, some will say, “Why should I bother?” Look at the alternative: No one wants to be a failure, no one really wants to be a mediocre individual, no one wants a life that is constantly filled with fear, and worry, and frustration. Therefore remember that you must reap that which you sow. If you sow negative thoughts, your life will be filled with negative things. If you sow positive thoughts – your life will be cheerful, positive, and successful.

Now, gradually, you will tend to forget what you have heard on this recording. Keep reminding yourself of what you must do to form this new habit. Gather your whole family around at regular intervals and listen to what’s been said here.

- - - -

Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint.

The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. The only way to earn money is by providing people with services and products which are needed and useful. We exchange our time and our product or service for the others’ money. Therefore the law is that our financial return will be in direct proportion to our service.

Success is not the result of making money; making money is the result of success – and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. They believe you’re successful if you make a lot of money. The truth is that you can only earn money after you’re successful.

It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it:”Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.”

How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service ... build ... work ... dream ... create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

- - - -

Prosperity is built on a law of mutual exchange. Any person who contributes to prosperity, must prosper in turn himself. Sometimes the return will not come from those you serve. But the return must come to you from some place. Because that’s the law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As you go daily in your 30-day test period, remember that your success will always be measured by the quantity and quality of the service you render. And money is a yardstick for measuring this service. No man can get rich himself unless he enriches others.

Now there are no exceptions to this law. You can drive down every street and from your car estimate the service that is being rendered by the people living on that street. Had you ever thought of this yardstick before? It’s interesting. Some, like ministers or priests or other devoted people, measure their returns in realm of the spiritual – but again, their returns are equal to their service.

Once this law is understood, any thinking person can tell his own fortune. If he wants more, he must be of more service to those from whom he receives his return. If he wants less, he has only to reduce his service.

This is the price you must pay for what you want. If you believe you can enrich yourself by deluding others, you can only end by deluding yourself. It may take some time, but as surely as you breathe, you’ll get back what you put out. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you can avert this. It’s impossible. The prisons and the streets where the lonely walk are filled with people who tried to make new laws just for themselves. We may avoid the laws of man for awhile, but there are greater laws that cannot be broken.

- - - -

An outstanding medical doctor recently pointed out six steps that will help you realize success:

1. Give yourself a definite goal.

2. Quit running yourself down.

3. Stop thinking of all the reasons you cannot be successful and instead, think of all the reasons why you can.

4. Trace your attitudes back through your childhood and try to discover where you first got the idea you couldn’t be successful – if that’s the way you’ve been thinking.

5. Change the attitude you have of yourself by writing out the description of the person you’d like to be.

6. Act the part of the successful person you have decided to become.

The doctor who wrote those words is the noted West Coast psychiatrist, Dr. David Harold Fink.

- - - -

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told you you must do. Pay the price – by becoming the person you’ve want to become. It’s not nearly as difficult as it is living unsuccessfully.

Make your 30-day test, then repeat it... then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.

Live this new way and the flood-gates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it.

But what’s more important, you’ll have peace ... you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.

Start today. You have nothing to lose – but you have your whole life to win.

Where to From Here?

We’ve now distilled two perennial-selling fiction, along with this viral Nightingale essay. Louis L’Amour’s Hondo, and Max Brand’s Dan Barry’s Daughter.

Along with a recent short short story of mine.

The whole point of these dissections is to introduce you to the vast amount of technical devices which are available for you do learn and internalize. Obviously, the better you write, the more sales you’ll get — and the more sustainable your writing income will become. The goal would be to then quit your day job, because your own perennial-selling backlist provides everything you could want.

It is possible. It has been done.

For me, this Strangest Secret recording is the tip of my own iceberg to what I discovered on personal development. A discovery that left me in a continuing state of peace. And prompted me to evangelize these authors to the world. So you’ll see another compiled book on this area from me shortly.

Meanwhile, as I’ve covered earlier, there are a couple of projects which are long-term: writing a serial novel based on my earlier short stories, and writing a serial non-fiction based on creating a sustainable writing income.

It’s not surprising to me that I was inspired to used Nightingale’s Strangest Secret essay here for this distillation. Because this was my own stepping-off point to a wonderful new world that I still live daily today.

For you, I’ve provided a glimpse into this world of writing craft that you can keep exploring. You can see that I’ve recommended Deborah Chester’s Fantasy Fiction Formula, and Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer. These are quite readable and continue the legacy of Walter S. Campbell. I’ll continue to excerpt from both his and Foster Harris from time to time.

And, as is my habit, I’ll continue to explore, research, and make my findings known.

If you like what you found here, or have a question, please leave a comment and/or restack.

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WHERE WE’VE COME SO FAR is into the sixth week of Max Brand writing a novel through weekly installments for All Story Weekly. This is Part 6, the Climax. And, typically for this author, they are filled with action and more action.

Here’s where the villains get their due, and (spoiler alert — like we didn’t know…) the two lovers see their Happily Ever After.

No you wouldn’t know it from where we left them…

We’ve covered how the process of how writing fiction serials favors someone here on Substack. Because you hook your readers and keep them going right through. That’s your craft doing its talking, though.

Our use of serials then requires us to write tighter and keep the reader looking forward to the next episode after the last one finishes. We have to improve our continuity skills.

How to develop your writing craft has been developed with short courses, as earlier posted:

Each of these short courses have 8 lessons, mostly pulled from the original OU Professional Writing Course texts of it’s founder, Walter S. Campbell. Also included are excerpts from contemporary successful authors of that time, as well as some clarifying notes by later course instructors.

We build on these by doing real-world dissections of perennial-selling classics. Every week, right here.

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In this dissection, we are using Dorothea Brande’s suggested approach — making notes as we go through the novel after our first reading, then dissecting how they created their effect on the reader. There are an generally 5-7 chapters in each part of Brand’s novel.

In lieu of an enclosed PDF about the technical devices discovered here, I’m including this link each week to that Google Docs version. This has the full text of this part of the book, and enables leaving notes in the margins, while allowing you to contribute.

At some point in the near future, I’m planning to create a discussion space within a Founding Member/Patron continually-running workshop. (Stay tuned for details as they develop - but leave a comment or DM me if you want in on the ground floor.) The point is to foster collaboration so we can all keep improving our craft. Because writing is communication, and our skills at communication opens doors and brings treasures our way. Always has, always will.

And I do all this work for both of us. To learn craft right along with you.

Just keep me informed about your own progress through these posts. Ask your questions. Join in the discovery.

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What is Tested This Week:

We’re into the Climax now. And as you’ve been following, I released a summary of the three approaches I’ve found by two instructors and one NYT list graduate of the OU Professional Writing training lineup.

The most useful for our use is the one by Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files fame), as found on his Live journal blog.

Here, he lays out a six step formula for this critical area:

ISOLATION

CONFRONTATION

DARK MOMENT

CHOICE

DRAMATIC REVERSAL

RESOLUTION

Again, this isn’t the only way to write a climax, but since most texts just cover this in a skimpy paragraph, this is a great assist.

These aren't necessarily in this order, but when you see his explanation, you can see why these are recommended to follow each other this way. So we test.

I’ve picked this out of the three formula’s in that article, because it’s turned out to be followed by Max Brand pretty closely.

Of course to discuss this, we’re assuming you’ve read the Google Docs dissection, which also takes you through the story itself.

Continuing our Dissection

We’re now at Part Six. And the full text, with technical notes, is found on this Google Doc.

Watch the interaction between the scenes and sequels as the story rolls out. In addition to the Climax formula…

Part Six

Chapter 33 - A Fatal Mischance

Samuel Carney is now going to warn the bank robbing gang off. We start with more of his emotional reaction as a Sequel, then he starts an action scene. It winds up that he sleeps through warning the gang, and so now will have to live with the results of that gang being shot to doll rags. Of course, Brand gives him just having enough time to get back and still warn them…

Chapter 34 - The Vengeful Bullets

The gang arrived a half-hour early. Gloster and Macarthur go up the main street, while the rest of the gang takes side streets to set themselves as backup.

The safe is cracked, and winds up with fake money. About that time, six men are in the room with them and the action begins. Trying to take them alive, all those were knocked out by Gloster. Then the bullets start flying.

Breaking through a locked door, they find one of the gang dead right outside it. Then another drops soon after. Two more show up with horses, one of them then is dropped. And another after that. 3 seconds have elapsed since Joe and Harry got through that bank door onto the street.

Here’s where the Isolation has begun.

Chapter 35 - The Sturdy Men of Wickson

Pushing around the corner, Macarthur is shot. The one remaining gang member besides Gloster is Dud Rainey. Only one horse for the three men, one of them wounded.

Then arrives Buck Daniels on his horse, and Joan on the Captain.

The discussion has the result of Joe being tossed across the pommel of Joan’s Captain, while Rainey jumped jump behind Buck Daniels - Gloster runs between the two horses. (No mention of Rainey’s horse.)

Buck gets them to the Livery, where they are trapped. Joe is dropped to the floor and Joan tries to administer to them. Joe’s only bet to survive is to get a doctor’s assistance.

Gloster calls out for help from the attacking hoard, who allow him to bring Macarthur out. And return, unharmed — because of his bravery.

Chapter 36 — A Strategy of Desperation

Rainey is trying to get Buck to not be part of their escape, and Joan would not be affected if she stayed back in the Livery.

Rainey then comes up with a probable solution - mount up on the two best horses out of the 30-some equines in that Livery.

Buck told her that this end is that of the wild freedom she had been chasing, just as the end of her own father. He also told her that he was ready to die, and had been for awhile. (Pointer.)

This now brings us up to the the points of Confrontation, Dark Moments, and Choice. It’s a bit complicated with so many characters.

These other characters all are telling Joan goodbye. Rainey only says, “Wish me bon voyage.”

Harry has nothing to say, just looks her in the eyes one last time — another pointer to a final scene between them.

Rainey had earlier developed a scheme to release the whole of these animals as a stampede and then ride out in their midst.

Just as they make their getaway in a cloud of dust, Joan rides out behind them on Captain and makes her own chosen escape.

Chapter 37 - Compassionate Shadows

Macarthur, treated by the doctor, wants to make a record of everything. He knows he has minutes to live. Carney is chosen to be his scribe - an irony they both note.

He confesses to murdering the two partners of Gloster. He also cleared Daniels. And just as he was about to name Carney, the uproar of the Livery escape happens, so only Carney gets to hear Macarthur’s final words - which were to wring out a promise that he’d hire a lawyer to get Rainey off.

But Carney is forced to live with the distrust of Macarthur as he died.

That is then a just end for both villains.

Chapter 38 - White Magic

Joan arrives back at the gang’s hideout upon Captain.

She finds Harry only there, who stays away from her. (Rainey already rode off.)

Now the isolation of the two lovers is complete.

Harry was grazed by a bullet, has a bandage around his head, but otherwise unhurt. Daniels, however, received a fatal shot and with his dying words gave Harry a locket for Joan.

It contains pictures of her mother and father.

Joan tells Harry he’s been cleared by Macarthur (a plot hole, as she was riding away while Joe was dying in a mercantile store down the street.)

But still, Harry is glum.

“Harry,” she whispered, “what has happened? Why look at me like that?”

“I saw Daniels die, Joan. He died for you. And I swore then that I’d never take a step to win you away from that wild freedom that you love. That’s your life and that’s your happiness, and God pity the man that tries to step between you and it.”

“But if I come to you, Harry, and tell you that I know how terrible and how foolish are the things I have done—”

“Joan, a step toward me would mean—”

And so, suddenly, they were in each other’s arms.

A wedge of wild geese, flying low, sent down their wavering and dissonant chorus, but Dan Barry’s daughter did not hear.

So, the final Dark Moments for each, And the choices made by both Harry and then Joan.

The dramatic reversal — and one-sentence resolution.

