Tom Bentley

About Tom Bentley

Tom Bentley is still trying to figure out what flavor of writer he is, but so far he’s a short story writer, novelist, essayist, travel writer, journalist, and business copywriter. He edits all that stuff too. His new book, Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See is available as an ebook on Amazon. His singing has been known to frighten the horses.

Bringing Shape and Color to a Book Cover’s Blank Canvas

October 6, 2017 By Tom Bentley

Book covers are influential. When I saw Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book in the store, I stole it immediately. (Abbie, thank you for not titling your book Eat Your Poop.) I’ve been motivated and moved by cover artistry many times, so much so I’ve paid for books about which I knew little other than their cover’s invitation.

There are seemingly endless combinations of illustration, typography, geometry and color that simply click that “yes!” in our heads—the cover is something felt, it paints an inviting dimensional landscape in our imaginations.

And then there are covers that are like eating poop.

When I slapped awake an old novel that had been Rip Van Winkling in my mind’s grotto, and decided I might self-pub it, I concluded my ability to draw only stick men—stick women, out of the question—was a stopping point. So I engaged the services of Alicia Neal, a woman who had illustrated the cover for a spectacularly unpublished collaborative novel of mine. She had done compelling work on that, so we began the email dance of grubby, obscurantist author and genial, accommodating designer to come up with an expressive, irresistible cover. (I gravitated toward Steal This Book as the title, but worried about copyright.)

After confirming that she’d like to work on the design and setting up a tentative timeline, I sent her the query, synopsis and first fifty pages of my novel, Aftershock. Those pages introduce the reader to the three main characters of the work, who are unceremoniously tossed together by the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. The landing after the tossing doesn’t go well, but that’s fiction for you.

So, what follows is a condensed—and it’s still way long for a standard WU post—exchange of our emails and the images of the developing cover, which evolved from rough sketches to a lovely thing. If this whole piece is tl;dr, just breeze through the images while sipping from an umbrella drink.

After reading the novel’s beginning, here’s what Alicia wrote back:

I read through everything you sent me. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 50 pages, and I’ve been working on concepts all weekend but I have to admit I’m a bit rusty, the visual inspiration hasn’t quite hit me yet. I’m leaning toward something that plays on the theme of the earthquake: a destructive force, uniting the paths of three very different people (unity through division, or order from chaos, etc.). I’m still working on getting you thumbnail sketches in the next couple days, but when you have the time to take some photos in the bookstore like you mentioned, that would be a huge help.

Here’s some of my response (which is embarrassingly vague), to try and kick off the process:

I guess a stereotypical image might have the Golden Gate Bridge in it, though it was the Bay Bridge that was damaged by the quake, though bridge damage doesn’t figure greatly in the story. Downtown San Francisco does.

I didn’t have any great starting ideas, other than maybe having the “A” in the Aftershock title be cracked as though it were from earthquake damage. But that might not be that original either. Anyway, I’ll try to get some covers for you a bit later in the week and try to think of any other themes that might be of help.

I spent about 45 minutes in my local bookstore, and I sent her 12 images of covers that appealed to me on various levels, with short explanations of why. To give you a capsule sense of my 12 cover samples, here are 3 of my 12 thumbnails, with brief comments about what struck me in seeing them.

1 – mood is rich, scene evocative

2 – Again, the simplicity of the stark illustration; like the use of type accent on “of”

3 – like the “old school” feel of this, though probably not the script type (though I like it)

After reviewing my cover samples and notes, she sent me 6 preliminary sketches—the above main image for this page—with these comments (slightly condensed):

1. This is based on a seismograph reading, the idea being that the line the needle draws could form the suggestion of three figures representing the main characters. In a final version I would elaborate a bit on the shape of the figures, adding some very light shading to suggest facial features, but keeping everything fairly ambiguous. I may also work the seismograph needle into the design somehow, to make it more clear that’s what it is. The font on this would be a loose handwritten style, meant to mimic the bouncy lines of the reading.

2. The three arms of the characters clutch one another to form a triangle, a symbol of strength. I would use radiating circles commonly used to illustrate the epicenters of earthquakes over each point of the triangle to imply that each character, and their relationships with one another, are the focal points of the story/that they are at the center of all the chaos.

3. The outlines of three figures that blur and bleed into one another. I envisioned this one to be just outlines, each one in a separate color to differentiate them. So, they might be red, blue, and yellow lines, but at parts blur together into oranges, yellows and greens. This partly references seismograph readings, but more so evokes shaking/instability.

4. Silhouettes of the three characters lay about, like they’ve been tossed to the ground. Their heads come together to form the epicenter of the quake.

5. A very understated suggestion of the San Francisco skyline done in muted colors, with a large moody open sky and three very small figures in the foreground accented in a bolder color. The type would be also be done in this bolder color (a red or orange), and in this sample, features an A that’s been cracked.

6. A map view of the California coastline, with the epicenter at San Francisco, and a bold line running through the San Andreas fault. This is a pretty simple concept so the type design for the title would take center stage.

