Story vs. Plot

This will most likely be the epigraph to the Hint Fiction anthology (major thanks to Stewart O'Nan for suggesting it in the first place):

"The king died and then the queen died," is a story.  "The king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot.

What, I ask you, is the difference between the two? Well, the common argument is this the second "story" contains plot because of causality. It was because the king died that the queen died. She had loved him very much and died of grief for his passing.

Okay, the reason I wanted to bring that up is, ultimately, I don't care whether your Hint Fiction submission has plot. Obviously, it has to have something, some kind of substance, but I worry that too many people might over think their stories. (On the flip side, I worry that a number of people might under think their stories too.)

Remember, it's possible to write a self-sustained story in 25 words or less. You can probably even come up with a great one, too.

But that's not what I'm looking for for this anthology.

Keep in mind the "hint" aspect. Ask yourself, What does your story hint at? Use the Hemingway six-worder as an example:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

What larger, more complex story is he hinting at? Imagine the characters. Imagine the grief. Now try to do the same with your own work.

Please keep in mind I won't be impressed by six-word stories that are obvious derivations of the Hemingway piece. Not that your stories can't be short. Joe Lansdale sent me a five-word story that I think is absolutely amazing. So just as with any story or novel, let the story dictate its length.

Now for a quick example:

The boy went to the corner store and stole a Snickers bar.

Okay, so what's going on in this story? The boy steals a candy bar, obviously, but what else? What is being hinted at?

Honestly, I don't think much is happening here. It's not interesting. It's not compelling at all.

Now let's change it up:

The boy went to the corner store and stole a pregnancy test for his sister.

All right, so this piece is becoming a little more interesting. There's definitely a larger, more complex story being hinted at. Why can't the sister buy her own pregnancy test? Why is the boy stealing it? Why doesn't he just pay for it in the first place?

But wait -- we need a title. So how about ...

Incest

If you're cringing a little bit, then the story definitely evoked an emotional response. Keep in mind you shouldn't go overboard, and maybe this title does that. Maybe it could be something more vague, like "The First Time" or "The Night After" or something like that.

See how the title is just as important as the story?

Still another two weeks away before submissions open. I hear people are already working on their stories. Which was the whole point announcing the guidelines at the beginning of the month -- I want writers to spend time on these stories, think about the word choice, and not just throw them together as fast as they can and submit them.

Also, I'm happy to say it seems the Google hits for "hint fiction" have increased by almost 2,000 in the last two weeks, which is pretty amazing. Thanks to everyone who's helped get the word out, no matter if it was positive or negative :-)

Regarding Hint Fiction

This is like déjà vu all over again. When something becomes successful or popular, the haters slink out from under their rocks to start their dissing.

It happened months back when this whole thing started, and it's happening again.

And to be honest, I think it's hilarious.

You can't please all the people all the time, and when the haters make their appearance, I always feel like I'm doing something right.

Anyway, I've realized I'm taking for granted the fact that many new visitors to this site don't already know about Hint Fiction and the contest we had a few months back. This is all new to them, and while I don't really expect everyone to go back and read the very first essay (or this post, or this essay, or this interview, all which give insight into Hint Fiction), I figured it would be nice of me to lay out a brief history of the form and the idea behind the anthology.

So here goes:

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word story that went "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." A complete story in just six words.

Only there's a school of thought that doesn't see it as a story. Why? I don't know. People are weird that way. But I was curious at just what point a story stops becoming a story, how short it has to be, and so I wrote an essay about it for Gay Degani at the Flash Fiction Chronicles. I said that these stories only give a hint of a much larger story, and that because of that they should be called Hint Fiction.

Please understand that I said all of this facetiously. I never intended for any of it to catch on. I certainly never intended to get a book deal out of the thing. But hey, I ain't complaining.

Why 25 words? Well, why not? I've always found the classification of stories baffling. From novel to novella to novellete to short story to flash fiction to sudden fiction to micro fiction to nano fiction to drabbles to dribbles to now Hint Fiction. Who came up with the set word counts? Why does being within 1,000 words (or even 100 words) declassify one form from being another form?

Sadly, in this writing world in which we all live, classification and labels are key. People can't just be writers. Oh no. They have to be literary writers or science fiction writers or mystery writers. They must be labeled, oh yes they must, and like the authors, the stories must be labeled too.