Now the reader want’s to collect the whole series and read them from the beginning…

What We’ve Learned Overall

Brand is a champ at alternating action and reaction, what is now called scene and sequel. At least, this gives us a method to analyze this writing and replicate it.

Using this last part to test the formula for climaxes has proved it valid. Especially as we consider that there is a genned-in way that readers want their story. And this was written some 50 years before Campbell’s course was started, and 80 years before Butcher penned that blog.

Evergreen principles. Worth practicing to internalize them.

OK, now we’re all happy that both the lovers and the villains get their just desserts.

Next week, we’re taking apart Earl Nightingale’s “The Strangest Secret” to see how a novella-length non-fiction transcript uses all possible fiction techniques to make itself go viral — earning it’s author a millionaire income and founding a new industry out of spoken-word recordings.

Set your calendar so you don’t miss it…

Your input is welcome. Needed, actually. Yes I do this to keep you posted on my research, but other than your becoming a paid subscriber, my reward is in people actually commenting and interacting.

A simple atta-boy, heart, or even one of those emogi-thingy’s helps.

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Table of Contents

Below you can find the first introduction to this book, which gives the synopses for the earlier books in this series. We’ll keep adding in links to the others of this analysis series to each subsequent post, since there are only six parts of the story as released (plus our overview in the first dissection in this series.) Three more after this will make seven total.

Again, you’ll need to access the Google Docs (as linked in each) for the full dissection.

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Like all things taught about writing, everything evolves. Mostly, it gets better. Basics become easier to remember, formulas appear. That is — if you’re on the right trail.

My journey to learn writing craft has been following the trail from through the inception of probably the most successful professional writing program of all time. This was the Professional Writing course started in 1938 by Walter S. Campbell. Since his passing other instructors carried on at the University of Oklahoma in his footsteps. They’ve each learned from teaching their students and incorporated those refinements into their own texts.

In this article, we are going to find out what we can about the Climax. And searching through two instructors and a NYT Bestselling graduate from that course to find out what we need to know.

I first found the formula for building a climax in Jim Butcher’s Livejournal blog.

Then I cross-checked backwards to find out how his mentor Deborah Chester taught it. Her simplest explanation was in her own blog, Chronicles of a Scribe.

Then I went back to Dwight V. Swain’s textbook, Techniques of the Selling Writer, to see what Chester had learned from his textbook. And found it buried in a convoluted chapter. (I found nothing in Campbell’s works specifically about this.)

I’m offering these here for you to ingest, test for yourself, and decide what works best for you.

Everything in the book you’ve been writing was built to this one point. You have gotten your reader into a fever pitch, wondering how the main character, with all his flaws, is going to actually solve what he set out to do originally.

Where the Climax fits in — is right at the Third Act. As Butcher points out, this means we start out with a sequel, where the main character is faced with his reactions, analysis, anticipation, and decision. This could be highly compressed, but this fuels his leap into dire action. This one, last, ever-loving time. You’re running out of pages in this book and have to wrap everything up for your reader.

Added here is that you’ve complicated that character’s life so much that he has all of his flaws exposed. These need resolution and also force him into such a bad situation he can only decide between two tough endings.

By this time, all or most of your minor story arcs have been solved with their obligatory scenes. And those solutions have mostly made the main character’s problems worse. (What’s left over will become cliffhangers for your next book in this series but that’s in the Resolution.)

The hero has to choose how to deal with that main nagging story question at this point.

If he chooses wisely, he acts in spite of the dire sacrifice required. But he wins and is rewarded.

If he chooses an easy out, then he fails and is punished.

Either way, he decides and acts.

Now we see how we want to write this:

How to Build A Climax

(From Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain)

(1) You set up a situation in which your focal character has a choice between two specific, concrete, alternative courses of action.

(2) You force the character to choose between the two courses available to him.

(3) You make the character translate his choice into an irrevocable climactic act.

(4) You reward or punish the focal character for his climactic act, in accordance with poetic justice.

(5) You tie up any loose ends.

(6) You focus fulfillment into a punch line.

Climax Structure

(From Chronicles of a Scribe, February 2 and 7, 2011)

There are six steps in creating a classic climax structure, and they’re designed to deliver optimal reader entertainment.

STEP 1: The Choice.

The protagonist should be boxed in or cornered or confronted by the antagonist. The antagonist has the upper hand and will offer the protagonist a choice of two courses of action. Neither alternative should be good. Even if one of the choices looks attractive, it should come at an extremely high cost.

Example: in the Dick Francis mystery novel, Odds Against, the protagonist is tied up by the villain and threatened with physical torture if he doesn’t tell where the incriminating evidence has been hidden. This is a simple either/or kind of choice. If Sid caves in and tells, he may save himself from agony, but the villain will get away with his crime. However, if Sid remains brave and courageously silent, he’s going to be beaten with a crowbar.

Never let the choice be an easy one.

STEP 2: The Decision.

Often I refer to this as the sacrificial decision because that’s what the protagonist should do …surrender something dear. The very definition of hero carries the Greek meaning “sacrifice.” So the protagonist may have to sacrifice the story goal, or perhaps his life or reputation.

Example: in the climax to Suzanne Collins’s YA novel, The Hunger Games, the protagonist is willing to sacrifice her life.

In Odds Against, the protagonist chooses not to let the villain get away.

STEP 3: Action.

Because people are filled with good intentions that they don’t always act upon, it isn’t enough for the protagonist to intend to do the right thing. Sacrifice is difficult, and at the last moment courage could fail. So it’s necessary for the protagonist to take irrevocable action, to burn her bridges, if you will. Then there’s no going back.

This is where the protagonist may suddenly spring at the antagonist, initiating a dangerous fight. This is where the protagonist may make a phone call, or verbally refuse the deal offered by the antagonist.

Example: in the film Pretty Woman, Vivian gathers up her clothing and leaves Edward’s penthouse suite in the luxurious hotel.

In the Dick Francis novel, Whip Hand, the protagonist activates a tape recorder and asks a witness to share information despite having been threatened with extreme violence if he doesn’t drop the investigation.

Whatever the protagonist does, it’s going to force the antagonist to carry out what was threatened in The Choice.

STEP 4: The Dark Moment.

If a writer is doing her job well, this part of the story should look bleak, perhaps even dire. The story goal should appear lost. The story question should appear to be a no. It should look as though the protagonist has failed. An inexperienced writer will rush the Dark Moment, but a clever writer will not. This agonizing section of suspense is critical to the success of the climax. You must keep your readers enthralled here and not let them pull away.

Example: in the film Pretty Woman, the Dark Moment comes when Vivian and Edward spend their first night apart. They’ve been unable to agree. Edward wants her to become his mistress. She wants marriage and a committed relationship. She leaves (acting on her sacrificial decision). Her tearful ride back to her apartment shows her Dark Moment. She thinks she’s lost the man she’s fallen in love with, and she’s miserable

STEP 5: The Reversal.

Now despite steps 1-4 making it appear as though the protagonist is going to lose, we don’t really want that to happen. Most commercial fiction is, after all, about positive endings. So in this next-to-last step of the climax, there’s going to be a reversal of some kind that flips the situation.

In older yarns, the cavalry (or whatever version of deus ex machina) showed up just in the nick of time. However, in today’s fiction it’s considered a cheat if someone else rescues the protagonist from a tough spot. So the protagonist has to have a trick up her sleeve, or be tougher or more determined than the antagonist, or have sent for help, or have the cell phone on and transmitting the villain’s threats to the FBI agents that are standing by, etc.

It is usually necessary for a writer to plant the seeds of the reversal much earlier in the story, so that when it happens the reversal is unforeseen by the reader but entirely plausible. Easy enough to do in revisions.

Example: in Pretty Woman, the reversal comes because Vivian is stronger than Edward. She holds out longer than he can, and he surrenders, realizing that he’s sufficiently in love with her to go after her.

In Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder is grappling with the villain at the edge of the crocodile pit. The reversal comes when she grabs his cigar from his mouth and burns him in the face with it. He releases her, staggers off balance, and falls into the pit. She is not physically strong enough to overpower him in hand-to-hand fighting, but she’s used her wits superbly.

In Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, Luke’s earlier attempts to reach his father finally come to fruition when Darth Vader turns on the Emperor and saves his son’s life.

Keep in mind, however, that the reversal will seem cheap without a well-done Dark Moment.

STEP 6: The Reward.

This conclusion of the story is sometimes known as the denouement or the wrap-up. It’s where poetic justice is handed out, based on what the characters deserve. This stage of story climax is all about making sure fairness prevails.

So how brave or foolish has the protagonist been?

How ruthless has the antagonist been?

What should happen to each of them as the story concludes?

A writer has several options. If the protagonist has grown and improved and risked much during the course of the story and has saved the day, then this character will obtain the story goal plus extra rewards.

Often winning the heart of the love interest is presented as one of the rewards.

If the protagonist managed to save the day but made several mistakes and could have done much better, then the character will obtain the story goal but may lose the love interest or see very little additional reward.

If the protagonist has thrown away chances and trampled over others and devolved as a character, he or she will lose the story goal.

Options for the antagonist are equally varied, but instead of “reward,” think in terms of “punishment.”

The antagonist is supposed to lose his or her story goal.

If the antagonist is a charming rogue, or helped incidental minor characters, or showed redeeming qualities in the course of the story, then the antagonist will lose the goal but escape capture.

If the antagonist is a villain, he or she will lose the story goal and be punished additionally, perhaps incarcerated or even killed.

Example: in Ken Follett’s WWII thriller, The Key to Rebecca, the hero prevents British plans from falling into Rommel’s hands, saves his son’s life, and gets the girl. The villain fails to steal the plans and is incarcerated in a tiny, windowless cell where his acute claustrophobia drives him mad.

In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara finds out too late that she loves Rhett instead of Ashley and she pays for her many mistakes by failing to stop Rhett from leaving her.

In the Sidney Sheldon novel Rage of Angels, the protagonist survives the climax with her life intact, but because of her mistakes she has lost her integrity, lost her lover, lost her career, lost her son, and is left walking down a snowy street at dusk, with nothing.

Some novels cover these six steps in a couple of scenes separated by a sequel. Others take two, possibly three chapters. Still others, such as the Dick Francis mystery Whip Hand, spend the second half of the novel spanning the climax.

How Do You Build A Climax?

(From Jim Butcher’s Livejournal blog.)

The same way you do everything else. You start at its beginning. A climax officially begins where the Great Swampy Middle ends. To use an overly-simple metaphor, the Beginning of your story dumps the dominoes of your story out of your box onto the table. The Great Swampy Middle sets all the dominoes up into a neat pattern.

And the climax knocks them down.

Guess which is the most fun. :) For the writer, as well as for the reader. There’s nothing quite as nice as flicking over that first metaphorical domino after several months worth of setting them up, let me tell you. :)

The Great Swampy Middle ends at the first of the story events that starts the dominoes to toppling. In Dead Beat, for example, when Harry and Butters find the little key-chain drive inside Bony Tony with the GPS coordinates in it, it sets off a chain of reactions that lead Dresden forward to the final confrontation. That little drive is the last domino to get set up and the first one to topple, and start the cascade.

The actual climax itself, the absolutely peak of it, though, is what I generally refer to as the Showdown or the Throwdown or the Beatdown, depending on my mood and testosterone levels at the moment. The most dramatic point is the actual confrontation between your protagonist and antagonist, where they are directly contending with one another, and where both of them know that the story question is about to be answered.

For THAT confrontation, there several structural components that you can use to organize it that will be really helpful, much like the components used in a Sequel:

ISOLATION

CONFRONTATION

DARK MOMENT

CHOICE

DRAMATIC REVERSAL

RESOLUTION

ISOLATION:

At the end of the day, your protagonist stands alone. That’s why that character is the protagonist. Oh sure, there can be other people around, but the one who really COUNTS is your protagonist. The more alone he is, the higher the tension levels are going to be, and the more satisfying the climax is going to be for the reader. Ellen Ripley lands on LV-426 with a whole squad of marines and various others. After the first confrontation with the Aliens, only eight others are left. During the second confrontation, THOSE companions are whittled away, one by one, until Ripley is left to enter the lair of the alien queen—a nuclear reactor about to blow up, no less—ENTIRELY alone. Now THAT is tension and isolation.