Because I am insightful (and needful of typing the word “condoms” in an email), I responded thusly:

Alicia, your approaches all have creative zest—nice work (and nice work investigating aspects of the work for the design). I admire elements of all the work, but the two I am most drawn to are #1 and #5. I like the mingling of the human figures with the seismograph reading (though the humans do look a bit like condoms in the sketch) and I very much like the title treatment, though my name might be too large.

It might seem weird that I also like the much more figurative cityscape work in #5, but I do, as well as like the type in that one, which is so different from #1.

Are the lines around the type in #5 going to suggest movement? And perhaps the “A” could be tilted? I like the idea of the human figures too, though it might be difficult to have them rendered with any clarity. I also like the stark drama of #6, but maybe I shouldn’t even mention that one, since I can’t seem to pin down a single one as the most resonant for me. But that must mean you have widely expressive talent, right?

Anyway, hope my remarks aren’t too vague or scattered. Have I given you anything to go on?

Alicia got on it (and complimented me, which I never fall for, except always):

This is great feedback! Since you’re a little bit torn between the ideas, I think what I’ll do is a round of slightly larger, more detailed drawings exploring layout options for both. Being able to fine tune some elements of the design will help us both have a clearer picture of the final image. I’ll get to work on this tonight, and send you the drawings by tomorrow.

The next day, there were these images, along with this comment:

OK, so I wanted to give you a few options on how both of the ideas that you were drawn to could be elaborated upon with layout and type design.
1. Breaking the seismograph into three unique “storylines”

2. I added the needle, some paper texture, rendered the figures a bit, inverted one to make them fit together better (which also mimics the shape of the seismograph reading more), and tilted the whole thing to make it dynamic/energetic layout/type, but with these more defined figure shapes rather than condoms, haha).

3. I realized your comment regarding the tiny figures in the skyline image was true, it would be very difficult to make them look like anything recognizable. Rather than do the distant skyline, I thought I could pull it in to street level and that would make it easier to add figures, but as I was doing the sketch I realized a finished version of this would be extremely time-consuming, as it is a fully painted scene rather than just a few illustrated elements. I’ve included it here (without the figures) just as an example, with the caveat that if we went in this direction I may need to charge more.

4. The skyline image again, sans figures, with more focus on the broken type. The layout leaves a lot of focus on the type treatment, which we can workshop any way you’d like, to add movement, emphasize mood etc.

Because I know style (I once owned a Banana Republic shirt), I countered with this:

Hi Alicia. Hope I’m not bugging you, but I wanted to clarify that I’m fine if the images of the people are indistinct in regards their facial features, like in image #1, because then the readers can assign their own faces. Though, contrary as I am, I enjoyed the deeper renderings of the faces that you did in the tilted image too.

And on the cityscape, as I said, don’t add it if it seems too much, but perhaps some portion of it (the bridge?) that indicates San Francisco could work. But again, if it’s too much information, or it seems to conflict with the seismograph image, don’t worry about it.

Alicia, wondering if the guy on the other end of these emails might be a narcissistic popinjay, but still willing to go along, responded cogently, with kicking illustrations too.

I’m sorry for the delayed response. I’ve been mulling over your points for a few days, trying my best to come up with a way to incorporate both the cityscape and the seismograph concepts together in a way that makes sense. The best I could come up with is just to add the skyline to the bottom of the “three storylines” idea, like this. Initially I was hesitant to do this, since with the original ideas there was a contrast in the tone of each (the seismograph reading being a bit simpler and more bold, and the skyline being a bit softer, moodier) that I didn’t feel meshed very well. That said, it might actually be nice to add some depth/color/weight to an otherwise very stark linear design.

So, if we were to go forward with this, I would make the skyline somewhat muted, hazy … to make the lines of the seismograph readings pop off the page. I would also leave the type very simple to avoid making the overall design too busy.

What do you think?

I have long been a sucker for seismographs and muted skylines, but yet I could do nothing but complain about collars:

Alicia, I like it a good deal and I’m good with making the skyline muted to have the seismograph pop. As for the type, I like the understatedness of the lowercase letters. However, both the title and my name have to be bigger, or no one will be able to read them at an Amazon book-page thumbnail size. Can they be adjusted up (keeping the same letterforms) without it being a problem?

Again, I like the figures in the seismograph, but the collar on the third fellow below is too big (it kind of looks like he has a suit with a bow-tie to me). If we can make it look more like a modern button-down shirt that would be better.

Otherwise, looking great!

A paragon of rationality, Alicia pinged me back, with a more fully realized sketch:

Hi Tom, I was able to do a larger, more detailed drawing of the idea, attached here.
I’ve changed the shapes of the characters a bit, hopefully more to your specifications. The title and your name are a smidge larger than they were in the thumbnails, though there is still some room to go a little bigger if need be.
A note about the lines in the background: As I was drawing I was starting to feel like the composition overall was very static and could use some texture/motion. The lines wouldn’t be nearly as overwhelming as they are in the drawing. I would want to keep them very muted like the city skyline to allow the seismograph readings to pop as I mentioned before, and the way that I envision them looking in the final piece would be as two very subtly different shades of sky blue or blue-gray.

