Happy Endings

One of the biggest misleading things people want out of a story is a happy ending- or what they say they want, anyway. Authors go crazy trying to wrap up every little plot thread in a saccharine bow, and it's been the ruin of more than a few good books. Some go too far in the other direction, and that can be worse.

What people actually mean when they say they want a happy ending to a story is that they want something that's appropriate to the narrative, and emotionally satisfying. For example, you could end a story with the main character dying- but if it's after a long happy life, or this is a resolution, or something is accomplished by it, then it works.

(This is not always true for every genre, though. Romances have to end well, or nobody's happy. That's sort of the whole point of that type of story! Everything's beautiful, nothing hurts.)

On Selling Books

Russel Blake has an interesting post up about what exactly it takes to publish and market books (see it in full here). I've found a lot of what he says to be true- but nothing more so than the advice to write quickly and make your releases frequent.

Now, that's the hardest part, of course. Getting all the words down on paper as fast as you can. What I need is a brain to page translator. My hands just aren't fast enough.

One thing I don't agree with, though, is going back and rewriting old novels years later. If you start in with that, you'll never stop. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, admit you weren't always as skilled as you are now, write more and write new.

More! Faster!

I was reading Rachel Aaron's 2K to 10K - if you've never heard of it, it's a book (adapted from the linked blog post) on how to, essentially, write faster.

I always feel like I'm not writing fast enough. Writing, especially these days, is a numbers game. You can't spend two years writing the novel of your dreams (much as I'd like to), you have to get your work out in numbers, make it good, and you have to get it out yesterday.

Her book's helped me out already. (I sound like I'm shilling, here. I'm not! I promise!) All it took was one simple little thing I didn't think to do- I used to shoot for pure word count in a single day, and when I reached it, I'd stop. Now, I start a timer when I start writing (I use toggl, it's free and I couldn't find any other timer that would give me nice graphs for what I did over weeks and months), and I don't stop writing until my time's up.

I'm not writing anything like 10,000 words a day- it's still kind of mind-boggling to me that anyone can manage that- but I'm producing more than before, and I'll count that as a win.

Dear reader who asked for a sequel to The Roman Boy with twice the debauchery: bless you. I love you dearly. I'm actually at this moment outlining a second book, and now every time I detail a sex scene I must pause and think "but how can I make this kinkier?" (Fortunately, ancient Rome lends itself to that kind of thing well.)