Adventures in Strandland

Three things prompted me to write this column today. One was a kind email last week from a writer in the Balkans saying he had read one of my SleuthSayers posts about mystery markets and asking if I had any updated advice about those, the second was a conversation I had the other day with old friend Rob Lopresti about mystery publications, and the third was the recent announcement that the wonderful Mystery Magazine was calling it quits.

All this got me to thinking about how relatively few mystery markets are still out there these days, and which of those have been the most helpful to me, over the years. Now that Mystery Magazine is no more, those are (again, in my case) AHMM, EQMM, Strand Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and (if you consider them a mystery market) Woman's World. For that matter, Black Cat Weekly isn't solely a mystery magazine either, but that's what almost all my BCW stories have been.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to today's post. A few weeks ago, my story "Welcome to Armadillo" was published in the new issue of Strand Magazine. It's a private eye story, but a bit different, in several ways. For one thing, my PI spends far more time in this story running from killers than he does in detecting anything, although the skills of his job do help him to survive the tale. Another thing is, one of the people intent on killing him is his own wife. (Have you noticed that very few fictional private detectives are happily married?) Also, though I guess it doesn't matter, this particular guy is new, and not one of my series PIs. 

Much of the fun I had in writing this story came from the four or five major plot reversals that happen in the course of the story and from a number of characters I grew to like so much I hated to leave them when I wrote END. The story features betrayals, shootings, stabbings, marital infidelity, political corruption, a bomb threat, a cross-country bus ride, killers for hire, rattlesnakes, drug trafficking, a birthday celebration, a jailbird bent on revenge, a guy abandoned in the middle of the desert, and a roadside cafe. (For some reason, several of my recent stories have featured diners and other restaurants; never let it be said that I allow my hardworking characters to go hungry.) 

This story also marked sort of a "first" for me: This was my sixth story in a row to be published by the Strand. I'm not sure I've ever had stories in six consecutive issues of a magazine before, and I would like to think this is the beginning of a trend. With most of the magazines I submit stories to, I'm more accustomed to having half a dozen issues published in a row without one of my stories in them. So I'm enjoying that while I can.

My other most recent publication was a short story that had appeared in Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024 and then showed up a week or two ago in that anthology's UK edition Best Crime Stories of the Year. That story, "Last Day at the Jackrabbit," also has ties to Strand Magazine--it first appeared in their Spring 2023 issue.

Back on the subject of current mystery markets, I would encourage you to try submitting to them all, including some that I didn't list. I often find that a story rejected at one market can later be accepted at one of the others. I'll close with two tips: (1) don't spend too much time trying to make sense of the selection process--that way lies madness--and (2) don't worry if your story isn't a traditional whodunit mystery. Very few of mine are. If your story contains a crime, that's all you need, for these markets. 

Questions: If you're a short-story writer, which mystery magazines do you submit to most often? Which ones do you tend to try first, second, third, etc.? Which magazines have proven to be the best match for the kind of stories you write? Do you--as I do--find yourself writing less for magazines nowadays, and more for anthologies? I welcome you to share your experiences and thoughts on all this, in the comments.

Meanwhile, keep writing!

The Rules of Dialog (Good and Bad)

  

I love writing--and reading--short stories. Almost everything about writing them is fun for me, though the things I most enjoy are the plotting and the dialog. For that reason, I'm often surprised to hear others (novelists, too) say they find those two things to be the hardest.

Easy or hard, plotting's a subject for another time. Today I'd like to rant awhile about what the characters say to each other, and how we convey it to the reader.

As for the title of this post, I think most advice about writing dialog is accurate and helpful--but not all of it.

Consider the following twelve points:

1. Some writing instructors urge their students to avoid the use of dialog attributes ("tags" like Joe said, Jane asked, etc.) unless absolutely necessary to identify a speaker. I agree to some extent, because ideally we should write dialog such that the dialog itself makes it clear who's speaking. But you can't take that to extremes. I've read a lot of student manuscripts, and several published stories, in which the writers were obviously going out of their way to treat dialog tags as if they were Kryptonite, to the detriment of the story. That total avoidance of tags, to me, was as distracting as using too many.

Even though I agree that dialog tags are mainly to identify the speaker, they can also be used for other purposes. 

- A he said/she said can serve as a way to change the subject in mid-speech. Example: "I'll sure be glad when this week is over," she said. "How's your dad doing?" 

- It can be used to isolate and put extra emphasis on a final sentence. Example: "I'll just tell you one thing," she said. "Don't trust him too much."

- It can create a needed break or pause, just to help the common-sense rhythm of a sentence or paragraph. "I coulda had class," he said. "I coulda been a contender."

2. I've heard writers say they dislike using the word said, to the degree that they usually substitute a synonym. I think that's wrong. I used to tell my writing students to remember that dialog tags such as he said and he asked (and maybe she replied) are so common that they've almost become transparent; the reader's eye goes right over them, while expressions like he exclaimed, she inquired, he interjected, etc., can interrupt the flow and distract the reader for a moment from the story, which is something no writer wants to do. (This is why Elmore Leonard famously advised writers to "never use a synonym for said," although I don't quite agree on "never.") Adding to the problem, tags like she explained, he insisted, she inquired, and he retorted are repetitive--the dialog itself should tell the reader whether someone is explaining or insisting or inquiring or retorting. 

Read, or re-read, Lonesome Dove sometime. Larry McMurtry used said constantly, regardless of whether an identifier was needed. If I weren't a writer, I would never even have noticed it. Not only was it not distracting, the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

3. In a nutshell, (1) don't feel you have to use a dialog tag if it's clear who's speaking, (2) don't overuse possibly-distracting synonyms for said, (3) don't worry about repeating said or asked too many times, and (4) do use a dialog attribute or an embedded name if there is any question at all about who is speaking. Readers hate to have to count lines backward to identify who's saying what. (And yes, I know I shouldn't complain about repetition--there was plenty of it in this little summary.)