Really, it's all very silly when you think about it. Like I've said before, as a rose is a rose is a rose, a story is a story is a story. Only, unfortunately, it's not.

Wait, you say, but isn't this art? Why should we limit art to anything, especially 25 words?

To which I respond: Take a freaking chill pill, okay?

Seriously, some people get uptight about the smallest things. Overthinking and overanalyzing way too much, and this is coming from a guy who overthinks and overanalyzes way more than he should.

Why 25 words? Why not 20? Why not 30? Can't a story of 30 words be considered Hint Fiction? Sure, I don't see why not (this story is 29 words and it definitely suggests a larger, more complex story), but you've gotta put your foot down somewhere, and besides, 25 words seemed like the perfect number (especially since a drabble is 100 words and a dribble is 50 words, making hint fiction 25 words just made sense).

And I'm hesitant to call Hint Fiction art, too, because once you call something art it becomes pretentious. But again, that goes into the whole labeling and categorizing foolishness ...

Then what about this thesis? you say. Why does this anthology have to prove anything?

To which I respond again: Take a freaking chill pill, okay?

Listen, this all goes back to the very start, to the idea that there are people who don't buy these tiny stories as stories. To them they're punchlines or jokes or aphorisms. And that's their opinion, and it's very difficult to change people's opinions. But with this anthology, I didn't want to include a slew of stories 25 words or less for the sake of being 25 words or less. My editor was in agreement. The top 20 finalists of the Hint Fiction contest were not authors just putting 25 words or less on a page. Each of them had to tell a story.

But again, that stubborn school of thought that refuses for whatever reason to see these stories as actual stories.

So I thought -- okay, then let's try to prove that these ARE stories. How? Well, quite simply I came up with four basic principles of what, for me at least, a story should do:

1. It should obviously tell a story
2. It should be entertaining
3. It should be thought provoking
4. And, if done just right, it should evoke some kind of emotional response from the reader

So I ask you -- if a story of 2,500 words or more can do all that, why can't a story 25 words or less?

Admittedly not everybody is going to see it that way. There are those who get the idea of this book and like it, others who don't and think it's stupid. That's to be expected.

(One major author I'd contacted about possibly submitting to the anthology said she didn't agree with the book's premise; her agent, however, thought it was a terrific idea and even suggested some of his other clients who he thought might be interested in submitting.)

Ultimately though, the idea here to just to have fun. My goal is for the writers to have fun working on their stories, and the eventual readers to have fun reading them. Granted, not every reader is going to love every story. I've found that a reader will love Story A and hate story B, while another reader will love Story B and hate Story A. Just like everything else in life, certain things appeal to us, other things don't.

Hint Fiction, above all else, is an exercise in brevity. It shows writers just how important word choice is, and hopefully this will reflect in their other writing.

So now I leave it up to you -- questions, comments, concerns, leave them in the comments section and I'll try to answer the best I can. After all, I don't have to defend myself like this, but I want everyone to see where I'm coming from, where I hope to go with the book, so that each person planning to submit can get a fair shake.

Show vs. Tell vs. Nothing

I published a story a couple weeks back at Every Day Fiction called "Incomplete." If you haven't read it yet, go take a look. I'll wait. Back? Good.

The response to the story was quite positive. It's great when readers leave comments or send e-mails about a story, but it's simply amazing when they actually blog about a particular story, as Erica Naone did. If you haven't read that yet, go take a look. I'll wait.

Now in the blog post she talks about creating an ominous mood right off the bat with the very first line:

The men without faces came for his father just after dinnertime.

This is one of those stories that started out with just that first line. I had no idea where it was headed. I just let the story tell itself.

One thing I was quite aware about doing, however, was staying detached from the story. Oftentimes it seems writers care way too much about their characters, and in doing so they smother those characters with their writing that the reader finds themselves not caring much at all.

Anton Chekhov once said that the colder a writer is toward his characters, the more the reader will care for them.

(Well, I'm paraphrasing here, because I'd first heard that in an interview with Stewart O'Nan, and even then I think he may have been paraphrasing.)

But the idea is the less you show and tell, the more the reader will feel inclined to step in and fill in the blanks.

(Yes, yes, just like Hint Fiction!)

So in the scene where the boy -- yes, I never gave him a name, which was intentional -- found the envelope with his father's thumbs, I never showed you his reaction. I left that reaction up to the reader, hoping they would then fill in the blank and feel the boy's surprise and pain themselves.

