Living Large

Photos from the top: Rajasthani turbans furnished by the Maharaja of Jodhpur for a soiree in Washington (from www.newyorksocialdiary.com); Jaipur’s Rambagh Palace, now a hotel; another view of the Rambagh Palace; author Rob Walker and his dog, Pongo.

By Pat Browning

News flash: David Letterman makes $32 million a year.
My friend Rob Walker will work cheaper. Here’s his Top Ten List.

Top Ten Things Writers Must Forego:
1. Bubble bath and skin nutrients ... forget about ‘em.
2. Aromatic candles, too expensive.
3. Starbucks coffee ... bring your own in a thermos.
4. Subscription to the New York Times.
5. Subscription to anything.
6. Going out to a play on a date in NYC with your spouse.
7. Snack food of any quality.
8. Lunch meat of any quality.
9. Steak dinners and alcoholic beverages.
10. Gasoline for the car or cash for a plane ticket.

What they can't live without – ink ... lots of black ink ... and workable
hardware.

Rob’s list is dead on – which just happens to be the title of his new book, DEAD ON, coming from Five Star in July. Meantime, you can download it for free at his web site.

http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com
http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com

You never know what will pop up on the Internet. The same day I read about Letterman’s paltry salary I accidentally surfed into a web site called New York Social Diary. The big news there was an Indian art exhibition in Washington, with wildly colorful Rajasthani turbans furnished to guests by the Maharaja of Jodhpur.

The who? The what? I thought the maharajas were long gone, but, no, there he was, big as life, a maharaja who traces his desert clan back as far as 1226. Talk about living large. The maharajas of India put everyone else in the shade.

I didn’t get to Jodhpur during my trip to India a few years ago, but I spent some time in Jaipur, another fabled city in the deserts of Rajasthan. As a guest of India’s tourism director I saw a picturesque India that was, in some ways, still stuck in the 19th century.

I felt like a fraud. I’m not much of a writer. I was on assignment for a travel trade journal. But India has a long tradition of respect for writers of all stripes. My tour guides were graduate students and professors. I got the royal treatment.

In Jaipur I stayed in the Rambagh Palace, now a hotel. The last maharani, who is 90, lives in a private home on the grounds. Rajmata Gayatri Devi (the Queen Mother) was the 20-year-old Princess of Cooch-Behar when she married Maharaja Man Singh II, and the Rambagh was their summer palace. Active in politics and charities, she wrote a memoir, A PRINCESS REMEMBERS, in 1976.

Jaipur was a dream. I spent one sunny morning in the open corridor café, sipping tea and munching cheese toast (grilled cheese sandwich). Across the lawn from me, two Indians toyed with a cobra and a mongoose. Another morning I took a taxi out to Amber Fort and rode an elephant up the hill to the old palaces, a collection of turrets, arches and inner chambers.

There are windows where wives and members of the court stood to pelt maharajas with flower petals when they entered the main courtyard. In a darkened chamber, my guide struck a match and light danced in hundreds of tiny mirrors covering the walls and ceilings. The image stays with me as typical of India.

Believe it or not, there is a YouTube tour of Amber Fort. The tiny url is
http://tinyurl.com/l7cr3k

India is an ancient and many-layered society. In 1947, the British withdrew and India became an independent democracy. It was not without problems, however. The people in charge literally drew a line on a map and declared one side was (mostly Hindu) country of India and one side was the brand new (mostly Muslim) country of Pakistan.

The split has been called the most complex divorce in history. The two countries squabbled over assets like a human couple. Pakistan got 17-1/2 percent of the cash, in return for covering 17-1/2 percent of India’s national debt. They flipped a coin for ownership of 12 horse-drawn ceremonial carriages. India got two-thirds of the army; Pakistan got the other third. Rudyard Kipling and Gunga Din must have turned over in their graves.

It took another 30 years to phase out the maharajas. Pakistan is still a mess. Kashmir is in pieces, claimed by India, Pakistan and China, and a hot topic with the United Nations even as we speak. I’m tempted to describe Kashmir as lying in the shadow of the Himalayas, but the geography of the Himalayas is as complicated as the history of India.