4. Here's something that's rarely mentioned but can be helpful: It's usually better, especially in informal writing, to place the name or pronoun first (Mary said instead of said Mary). The only times I find myself putting the name last is when I need to add some kind of phrase afterward, in the same sentence. Example: "I'm leaving," said Mary, putting on her hat and coat. 

5. I've seen beginning writers, in their efforts to avoid dialog tags, overuse characters' names in back-and-forth dialog between two people. "Hi, Tom, what's up?" "Not much, Jimmy. Taking a trip tomorrow." "Where to, Tom?" "Well, Jimmy, we're headed for the mountains this time." That's an exaggeration, but not by much--and people obviously don't talk this way. Same thing goes for the use of contractions. Nobody speaks like this: "I think I will go see Bill. I am sure he is fine, but since his wife is away, I will go check." Instead they use contractions like I'll and I'm and he's and wife's. If you read your dialog aloud afterward, you'll be able to spot problems like this right away.

6. To again paraphrase Mr. Leonard, try to avoid the use of "ly" adverbs. If the dialog's written well, it probably won't need adverbs after the tags (he said softly, she asked sadly, he replied angrily) to prop it up. And silly repetition can come into play here as well, if you write something like he whispered softly, she moaned sadly, he growled angrily.

7. Since I've already mentioned formal vs. informal, the use of semicolons in dialog can make the writing appear stiff and formal even if that's not your intention. I use far fewer semicolons than I once did, in all kinds of writing, and I never use them in dialog. Dashes, by the way, can be good substitutes for semicolons.

8. Something I do a lot in dialog is indicate interrupted speech. If it's an abrupt interruption and not a "trailing off," the best way to do this is to end the sentence with a dash (not a set of ellipses). Example: 

"What do you think you're--"

"You know very well what I'm doing."

It's especially effective because interruption happens so often when we speak to each other in real life.

9. Feel free to fragment sentences whenever necessary, in dialog. One trick I think I've mentioned before at this blog is to delete certain words, especially at the beginning of some sentences, to make the dialog sound more like the way we actually speak. Here's an example:

Original sentence: "Do you want to go see a movie?"

Better: "You want to go see a movie?"

Even better: "Want to go see a movie?"

10. Be careful about using dialect. The key, I think, is to ask yourself if it's really necessary. And if you do try to write dialect, remember that many editors hate intentionally misspelled words (sho nuff, etc.)--I've found those sometimes work if you don't do it too often. A better idea is to occasionally use slang or regional or ethnic expressions or change real sentences around a bit: (Where you think you headed? or You got mush in your ears? or Daisy says Jimbo has done shot Charlie or You best get over here, and quick.)

11. An ironclad dialog rule that often gets overlooked: Do not include closing quotation marks at the end of a paragraph in a speech that resumes in the next paragraph if the same person is speaking. A correct example: 

John said, into the microphone, "Thank you so much, Councilman Smith, for that fine presentation. We all appreciate your taking the time to visit us today.

"Our final guest is Dr. Susan Jones from the Carter Foundation. Please join me in welcoming her."

I still see this misused, probably by accident, in many published works, and I always find myself wondering if it was a typo or if the author and/or editor just didn't know better.

12. Try, when you can, to use what Sol Stein called "oblique" dialog. In other words, introduce something unexpected--have people reply in a way that doesn't answer a question or brings up new questions or changes direction in some way. Examples:

"Hey. How you doin'?"

"Wow--I sure didn't expect to see you here."

"What have you been up to?"

"Oh. You haven't heard?"

"Where you going today?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Looks like it's beginning to rain."

"What do you suggest?"

12. Last but not least, try not to construct paragraphs of dialog that look too much alike. Example:

"We're ready to go," John said. "You coming?'

"Hang on," Judy called. "I'm in the bathroom."

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said. "Good grief."

That kind of writing looks and sounds amateurish. You need some tags here to ID the speakers, yes, but maybe some of those tags could be deleted or moved to the end of the paragraph instead of being in the middle--or maybe some beats of action could be plugged in. Example:

John picked up his car keys. "We're ready to go. You coming?"

"Hang on, I'm in the bathroom," Judy called.

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Good grief."

So, what are your thoughts on all this? Do you like writing dialog, or do you find it difficult? Do you ever write plays or screenplays, which are almost nothing but dialog? What are your own personal "do's and don'ts"? Do you ever use dialog tags just to help regulate the sound or rhythm of a sentence? Do you ever read your dialog aloud to see if it "sounds" right? What are some of your own hints and tips?

There is of course much more that could be said about dialog and its rules, but I know (or I hope I know) when I've rambled long enough. So pick up your car keys, unless you're in the bathroom, and come on--we're already late. Go do some writing.

"What kind of writing?" she asked.

"Dialog," he said.

R.I.P., Nelson DeMille

  

Three days ago, I sat down to start a column about writing dialog--rules, myths, hints, tips--that I intended to post here at SleuthSayers today (I'm up every first, third, and fifth Saturday). Instead, I immediately saw a post by friend Don Longmuir on Facebook about the September 17 passing of crime/suspense author Nelson Demille.

All of a sudden I had no interest at all in writing a blog post about dialog. I couldn't seem to think about anything else except the unexpected loss of one of my favorite authors. I mean, much of what I learned and know about dialog--and other elements of fiction as well--I learned from DeMille's work. I devoured his books.

By way of background, Nelson DeMille was a NYT bestseller and Vietnam veteran who lived most of his life on Long Island. His novels were full of dry humor and sarcasm, and often avoided so-called "Hollywood endings"--they often finished in a satisfying but unexpected way, with the characters' futures unresolved. As far as I know, only one of his novels has been adapted for film: The General's Daughter (1990), starring John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, and James Cromwell--though I suspect almost all of them have been optioned. Now that he's gone, I especially hope that more movies will follow.

I own all his major novels, in hardcover because I bought them as soon as they were released, beginning with By the Rivers of Babylon in 1978. (I was a Book-of-the-Month Club member back then, and I think it was a main selection, sent to me automatically.) I loved it, and was an avid fan from that point on. Looking at one of the shelves behind where I'm sitting right now, I have twenty-three of his novels, two of them co-written with his son Alex. Every one of them is special. DeMille is one of those few writers whose books I will pick up and re-read every few years. 