CONFRONTATION:

Your lone protagonist, determined to follow things through to the end, confronts the antagonist. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

DARK MOMENT:

The confrontation Does Not Go Well. The odds are stacked against your protagonist, or the situation swings out of his control, or he just plain gets outclassed. Everything looks like it is in genuine jeopardy of going to hell. It looks certain that the answer to the story question is going to be one that the reader is NOT going to like. In the recent Narnia movie, that moment was at the death of Aslan. The Great Lion is gone, the White Witch has made fashion accessories out of his mane, the bad guys have them outnumbered and out-gunned, and there’s just no way to win the fight that’s coming the next day—but the folk of Narnia need Peter to lead them. Which brings us directly to:

CHOICE:

It always comes back to choice. The climax of the story is the acid test, the crucible, where the rubber meets the road and where the schisse hits the fan. Your protagonist has to CHOOSE whether or not to stay true to his purpose or to let himself be swayed by fear, by temptation, by weariness, or by anything else. In that Dark Moment, he has to make the call that ultimately reveals who your protagonist really is, deep down. And the choice has GOT to be a BAD one. If it’s an easy choice, there isn’t any drama to it--no tension, no release for the reader.

“Use the Force, Luke,” urges ghost-Kenobi’s voice. “Let go, Luke!” Luke visibly makes a choice, turning off his targeting computer, putting his faith in the Force to make the shot that the whole galaxy is literally riding on, the way a Jedi should. He’s alone, with the baddest guy in the movie hot on his tail, and even his friends are telling him he’s nuts. “His computer’s off. Luke, you’ve switched off your targeting computer! What’s wrong?” “Nothing!” says Luke. “I’m all right!” Not ONLY is he about to get blown out of the air by Vader, but he might miss the shot, too. Luke is about to do something INSANE. He’s about to sacrifice his life to take a literal shot in the dark.

Which segues right into...

DRAMATIC REVERSAL:

The intrinsic nature of the story or of the protagonist’s character influences or causes the events of the confrontation to be changed in an unexpected way, causing an outcome that is in harmony with the principles of poetic justice. Luke is an idealistic young kid, brave to a fault, dedicated to a fault, and because of that he has made a choice that is Going To Ruin Everything. But that very idealism and courage have also touched the heart of a jaded smuggler, who, instead of running to protect his own life, has returned to throw in his lot with the rebels, and who has entered the battle at the absolutely critical moment of truth.

(A quick word on Choice and Reversal. Not all heroes MAKE the self-sacrificial choice. Sometimes, the hero falters and makes the awful choice, to save his own skin or indulge his own darker nature. In that situation, the reversal is still there doing exactly the same thing--only this time, the justice that gets handed out is BAD for the protagonist. There’s a name for that kind of story: tragedy. See King Lear. See also Hamlet, Othello, etc, etc, etc.

This outline works for both tragic and happy/heroic endings. Those aren’t the only ways to end stories, by any means. But they are popular ways to end stories, and they are fairly simple ways to end stories, and this article is aimed at beginners and aspiring writers. Trust me on this one. If you’re new, just go for a happy ending or a tragic ending. Work on bittersweet open-ended thought provoking montage endings after you’ve practiced on some of the simpler ones.

And, to be frank, if you’re wanting to write professionally, work your happy ending skills. Real life is full of the other kind. There probably are some, but I can’t think of many full-time tragedy writers.)

Finally, we get to...

RESOLUTION:

Time to hand out the medals, kiss the girl, go to the wedding, put the star on the Christmas tree, raise the curtain on the rock concert, attend the funeral, or otherwise demonstrate that with the conclusion of the story, some kind of balance has been restored. The catharsis is complete, the tension eased, and the reader can catch their breath now.

My advice to you on resolutions: Keep it short. Once you’ve gotten through the Showdown, write as sparingly as possible to get to the end, and don’t draw anything out any more than you absolutely must. You’ve already kept your poor reader up until 3:30, your heartless bastard. Let them get some sleep before they have to rush off to their shift in two hours!

Then you get to type the most satisfying words in any book you’ll ever write:

T H E

E N D

What We Learned

There is no one way to write a story’s climax. All those formulas above will work. It’s going to take distilling several of the books you most like to read in order to settle on a pattern you like. The current ongoing distillation: Dan Barry’s Daughter by Max Brand, appears to have that last Climax formula down pat. Which is interesting, since Brand’s classic novel came out about 80 years before Butcher’s blog post.

But that’s the point of taking apart perennial-selling classics. They prove later discoveries as valid.

Again, your mileage will vary. “Read what you love, write what you’d love to read.”

How You Can Contribute

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WHERE WE’VE COME SO FAR is into the third week of Max Brand writing a novel through weekly installments for All Story Weekly. This is Part 5. Only one more after this. And, typically for this author, they are filled with action and more action.

Somehow, we know these two lovers will find their happily ever after - but first, there’s that criminal gang…

We’ve covered how the process of how writing fiction serials favors someone here on Substack. Because you hook your readers and keep them going right through. That’s your craft doing its talking, though.

Our use of serials then requires us to write tighter and keep the reader looking forward to the next episode after the last one finishes. We have to improve our continuity skills.

How to develop your writing craft has been developed with short courses, as earlier posted:

Each of these short courses have 8 lessons, mostly pulled from the original OU Professional Writing Course texts of it’s founder, Walter S. Campbell. Also included are excerpts from contemporary successful authors of that time, as well as some clarifying notes by later course instructors.

We build on these by doing real-world dissections of perennial-selling classics. Every week, right here.

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In this dissection, we are using Dorothea Brande’s suggested approach — making notes as we go through the novel after our first reading, then dissecting how they created their effect on the reader. There are an generally 5-7 chapters in each part of Brand’s novel.

In lieu of an enclosed PDF about the technical devices discovered here, I’m including this link each week to that Google Docs version. This has the full text of this part of the book, and enables leaving notes in the margins, while allowing you to contribute.

At some point in the near future, I’m planning to create a discussion space within a Founding Member/Patron continually-running workshop. (Stay tuned for details as they develop - but leave a comment or DM me if you want in on the ground floor.) The point is to foster collaboration so we can all keep improving our craft. Because writing is communication, and our skills at communication opens doors and brings treasures our way. Always has, always will.

And I do all this work for both of us. To learn craft right along with you.

Just keep me informed about your own progress through these posts. Ask your questions. Join in the discovery.

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What is Discovered This Week:

My homestead work has left me tight for time, as usual. Yet this study drives itself forward. Brand is writing a novella every week for this serial in addition to other works.

We aren’t working to figure out how to become so prolific. We are working to find out the craft he used to produce this perennial-selling classic.

There’s the mythic base he used to develop a new story based on timeless legends and stories. So Brand started with timeless elements. And now we find his daughter has inherited her father’s legacy. Joan knows that if she continues down that line, she can never marry. Meanwhile, her lover Harry has been falsely accused of murder and is condemned to live an outlaw life.

Irreconcilable differences. Our last part had Joan conquering the mighty horse Captain, who was reputedly a man-killer. And yet, Captain only wanted to return to the same mountains Joan herself was called to. So she gave him his head. Of course it helped that she considered that Harry was part of that gang and so this would be a way to find him.

All these the stuff of myths. So the search is for what made these myths still effective in our modern age. It goes back to their core human wants, expressed effectively.

The intermeshing of action and emotion, through scenes and sequels, is being proved right in front of us. Alternating chapters devoted to different viewpoints has us updating the separate story arcs as we continue reading.

In this second-before-last part, we see how these arcs are now starting to merge.

Joan arrives at the gang’s mountain hideout, while Buck Daniels and Harry Gloster are tracking her path. Joe Macdonald has regained the trust of his gang, and has one last money-making bank job to enrich the outlaws.

All against the clock. Action, romance, mystery - it’s all there in a blockbuster story delivered such that the reader becomes involved in the story and cannot put it down.

Transitions are key here — those cliffhangers like Louis L’Amour was famous for. You’ll see scenes start up right at the end of chapters, and ending where the sequel should start. As well as clustered scenes in the action sequences, which then cool down the action while bringing the characters to process their emotional reactions to what just happened — even if that action was from a couple of chapters prior.

And we see how leading a chapter with a sequel piques the interest of the reader and involves them immediately with the characters. We’ll find that the rapid alternation of short scenes and sequels quickens the pace and raises the tension.

We’ve seen compounded scenes before this, but now we see compounded sequels in chapter 27.

Continuing our Dissection

We’re now at Part Five. And the full text, with technical notes, is found on this Google Doc.

Watch the interaction between the scenes and sequels as the story rolls out.

Chapter 26 - The Might of Innocence

Scene starts with the six men coming out to confront Joan sitting on the horse Captain.

The reaction of Macarthur to the Captain starts a sequel, and dialog.

Joan confirms her and Captain’s wildness.

Macarthur has a discussion with Joan, which is relayed by shifts back the rest of the gang as they tidied up their rock hideout. An interesting device to review backstory and reveal the character traits of these individual gang members.

Joan ends with noting the wild geese flying, which the men all paused to reflect on.

Chapter 27 - An Unexpected Mercy

Starts off with a sequel, much as the first Chapter in this book did. Arthur Fern is introduced as a semi-round character. There is some action (walking to the bank building) but that’s more setting. The bulk of this deals with Samuel Carney, bank cashier, and his emotional reactions to his own deceit. Limited action, which just verifies the traits of Carney. And this engages the interest of the reader for this tortured soul.

A second sequel starts when Carney goes into Fern’s office and confesses. Fern tells Carney to send a messenger to ward off the gang, while he prepares the town to defend the bank.

This was tricky, and the compounded sequels with mini-scene action bits between is unique. Earlier, we’d seen mini-sequel bits of reaction in the middle of long scenes.

Chapter 28 - The Wild Heart

Starts with a sequel involving Buck and Harry as they process their reactions and known data while following Joan into the mountains.

Buck gives the backstory of Dan Barry once again, along with his wife Kate Cumberland. Most of this deals with the second and third books of this series.

This sequel ends with a smooth transition to the scene of Harry discovering the gang’s hideout.

That then winds up with a short sequel as cliffhanger, where Joan admits her love for him, but refuses Harry.

Chapter 29 - The Untamable Soul

This title draws back to the first book in this series The Untamed.

The sequel continues for these two star-crossed lovers.

He proposes to her, and she refuses.

Their first kiss is passionless for Joan.

Chapter 30 - The Fourth White Pebble

Scene starts with Harry going back to Buck and telling him his decision to join the gang in order to be with Joan and ultimately win her over.

A sequel starts with Macarthur’s reaction to Harry holding him captive. Harry makes his case to join the gang.

Macarthur decides to let the gang decide.

New scene, with Harry raising a huge boulder and dropping it at Macarthurs’ feet - winning his position in the gang.

Chapter 31 - Blood Brothers

The scene here is the action of taking the oath to join.

Lots of emotional tension as the gang takes a blood oath to defend Harry as does he to them.

Sequel starts when Harry finds out that bank job is that night, starting immediately. Macarthur reveals he’s the one that killed Gloster’s mining partners. Now each are sworn to bury their grievances with each other.

They end up shaking hands.

Chapter 32 - Riders in the Night

Starts with a sequel for Joan. She’s processing her own reactions to Harry, now that she’d spurned him with finality.

Her other character here is the wild Captain, who helped her resolve to leave that valley, which would force Gloster to follow her and be safe from that criminal gang.

She decides at the end to follow the gang and at least witness the crime, perhaps help them flee.