I don't think there's a term for this, and quite frankly, I've retired from attempting to coin literary terms (might as well quit while I'm ahead, right?), but I've always thought of them as punchline stomps.

Like when you tell a joke, you get to that punchline and everyone laughs and has a good time ... but if you keep going, past the point where you should have stopped, the joke loses its effectiveness.

The same thing goes for writing.

There are certain authors who know when to end a scene in the right place. Then there are certain authors who don't, and who draw the scene out for another two or three or four pages.

How do you know when you're stomping your punchlines?

Well, I'm not really sure. My suggestion is start at the very end of the scene or chapter or whatever, and start cutting. If you get to a point where you cut something and it takes away from the overall story, you know you've cut too much. After all, if you can cut and cut and none of it affects the story at all, what's it doing there in the first place?

Anatomy Of A Book Deal

Recently I was interviewed by a reporter for the local newspaper about the Norton deal (it should make Monday's evening edition, and if it’s also online I’ll be sure to post a link). To prepare for the interview I went back over some of the dates and thought I’d share them here for anyone who’s interested (so this isn't really an anatomy so much as a timeline). As my buddy Joe Schreiber told me, it’s amazing how fast the deal was closed, and it’s true -- unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson, book deals don’t happen overnight. They take weeks, sometimes months, and that’s if you’re lucky. Anyway, here’s the breakdown:

On March 31, I sent Gay an e-mail pitching my idea for an article about how short can you make a story until it’s no longer considered a story.

On April 14, I had written and uploaded the article into the Flash Fiction Chronicles website. It was officially in the queue, with two or three articles before it. (Note here that Gay had asked me if I wanted it launched on Friday or wait until Monday; she suggested we wait until Monday, as not much traffic passes through during the weekend, so that’s what we went with.)

On April 20, the article was posted and the Hint Fiction Contest was announced. A few blogs picked it up immediately and the news began to spread.

On April 21, MediaBistro mentioned the Contest on their website, and the thing blew up. Entries streamed in nonstop, not to mention that same day W.W. Norton approached me and my agent about possibly doing an anthology of Hint Fiction.

On April 22, Hint Fiction had an oh-so-brief mention at The New Yorker blog.

On May 1, Norton officially made an offer. My agent did his agent thing and negotiated for more money.

On May 6, Norton made a new offer. We accepted.

On May 11, my agent closed the deal and gave me the go ahead to announce the anthology to the world.

All said and done, from when the article was first posted to the closing of the deal, less than a month had passed. 

Now here are some points worth noting:

• I sometimes hear ignorant writers say “Why would I want an agent who takes 15% of my money when I could keep all of it?” Okay, that’s one way of thinking about it, but the truth of the matter is the more money an agent makes for you, the more money that agent makes, so of course they’re going to try to make as much as possible. (There's more an agent does, of course, but for our purposes right now let's concentrate on money.) After all, there’s a reason they are agents in the first place -- they know how to negotiate. My agent was able to increase the first offer by over 30%. And, remember, he only gets 15%, so that’s a hell of a lot more money for me. Also, agents do the dirty work as the intermediaries, so that there are no hard feelings between the publisher and writer. A writer can try to negotiate his or her own rate, but unless you’re Dean Koontz (who now works without an agent), you will never get as much money from a publisher as you could with an agent.

• The Internet is full of liars. I’ve been fortunate enough to know Stewart O’Nan for many years now, and when I asked him to judge the contest he was more than willing. But how would anyone know that? Nobody ever asked for any proof. I just posted on my blog that Stewart O’Nan would be the final judge, and everyone believed it. Hell, MediaBistro believed it, and that’s why they picked up the story. See where I’m going with this? Fortunately I’m an honest person and would never try to pull off a hoax like that, but who’s to say that Joe Blow over at the blog down the street who’s sponsoring a contest with James Lee Burke as the judge really knows James Lee Burke? Just saying. 

• Luck plays a major factor. Hard work does too, of course, just as perseverance, but being in the right place at the right time ... you can't plan for that. Had I told Gay I wanted to have the article posted that Friday, not many blogs might have picked it up, and MediaBistro may never have mentioned it, and Norton may never have approached us ...