One of the things that 's always surprised me a bit is that so many of my writer friends, and readers also, are unfamiliar with his fiction. Those who do know of him seem to be most familiar with one particular series he wrote, beginning with Plum Island in 1997, starring retired NYPD detective John Corey. I believe there are eight Corey novels, but I can tell you, I thought all DeMille's books, series or standalone, were good--well-written, entertaining, and sometimes educational. One of the things I most loved about them is the way he inserted humor into otherwise serious fiction, sometimes on almost every page. It makes reading--and re-reading--his novels even more fun. 

For what it's worth, my favorite DeMilles are The Charm School (1988), Plum Island (1997), Up Country, (2002), Wild Fire (2006), and The Cuban Affair (2017). Only two of those are installments in the John Corey series, but again, I liked 'em all.

I never knew Mr. DeMille or met him, except via one Zoom call a couple of years ago. But some of those who did know him well--Otto Penzler, Andrew Gulli, and others--have told me he was as good and as interesting a person as he was a writer. I know for sure that he's one of several authors who had a great influence on me and my storytelling. 

(Something only just occurred to me: The feeling I had when I learned of DeMille's death the other day was like the way I felt the week before, when I heard James Earl Jones had died. I never knew either of them, but somehow it seemed as if I did. Probably because I so admired and respected them, and spent so much time reading and watching them over the years.)

 

In closing, if you've not read the novels of Nelson DeMille I hope you will, and if you've already read some of his work, I'd love to hear what you think, in the comments section below. Personally, I will miss him greatly, and will miss looking forward to his next release.

As for my column on dialog, I'm not letting you off that easy. It'll be my next post.

See you in two weeks!

The Second (or Third?) Time Around

 

Last Saturday I posted a column here at SleuthSayers about a story of mine that was reprinted several times, in different magazines, books, etc., after its first publication. As a result, during this past week, I received several emails from fellow writers asking me to do a followup post just about reprints. How often do they happen, how much can you earn from them, how and where do you market them, etc.

This request came at a good time, because I had no idea what I was going to write about today. Anyhow, here's my response.

First, there are two kinds of reprint opportunities. One's the four-leaf-clover, blind-luck kind that comes out of the blue, thanks to no action or initiative of your own. These are the best kind of reprints because they're usually more prestigious, result in higher payment, and require no effort on your part. A good example is when/if your story happens to be selected for an annual "best-of" anthology, like The Best Mystery Stories of the Year. Those are seen by a lot of readers, and--in my experience--pay around $500. Your story might also be chosen for reprint by a foreign or specialized publication, one you might not even know about until you've been contacted by that editor or publisher. The pay for those projects is often decent as well. All you have to do is sign a contract allowing them a one-time use of your story and send them a copy of it--and sometimes you don't even have to send a copy, if they already have the issue of the publication (or the book) in which your story originally appeared.

The other kind of reprint opportunity is the one that you find in the wild, on your own. You gather what information you can about the publications that might be receptive to previously published stories, then you study their submission guidelines and submit your story to them along with a cover letter, just as you would when marketing an original story. Then you cross your fingers and wait for a response. If your story's accepted, the payment for this kind of reprint varies all over the place, as you might imagine. But I have occasionally made more money from those than from the original piece. And you can do this over and over, so long as you never relinquish "all rights" to your story. (By the way, here's something that took me a while to learn: you cannot surrender all rights accidentally; it must be done via a contract. So it's not something you have to worry about.)

What are the markets for reprints? They're the same three as for original stories: magazines, anthologies, and collections.

Magazines that feature reprints are few and far between, these days. One is Thema, the New Orleans literary journal that's been around a long time. I've sold them only original mystery stories, but their guidelines say they'll also consider reprints. Another is Crimeucopia, a UK-based anthology-like magazine. All seven of my stories that have appeared there had been previously published, and editor John Connor is kind and professional and easy to work with. Shotgun Honey also accepts reprints, or at least they did four years ago, when I sold them a previously published flash mystery story. The nonpaying but longtime markets Kings River Life Magazine and Mysterical-E also consider reprints.

Anthologies are usually a better bet than magazines for reprints, and they usually say in their guidelines whether reprints are allowed. Anthology editors' opinions vary: some want only original stories, stories no one's ever seen before, but others are happily open to reprints because (they say) those stories are proven quantities that have already been vetted and accepted for publication elsewhere. Be aware that anthologies, like magazines, usually pay less for reprints than for original stories, which is understandable.

The last of the three, a collection of a writer's own work, is a logical place for reprints. The publisher of my short-story collections actually preferred reprints, for the same reasons I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Do make sure, though, that the collection contract states that you will still own the rights to the individual stories. 

NOTE: Another recent reprint market, although it's neither a magazine nor an anthology, is Storia, also known as Storiaverse. Most of what I've sold them are original stories, but they've also published one of my reprints. I'mvnot sure what their payment for reprints is now, or how long it is before they return rights to you for the story, but at one point it was $750 per reprint, and rights would revert to you after ten years.

Here are a few more points/hints/tips about the marketing of reprints, also known as Giving Your Stories a Reborn Identity. 

1. When you see a group of markets presented as they are in places like Publishers and Other Forms of Insanity, try searching those market listings by typing REPRINTS in the "Find" box at the time of the page. This should quickly show you which of those listings will consider reprint submissions. I used to do that often at the Ralan's Webstravaganza website, but alas, they gave up the ghost several years ago.

2. It's usually easier to sell reprints of older stories than those published more recently. Some guidelines even state that they'll only consider stories published more than a certain number of years ago.

3. Try selling your original stories to print publications first. When you later re-market those stories as reprints, they're often easier to sell than stories that originally appeared in online publications.

4. When selling a reprint that has already appeared in more than one place, put in your cover letter that "this story was first published in ABC Magazine." That way you can be truthful without having to say "this story was previously published in ABC Magazine, X Magazine, and Y Magazine." Shouldn't make a difference, but it could.