But as she now waits, on the Captain’s back, she spies an eighth rider. It’s her stepfather, Buck Daniels, who now trails the gang.

A perfect cliffhanger for next week’s reading.

What happens next to Joan Daniels and Harry Gloster? And this other wealth of characters moving too quickly toward certain doom? One last part this coming week, with the climax…

Set your calendar for next week…

Your input is welcome. Needed, actually. Yes I do this to keep you posted on my research, but other than your becoming a paid subscriber, my reward is in people actually commenting and interacting.

A simple atta-boy, heart, or even one of those emogi-thingy’s helps.

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Table of Contents

Below you can find the first introduction to this book, which gives the synopses for the earlier books in this series. We’ll keep adding in links to the others of this analysis series to each subsequent post, since there are only six parts of the story as released (plus our overview in the first dissection in this series.) Three more after this will make seven total.

Again, you’ll need to access the Google Docs (as linked in each) for the full dissection.

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STRUGGLING FOR INCOME seems the fate of all up-and-coming writers. By survey, 97% of all writers have another income source (or several) to support their main joy in life. But it doesn’t have to be this way…

I’ve been there, done that. Solving the prolific output problem was first. After that, I started to solve making them so memorable and remarkable that readers would share them — that is the seeming key to book sales income. And it takes us right back to improving our writing craft. With every story we write.

And this situation has run through history as well. Nothing new. There’s always that tiny handful of writers who hit an “overnight” success. The rest of us still work at our writing, searching for the evasive breakthrough that gives us a steady five- or six-figure income just from book sales.

The trick, it’s said, is not knowing what we don’t know. And somehow stumbling upon the solution of reading and absorbing writing craft from published books.

I finally hit my own wall. Everything I’d studied and practiced from modern texts didn’t seem to convert to books that sold. Not even enough…

Current Writer Training Fails

Our current writing texts stress strict adherence to structures of genre and their tropes, to mimic the structures of existing books being produced. The covers have to be the same, the plot nearly boilerplate to all others out there. Those students following the conventional wisdom advice seldom if ever develop a sustainable income from their backlist of published books. The modern how-to books they study only compound the errors of other struggling writers who don’t know what they don’t know.

These books only teach the mechanics of form, not what makes a good book worth reading. I’ve been publishing since 2006. Over nearly two decades of writing, a small handful of my books were somewhat successful — most weren’t. Some would fly up in sales temporarily, then dive down to only occasional sales. I’d gone the route of buying books and courses to learn my craft. Even the best of all those writing advice texts I’d studied simply didn’t work. So I made my approach to re-learning my writing craft through the other path not taken..

I started studying marketing to improve my sales. I was looking for successful marketers. This was logical, since I’d already done a long survey of writing craft and boiled down 227 writing texts to a dozen, and then distilled what these held in common. The common advice suggested the next step was really internalizing these by writing — lots and lots. The book marketing texts, however, just led back to the modern fast-release approach. More “content” is better, according to those experts.

This was just circular advice, though. One of these repeated advices was “Write a damn good book.” The trick was that none of these texts defined what made such a book — much less how to write one.

I was puzzled that the best advice about “successful” self-publishing covered only the mechanics of getting a book up on Amazon and the other ebook distributors. This also held true for getting a book published traditionally — it was all how to query an agent or editor, how your manuscript needed to be formatted. While the traditional approach took an average of two to three years, the rapid-release approach on Amazon was to publish a 300-page novel on Amazon at least once a month — for as long as you could keep up that pace before burning out. Meaning: if you were already an inadequately trained writer, you would be simply producing more of the same errors in these later books. Marketing became just running ads on Amazon and Facebook to hopefully get your name in front of potential readers.

You paid for these ads with your day job income, since your books weren’t selling — and if they did, it only took a month or so before they disappeared behind a flood of other authors’ books, who were also rapid-releasing their works right behind yours.

So much for learning to write fiction. Writing a lot more and faster just compounded any error I was already committing. Meanwhile I had a small handful of my non-fiction paperback books that were bringing me regular income — enough to pay simple bills and continue my research. All without any ads. A curious outlier. My hundred or so fiction books mostly sat there, buried and undiscovered. The result was to take up the study of marketing. Because I hated ads. There had to be another way.

In that marketing study, I looked for lists of books the successful direct marketers recommended. In this, they boiled down to books mostly written through the 20’s and 50’s, but the recurrent one was by Eugene Schwartz called “Breakthrough Advertising”. In this book, Schwartz referenced and recommended one book four times. It was Walter S. Campbell’s “Writing Non-Fiction”.

And I found Campbell’s book on on Scribd, missing only a few non-vital pages. (And it’s still available there today.) This textbook ran along well and gave a novel approach to non-fiction writing. In that book he posited that the best non-fiction borrowed the devices that fiction writers used to produce their perennial-selling novels.

But that just pointed my nose into the fact that I’d missed some techniques in my writer training. My research just intensified.

Finding the Missing Training

I was in search of evergreen principles of writing and entrepreneurship. Writing is both an art and a business. It apparently wasn’t so mystical as some believed. As part of this research, I took all the many books I’d earlier written on self-publishing and boiled them down to their evergreen principles. Then reviewed these to find obvious holes and questions remaining.

Yes, there are core principles to marketing and publishing. And lots of false trails. No, social media “marketing” was a snake eating its own tail. The user is the product — you’re there just to watch ads and click on them. Which leads you back to buying ads to sell your books. What ever happened to creating those perennial-selling books — that sold continually without ever running ads?

One of my always-selling non-fiction books was a review of Schwartz’ advertising methods. So I worked to created an update for this — extend this brand by expanding it with a sequel of more marketing approaches and techniques I’d learned subsequently. In that, I restudied his book thoroughly. His classic text posed questions that still needed answering, and my new update sequel was to fill that need. That research led into other marketing questions — like what is this “going viral” that was the current Holy Grail?

Answering this “virality” question went back 20 years to a perennial-selling book by Malcolm Gladwell, called “Tipping Point”, which was years on the NYT bestsellers list. He was in search of what made word-of-mouth effective. While he didn’t actually answer that question, three researchers got inspired by this and then independently answered that question — after years of their own research studies. (These were Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick” and Jonah Berger’s “Contagious”. Their short answer is that effective word of mouth is both memorable and remarkable.) And I continued to write up what I’d learned — which fleshed out that marketing update book. (See below for your own copy.)

Of course, this research also piqued my curiousity of why that top-marketer Schwartz had mentioned Campbell’s book four times, so I looked up more about him. It turned out Campbell had run one of the most successful writer-training programs in history. And during his nearly 20 years instructing, he had produced three other textbooks for that training. I got these books through inter-library loans and also studied them. Here I was astonished to find the answers I’d been needing to upgrade my writing craft. Material in these out-of-print books revealed more than any modern book I’d encountered. Here was real, actionable writer craft that could be learned.

Timeless Writing Craft Revealed

Writing is simpler and more straightforward than most writers believe. And that is where their problems all start - with their beliefs.

Most beliefs begin with accepting conventional wisdom - which is always about 97% wrong. Yes, a writer can achieve greatness if they read a lot and write a lot. And meanwhile spend a couple of decades churning out wordage and getting rejection slips. The problem with this system is that it takes, on average, some two decades of self-training. Meanwhile, you’re absorbing what you really need to know by reading.

That reading has to be conscientious. It has to have the goal of learning how those authors did one thing well — creating a specific effect on their reader. All the technical devices that the most successful writers use were written down for anyone to discover. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Janet Daily came up to the same conclusion after reading tons of books they found entertaining, “Hey, I can write this stuff!” And then they did.

Louis L’Amour, who consistently published two or more novels every year for decades, has never gone out of print. He revealed in his own memoir that he read over a hundred books a year. This was his education. And how he taught himself how to write:

Often I am asked if any writer ever helped or advised me. None did. However, I was not asking for help either, and I do not believe one should. If one wishes to write, he or she had better be writing, and there is no real way in which one writer can help another. Each must find his own way, as I was to find mine.

My way may not be for anyone but me. In fact, I doubt it is. After many rejections I sat down on the porch one night where I worked, looked off through our growing plum trees, and decided that all the editors who rejected my work could not be mistaken. Something was basically wrong with what I was doing.

From my shelves I took several stories by O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, and Conan Doyle. From popular magazines I took several that I had liked, and I settled down to study them, to see what those writers were doing that I was not. Later, I added stories by Maxim Gorky and Robert Louis Stevenson.

(from L’Amour’s Education of a Wandering Man)

He read with intention to learn how readers wanted their books written. It was too simple. Like Stephen King and others have found to be true: In order to be successful you have to read and you have to write. The missing point to that is how you read to apply and apply to improve.

Even late in his life, L’Amour is known to have said that he was finally getting the hang of writing well. Learning writing craft is a life-long adventure and journey. It begins with deciding to master your craft and believing that you can.

Getting Restarted

Next, there are two actions a writer has to master - how to get started and how to keep going. A writer’s fortune is balanced their ability to keep producing works that people want — that help them somehow. And the devil’s details is that both are “writer’s block” and that is a mass of fiction. You solve both of these by sitting down and consistently writing.

There’s no lack of inspiration. For fiction, It’s all about getting curious about the various what-if’s sitting all around you and waiting to be pulled — like some balloon on a string. For non-fiction, it’s being fascinated with finding answers to their own questions about how things work. Writers are surrounded constantly by these ideas and they’re all within grasp.

Earl Nightingale always wanted to become a writer. His journey took him to radio broadcasting and writing his own TV programs. But he’d always been curious, from being raised in a Depression-era Long Beach tent city, why some people stayed poor and others got rich. His wide studies eventually discovered a core principle, “We become what we think about.” He then wrote and recorded an essay called “The Strangest Secret”, which became a viral hit and perennial-selling classic. One that started an entire industry of personal development recordings.

In his LP recording, he discovered that many authors had already found their own version of that single datum over the centuries, and wrote that idea down in their books. His discovering it for himself, then publishing this concept through a spoken-word recording was new. The point here is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, especially when there are so many perfectly good wheels lying around in libraries and online called “classics”. A person only had to make a new version, with their own voice and improved technique.

No Reinventing the Wheel

This was the point of that early training by Walter S. Campbell. He was Oklahoma’s first Oxford Scholar and studied under Sir Walther Raleigh and George Gorden, themselves published authors. He found that there were no “new” plots, just authors revamping earlier works into an exciting, new approach — utilizing their own personal voice and developed technique.

At Oxford, he was trained to apply what he learned and write weekly original essays on what he’d learned the week before. He then brought back those disciplines of training when he was hired at Oklahoma University and shortly after was assigned their Creative Writing class.

That OU course had long been considered a frustrating failure. No other staff instructors wanted to teach it. Because the few students who really wanted to learn writing had a bit of success with it during the course, but then were cast off with no further access to collaboration with their teacher and so foundered along and quit writing not long after.

“Students are meant to apply what they learned, not just wander off with a sheepskin.” This was Campbell’s mantra. So he did a test on his own. He put an advertisement in the school’s newspaper and selected four students to work with him for a year - non-credit, and at his expense. Three of these got a story published in a magazine by the end of that year’s collaboration. This proved the approach worked.

To recoup his expenses, he wrote a textbook and shopped this around, getting it published. It wasn’t long after that when the President of OU called him in about his ideas and offered to support a set of training courses he would run that would turn out authors. Campbell accepted, on his own terms, and ran this as non-credit course under the Journalism Department, exclusively for free-lance authors. It was to simply empower them to write and sell their stories. And to shorten the time of study needed to turn professional.

By the end of the first 20 years, Campbell’s Professional Writing courses had graduated over 2,500 students. These became successful freelance writers, selling 250 books and 10,000 shorter works to 1,000 different magazines, totaling over $2 million in 1957-era royalties.

