Eaten by the Bear - Tom Barczak - Biggest Aha Moments

There’s a story of a group of people who went for a walk in the woods.

Only one of the poor souls came back.

The group had been attacked by a bear.

Everyone was, of course, grief stricken, and wondered how the lucky soul returning had been fast enough to get away when his companions hadn’t.

“It was quite simple, really.” The wise soul said.

“You don’t have to be faster than the bear.  You just need to be faster than the person behind you.”

This was one of my biggest “Ah ha” moment as a writer, the day I first heard this. 

For me, it was I didn’t see how I would ever get published.  And I had so many excuses.  But it was in that moment that I realized - so did everybody else, and that most people don’t ever get away from them.

They quit.  They give up.  They quit running. And they get eaten by the bear.

But I don’t have to be.

As long as I just.  Keep.  Writing.

Tom's website is here. His books are Veil of the Dragon, Awakening Evarun, Wolfbane - I Gotta Be Me, What Scares the Boogeyman.

Big Bangs – Beginnings and Endings By Michael McCarty - Biggest Aha Moments in Writing

    The best way to grab the reader’s interest immediately is to plant the hook and drag them into the story. This is also the best way to rise to the top of any slush pile. Start with a bang of a beginning, something compelling, disturbing or even outrageous.

     Likewise, the conclusion should leave a lasting impression on the reader. Endings must pack as much punch as their beginnings.

     Look at H.P. Lovecraft's stories. The prose was pretty over-the-top, but he sure knew how to start and end his breathless tales: with wild cautions at the beginning and horrific, surprising finales.

     A few examples from my own work: Return of the Scream Queen written by Michael McCarty, Linnea Quigley and Stan Swanson starts off with a creature’s clawing popping up from a swimming pool, which inspired the cover of the book as well. And Bloodlust by Jody R. LaGreca and Michael McCarty which begins with movie star Marilyn Monroe.

     As for the endings, you’ll just have to read the books yourself.




Michael McCarty has been a professional writer since 1983 and the author of over thirty of fiction and nonfiction including I Kissed A Ghoul, Modern Mythmakers, Masters of Imagination, Revenge of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster (co-written with Mark McLaughlin) and many others. He is a five-time Bram Stoker Finalist and in 2008 David R. Collins’ Literary Achievement Award from the Midwest Writing Center. He lives in Rock Island, Illinois with his wife Cindy and pet rabbit Latte. Michael McCarty is on Twitter as michaelmccarty6. Facebook! Like him on his official page here.

Research and the Author - Mark Stone - Biggest Aha Moments in Writing

            It is absolutely true that if you are writing fiction, you can create your masterpiece  whole cloth without a stitch of research and, most likely, get away with it. I am not saying go ahead and put forth your best effort sans the appropriate effort, far from it. It has always been one of my rules to exhaustively study upon the subject I decide to write about. Okay, more of guideline than a rule, but let’s not be picky.

            A couple of years ago I was writing a book called Living Legend set in ancient Greece. I could have taken the well-traveled road, winging it until the end and I probably would’ve gotten away with it. Probably.

            The problem was my own stubborn pride and my sense of what’s right. If I wrote something about ancient Greece that didn’t jibe and got caught, or worse yet, caught myself, I would have been both mortified and enraged (at my inherent laziness, of course). It was my ‘Ah-ha’ moment in writing, when I realized that research was important for the creation my world, my art. I also came to the conclusion that it would be insulting to the reader to half-ass the endeavor. The worst thing I could do (besides committing a gross act of violence) was to treat the reader like a simpleton.

            Despite what MSNBC, CNN, and FOX news would have you believe, most people are as smart or smarter than the average bear and are pretty quick to spot a slacker. Research is the key to world building, to avoiding logic traps and to adding depth to a story, bringing it to rich life with not only the addition of detail, but the correct detail. The art of storytelling requires, no demands, that we as authors summon the energy for competent research.

            Look, I’m old enough (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) to remember when we didn’t have the Internet with Wikipedia at our fingertips, not to mention the thousands of other websites perfectly suitable for data mining. Back in my day (yeah, I said it), it was books, books and more books. Encyclopedia Britannica was my best friend an the local public library was my home. Now there is no excuse not to at least head to Google, type in what you’re looking for and hit RETURN. Life in the Digital Age is a lot kinder to us wordsmiths. In fact, as far as research goes, it is virtually ideal, so there is no reason not to perform due diligence for our readers.

            ‘Nuff said.

           

           

Mark Everett Stone is the author of The Judas Line and the BSI Series that begins with Things to do in Denver when you’re Un-dead.

           

A Little History About Me and Mystery - Robert Walker - Biggest Aha Moments in Writing

    We learn so many small and large, great and greater truths about our writing in the doing of it and from great editors. I know I have learned better use of the word HAD for instance, and early on in high school, the Well High newspaper editor sat me down and opened a grammar text on four or five pages of Active Voice vs. Passive Voice -- and that was a huge aha! moment for yours truly.