5. Sometimes a story needs to be tailored a bit before trying to sell it as a reprint. When that happens, it is not enough to just change the title and the setting and the characters' names and some things about the plot and then call it an original story. It's still a reprint. What I do in that case is say in my cover letter something like "a modified version of this story first appeared in XYZ Magazine."

6. Specifically, what I usually say in a cover letter for a reprint is, "This story was originally published in the July 20, 1997 Issue of Dead & Gone Magazine. Since they acquired first rights only, I hope you'll want to use it in a future issue of Here & Now Magazine." Be ready to send a copy of the original contract to the editor if requested, but I have so far never been asked to do that.

So that's it. What are your thoughts, and history, on this subject? If you're a writer of short stores, do you actively seek out reprint opportunities? Have you had any good, or bad, experiences there? What have been some of your best reprint sales, and reprint markets?

In closing, here's something I've mentioned before at this blog--and it's still true. Don't let those stories that you've worked hard on sit idle after publication. When the exclusivity period in your contract runs out--they're rarely longer than six months--get the stories you're proud of back out there and into circulation again. Why not?

Remember, short fiction is 100% recyclable.

The Same Old Story

  

A fact of life, in this business: a short story will sometimes take on a life of its own, after it's first published. That doesn't always happen (I wish it did), and I've never been able to predict if or when it will, but sometimes you get lucky.

 

Here's an example. A little over ten years ago, I saw a piece on the TV news about a bank that no one thought could be robbed. I've forgotten what bank it was and where it was located, but I remember the report featured a bunch of security experts giving their reasons why that particular financial institution would probably always be safe from criminal behavior. And as far as I know, it was, and still is--but their long-range outcome didn't much matter to me. I mean, I continue to wish them well, but I already had what I wanted: I had an idea for a crime story.

As I have mentioned before at this blog, I always start the writing process by thinking about the plot, not the characters or the setting or the theme, and sometime over the next several days I worked out what I thought would be a cool little story with a bunch of reversals and surprises, involving a regular guy with a smart wife (I can relate directly to that) and what might happen if she mapped out a risky but interesting blueprint for a heist.

Flash forward several days. Having brainstormed the plotline until my head hurt, I came up with a title ("Molly's Plan"), sat down, and wrote the story--the writing itself usually goes pretty fast once I've figured out the structure and flow, etc.--and submitted it to Strand Magazine, where I'd had some modest success with stories that have twisty plots. Thankfully, after a wait of several weeks, editor Andrew Gulli accepted the story, and it was published in the Strand's next issue (June-September 2014). I was happy, the editor seemed happy, both of us hoped the readers who read it were happy, and, as folks around here like to say, life went ahead on.  

Then, around the end of that year, I received an email informing me that "Molly's Plan" had been chosen for the upcoming (2015) edition of Best American Mystery Stories. This was my first time for that honor, which had been sort of a bucket-list dream for me, and at the time I didn't realize just how much exposure and feedback and recognition those selected stores later receive. The Strand has a big circulation, but BAMS reached a lot of readers who otherwise might never have seen or known about Molly or her plan. Within a month following the anthology's release in September 2015, I was contacted--mostly via my website--by (1) people I'd never met, (2) old friends I hadn't heard from in years, (3) several high-school teachers and college instructors asking if they could use my story in their classes, and (4) an agent at CAA in Los Angeles inquiring about film/TV rights to the story. (I happily put her in touch with my agent, but alas, that project eventually went nowhere.)

I think a lot of this immediately-after-the-fact interest was because the guest editor for that edition of BAMS was James Patterson, who singled out my story for special praise in his introduction to the book. He said, "'Molly's Plan,' by John M. Floyd, details the formation and execution of a bank heist so real and intense that I find it impossible to believe the tale took up only a few pages. An imaginative twist at the end of the story makes it a truly satisfying read." And no, Mr. Patterson is not my long-lost uncle--he's just one of those kind and encouraging authors who are famous but have nice things to say about writers who aren't, and for that I'll always be grateful to him.

Shortly afterward, Kirkus Reviews said, in its coverage of BAMS 2015, "In 'Molly's Plan,' John M. Floyd maps out a nearly impossible bank robbery with a twist ending that's so ingenious it's tempting to root for the bad guys." And Publishers Weekly mentioned it as well: "A never-robbed bank practically invites criminals in John M. Floyd's amusing heist yarn, 'Molly's Plan.'" All these kind words were welcome and unexpected and humbling, and made me even more thankful that I'd happened to look up from eating ice cream in front of the TV long enough to watch that news broadcast about that unrobbable bank the previous year.

Back to my story-history analysis. The following year, 2016, a sixth collection of my short stories was published, called Dreamland. (A strange name for a mystery collection, I know, but the title is from a crime/fantasy story I sold to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.) The collection featured thirty of my previously published stories, including that one from AHMM, an Edgar-nominated story from the Strand, two Derringer winners (one from EQMM and one from the Strand), and "Molly's Plan." Signings for this book were especially fun for me because copies of the 2015 BAMS were still on display at most of the bookstores I signed in, and a surprising number of customers wound up buying my story collection because of that (I might've, in weak moments, happened to mention the BAMS inclusion to them). Many even bought both books, which was pleasing to the store managers--and bookstore managers rank high on the list of folks I like to please.

Anyhow, another year passed by, and around the time any excitement about "Molly's Plan" seemed to have faded away (I was the only one truly excited about it anyway), I was contacted by an editor from Moscow who had seen my story and wanted to reprint it in Inostranaya Literatura, Russia's leading literary journal. I again called my agent, put him in touch with the editor of the magazine, and this time all went well. I got paid, thankfully in dollars and not rubles, and the Russian translation of my story appeared in IL's January 2018 issue. I still can't read the story, but the issue's sitting here on my bookshelf. 