Campbell found there was no magic formula that converted the writer’s efforts into an editor’s acceptance. He found instead, that the nearest thing to such a formula was simply

• to write continually, regularly,

• to study carefully the specific market where he wanted to write in order to gauge what that market would buy,

• to study the works of the continuing top-selling masters in each market area, learning their techniques but not copying their writing style – and beyond all,

• writing only about subjects which interested him greatly and involved him emotionally.

The Formula to Crafting Perennial-Sellers

Of course, those four points above are sheer simplicity. The rest is practice. So we return to the idea that writers are made by writing. But what makes great writers is the action of studying the all-time bestsellers to see how they were written. You need to be always studying the effects these writers created on the reader and then distilling the craft they used.

Now we know what is meant by “read a lot and write a lot”. You have to read what you love, that moves you, and then write what you’d love to read. That reading has to be intentional — to learn from those that moved you and how they did it. Then practice and apply those same techniques through your own writing voice.

And in this, you’ll find that the same basic effective writing techniques used in fiction are employed by non-fiction writers as well. Which are the same that copywriters use.

Their produced works are memorable to their readers and they remark about them to their friends and acquaintances. These perennial-selling books earn their word of mouth promotion from the excellence of their technique. Any author who follows that formula above can determine their own success.

If you dig through what is covered above (and my included books below) — now you can, too.

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For paid subscribers, I’ve included three of the books that resulted from my research above. All ready for instant access.

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• Writerpreneur: Authors Survival Guide

• Writerpreneur: Copywriting for Authors

• Writerpreneur: Forgotten Bestseller Secrets

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WHERE WE’VE COME SO FAR is into the third week of Max Brand writing a novel through weekly installments for All Story Weekly. This is Part 4. Now we’re deep into the complications of these two lovers trying to reunite with each other.

Two parts after this. And, typically for this author, they are filled with action and more action.

We’ve covered how the process of how writing fiction serials favors someone here on Substack. Because you hook your readers and keep them going right through. That’s your craft doing its talking, though.

Our use of serials then requires us to write tighter and keep the reader looking forward to the next episode after the last one finishes. We have to improve our continuity skills.

How to develop your writing craft has been developed with short courses, as earlier posted:

Each of these short courses have 8 lessons, mostly pulled from the original OU Professional Writing Course texts of it’s founder, Walter S. Campbell. Also included are excerpts from contemporary successful authors of that time, as well as some clarifying notes by later course instructors.

We build on these by doing real-world dissections of perennial-selling classics. Every week, right here.

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In this dissection, we are using Dorothea Brande’s suggested approach — making notes as we go through the novel after our first reading, then dissecting how they created their effect on the reader. There are an generally 5-7 chapters in each part of Brand’s novel.

In lieu of an enclosed PDF about the technical devices discovered here, I’m including this link each week to that Google Docs version. This has the full text of this part of the book, and enables leaving notes in the margins, while allowing you to contribute.

At some point in the near future, I’m planning to create a discussion space within a Founding Member/Patron continually-running workshop. (Stay tuned for details as they develop - but leave a comment or DM me if you want in on the ground floor.) The point is to foster collaboration so we can all keep improving our craft. Because writing is communication, and our skills at communication opens doors and brings treasures our way. Always has, always will.

And I do all this work for both of us. To learn craft right along with you.

Just keep me informed about your own progress through these posts. Ask your questions. Join in the discovery.

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What is Discovered This Week:

This is short because of other work this week on my homestead. A great deal more is in the Google Doc link, where I’ve gone back and forth over this part’s chapters. One advantage of being able to scroll back and forth, as well as having desktop search.

Brand was expert at interweaving emotion with fact - and so keeps the reader at it. This is in the Forgotten Bestseller Secret 102 chapter.

This is the importance of knowing that these stories were bought by their magazine’s editors based on their commercial value. Brand brought out The Untamed some five years earlier, with a sequel book each year - until this one, which was two years after its predecessor.

That’s the other point about writing serials in Substack or other online venues. It requires the readers to become the final say — their own gatekeeper. And so the conventions of fiction are there because people expect these patterns in their writing. You’ve seen all along that we are working to discover how people think, how they learn, all in order to give them the fiction they want.

People have to deal with the information in these books as if they were a character right in the middle of things. All we writers do is, as Hitchcock said, “leave out the dull parts.”

Alternating action and reaction, scene and sequel, these keep things moving. The trick isn’t to let your own writing craft make your own stories seem staged and dull. This is why we study other’s masterworks — by dissecting their works, we see what technical devices they used. Then we practice on our own to master them and make them ready at our hand.

This is something the current raft of AI fad won’t ever accomplish. Emotion is in the heart, not the pages of novels collected as snippets. Imagination is in the world of the mind — and is so just as mysterious as that very common thing we all have. But the mind has no physical location in the body. The brain is just organic circuitry. These two have been mixed and confused all through time. But the mind is closest to the soul, if you study the outcome both.

Machines can never have soul. At best, they can become a golem — matter possessed by some demonic force. That is in both our literature and our history.

The inspiring perennial classics of our literature continue to inspire us by reference to those reactions and emotions we have always used to process the world around us.

In our own reading, we then need to be very aware of the subtle changes within us as we read. Our studies, going back and forth through our reading, just to find out how that happens through the text, is how we learn to become better and ore effective communicators. And this has been true since before the printing press, back through the days of parchment and dip pens, back into the clay tablet and stylus. And before that to cave paintings before the written word was invested.

The most important Forgotten Bestseller Secret is what Campbell wrote early in his first textbook — how to study others works to find out what made those writers successful. So we can learn from all the greats and find out what effects they made on their reader and how.

Do get copies of this entire Brand series that followed “The Untamed” — and dissect these on your own. Follow these with other serials-turned-novels and find for yourself this lifetime learning path.

Continuing our Dissection

We’re now at Part Four:

Chapter 19 - The Unconquerable Captain, and Chapter 20 - Spirit of the Heights.

Here is where the horse as a main character has it’s spotlight moment. Actually, there are four chapters back-to-back about this horse - and Joan’s own evolution as she comes to grip with her father’s legacy.

The pace of the scene-sequel quickens. And Brand’s work to inter-connect sequel elements with short action scenes moves the viewpoint from narrator, to the crowd around the corral, to Joan.

By the end of it, the crowd gives up after three riders are violently tossed by the Captain. Yet Joan stays, marveled by this horse. And goes through her own transformation toward her father’s legacy.

At the end, she is able to reach through the corral poles and touch the Captain, then she is able to slip into the corral and stand there for the horse to come to her, willingly, without aggression.

The Captain is tied to the wilderness of the mountains.

Chapter 21 - Free Pinions

Joan’s reaction to riding Peter denotes her own changes. After the Captain, her excellent horse is a pale shadow.

First scene is cooking for Buck Daniels, who has also undergone transformation. He is now quiet, fearful. Joan regrets what has come between them.

In their conversation, Buck tells her that they are going to kill that animal - as he’s a man-killer (like his last owner.)

Joan slips out after Buck retires, then she returns to town. Overhearing a conversation, she realizes that Harry Gloster is probably with that outlaw band of Haines, that the Captain wants to return there.

She frees the horse and watches him ride off to freedom.

While riding back on her dutiful horse Peter, the Captain suddenly runs past her from behind.

Chapter 22 - The Gypsy Trail

This is an interesting play of scene and sequel, where she shifts to riding the Captain (with his permission) after sending Peter back to the ranch on his own.

Then the interplay between these two continues. They become companions in the mountains.

Chapter 23 - “You Ain’t No Killer!”

Harry Gloster outwits his pursuers by returning to town. In fact, he looks up Buck Daniel’s ranch to find Joan.

He arrives at the ranch in time to see Buck discovering Peter, and mounting another horse to follow Peter’s back trail.

Thinking he was keeping out of sight, Gloster follows Daniels, as that will lead him eventually back to Joan.

Daniels surprises him, at gun point. Then they both dismount and Gloster is disarmed.

The concluding discussion shows Buck that Daniels is a decent man, unjustly accused. When he throws Gloster’s gun back to him, Daniels sees him jam it back into his holster, obviously not a gunfighter. (Note: there is a lack of a plant - where did this gun and holster come from?)

Chapter 24 - The Forces of Evil

Joe Macarther returns to his old gang in the mountains. These are each introduced and described. There is no common trust among them for Joe. But he brings an idea of robbing a bank they’d long considered, but thought was too risky.

Chapter 25 - The Dove in the Hawk’s Eerie.

The title for this chapter is in its cliffhanger. Otherwise, it’s all about how Joe Macarthur gets back into the graces of the gang — and even becomes its new leader. There are twists in this, fancy shooting is one. But Macarthur has to overcome his own past history with the gang.

At last, Joan enters the hollow on the back of the Captain, singing that Spanish dance song. Two wild elements returning to the mountains.

A perfect cliffhanger for next week’s reading.

What happens next to Joan Daniels and Harry Gloster?

Set your calendar for next week…

Your input is welcome. Needed, actually. Yes I do this to keep you posted on my research, but other than your becoming a paid subscriber, my reward is in people actually commenting and interacting.

A simple atta-boy, heart, or even one of those emogi-thingy’s helps.

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Table of Contents

Below you can find the first introduction to this book, which gives the synopses for the earlier books in this series. We’ll keep adding in links to the others of this analysis series to each subsequent post, since there are only six parts of the story as released (plus our overview in the first dissection in this series.) Three more after this will make seven total.

Again, you’ll need to access the Google Docs (as linked in each) for the full dissection.

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Writing is best done by putting myself in front of a keyboard, behind a plate glass window, on a busy street. Writing in public. Like Harlan Ellison did.

OK, so I live on a farm. Doesn’t mean people half a world away that I’ve never met won’t be passing by my writing here on Substack, where the writing is inside virtual glass.

A Good First Start

I’ve recently discovered the idea of taking all my pantsing-type writing and treating it as a first draft. Those 166 short stories I had out there as published ebooks can then each become a stepping-off point for a full novel.

Between January 2018 and December 2021, I wrote 166 short stories and published most of them as ebooks, a goal of (at least) one per week. Meanwhile, I compiled collections and anthologies of those so that they could also go out as paperbacks. Total fiction books published were 257. That didn’t include my non-fiction books. These did wind up as a fair number of collections.

Collected by date published, pen-name and subject matter. These were then a good first start.

Novels need a single main story arc, though. So I started going through these, looking for ongoing story arcs. Finding those which had continuing characters and narrative. And, ideally, they were already novel-length.

What all this advice I’d swallowed about pantsing misses is that you have to internalize a model that’s proved to make salable stories. You have to read a lot of books. Then you have to study how those books made their success.

This then took me back to the beginning. I’d compiled works written about writing craft, but what had I really put to use?

I’ve learned in these just past three years of reviewing my understanding of writing craft is now to the point of putting out a real test case — writing full novels that have the potential to become perennial-selling works.

Where would I start?

One of these collections had a decent story question. It had heroes working to get somewhere, to solve some problem. And there were opposing characters wanting something for themselves, while the heroes were just in their way. Lots of rising stakes and complications along the way.

This was just the beginning. And in that, I had to run these through the same editing process I would do for anyone else.

I had first to review my model for what made a good story idea into a good novel.

Story Planning

Studying existing perennial-selling models is the solution.

I found three approaches to republishing short stories.

A first model is to simply assemble them by theme and author (pen name). Promote them based on “more work by this author.” So that depends on being well known, which depends on writing well and getting those short stories accepted somewhere - which again, goes back to writing well. O. Henry and Jack London started getting regular, sustainable income as they collected their magazine stories and published them as hardbacks.

A second approach is to assemble them in a themed collection. Ray Bradbury did this with his Martian Chronicles, where he arranged them by their fictional history and then assigned future dates to when they happened.