India was an assault on my senses, and I caught it like a low-grade fever. For years all I could think of was going back. Many, if not most, of us go through life without knowing what it’s like to live in luxury. I got a brief taste of it twice. Once was at the Rambagh Palace in India. Twice was at the Gleneagles resort in Scotland, but that is another story.

A Note From Pat Browning

No, that's not Pat Browning. That's Robert W. Walker and his dog, Pongo.

I turned my usual Saturday space over to multi-published author ROBERT R.WALKER for his advice on the dread synopsis. It is Part 1 of his post on the synopsis and the outline, which are two completely different things.

Today, Sunday, we go to Part 2, with Rob’s “bullet outline” for his upcoming book, DEAD ON, to be published in July by Five Star.

AND HERE'S A TIP: On Rob’s web site (www.robertwalkerbooks.com) you can download DEAD ON for free. The book itself, together with these two posts, make up a mini-writing course. You can literally follow the book from the “brag sheet” to the outline to the finished product.

DEAD ON is a thriller, and may be a tad graphic in a place or two for the squeamish. Don’t be misled by the cozy photo of Rob and his dog. Behind Rob’s angelic mug lies a devilish imagination!

A happy holiday to all, and great success with your writing --

----- Pat Browning

Part 2 - The Outline

Part 2 – The OUTLINE
By Robert W. Walker

The outline is for many far, far harder and more grueling to create than either the book itself or the synopsis and for good reason or reasons. While many authors outline and do so BEFORE the novel is written, many find such a task so off-putting as to lead to putting the entire effort of writing said book aside—often for good.

I make no judgments on those who routinely outline a novel before ever writing a word. I salute such people who have found a comfort zone with this process, but for me and many another author to outline a novel before writing at least several chapters and often at least those crucial first 100 pages, … well … it is just as awful as torture.

I can’t speak to how others organize a novel via an outline before getting the book underway except to say that for most of these “artists” they have struggled with many elements they wish to see in the story in their minds and with notes and perhaps even 3 by 5 cards (which I detest), and sometimes these cards are character cards, plot note cards, setting note cards, dialogue moment cards, thematic cards—to keep track of various threads one “plans” on using in the story.

I submit that for many another “artistic mind” such accounting work is about as torturous as having to do an index for a book—a job for people with another set of brain cells than I possess. I personally believe that many who are wonderful at outlining are also great at keeping their checkbook straight (again something I suck at). I also believe, especially among mystery, suspense, thriller writers who tightly organize a novel this way know the ending and the outcomes and they write to that end (any means to an end).

And there’s nothing wrong with that, but most novels begin with a What IF, a set of circumstances that in chapter one raises 20 questions, far more questions than answers, and the subsequent chapters grow out of what is typically an outrageous and highly dramatic moment seen so clearly in the mind’s eye of the author but he does not have any idea where he will go next until he gets there.

This method I call “Going Where No One Has Gone Before” and this means the story grows and enlarges from the seeds planted in chapter one—organically it has been called. I don’t know the final outcome except a general notion that some will die and some will survive, and it’s nice to know that at least fifty percent and perhaps more authors than that who I have met and talked to about these matters doesn’t know the ending much less the middle and often the next chapter of the work in progress.

Yet the artist who works in this manner, his mind often in a surging fever that looks like a parabola or figure 8 as the author works up to page fifty, rewrites to fifty, goes on to 100, rewrites to 100, goes on, rewrites, goes forth, etc. while not knowing what’s going to happen on the page until it happens—often about who lives and who dies, and absolutely no idea how he will arrive at a satisfactory ending except to GET THERE, knowing that once it is on paper, a product, he can begin to massage and manipulate and make it all work on subsequent rewrites.

In this process rewriting is writing, not to suggest that people who organize better than I and write complete whole outlines are not doing many, many rewrites as well—often to “get the seams” of organized writing out of sight! I see the seas in a Robert Ludlum novel for instance; do you?

Now years ago, I learned that I had to do an Outline for my editor/publisher; that he or she needed it for that all-important editorial and/or marketing and PR or cover art meeting—that outlines and synopsis were used again and again by the person in-house who is trying her level best to present your story in succinct manner to business folks responsible for preparing the complete “package” of your book down to the font they will use on your name—and the size, color and even texture of the title, and how Press Releases will look. If your synopsis is done well, whole sections may go on the back of the actual book!