Also in 2017, while I was getting those emails from Russia with love, another unexpected honor came along. I received a kind note from a lady at the New York Public Library, informing me that "Molly's Plan" had been selected for inclusion in their permanent digital archive, and partly as a result of that, they wanted to acquire the rights to use the story in their newly-conceived Subway Library System project, which would allow subway passengers audio access to a number of short stories read by professional narrators. They even designed what I thought was an eye-catching cover for the story--the one with the blond lady shown at the top of this post--to put in their promotional materials. I don't know if the project ever got off the ground--or into the subway tunnels--but it sounded like a worthwhile effort and I was flattered that the library folks wanted to again resurrect Molly and her husband and their illegal activities.

Finally and most recently, a full ten years after this story was first published in the Strand, my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman chose it as her "pick for the week" in Issue #155 of Black Cat Weekly. Thank you once again, Barb, for doing that, and thus giving this story some new readers. I'm glad you liked it and I hope they do also.

How about you, my fellow writers? Do you have stories that you wrote and sold and possibly forgot about, only to see those stories pop up again in other places, months or even years later? I know many of you have, because I've seen those stories in your own collections or in best-of-the-year anthologies or awards. If you're one of those fortunate writers, please let me know, in the comments section, about your experiences. Did you ever have a feeling, early on, that those stories might go on to gain later recognition? Or did those opportunities appear out of the blue?

In closing . . . keep in mind, everyone, that every time you put your fingers to the keys, these stories of yours that might've begun as vague glimmers of ideas in the middle of the night could just possibly be around for a long, long time. It's the exception rather than the rule, but it can happen. 

Just another reason to keep doing what we're doing.

See you next Saturday.

 

 

Submission Accomplished

  

About two weeks ago, a good friend who's also an editor contacted me and said he needed a story for a crime anthology he was editing and needed it really fast, because one of the contributors had backed out of the lineup and he had to send everything to the publisher in just a few days. (Red alert red alert!) The theme of the anthology was specific but interesting, and after some arm-twisting I agreed to come up with a story. I did it in my usual way, beginning with a plot (a crime) and then putting in the characters and settings that were necessary to tell the tale, and--bottom line--I finished the story, sent it to him, and got a thumbs-up, so all is well in the world.

But that's not why I'm posting this column. I'm posting it because it occurred to me, as I sat down to begin typing that new story, that every single story I've written in the past several years has started by my doing the same thing. I pull up a previous story manuscript, change the title, delete everything below my byline, and start typing the new manuscript--which is then "saved as" a new file bearing the title of the new story. What I'm saying here is that all my stories use the same template.

What does that template look like? It's almost identical to the example shown at the Shunn's Modern Manuscript Format site. I said "almost the same" because there are a few things I choose to do differently. 

In case you're interested (and if you're an established writer I'm sure you already have your own version of all this), here are some observations about the way I format a short-stort manuscript for submission:

- I like Shunn's advice on placing the name/address/contact information at the top left of the first page and and the approximate word count, rounded off to the nearest hundred, at the top right. I don't usually include my membership in professional writing organizations in all this, as he suggests, but you can do that if you want.

- I type my story title and byline in proper case between a third of the way and halfway down the page. I sometimes change this after I finish the story, depending on where my story ends on the final page. (More about that later.)

- I always indent the first line of the story and the first line of every new scene, just as I indent the first lines of all the other paragraphs, as Shunn suggests. Some authors don't indent those first lines of scenes in order to make it look more like a printed version, but I do.

- I double-space everything in the text of the story with nothing extra between paragraphs. When I taught writing classes, some students turned in their stories with a slightly bigger vertical space between paragraphs. Editors I've talked with don't like that, and neither would I.

- I center a pound-sign (#) between scenes. Some writers and editors prefer using other separators (three asterisks, etc.) and some prefer to use nothing except one extra vertical space to separate scenes. I do whatever the guidelines tell me to, but I like putting at least something there, because when I used only spacing between scenes, I once had an editor butt two scenes together in the printed version of one of my stories. Scene breaks are there for a reason, and inserting a separator of some kind lessens the possibility of that happening. 

- I make sure Widow/Orphan Suppression is turned OFF before starting. In other words, widows and orphans are fine with me (even in real life) and if you suppress them, it can cause way too much open space left at the bottom of some pages. If all this sounds ridiculous to you, Google widow/orphan control.

- I also make sure Grammar Check is turned off. That program is maddening to me. When writing fiction, I happily splice commas, split infinitives, fragment sentences, etc., when needed, and I don't want the computer telling me I can't. (This is one of those times when it's good to be da king.)

- I use the Tab key to indent the first lines of all paragraphs unless the submission guidelines tell me to do otherwise. I know some editors prefer an automatic half-inch setting, etc., to indent paragraphs.

- I space only once after a period. I'm old and it was hard to make myself change, on this, but I did. It's my theory that the two-spaces-after-a-period rule was there to go along with the each-letter-takes-up-the-same-amount-of-space Courier font. The two spaces made everything look better, back then.

- I italicize. I don't underline. Underlining to emphasize text goes back to the days of typewriters, when italics weren't a possibility. I have, however, submitted stories to publications whose guidelines said to underline and not italicize, and I followed their rules. Just saying.

- I center the word END three double-spaces (sometimes two) below the final line of my story. Shunn prefers THE END, and that's fine too. I think it's good to put something there, because if my text happens to go all the way to the bottom of the final page, I don't want an editor to wonder if another page should be coming. Maybe, as with scene separators, that's just me and my paranoia.

- I don't use anything except black TNR 12-point format throughout. No colors, no boldface type. If I need to include something like a newspaper article excerpt, etc., I sometimes indent the whole thing to set it off from the rest of the text but I leave the font size the same.

When I'm done typing the story, I go back and check several things:

- I make sure all curly apostrophes and quotation marks are "aimed" the right way. Example: to properly type 'em (instead of them), I type a character just before em, hit the apostrophe key after that character, and delete the character I inserted. I realize that's a bassackwards way of getting there, but it works. I do the same kind of thing with single quotation marks in funny places. There are of course other ways to do this, but I like that one.