Bradbury did something a bit different with his Illustrated Man. To this set of stories, he created a prequel and sequel which tied them into the life of a tattooed man. The stories on his body were alive, it seemed…

Per IMDb, this was first published in February ‘51, then republished in ‘52, ‘54, ‘65, and ‘67. It has 19 stories (including the Prequel and Epilogue). 71220 words, an average of 3748 words per story. 4 were 3K, 6 were 4K, 2 each were 5K and 6K.

These stories are only connected by an overarching prequel which sets the stage. They are otherwise dis-related. Most of these storied individually have achieved fame on their own. So it was also a collection of “top hits”.

Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles contains stories that all take place on Mars and are aligned as a future history.

Bradbury himself credits Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio as an influence. That book was partially published as short stories, and also contained stories pulled from an incomplete novel. Interestingly, Bradbury was inspired during his Martian series by placing relatives and childhood acquaintances up on Mars to see what they would do in a given situation.

The third model has creating a full novel from a set of related stories with a core narrative that you’ve revisited several times, to write them out as a series. This happened sometimes when the author gets curious about the world and characters he created, and so starts adding more, to answer the question, “Yes, but then what happened?”

Max Brand had a runaway bestseller novel on his hands (The Untamed) with an open-ended result. Interestingly, he wrote this first as a multi-part serial in one of the pulp magazines of that day. Then these were collected up and published as hardbacks. After that first bestseller, he followed this up by writing two more novels with that main character and ultimately killed him in that last book. And even then, because of public demand, he had to return a couple of years later to write the last one about the daughter that character had left behind.

This fits our current Substack serial model as he published these stories first as 12K-word serial installments, then would turn around and publish the novel once they were complete. The final book in that series, Dan Barry’s Daughter, turned out to be 80,000 words written 12,000 per week over six weeks. (Yes, prolific. But that’s really just one novella per week, about 2000 words per day.)

All of these models requires an ongoing narrative or story framework. The serial-first model seems to work best. It also aligns to what several authors are doing here on Substack. They build their audience as they craft their story into a novel-length story — then edit those serial installments into a novel-length book and publish that.

In my case, I dug through my own collections of short stories to find something that fit one of these serial-to-novel models. And found that I had actually done this several times, as I built out my short story work to carry on longer narratives. One became a NaNoWriMo winner, and completed in just over three weeks, in 9 short stories. The rest were built up over time, returning now and then to add another story to that saga.

I finally picked one of these that had a strong narrative all the way through. And looking these over critically, from what I’ve learned since, told me I had some work to do. More than a little.

Below all this, the idea is to take that first draft (the target I’m using already has 60K words, so it’s novel-length already) and then start editing it into shape.

The starting point in all editing is to make sure you have your story arc, which depends on your story question.

Do You Have a Novel’s Worth of Story?

Having a bulk of already-written stories is both a godsend and a invitation to hell. Where do you start?

More importantly, where do you end? A novel needs to be around 50-80K of words. So your story arc has to be momentous enough to carry you through.

The trick is that the muse-driven works weren’t all that well organized in terms of plot. I wrote these originally under a weekly deadline of another story to publish that week, every week. Sometimes, I wrote two. All straight-ahead, with only your headlights on, into wherever the story takes me. Very seldom did I quit before I got all these out.

Short stories can be any little change in the main character. Big stories have complexity and a depth where you really get to know the main characters and their opposition. You start rooting and booing their actions, respectively.

Having repeating characters didn’t mean they had continuity with following stories. I had to discard mere collections of procedurals, where little happened to change the lives of the main characters. There had to be evolution.

I kept researching models.

The longer-running TV series become another core model. Those, like Stargate SG-1, where there is a longer story arc where main characters (and even villains) evolve. This had three main villain sources over their 10 years of syndication (and several movies just to end things off right.)

The longest running series I have is Ghost Hunters, which were reorganized in collections to have several spin-offs. It was these spin-offs that had the most promise. I went after something in these — at their end, there was always a “now what happens?”

A story arc across a serial is basically the same as writing a novel, except that you’re publishing weekly as you go. And they have to hold together and link into the next with a cliffhanger.

The trick is to plan your work, then work your plan. Your first act is set up to introduce characters, conflicts, opposition. All in an engaging story that leaves the reader wanting more. Then you build into your 2nd Act Big Scene (or other devices you want to use) and cap it off with a stunning climax - one which is satisfying, but also leaves some strings for a later sequel.

The main point, to have a novel, is to create some sort of long-running opposition from a central villain. Other than three full novels, Sherlock Holmes books were merely a collection of stories, since with the exception of a few stories about Moriarty, the stories had different opposition every time.

Burrough’s Tarzan series built his fist two novels from magazine-published serials - and the first one itself ended on a cliff-hanger (so you’d have to buy the next novel to see how it turned out.) Subsequent stories only held villains through each novel.

In SG-1, villains lasted two and three seasons each. If these stories were simply read aloud, about 150-200 words per minute, this meant each show becomes a short story. A season would mostly have 20 shows of 5-6000 words each, or some 120K words. 10 years of enough story for two novels annually.

Perry Mason was a very long running series of novels, which more or less maintained the world that main character lived in, but their lives changed little during the series. But his novels held together due to their quality, due to the principles of the author. And the Fugate’s Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer related Erle Stanley Gardner’s approach:

Work on every plot until you have

1. Unusual opening incident

2. Complete character conflicts

3. Some emotional appeal

4. Some unusual slant of characters and situation

5. All stock situations eliminated

In short, a procedural formula/recipe for writing great stories. All the Perry Mason novels were written with this in mind before they were started.

All this leads us back to knowing what we need to do in order to have a good novel’s worth of story. Like Walter S. Campbell laid out when he started his 1938 course. This is how his students got better grades for their work — get that story they were working on published in a magazine. Writing short stories were how most of the greats got their start. And writing a short story weekly was an effort to train myself on fiction writing.

After three years of my own lackluster fiction sales, I’d set out to really train myself to really write. That was when I found Campbell’s early course, and dug out all it’s texts and what it taught.

It’s heyday was when Campbell himself was in the traces, until he passed in 1957. Coming forward, I sought out the subsequent instructors and graduates of Campbell’s course in order to see what they did and how.

The instructors of his course had to be published authors first. So they found their own success and then got a position where they would help others shorten their own learning curve. The instructors I’ve found were also graduates of that same course.

I was also finding what these subsequent OU instructors were producing as writing texts. Did they simplify the core processes? What techniques didn’t survive into their own texts?

Dorothy Chester’s name came up, as she credited Campbell for her own success both as a writer and as an OU instructor. Looking her backstory up found a text she’d written (Fantasy Fiction Formula), with an introduction by one of her famous students, Jim Butcher (Dresden Files). She’d also kept up a blog for many years, teaching there what wound up in her book.

Butcher also kept a LiveJournal blog for awhile - until he achieved what he wanted, which was to lay out how he wrote that success into being. 18 posts is all it took.

The OU Instructors Evolve

There’s a lot here to work over. But my interest and drive in research is to find commonalities that have proven results, then boil these down into mnemonic sets of principles. That makes them memorable - while you can always type these out and post them above your monitor…

OU Instructor Deborah Chester studied Dwight V. Swain’s text during her own OU training, as well as Campbell’s and Harris’. She was taught by Jack Birkham, who wrote many textbooks after he finished his instructing career. Chester still instructs at OU in their program as far as I know.

She mentored Jim Butcher with all this wealth of data. Butcher said his work on Storm Front was mostly to prove her theories wrong — but he wound up with a top-selling, NY Times list, book series instead. He wrote these according to patterns that work. And employed his own particular emotive writing style as he went.

My job became to find out what these text books taught him, and how he was instructed. His blog, and his mentors blog, started telling these tales.

From time to time, you’ll see some of the various clues about the assignments given to those students. Butcher even mentions that he still refers to the notebooks he kept from those days.

Core Principles of Novel Writing

So I’ve boiled down the core points of all these instructors to just a few, and reproduced them here for a simple, single reference.

You’ll need to access my Forgotten Bestseller Secrets book and short-courses. Because Swain and the rest simply narrowed down to writing novels. Campbell also covered writing non-fiction, and how to train by reading other’s works. In short-handing these texts to only writing novels,, the bulk of Campbell’s disclosed technical devices on maintaining continuity were lost. Character tags and traits were given short shrift as well as viewpoint development. These later instructors also glossed over any broader view of story beyond the structural descriptions. They lost references to age-old and timeless concepts of story, which then leads you right back to continuity.

All those three areas of continuity, characters, and storytelling are covered in my book and their three short courses. (Obviously, I’ve included more bonus material in the book itself, while most of it has been published on Substack.)

Of course, you can do as I did — borrow the texts of Campbell and Harris from inter-library loans, get the texts of Swain and Chester (Bickham, too), save the Livejournal blog of Jim Butcher to your laptop or other digital storage. (Did I mention to scan, OCR, and save the thousand-some pages of Campbell’s works?)

There’s your prize addition to your real writer craft library. Review them from time to time. Then go to work on your own earlier first draft pantsing efforts.

At least you’ll be satisfied you’ve given those stories your best shot.

Let’s begin with the skeleton, the spine of any novel.

The Bare Bones to any Novel

The very first action in editing is to review your collected work to see if you have a real story question that bridges all the stories there. Your short story may just be a single scene that is only a character’s backstory. A weak story question needs solving first. You want to know who he hero is, what’s their problem, what’s their opposition, and whether that climax makes the story effective. And is that story question one which is big enough to explore fully.

After that, the individual stories have to build a story arc by becoming chapters. We want to find out the story question will support a novel’s worth of writing. Nothing is sacred. If your collection doesn’t do this, move to the next.

If it’s held up so far, now we can get to work. The next part means physically filling out papers and cards so you can see how it all holds together - and how to organize the various scenes and sequels to give the best flow and continuity, rising tension, all that.

I built this system from Jack Birkham’s index-card idea, and added some organizing to it.

You’re going to do character sheets, one for each character, and index cards for every scene and its sequel. Somehow you need to keep these all straight.

Get a loose leaf three ring binder with pocket separators. So you can stuff the write-ups you’ll be making in it, as well as organizing your index cards. You might need rubber bands when those stacks of cards get thick. Get a three-hole punch. For each heading below, these generate sheets you’ll need to refer back to. Stow everything in that binder when not in use. Don’t throw any sheets away, even if that character is cut out - store these in the very back, perhaps with a separator tabbed “Cutting Room Floor”. This is where your back story and story world lives. These sheets help you keep your details straight. Obviously, there’s a section for your cast right up front. Right after your…

Story question:

Take the first and last chapters to see if you can answer the following.

Per Jim Butcher:

*WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS*, *YOUR PROTAGONIST* *PURSUES A GOAL*. But will he succeed when *ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION*?

Or, per Deborah Chester: SPOOC

Situation, Protagonist, Objective, Opponent, Climax.

Story Arc

Next, you review the work to see if it really holds true to the classic format for all stories -

Beginning, Middle, End.

Campbell wrote this formula in each of his books:

Hey!, You!, See?, So…

Hook, Involve the reader personally, Cite cases, Call to Action

Each chapter and scene needs a hook to start with and a cliffhanger to end with. Together, they are a transition device that keeps the reader reading.

The SPOOC model also works for planning out your novel in its parts. Each chapter has a chapter question which answer forwards the story question. Similarly, each scene has a scene question, whose answer has to contribute.

Write out a SPOOC and story arc for every story in your collection, even if weak. These will then help solve the larger story are.

Believe me, you won’t be able to turn out a finished and reader-riveting work unless every little part contributes to solving the whole.

Characters

If its held up so far (even if part of the structure is missing, but obvious that you can write it) then go through your collected stories and start making a list of your characters — and include the settings. This also applies to characters with no name, but a function — such as the “red shirts” who routinely died on any Star Trek landing party. Even if you write out a character later, this homework will be useful.

For each character, make up a sheet which tells their traits.