Now I do outlines but not until I am at least well into the writing first. It may be at the conclusion of Chapter Three or Four or it might be after I complete page 100—at which time I have a far clearer picture of where the story may wind up, where characters might fall or survive, what the ending may look like. The beauty of it is that most editors, once they get the actual pages, seldom to never hold you hostage to your outline, and if they do it is folded in as part of the rewriting process.

This is my method, and it works for me, and I stand by it. In my head, once a story has been told, it can’t help but get old … and if I am doing an extensive outline (or struggling to do so) for a novel I have not yet written a word on, I know I am setting myself up for failure—that my mind and artistic process and imagination demands I outline only after I have literally “lived with” my characters in their time and place on actual pages produced before I can make “predictions” on where the story might go from there. The good news is that if you “think” as I do, you know that it is a viable and a time-honored way to work the novel.

Final word on Outlines is that I got freed up by an editor at Berkley with whom I worked for many years on my Instinct and Edge Series titles, and John used the term when pleading for an outline from me to accompany him into meetings, one he could duplicate for his fellows in New York, that I simply do a “bullet outline.” This is in its simplest terms a paragraph covering plot points for each chapter. I found this approach very helpful and adopted it after I would complete those first 100 pages or at least three chapters to accompany the synopsis and outline in so many efforts to “green light” a project.

As an example, I will put up the bullet outline for DEAD ON. Anyone wishing to see an outline done on another of my titles, please contact me with a query line to that effect. You can find me at
www.robertwalkerbooks.com or at myspace.com.robertWWalkerbooks
Rob Walker

Guest Blogger Rob Walker - Part 1

Rob Walker is making the blog rounds, so I snagged him for help on synopses and outlines, two bugaboos for many authors.

Rob teaches, edits, and has written too many books to count, using his name and four pseudonyms – Evan Kingsbury, Glenn Hale, Stephen Robertson and Geoffrey Caine. His work includes three series. His newest crime fiction novel is DEAD ON, to be published this summer.

And heeeeree’s Rob …

“Blurbs, Synopsis, Outline & Selling It

With a Look -- Advice to Publish By”
By Robert W. Walker

Part 1 – The Synopsis

First blurbs – you can accumulate useful buzz even before your book is sold or published if you have worked to create a network, a support group, so to speak, of people you meet at writers/readers events and conferences and/or online.

Once you have established a relationship either at the hotel bar or the online deCafe since you are on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Crimespace, Plaxo, Linkdin, blogs and chat rooms, and conferencing, then you have to take that brave, nervy step—you have to ASK. Ask for a read—even a cursory read and comment on your book from folks who will either say yes or no.

Do so with the attitude that you will get some turn downs and you must make NO judgment on “turndowns” (as they feel a lot like a rejection letter) and let that one go, and go on to the next. Try your best to gain 3 to 5 blurbs or at least 2 strong ones from your pool of acquaintances.

Finally, if you are resourceful in this age of information and you locate the author you most admire and contact me…I mean him or her…this person might be finessed into reading maybe your first three chapters with a synopsis and an outline—and you might again never hear from this person, but then again shock, awe, and surprise along with lightning striking happens from time to time.

This then below is an example of blurbs gathered long before the publication of my DEAD ON due out in July from Five Star/Tekno Books. Three blurbs from three extremely busy authors:

“Whip-smart dialogue, vivid characters, and ever-building tension make Dead On a terrifically compelling read.” – Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of The Keepsake & more.

“What happens in this book shouldn’t happen even to a fictional character. In addition, Walker’s prose cuts like a garrote; he is a master at the top of his game.” —J.A. Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour, Dirty Martini, and Afraid.

“Walker’s a master of fiction, and that’s the holy all of it.” —Ken Bruen, author of The Killing of the Tinkers & more.

Now let’s take up the SinNOPSIS or Synopsis. Why do many authors find this so hard to write? It amounts to a single page, two at the most, so it’s not like writing a 300 page novel. It is less than 500 words and never longer than 700, so it’s no BIG deal, right?

Yet it confounds writers, so we first ask why the mayhem and chaos over this and outlining (which we will get to). Here’s the deal as to why our palms sweat when we are asked to write up this “pitch” for our novel. It is not fiction. It is a kind of brag sheet that walks a tightrope between overwhelming arrogance at one extreme and boring matter-of-fact essay on just the facts, ma’am!