- I do a spell-check of the whole finished manuscript to catch misspellings, duplicated words, etc. It also flags certain odd words that I want to leave as is. (I like made-up words, and my characters sometimes THUNK their heads on the sidewalk or WHACK their palms on desktops, so when those get flagged I just override the program and allow them.

- I check to make sure my headers look right. Since I use previous stories as templates, it's all too easy to accidentally leave the title to the previous story in my header.

- If my story ends too close to the bottom of the page for me to write END two or three double-spaces after the final line, I don't want to put END by itself at the top of the next page. Instead, I go back to the first page and adjust that one-third-to-halfway-down title and byline such that END can now fit at the bottom of the last page or such that I can put the final couple of lines of text at the top of the next page and type END below that. This adjustment isn't usually required, but it sometimes is.

NOTE: Some editors prefer different fonts, different separators between scenes, and other unusual things. Whatever they want, I do it. (One editor, I recall, wanted everything to be in Verdana font.) If I don't like it, I do it anyway, and then change it back later, when I submit the story someplace else as a reprint. 

Again, these are just things I do in preparing my own stories. I'm NOT saying you should do it that way. I would like to hear, though, about your preferences on this submission/style/formatting issue. Are you a Shunn follower or a Shunn shunner? What's the strangest requirement that you've seen in submission guidelines? Do you have some formatting tips that I or others might consider, to make manuscripts look or read better? In my view, all of us are still learning, on this and on everything.

Meanwhile, I wish you joy in your writing and luck with your submissions!

Back in two weeks.

Okay, You've Been Warned

About ten years ago I wrote a post here at SleuthSayers about the technique of foreshadowing in fiction. My intention today was to provide a link to that column, but it turns out some of the illustrations in that post have disappeared, so I've updated and expanded the whole thing here. (Partial plagiarism of my ownself.)

First, a definition. Merriam-Webster says foreshadowing is "a suggestion of something that has not yet happened." In the literary world, it's a little more complicated. Among other things, it means the early inclusion of information that makes later action believable. Because of this, and because our fictional plots must always be (or appear to be) logical, this writing technique is one of the most useful items in our toolbox.

I love foreshadowing. I like to read short stories and novels that use it, and--probably because of that--I like to use it in writing my own stories. An example of that is my story in the current (July/Aug) issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, called "Moonshine and Roses." I mentioned it in an SS post a few weeks ago, but I didn't talk about the foreshadowing part of it. I won't spell it out in case you haven't yet read the story, but if you have, I hope my early planting of vital information made the plot more interesting--or at least the conclusion more satisfying.

Give 'em hell, Larry

Mystery author Lawrence Block once told a joke about the use of foreshadowing. I'm paraphrasing here:

Officer: Okay, soldier. Suppose an enemy submarine surfaced and ran aground on that beach over there, and suppose it offloaded fifty enemy troops. What would you do?

Soldier: Sir, I'd blow 'em off the sand with concentrated mortar fire, sir!

Officer: What? Where would you get the mortars?

Soldier: Same place you got the submarine.

Foreshadowing, according to Block, is the technique of making both the submarine and the mortars acceptable to the reader.

It's a mystery to me

Mystery stories probably lend themselves to foreshadowing more than any other genre, because the clues in the narrative of a traditional mystery usually lead to the solution to the case--and if the reader pays attention, he is ideally given enough facts to come up with the answer himself. This is true of most crime/suspense stories, not just whodunits; the foreshadowing in thrillers and other non-traditional mysteries is sometimes used to telegraph to the reader the means by which the protagonist will get out of whatever fix the writer puts him in. Maybe there's an hidden gun in the kitchen drawer or a sudden curve in the highway up ahead that the carjacker doesn't know about, or maybe the killer's henchman is actually an undercover cop or the radio button on the dashboard is really the trigger for the ejection seat, or . . . you get the picture. 

And foreshadowing isn't always used just to "explain" later events. It can also be a way to generate suspense and anticipation, sort of a "ticking bomb" effect. If you read a story or novel or see a movie that mentions, during its first half, a particularly scary place or an especially fearsome enemy, then you as the reader/viewer will dread any situation that might put your hero in that dangerous location or put him in contact with that terrible person or entity you've been told about. Consider this: A group of hikers sees a razor-wire fence, or maybe a skull-and-crossbones sign or a row of scarecrows, on a ridge as they pass through the valley below, and one of them points and asks their guide what that means. The guide looks up and frowns and says, "Oh, that? That's the border of the Forbidden Zone. Don't worry--we won't be going there." That vague warning is a kind of foreshadowing, and the Forbidden Zone is of course exactly where the poor hikers will wind up, before the story's done.

What does foreshadowing really look like, in some of the movies and novels and stories that we see or read? (NOTE: the following examples contain spoilers . . .)

Hiding in plain sight 

The Usual Suspects -- As Verbal is questioned by the police, he sees a number of photos and newspaper clippings posted on their bulletin board. Those "clues" later add up to a great surprise ending. 

Psycho -- Norman Bates tells his motel guest, early on, that his mother is "as harmless as one of these stuffed birds." Which turns out to be true, since she turns out to be as dead as they are. It's her son who isn't harmless. 

Wait Until Dark -- The blind lady remarks to a visitor in her apartment that her old refrigerator growls and gurgles when its door is open because it needs to be defrosted. Later, after the lady has escaped from a killer in her apartment and has frantically knocked out all the lights in every room so he'll be in the dark as well, the killer quietly opens her fridge's door so the light will come on and he can see. She, of course, doesn't know he's done this--but then the refrigerator growls. She now knows the door's open, and knows that he can see her but she can't see him. (I saw this movie while in college, and I'll never forget that scene.)

The Empire Strikes Back -- "Much anger in him," Yoda says to Obi-wan, "like his father." He's talking about Luke Skywalker, who turns out to be the son of Darth Vader. 

Jaws -- Hooper warns Chief Brody about the potentially explosive nature of the compressed-air tanks, and Quint says something like "What good is all this equipment? Maybe the shark'll eat it." Later the shark winds up with one of the tanks in its mouth (its jaws?) and Brody shoots the tank, thus blowing Great Whitey to bits.