Traits

Campbell holds that there are four kinds of traits:

1. Human - the natural traits of any human or being. What makes them a good animal or good human, a beneficial being.

2. Typical - that character’s social functions, what groups they associate with. Such as race, color, profession, sex, age.

3. Social - within each group, you have their qualities of character which are approved or disapproved by society as a whole, or that group.

4. Individual - those which are peculiar to that specific being, distinguishing qualities of their mind, or character.

Notes these down for each character on their sheets. Flat and semi-round characters (see below) won’t have but one or a couple.

Tags

As you define their traits, then you can tag them:

Gesture or Mannerism, Habit of Thought, Appearance, Functions.

They can and should have multiple tags, so the reader can identify them, but not become bored or expecting every red-haired man to be named George.

Write their tags at the bottom of each Character page. Add to these as you go along.

Tools or Weapons

These must be planted for any character to use them. As you go through the stories, look for things that appear in the character’s hands, or used by him (the clock on the bank, the bell tolling for church services.)

Again, note these on the character page, perhaps along with where in the story they should be planted.

In some cases, the tool or weapon, even a setting, will become a character of it’s own, so may need it’s own sheet. Westerners often fought against the desert climate, and endured its flash floods.

Variety of Characters

• Flat characters usually have only a single trait, and usually appears always dressed the same (butlers, maids, barkeeps).

• Semi-round (in profile, or in relief) characters have a couple or few. The second set of traits might show up as a surprise (the butler who unexpectedly uses a heavy candlestick to bop the escaping burglar unconscious and so protects the household.)

• Fully round (main) characters have all four trait classes above. One is more dominant than the rest, but here is the character which has flaws as well.

Settings also fall into regular traits and tags. In many stories, the setting itself becomes a character - like the desert as opposition/antagonist. So make up a sheet for for each of your settings, and also whenever they change or get added to.

Indexing Your Scenes and Sequels

Now comes the interesting part, even though it seems like a lot of work.

For every single scene and every single sequel (even if missing), take an index card and title it. Scenes and sequels should have different colored cards.

To begin with, just put down a short line about it. Once you get through the below material, you’ll examine each scene and sequel in detail and add to these.

The point here isn’t writing (although several of these will give you great ideas - have a stack of post-it’s around to note these down.) The point here is reviewing and editing.

Keep the white index cards for placeholders. Like you want to separate your cards by chapters. And note where there are missing parts.

Once you’ve gotten all the character pages and scene-sequel cards laid out, lets back up to the broad strokes. Stash the character sheets in the first binder pocket and have the index cards handy.

Story Arc: Beginning

Preferably starts out action in the middle of things. Such an opening grabs the reader from the beginning and entices them to read right through. Some of these authors say to begin near the end of things. Like a flash forward, where you then have to return to where this story starts in earnest and come along from there.

So you’ll need to give some thought to the story title and first line, second line, and so on through the first page. After that, your scenes and sequels have to interlock with effective transitions, particularly to bridge chapters.

Just look over what you have and make stacks of your cards in their current sequence. Make a stack for Act One. (Rubber band it together against some later accident.)

Story Arc: Middle

While some writers have problems when they hit the middle, such can always be traced back to a lack of planning. You haven’t interviewed your muse enough. I’ve covered the Solving the Dismal Middle in an earlier post. Right now, we just want to see what you have.

So make an index card stack for the middle (Act Two). Band it.

Story Arc: Climax

Act Three then gets its own index card stack.

Now, I haven’t covered this earlier, but there is a set pattern both Butcher and Chester then gave us as a model that works. Like the sequel, this is based on how we think, so these always flow in order to both keep the reader reading and also to make the climax plausible. Check to see your climax contains these reader-expected elements, in order.

Per Butcher:

ISOLATION – the main character does this on their own.

CONFRONTATION – they meet up with their main antagonist.

DARK MOMENT – and have to come to grips with changing their world view.

CHOICE – they decide on their final action.

DRAMATIC REVERSAL – and get the final understanding needful to answer the story question.

RESOLUTION – wrap everything up with quick, short bows.

Per Chester:

Step 1: the choice — In the first step of story climax, your protagonist should be cornered, with no way out.

Step 2: the decision of sacrifice — where the villain puts his finger on the inner weakness of the protagonist. And presses hard. Whatever your protagonist’s weakness, flaw, or area of emotional vulnerability, that’s where the antagonist will strike.

Step 3: taking action — Taking action on the decision means burning all the bridges behind your protagonist. There can be no turning back. The protagonist is committed to a course of certain disaster and defeat.

Step 4: the dark moment — The dark moment is a sequel to the obligatory scene that has just played. Its emotional component should serve up the protagonist’s strongest doubts and fears. This is where the protagonist has to face the crumbled disaster of everything she’s striven for. This is where the story is at its bleakest, most dismal point.

Step 5: reversal — a last-minute reversal takes place. Today, readers and film-goers expect the protagonist to save herself.

Step 6: reward and punishment — The final step of story climax construction depends on poetic justice. In other words, what does any character deserve at the end of the story?

Your scene cards should show this sequence. If not, take some while index cards and note these as placeholders.

OK, now we are going to start filling out these index cards.

Back to that Act One stack:

The Scene

This is covered in a very full chapter out of the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets short course (Lesson 105). The core of the Campbell method is having interlocking scenes tell your story. Harris suggests you try to plan your book by scenes. Bickham says to note them down on index cards (one each for both scenes and sequels) and then you can align them to where they need to be told in your story. Different colors for each. And probably add a white place-holder index card for where the chapters start.

The short hand:

Swain:

goal, conflict, disaster

Chester:

goal, conflict, resolution

Butcher:

point of view, goal, conflict, setback

Butcher considers the scene should be told by the character who has the most to lose in the action that follows.

And I have a much longer compilation of scene-sequel discussions from Campbell, Harris and these above. (Available for paid subscribers below, and not for resale or other distribution.)

Next take up what should follow each scene somewhere…

The Sequel

Swain:

Reaction, Dilemma, Decision

Chester:

Emotional aftermath.

Analytical thought.

Review of previous story events.

Weighing of options.

Making a decision.

Taking action.

Butcher:

1) EMOTIONAL REACTION

2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON

3) ANTICIPATION

4) CHOICE.

(Mnemonic: Reacting, Analyzing, Anticipating, Deciding - RAAD)

Again, these steps have to be followed in sequence to make the scene plausible. Because they follow how we ourselves process situations presented to us by life.

Fill out those cards. Replace any placeholders with the data above on an appropriately colored card.

Now We Reorganize

Again, you started with a collection of short stories that together build a story arc.

You determine if it has a story question, and adjusted it. Now your scene-sequel cards reflect your original layout according to those first short stories. You can see the opposition (and their minions) run through the story as well as the protagonist and their helpers.

And the index cards were built up to show where everything was originally placed.

Here you can sort the stacks out into chapters, with a white placeholder on top for each chapter - with it’s title, if any.

You can now take a large sheet and layout the whole arc and what happens where.

Sure, it will twist and turn, but ask yourself - of every action and character: Does it help to answer that story question?

Cut anything that doesn’t somehow contribute to answering that question by the story’s end. Put all your “cut” scenes and sequels into the Cutting Room Floor stack. They’ll be there when you need them.

Once you’ve got everything noted down, now you can start to rearrange these cards to explain the story best. Which isn’t necessarily in time sequence. (Such as Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.)

With our Dissection of Max Brand’s Dan Barry’s Daughter, you can see that the sequels didn’t always stay in the same chapter as its scene, and often would show up one or more chapters later. And then the action picked up as scenes were clustered right next to each other without sequels showing up until much later.

The point to this reorganizing is to set up the flow of these scenes and sequels so they are riveting to the reader’s attention.

Check through those lessons in Keep ‘Em Reading short course to see how this is applied.

Your stacks of cards can be reshuffled until you have a your best idea of how to move reader through them. Flip through them rapidly and you’ll see where the pace needs to speed up or slow down, where you’ll need something more to re-interest the reader (a white blank card placeholder goes there, maybe with a post-it note for any idea you have about it.)

At that point, you’ll be ready to edit and align the original text again, taking each card and moving the text so it aligns with your index card organization.

Rewriting scenes and sequels can be now be accomplished - taking a single card at a time and reviewing/editing that into shape before continuing to the next card.

Start Writing in Front of Everyone

Here’s one last organizing step. You have your original copy, and your stacks of cards, your character sheets. Start delivering the goods under a deadline.

For Substack, with the current model being one scene/sequel per installment, you may need 24 episodes of 2500 words to make an 80K novel you can later compile and publish. So, probably two novels a year. A nice start for your backlist.

All while you’re building your audience.

So you can separate how many scenes/sequels will go into each chapter, and adjust your 24 chapter placeholder cards in between.

In re-writing, be sure to include parts that are needful as transitions between your story arc parts - do they improve the story’s movement toward its answer?

It may be that you should simply re-write the whole story from scratch. It might save you time. But you’d miss the learning experience. And that last is how you would speed your progress as an author in both speed of production and sustainable booksales income.

Which now explains why I’ve spent three years of writing 166 short stories, and now three years of distilling my own hard-won wisdom from the decades following 2006 when I published my first book.

I now have somewhere around five or more novels which can be generated from these, as well as three full novels which can be run through as above - treating them each as only a rough draft.

Of course, the entire set of actions above can be performed on any perennial-selling classic as aids to your restudy after first reading it through. And then you could cut and rearrange that text to improve on them. (Which, with character and setting change, would give you a new version you can publish with your own new wordage. Which has been done throughout our cultural history.)

There are probably shorter methods for doing this. L’Amour and Brand wrote straight-ahead, performing all these actions in their mind as they went. No index cards or binders. For now, these are the training devices you can use to tackle your editing and re-writing. Again, the result you’re aiming for is a perennial-selling classic of your own. All while improving your craft so that you can build a big backlist of books your readers will want to experience - and buy them so they can read each one over and over.

This brings up the point: what you’re doing is speeding up your writing process, improving your certainty. For you and your reader, rewards are in the journey, not the end result.

But, what do you think?

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What’s coming up?

Here’s an interesting approach, a logical one. Non-fiction sells more copies and longer than fiction. With higher royalties possible.

Non-fiction has always borrowed technical devices from fiction. Consider Gladwell’s Tipping Point and Outliers. Use of a narrative and main character in every chapter to explain a point made Hill’s Think and Grow Rich into its own success, but was known earlier than this.

What about applying this to non-fiction books - writing them as serials?

There was an old schema of “blog to book” — which gave indifferent results.

Mainly because: 1) No consistent story question, 2) lack of continuity between posts, 3) lack of real story basics, such as compelling characters and continuing opposition.

Now that we know about what makes great and readable fiction, lets see the mess we can get into by applying these same approaches to non-fiction…

How would you like to contribute to this educational journey?

You can purchase the Forgotten Bestseller Secrets at pay-what-you-want author discount.

Or, buy me a coffee..

Or, upgrade to paid or Founding Member subscription.

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WHERE WE’VE COME SO FAR is into the third week of Max Brand writing a novel through weekly installments for All Story Weekly. This is Part 3. By the end of this part, we are at the halfway mark.

But according to the math, we are really just at the first part of Act Two, which should run about 40K in total. The last quarter — Act Three — would start about chapter 28, in Part Five. But that’s just the rough math. What we’ll find is anyone’s guess. (No, I’m here right along with you. Yes, I’ve been restudying this as I go, but this distillation proves or disproves various theories and models.) At least we should find what made this book a success — rules or no rules.

We’ve covered how the process of how writing fiction serials favors someone here on Substack. Because you hook your readers and keep them going right through. That’s your craft doing its talking, though.

Our use of serials then requires us to write tighter and keep the reader looking forward to the next episode after the last one finishes. We have to improve our continuity skills.