     But the biggest aha I got was from writing my first novel during my senior year Daniel and the Wrongway Railway. I could not sell it; it was slow, drab, and then while shopping it around, an editor sent a rejection back with a long list of considerations but tantamount was a question: "Where is the mystery here? The Underground Railroad must have been the biggest mystery to stump people in those times, so?  A light bulb blew out.

     A titanic AHA moment hit me. The realization was that a good piece of writing needs an element of mystery, suspense, intrigue and I was overlooking the Underground Railroad as the biggest mystery of its day....right in front of my nose. Until I began thinking of the U.R. as a mystery, the book was flat. On rewrite with mystery element lodge in brain, it sold immediately after I made that connection. Viola!

     Mystery! This is what is meant by editors when they say they want COMMERCIAL fiction. The idea of a story being commercial and it not being a dirty word like sellout. That has kept me in good stead ever since, publishing multiple books each year since 1979.




Award-winning author and graduate of Northwestern University, ROBERT W. WALKER created his highly acclaimed INSTINCT and EDGE SERIES between 1982 and 2005. Rob since then has penned his award-winning historical series featuring Inspector Alastair Ransom with CITY FOR RANSOM (2006), SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY (2007), and CITY OF THE ABSENT (2008), and most recently placed Ransom on board the Titanic in a hyrid historical/science fiction epic entitled Titanic 2012 – Curse of RMS Titanic. The original Ransom trilogy straddles the Chicago World’s Fair circa 1893, and has had enthusiastic reviews from Chicago historians and the Chicago Tribune, which likened “the witticism to Mark Twain, the social consciousness to Dickens, and the ghoulish atmosphere to Poe!”  Rob has since published DEAD ON, a PI’s tale of revenge as a reason to live—a noir set in modern day Atlanta,  followed more recently by Bismarck 2013, an historical horror title, The Edge of Instinct, the 12^th Instinct Series, and a short story collection entitled Party of Eight – the one that got away.  Rob’s historical suspense CHILDREN of SALEM, while an historical romance and suspense novel exposes the evil in mankind via the politics of witchcraft in grim 1692 New England, which one professional editor reviewed as:  A title that only Robert Walker could make this work—romance amid the infamous witch trials. Robert currently resides in Charleston, West Virginia with his wife, children, pets, all somehow normal. For more on Rob’s published works, you can see his website here or check Harper Collins and Amazon.  He maintains a presence on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Beyond What Defines Us - Steve Tem - Biggest 'Ah-Ha!' Moments in Writing

     Recently I put together a new collection for ChiZine, Celestial Inventories (August).  Perhaps you can tell from the title that it’s not my usual group of horror stories.  No ghosts or vampires, not even a serial killer. There are a Halloween story, a plague, some creative terrorism.  Some people die.  And there’s a story called “The Monster in the Field,” but is it the monster who’s terrifying or the things he feels? Not exactly horror stories, in the traditional sense.  Some may read as science fiction, bizarro or absurd or surreal or some variety of fairy tale, yet fear is the engine that drives every one of them.

     In our daily lives quite a few of us behave as if we're immortal, as if we understand ourselves and our world, as if our surroundings are perfectly safe, as if our friends and acquaintances are exactly as they appear to be.  We believe, at least part of the time, that we know what we know.

     For example, the idea that we might be immortal is clearly a fantasy, but I think some of us feel compelled to suspend disbelief and act as if we’re immortal just to get through the day.  Otherwise the bald fact of mortality stymies us into a kind of stage fright.  And maybe you do understand yourself and see the world clearly-it’s your reality so how can I argue with it?  I simply suspect that the truth may be less defined than you think it is.

     All of this is a source of low-level, every day anxiety which, given the right circumstances, can develop into paralyzing fear.  Because it’s not just the ghost or the knife-wielding stranger that terrifies, but also our fears that we are invisible to others, that we will make some terrible mistake, that we are subject to powerful forces and predators beyond our control, that we may not find our particular meaning, that we may not find that thing or person we need the most.  We come to question how we've defined ourselves and our surroundings, and horror is the result. 

     Which may give rise to questioning how we’ve defined horror, for those of us who create stories out of this material.  Or questioning why we need to define it at all.  The boundaries of human experience are slippery, including not only observable daily events but dreams and fantasies and anticipations.  The same experience can make us laugh or cry or cower in terror or dream—and sometimes all of these before the day is done.  To tell stories that adequately capture that richness of experience, you have to be willing to move, to cross boundaries, and to imagine outside the definitions that have been handed to you.  Our lives do not inspire simple feelings.  Our stories shouldn’t, either.

World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award winning writer Steven Ransic Tem's short fiction has been compared to the work of Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury, and Raymond Carver.  His latest collection of genre-bending sf, fantasy, and horror, Celestial Inventories, will be published by ChiZine Publications (www.chizinepub.com‎) in August. Find more information here.

You can visit the Tem home on the web at here.