Reservoir Dogs -- An orange balloon is seen floating along in the street behind a car. As the story progresses, the man code-named Mr. Orange turns out to the impostor who's infiltrated the gang. 

The James Bond novels and films -- Before most of 007's missions, the armorer demonstrates the newest lethal gadgets developed by Q Branch. Later Bond uses them to save his skin (and the world).

Fatal Attraction -- When Dan Gallagher says he has to go walk his dog, the lady to whom he is fatally attracted replies, "Just bring the dog over--I'm great with animals and I love to cook." She later cooks Gallagher's daughter's pet bunny. 

Once Upon a Time in the West -- Several brief flashbacks show a mysterious blurred figure approaching the protagonist, in the desert. At the end of the movie, that image clears to reveal the villain, and the reason the protagonist has been searching for him for all these years.

The Edge -- An Alaskan guide explains to a group of tourists what a bear pit is, and points one out, saying, "Be careful--don't fall in." Afterward, when the two main characters are alone in the wilderness, and one is about to shoot the other, the gunman falls into a bear pit. The viewer accepts this sudden and convenient turn of events only because of that earlier explanation. 

The Shawshank Redemption -- During the search of an inmate's cell, the prison's warden picks up a Bible and says, "Salvation lies within." It's later revealed that the rock hammer used for the breakout is concealed inside the hollowed-out pages of that Bible. 

Goodfellas -- "Tommy's not a bad kid," Paulie Cicero admits. "What am I supposed to do, shoot him?" Which is exactly what later happens.

Citizen Kane -- The word rosebud is spoken at the first, and its meaning is revealed only at the end. 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- At one point, a wealthy collector notes that they're only one step away from locating the Holy Grail. Indy replies, "That's usually where the ground falls out from underneath your feet." When at the end of the story they find the Grail, a huge earthquake splits the earth and swallows some of the party.

"The Lottery" -- The pile of stones at the very beginning of this short story later takes on a whole new meaning.

Cool Hand Luke, Ghost, Love Story, Casablanca -- Bits of early dialogue are repeated at or near the end, for closure: "What we got here is a failure to communicate," "Ditto," "Love means never having to say you're sorry," "Here's looking at you, kid." 

L. A. Confidential -- Captain Smith asks Ed Exley whether he would be willing to plant evidence, beat a confession out of a suspect, or shoot a criminal in the back. Exley says no. By the end of the movie, though, he has done all three. 

Back to the Future -- In the opening credits the camera pans across dozens of clocks, one of which shows a man hanging from its hands, as Harold Lloyd famously did in the silent movie Safety Last. Later, as Marty McFly tries Doc Brown's experiment to go back to the future, Doc winds up hanging from the hands of the giant clock in the tower on the town square.

Aliens -- Lt. Ellen Ripley, who during training demonstrated her proficiency with a powerloader, later uses a powerloader to battle and defeat the alien queen. (This is, by the way, a fantastic movie.)

Signs of things to come

Two of my all-time favorite examples of foreshadowing:

The Sixth Sense -- There are a number of clues throughout the movie that I never suspected would point directly to what the audience eventually saw. I think this was the only time the Best Picture Oscar was ever awarded to a movie that was totally dependent on a surprise ending.

Signs -- There are at least half a dozen facts (signs?) presented during the course of the story that seem to make very little sense at the time, and later serve to make the unbelievable ending believable. I think of this film every time I see a really clever use of foreshadowing.

Questions for the class

Can you think of other stories, novels, or movies that demonstrate the effective use of foreshadowing? As a writer, do you incorporate foreshadowing in your own plotting? Have you, like me, ever used it to "rescue" a hard-to-believe plot and thus make your ending more logical? Which of your stories have featured it?

I have a few short stories coming out soon that rely heavily on planted clues that (I hope) make the endings better, and I'll probably report on those here, when they're published.

How's that for foreshadowing?

Transparent, Proactive, and Incentivized

  

Let me begin with a confession.

This post is of very little literary value, and required no research and no knowledge. It's just a venting of my annoyance with certain words and phrases that I think have been overused and/or misused to the point that I truly don't like hearing them in speech anymore, or reading them in the writing of others. I guess I should call them cliches, but mostly I just call them irritating. 

The following is my current list of those expressions. It'll probably change by tomorrow.

1. It is what it is

2. Go for it!  

3. My journey (everything in life these days is a journey)

4. If you will

5. I'm all about . . .

6. Iconic

7. Problematic

8. You've got this!

9. At the end of the day

10. No problem (when used instead of You're welcome)

11. Feeling badly

12. Stunning video

13. A sense of closure

14. Bro

15. Let's do this!

16. I could care less

17. Awesome 

18. Reach out

19. To die for

20. Serious as a heart attack

21. No can do

22. Pushing the envelope

23. Giving 110%

24. Utilize

25. Irregardless

26. Amazing (as in My amazing husband, wife, etc.)

27. Towards

28. Have a good one

29. Be back in a few

30. Athleticism

31. Physicality

32. Transparency

33. Granularity

34. Impact (when used as a verb)

35. Know what I'm sayin'?

36. Come with?

37. You feel me?

38. Incentivize

39. Sounded like a freight train

40. Looked like a war zone

41. Penned (as a synonym for Wrote)

42. 24/7

43. Own it

44. True that

45. As it were

46. Take it to the next level

47. Proactive

48. In point of fact

49. At this moment in time

50. Outside the box

You might have noticed that some of the above are favorites of news anchors, and especially (for some reason) sportscasters and weatherfolks. I agree that teeth can be impacted, and colons can be impacted, and the earth can be impacted when struck by a meteorite--but how many times have you heard that rains will impact the coastline, or high temperatures might impact the I-95 Corridor? Is a word like affect not forceful enough anymore, for our action-charged news broadcasts? And have you noticed, by the way, that their "breaking news, as we come on the air" might've broken several days ago? Personally, I want to see the stunning video. Politicians are also full of phrases that aggravate me. For one thing, they keep saying the American people want this or that. Well, that's a big assumption. I'm an American person, and I often don't want what they think I want. 