• Viral kicks ass. Sometimes it just happens, and sometimes you can help it happen. I stole an idea from Joe Konrath for the second part of the Hint Fiction Contest. Joe went on a blog tour, stopping by over 100 blogs in a month's time, and that really helped spread the word about him and his book. I used the approach where if people mentioned the contest on their own blog, I'd put their name in a hat for a random drawing. Not a massive turnout, but pretty big nonetheless. Had I not originally offered that second contest, who's to say what would have happened? (Also note here that over the course of two weeks, Hint Fiction went from a Google hit of less than 100 to over 2,000.)

So yeah, there are some things worth thinking about. Some what-ifs and what-could-have-beens and what-might-not-have-happeneds. Heavy stuff, no?

Why I Like Blogging Better

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of self-promotion. Personally, I just want to write, try to sell stories and novels, and that’s it. Unfortunately, in this digital day and age, you can’t do that.

I knew I’d eventually need a website but kept putting it off. Finally, about a year and a half ago, I broke down and realized I just needed to do it, jump in with both feet.

Only I didn’t want to spend money (who does?). After all, what would I be spending money on exactly? It wasn’t like I had a book to promote. Hell, I hadn’t sold a story in over a year, so I had nothing to promote on that end either.

But still, that inevitable hyphenated word: web-presence.

I started out with Blogger. I liked the setup. Stayed with that for a few weeks. Thought I'd be happy.

Then I came across WordPress. I liked that setup even better. It made it look less like a blog and more like a website … while still being a blog. So I switched over.

In the back of my mind I always knew I wanted to have an actual website, my own domain, all of that. I had even considered buying a domain through WordPress, which would have been cheap, but I still would have been hosted by WordPress. Which meant I was limited in what I could and could not do without having to pay an upgrade.

And then this Norton deal came along, and Joe Konrath was telling me about this whole self-employment tax, how the government is basically going to try to screw me out of as much money as possible, so I had to be sure to write off every single thing that could be construed as a business expense, keep the receipts, keep logs, etc.

(Which I’ve dutifully been doing, thank you very much.)

And then I thought, shit, I jumped in with two feet before, why not do it again?

So I found hosting, bought a domain, and now here we are.

I could have gone many different routes with this website. I could have had just a nice shiny site created professionally. Trust me, I was tempted. There are some web designers out there that I absolutely adore. Their sites come off looking so clean and crisp and fresh.

But, for the most part, they remain static.

They get updated every once in awhile.

There might be a link to the writer’s blog, where the visitors are ferried away to yet another site, mostly to Blogger which is – surprise, surprise – free.

So that’s where most of the visitors, in my mind at least, end up.

At the free blog, the one the author updates regularly, and not to main website, the one that author is paying a pretty penny to keep maintained.

See where I’m going with this?

My philosophy with having a website is that readers and visitors or whoever can come across it and see that it’s fresh, updated, coherent. That’s where they come and that’s where they keep returning (hopefully).

Not to a website that hasn’t been updated in six months.

Not to a website that has links that are outdated and lead absolutely nowhere.

Not to a website that leads to another website that leads to another website that leads to another website.

(Okay, I'm exaggerating with that last one, sorry.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those scenarios, of course, but that’s just not what I’m going for here.

You see, I’ve come to understand lurker are quite lazy.

They don’t like working for what they want.

They don’t like clicking on more links than they have to.

So if they come to a writer’s website and see a static page, they might happen to notice the link on the sidebar that directs them to that writer’s blog or LiveJournal or whatever.

Nine times out of ten, that person will probably click on that link.

Then again, they might decide it just isn’t worth it, that they’re much too busy, and go elsewhere.

I wanted this website – this fabulous www.robertswartwood.com – to be the one-stop place for all things me.

My hope is to update regularly, at least once a week if not more. I keep the Announcements box at the top of the sidebar, and you’d be amazed how many more links are clicked there than anywhere else on the website. I also plan to expand the Hint Fiction page (with what, I’m not sure yet, but as the weeks and months lead up to the eventual release of the anthology, it will definitely be going through some changes).

Are there things I’d like to do with this website that I can’t do right now?

Of course.

But I’m not a web designer. I can barely understand HTML code. To even get a hint I'd have to read one of those HTML for dummies for dummies for dummies.

And I don't know if that book's even exists.

Hmm -- maybe there's my next book idea ...

(Oh, and the picture? We're turtle-sitting for friends. His name is Franklin. He's not mutant, nor is he a ninja, but he is pretty friggin cool. Cowabunga, dude!)