So it is an entirely different hat the author needs to wear when writing this the “shortest” and “most important” short story s/he will ever write—the story about your story. You have to remove the fictionalist’s hat and slap on the marketeer’s cap, the PR person’s peaked hat, that of the crafty sales person’s slick Fedora.

Indeed this is a grand opportunity to turn the book over in your head (or do it literally with the manuscript and craft/create/imagine and produce what you would most like to see on the back flap or back copy of your soon to be “sold” (if that’s the manuscript status) or soon see light of publication (if that’s the book’s status).

You know the character(s), setting, plot, sound and sense of your book better than any stranger as in a copyeditor who is likely making far more money writing your back copy than you will make on the book! So set yourself up as a Stranger, a Copyeditor with a job to do—to write decent copy on the book.

Sure, some might say the author knows his/her book too well, and so falls into too much detail, but sit down and read twenty or forty or sixty or a hundred models of copy writing on the backsides of books, and after modeling these, decide on what sort of bell you want to ring on the backside of your book.

Setting and characters named in sentence one—establishing time and place and who it is about immediately? Or do you want some moody tonal sentences leading to a last sentence in that paragraph, which hammers home the character(s), setting, time and place?

Here you give the appetizer for the reader who has an opportunity to “sample” the five questions about any novel—Who, What, Where, Why, and sometimes How—the same five questions found in any newspaper story. In short, this “shortest, most important” story fills a needed job, one the novelist can’t deliver on so well as the PR person or writer who can learn the non-fictional elements and art of writing a story about the story.

Now get thee to a newsroom in your head and think News Release, PR, marketing. Put the feather from the pen to your newsman’s cap.

Below is the actual Synopsis for DEAD ON. As you read it, imagine an acquiring editor getting this covering the first three chapters. Will it move an editor to ask for the entire manuscript? Will it get a green light.
*****
Synopsis:
PI Marcus Rydell is out to reclaim his hold on life, as for the moment only suicide offers an escape from his pain. Dr. Kat Holley seeks a fiery revenge on a maniac who has destroyed both their lives. Together, hero and heroine become hunters who come to respect and understand one another, and to share a bond that colors this suspense-thriller filled as it is with bright touches of romance, light banter, and laugh-out-loud humor alongside terror from without and battles within. And as in any good noir thriller, there figures a black dog; this one’s named Paco.

Just when disgraced Atlanta cop-turned-PI Marcus Rydell prepares to eat his gun, a kid in trouble, a call to duty, and a dirty blonde named Kat Holley stop him cold. Kat Holley pulls Marcus from a suicidal depression, and his soon-to-be demolished apartment building—only to make him face a past he cannot come to terms with without her. But not before she leads him on a deadly hunt deep into the blackest forests of the Red Earth State. Near the Georgia–Tennessee border in the breathtaking Blue Ridge Lake countryside, the pair witness a safe paradise become their death trap, as their prey is no ordinary man. They seek to destroy a local legend, a cave-dwelling ex-marine who happens to be a multiple murderer. In fact, their prey is a monster whose instincts and military training have allowed him to survive in the wilderness for four years, eluding the Feds as well as the Atlanta PD.

However, the hunt for the evil torturer and executioner, Iden Cantu, pivots. And now Cantu comes for them, leaving the dead in his wake. In the end, they must duel with this psychotic deviant, who is equipped with night-vision, a high-powered Bushman, and a cruel intent to kill by means of mental and physical pain.
*****
Such a “synopsis” can be used again and again as an oral or written “pitch” for the manuscript. It can do double and triple duty, used each time you present it to an editor in whatever form—written or verbal. In fact, at a pitch—as you leave, you can and should leave a single page synopsis/pitch with that lady from Bantam. It can make a great, delayed impact (so be sure your contact information is on the page as well).

If your synopsis is getting too long and involved, you are getting into fine and wonderful details that belong in the novel; the synopsis is about creating a CAPTION that enraptures and enthralls a reader—like the stuff found on the back of a book is supposed to do. Which leads us into the less than enrapturing and enthralling, often despised-by-its-author OUTLINE, and the difference between outline and synopsis.

(Check back for Part 2/The Outline on Sunday)