How to develop your craft has been developed with short courses, as earlier posted:

Each of these short courses have 8 lessons, mostly pulled from the original OU Professional Writing Course texts of it’s founder, Walter S. Campbell. Also included are excerpts from contemporary successful authors of that time, as well as some clarifying notes by later course instructors.

We build on these by doing real-world dissections of perennial-selling classics. Every week, right here.

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In this dissection, we are using Dorothea Brande’s suggested approach — making notes as we go through the novel after our first reading, then dissecting how they created their effect on the reader. There are an generally 5-7 chapters in each part of Brand’s novel.

In lieu of an enclosed PDF about the technical devices discovered here, I’m including this link each week to that Google Docs version. This has the full text of this part of the book, and enables leaving notes in the margins, while allowing you to contribute.

At some point in the near future, I’m planning to create a discussion space within a Founding Member/Patron continually-running workshop. (Stay tuned for details as they develop - but leave a comment or DM me if you want in on the ground floor.) The point is to foster collaboration so we can all keep improving our craft. Because writing is communication, and our skills at communication opens doors and brings treasures our way. Always has, always will.

And I do all this work for both of us. To learn craft right along with you.

Just keep me informed about your own progress through these posts. Ask your questions. Join in the discovery.

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What is Discovered This Week:

Scene and Sequel Evolved

One key element, is how Brand handled his scenes. I’ve earlier gone by the shorthand that scenes are action and sequels are reaction. And that sequels deal with providing information, much as the action-based scenes.

And I’ve included my collection of works on the Scene for all paid subscribers below.

We have to understand how the sequel itself was evolved after first included in Campbell’s 1938 “Professional Writing”. But let’s back up (I’ll cover this more in an upcoming Pro Writer article.)

Here’s the overall formula for a scene as first introduced:

Meeting—of the two forces (emotions) involved in the conflict.

Purpose.

Encounter, containing these possible elements:

attempts—

• to interrogate, or seek information;

• to inform, or convey information;

• to overcome by argument or logic,

• to convince;

• to persuade;

• to influence, impress;

• to compel.

Final Action (win, lose or quit).

Sequel.

This was credited by Campbell to John Gallishaw in his Two Ways to Write a Story.

Campbell updated this in his 1940 Writing Magazine Fiction to give more emphasis to the sequel and its ability to give more cohesiveness and continuity.

There, he states

[T]rouble generally takes the form of a struggle to overcome or avert one of three things:

• an obstacle or barrier;

• an antagonist;

• a disaster.

And so here in Brand, we see conflict between two characters as in Joan and Buck taking center stage - when the real conflict is Joan becoming aware of and overcoming her natural urges inherited from her biological father, Dan Barry.

I’ll continue to call these sequels, as the follow the formula Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files fame) brought up in his blog post on sequels:

Here’s the basic structure to a sequel. It’s another little worksheet you can fill out when you’re thinking about it ahead of time:

1) EMOTIONAL REACTION:
2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON:
3) ANTICIPATION:
4) CHOICE:

And it MUST happen in THAT ORDER. Why you ask me? Because we’re all human beings, and THAT is the order in which we respond, psychologically, to events that happen around us. Especially to big nasty events that bring out a lot of emotion.

You’d have to bone up on Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, and Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure to see how the action-reaction evolution came about. Essentially, Swain’s single textbook replaced Campbell’s four. (Apparently due to Swain signing over his book rights to OU Press, while Campbell’s texts remained under four different publishers.) Swain trained Bickham, who trained Dorothy Chester, who trained Jim Butcher. Swain wrote a text on how to write an action-based novel, which is what he wrote. As Campbell’s books disappeared, Swain’s became the single source. Bickham added his own approach, and fortunately Chester references all of these through her own Fantasy Fiction Formula.

And I’m bringing up this long history just to tell you why I’m recommending Butcher’s work - because he explains that the writer is working to duplicate the readers natural mental processes.

Brand follows these processes in his chapter-long sequels - and why I call them sequels.

I probably owe you an article that simply tears these down. Meanwhile, there’s no shorthand for writers other than to collect all these books mentioned above and do your own studies. Just as you’ll get more from Dan Barry’s Daughter by reading the other three books in Brand’s series.

Myths and Revamping

I got myself a copy of Robert Easton’s Max Brand, The Big Westerner. In chapter 8, “Western Novels”, Easton describes how Brand revamped mythic structures to write his westerns in non-exact, generalized settings. Brand was emphasizing the bigger-than-life heroic qualities of legends and developing the themes presented in the Greek presentations:

“The Untamed” is about a larger-than-life hero and the wrath of that hero. Its setting is in some indefinite locality in the Far West at some indefinite time. A young man named Dan Barry, who is partly Faust and partly Homer’s Achilles, confronts certain problems, such as a beautiful girl, an ungovernable temper, an invincible ability to kill people when roused to anger, and an uncertainty about the future.

….

Before the book and its successors were done, Faust had introduced most of the Olympian hierarchy, not to mention Norse gods, Celtic master-spirits, and Arthurian heroes.

We can then tie this into both Campbell’s recommending revamping as a proved model of storytelling and Foster-Harris’ concept of theme vs. theme as a plot structure.

Brand’s runaway bestseller, The Untamed, created an audience that forced Brand to write this series, culminating with Dan Barry’s Daughter. Here, the myth is brought to earth with a simple romance that ties up all loose strings developed during that series. Again, I recommend you get his earlier three books (available on Gutenberg.org) to fully understand how this series was built, and the references to Barry and other characters. All so we can see how to build a series out of our serials - and so build a perennial-selling backlist which brings us sustainable income for our writing lifetime.

This then brings us back to Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces to see our real use of revamping. Interesting fact: it was John Gallishaw who helped this Campbell to find and distill the commonalities these legends contained. There are no new plots, only new versions of older ones that were originally written in the stars.

The Middle - 2nd Act

Coincidentally, our Pro Writer Lesson this week covered the “Great Dismal Middle” — where most writers give up after a great start and consign their story to the file cabinet as hopeless.

This week, we’ll delve a bit more into what devices Brand used to work through his own novel’s middle.

Again, we are already three chapters into the Second Act. We know the characters and their conflicts. Joan Daniels and Harry Gloster are in a Romance story arc. Harry has been arrested for a double-murder he didn’t commit. Joan auctioned off her prize horse to get the bail money - only to be refused by the judge, due to a telegram he received. Added characters are Joan’s father Buck, who is mysteriously over-protective. And Lee Haines, an outlaw himself, whose life was saved by Harry.

Continuing our Dissection

We’re now at Part Three:

Chapter 13.

This picks up with Joan being unable to post any amount of bond to free Gloster — a setback — so she returns the money and gets her horse back. There is a sequel here, after she rides off and the crowd of men come to grips with the emotions of the moment, and their own decisions.

This then segues to Lee Haines’ sequel, where he’s now coming up to a decision about what to do to help Harry Gloster. Returning to his hotel room, he prepares to start using his damaged hand as a gunfighter. In amongst these, he reviews his own reactions and thoughts, which is a recurring device for Brand — alternating action and reaction to keep the reader interested and involved.

Once he leaves the hotel room, the scene starts in earnest. We find his horse, unnamed as yet, planted as a new character here.

As a note, this chapter contains the last mention of the Spanish dance song.

Chapter 14:

This starts a new scene, even though the building is the same. We hold to the definition of a scene having just a couple characters in it. Haines breaks out Gloster from jail. The opposition here is the strength of the building itself.

Once outside, it’s apparent this is a scene cluster, several scenes piled on top of each other, where the emotional reactions will have to wait until the action subsides - sequels put on hold, for now.

Chapter 15

Lee Haines catches a stray bullet, Joan finds him, and hides him, tending his wounds. Action scene.

Chapter 16

Sequel. Haines tells Joan about the horse he rides, and finally discloses her real father and mother to her. A long narrative delivered from a death bed. Ties back into the first scene with Haines (Chapter 3) where he’s looking for Kate Cumberland.

Joan begins embracing Dan Barry’s legacy through this, even though she’s not certain of Haine’s story - until his disclosure at the end. Which leaves you in a cliffhanger until two chapters later.

Haine’s black horse now has a name - Captain. A tag, some traits described.

Chapter 17

Chase scene of Harry Gloster and posse. Another delayed sequel — somewhere later for Gloster to process all that happened.

Chapter 18

Here’s a sequel is for Joan and Buck Daniels. He confesses that Dan Barry is her father, Kate Cumberland her mother. Joan has changed, to confront her wild heritage. It ends with reference to the wild geese flying, Joan has begun evolving into her father’s spirit, something Buck had promised her mother to prevent.

Alternative Action and Reaction

As you track this story through it’s course, you can see how the scenes forward the story, but alternate between Joan and Harry, between action-scene and dramatic sequel, mostly dialog.

Sometimes, the sequel starts off, then segues into a new scene. All the parts of processing emotional reaction are there. As sequels developed in the precision sequence Butcher outlines, we can see that writing needs to follow the habit-patterns of the reader, what they expect in every story.

Brand added more action, but the story reads the same as any classic legend. Just as Shakespeare had to write for the “penny-farthing” (discount) crowd that sat down front, as well as those in the expensive box seats — so Brand has chase scenes, gun fights, criminal gangs, and romance. These were written for pulp magazines.

Zane Gray started out in the pulps, but then got accepted by his first slick magazine, Colliers, and never looked back. His style is quite different, more polished and has sublime descriptions of the land. Louis L’Amour came into the pulps in the late 1930’s and began writing novels in the 50’s without losing the serial touch he’d learned earlier. Both Gray and L’Amour have styles different from Brand, using accurate details about the lands and facts as historical fiction.

Again, you can do a full study here of Brand’s use of transitions at chapter starts and endings to improve your serial writing. For our use, on Substack, the current trend is a long series, probably some 24 single installments. So you have to leave the reader hanging, by some sort of emotional hook. In general, this is needing the sequel to process the action just witnessed. L’Amour was a master of these (as covered in my dissection of his book, Hondo).

Brand also drops little mini-sequels throughout, so you find the motivations for the actions.

Hero’s Journey On Display

In general, these six parts follow the Hero’s Journey through the eyes of the two main characters, Joan and Harry. We have the existing world, where the two lovers meet at a dance, each with their own flaws. They travel to a new world, where Harry gets arrested and Joan works to free him. Then (spoiler alert) they deal with a criminal gang - both Joan and Harry, as well as Joe MacDonald and Buck Daniels, are present and participate in a failed bank heist and escape. At the end, Joan and Harry return to meet up, freed from their bonds, and she lets go of the wild urge so they can have a happily-ever-after.

Go over any analysis based on the Hero’s Journey and you’ll see all the parts present. This is too fitting, since Brand was revamping classic myth and legend for this stories.

Another excerpt from Easton’s biography explains Brand’s style further:

Faust introduced old world myth into the new world West. This—with his poetic approach—is his unique contribution to the western story.

Supporting this contribution, as in The Untamed, was a unified vision of experience which made the western part of world literature as it never had been before. Men in chaps and women in gingham were united with gods and goddesses in situations nearly as old as mankind.

A still further contribution took the form of a fast-moving style that was lucid and lyric and focused on action and more action.

We aren’t even half-way into the second Act. And yes, it gets more complicated. The two lovers are even further apart. And Joan now becomes more like her real father. She doesn’t know the depth of those yearnings, but is beginning to explore them.

But how about that black horse Captain that Haines left — an animal wild like its own sire — that no one else could ride?

What happens next to Joan Daniels and Harry Gloster?

Set your calendar for next week…

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Table of Contents

Below you can find the first introduction to this book, which gives the synopses for the earlier books in this series. We’ll keep adding in links to the others of this analysis series to each subsequent post, since there are only six parts of the story as released (plus our overview in the first dissection in this series.) Three more after this will make seven total.

Again, you’ll need to access the Google Docs (as linked in each) for the full dissection.

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