Words and expressions I didn't include above are the many that I used to hear a lot in my job--things like synergy and paradigm shift and value-added solutions, which are just as bad as, or worse than, the fifty in my list. By the way, on the political-correctness side of things, I'm also weary of hearing people say, "I find that offensive." It seems that almost anything we say or write is offensive to someone, somewhere. Maybe what I'm saying is, I find "I find that offensive" offensive.

Sometimes the silliest or most pretentious expressions wind up being more funny than irritating. During my IBM years I was once at a client location (it was a bank--I spent most of my workdays in banks) when their newly-installed computerized teller system developed response-time problems. When one of the programmers and I drove to a nearby branch to see exactly what was happening, the unhappy head teller pointed to her slow-as-molasses computer terminal and said, "This has left my team emotionally devastated." Strangely enough, they didn't look devastated, or even emotional, and we promptly fixed the problem, but that two-word phrase became one that we remembered, and used over and over at the bank's operations center for years afterward. I ran into one of those programmers not long ago, and when I asked him how he was doing, he grinned and replied that he was emotionally devastated. Some things stick in your memory.

What are some words and phrases that you consider to be overused, misused, frustrating, or just tiresome? Are you sick of hearing or reading those? Do any of yours match the entries in my list? (I won't find it offensive if they don't.) 

A final note. Even though I've been unusually critical in this post, I do not pretend to be guiltless in the misuse of our language. I often find that I like using some expressions that I already know are wrong or ill-chosen. As a kid, I clearly remember my mom asking me why my friend Boyd, whose grandmother didn't allow dogs in her house, was crying so loud we could hear him bawling all the way down the street. "Snoopy snuck in," I explained to her, "but she drug him back out."

Hey, that still sounds correct, to me.

Historicals with Horses

  

Since my column here at SleuthSayers about period fiction last week, I've had some interesting conversations with fellow writers about the Western genre. Some of them like it, some hate it, etc. Some don't even consider those stories historical (but they are). As I think I've said before at this blog, Westerns are just historical fiction with horses. To me, one good thing about writing Western stories--whether they're novels, shorts, or screenplays--is that they can usually be considered mysteries as well, and therefore marketable as mystery fiction, because a crime is almost always involved. (Uness maybe it was the movie version of Old Yeller, where the only crime was the older brother's attempt at a Southern accent. But that's another story.)

As I said to one of my writer friends in an email on this subject the other day, part of the Western genre's appeal to me is the definite line those stories draw between right and wrong. It's a black/white structure: there were good people and evil people, with very few gray areas in between--unlike the way our world is today. This is especially true in the older Westerns, the ones I watched in the movie theater and on TV as a kid. 

In that long-ago world--Bonanza, The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, etc.--it was easy to identify the villain or one of his friends, because the good guys always shaved every morning and wore clean clothes, while the bad guys appeared to have been been dragged into town behind the stagecoach. Another thing: the streets of Virginia City or North Fork or Dodge City were always neat as a pin, with nary a sign of mud or ruts or horse droppings. In fact, the downtown thoroughfare in all those different shows often looked suspiciously like the same street. (How could that be? Even as a kid, I knew Nevada and New Mexico and Kansas were a long way apart.)

Other puzzling things happened, as well. As Clint Eastwood once said in an interview, why did the good guy always wait for the bad guy to draw first? He said that made no sense. And when a reporter asked Stagecoach director John Ford why the Indians chasing the coach didn't just shoot one of the horses, Ford replied, "Because that would've been the end of the movie." That, I guess, does make sense. Later, of course, Westerns got smarter in that regard, and way more authentic, although the standoffs in the street and the hero waiting politely for the other guy to draw have persisted to this day. 

Having said all that, these recent discussions of the horse opera and its fans have prompted me to revisit some of the movies I've watched and re-watched over the past years. Here are a few observations, by me and me alone, so feel free to disagree.

My 10 favorite Western movies, in no particular order:

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

The Big Country (1958)

Unforgiven (1992)

For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Shane (1953)

Dances with Wolves (1990)

High Noon (1952)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Open Range (2003)

The Searchers (1956)

NOTE 1: There actually is sort of an order to these. I consider Once Upon a Time in the West and The Big Country the absolute best of the bunch.

Runners-up:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Tombstone (1993)

The Man from Snowy River (1982)

Hondo (1956)

Will Penny (1967)

The Hanging Tree (1959)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Rio Bravo (1959)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

True Grit (remake, 2010)

Quigley Down Under (1990)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Hombre (1967)

NOTE 2: I didn't include the wild and crazy Cat Ballou (1965), Blazing Saddles (1974), From Noon till Three (1976), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), or Rustler's Rhapsody (1985), but if you haven't seen those, I recommend them. 

Good Westerns you might not have heard of:

The Homesman (2014)

The Last Sunset (1961)

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Hostiles (2017)

Duck, You Sucker (1971)

The Proposition (2005)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Lone Star (1996)

7 Men from Now (1956)

Old Henry (2021)

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

The Salvation (2014)

Appaloosa (2008)

News of the World (2020)

Ride the High Country (1962)

NOTE 3: I also didn't include any TV series or mini-series in my lists, but of those, I think the best, by far, are Deadwood (2004-2006) and Lonesome Dove (1989). Runners-up might be The English (2022) and--if you count it as a modern-day Western--Justified (2010-2015). Once again, my opinion only. Disagreements are welcome.

Questions

What's your view, on Westerns old and new? Like 'em? Hate 'em? Tolerate 'em? Do you agree with any of the above choices? What are some I overlooked? If you do like Westerns, have you tried writing any, either novels or short stories? Have you had any published? In what markets? Were they standalone stories, or installments in a series? Was writing them work, or fun? Please let me know in the comments section.

Final thoughts:

1. I'm looking forward to seeing Kevin Costner's recently-released Horizon. Haven't gotten around to it yet.

2. If you haven't written a Western story but you want to . . .

"Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let's go."--John Wayne, The Cowboys (1972)