I can of course leave this out of the background entirely if you think it might be too busy. Let me know your thoughts, I can make any changes and then get started on the final this week.

Because clarity unsettles me, I had to argue for murk:

Hi Alicia. The cover is progressing well: I like the motion lines and the color integration, though I’d probably have to see all colors you will work with for the cover to understand how it will all coalesce. I’m of a split mind over the clarity of the faces and appearance of the protagonists.

It might be better not to have their faces sharply realized, because perhaps that might take away from the reader’s imagination. But human faces are appealing, so I like them. However, in the instance of the top guy, the homeless guy, he’s actually a 50-something black guy, described in the book as having black hair streaked with gray, and in a very short afro style.

So, the image as rendered doesn’t reflect the character in the book. And the woman has longish blond hair in the book, a bit lower than her shoulders and she’s fairly short, so she isn’t quite right either. The lower guy does work fairly well. So, I’m not sure if it’s better to mute out those distinguishing characteristics or make them much closer to the book’s depictions. What do you think? I can search the book for any hints of their appearance if you want to go the close-appearance route.

And the title and author name are better, but they probably need to be a touch bigger, and “Aftershock” lettering should be bolder.

The woman is a flexible thinker (and ooh-la-la, I’m liking the thinking):

After you mentioned the title should be a bit bigger, I decided to reduce the drawing I had done down to a smaller size and compare it with what Amazon uses on their main page to see how the layout reads … and damn was I off! Apologies for not having done this already, it didn’t occur to me the title would be so illegible.

Also, in light of this, I think it’s better to not render the faces with any detail, since nothing would show up at the small size, and wouldn’t even really be readable at the full size. (If you wanted to go to print in the future and think faces would be good in a print version, they could always be added later on.)

So, without redoing the layout completely, I redrew it to
– move the female figure off to the right allowing more space for the title, and gave her longer hair. I do think the title reads OK at this point, but there is still some room to go a bit bigger.
– changed the figure of the veteran to include a bit more of an afro (a note on this: I’m very much unsure of how to make him look older with just a silhouette. I had thought about including a bit of the top of a crutch in one arm, but didn’t think that read very well).

If I’m not hitting this yet and you have a clearer idea of what he should look like, feel free to send reference photos my way). I chose a bolder, larger type.

Attached here is the adjusted drawing, as well as a quick tonal study (not actual colors, but an idea of how the finished painting will be in terms of dark/light.

Tom must fuss:

Alicia, I like the cover very much. No need to try and get the top man looking older or adding a crutch—it’s fine if it’s vague. I like the tonal feel too—how will the final rendering look/feel different? I do like how the white of the S.F. sky contrasts with the seismograph renderings above.

Two small things: no need to have that elaborate bow on the woman’s outfit—she is an office administrator/department head, but it was a fairly casual S.F. office, and she wouldn’t have that component to her outfits. And the lower male figure’s left arm looks cut off to me—is it supposed to be behind his back?

As for the title/author name, you might bump them up just slightly (or darken them more), but they look much better now than before.

Looking good—can’t wait to see the finals.

Alicia fussed with purpose:

Excellent, I’m glad we’re getting close.
On the lower male figure: in the reference photo I’ve been using, the man’s left arm is bent forward and his hand is up near his neck adjusting his tie. I had left out the details because I thought it would be distracting (but embarrassingly contradicted myself here by adding the blouse bow on the female figure).

I’m going to make some quick edits (remove the blouse bow, enlarge the type, and redraw the man so that both hands are in his pockets) and will send you the result.

[two days later]

Hi Tom, Here’s the drawing with the edits I mentioned, and additionally I added a few details to the upper male figure to make it look like he’s wearing a jacket instead of a t-shirt. Let me know if that suits the character, or if you’d prefer a simpler top.

If I can get your approval on this, I can get started on the final painting this week.

I left out this image, bacause the changes were fairly subtle. Here’s my response:

Alicia, I like it! I have no suggestions at all. Very much looking forward to how you’ll work with some color, because in black and white, it’s great!

As for the final final—it’s the fanfare of angels. You see it here, with Alicia’s comments: [Read more…]

Writers: Fact to Fiction? Not So Fast

November 22, 2016 By Tom Bentley

Some light years ago, I was living with my best friend in a small apartment in Southern California, on my own for the first time. It was our first New Year’s Eve together as that eager, barely tolerable species: raffish apartment-dweller-type dudes, barely out of high school. We were going to celebrate that self-congratulatory state of being with a New Year’s party.

That evening we had a respectable turnout of our friends, acquaintances, and other welfare cheats of note, and had settled in to the numerous foolishnesses of New Year’s Eve. We had a wee dram, and a wee dram more. As it neared midnight, my housemate and I had an insight: to christen the New Year, we could both doff our clothes and walk around outside in the soft warm rain that was falling. Did I mention we’d had a drink or two?

Equally inspired, my girlfriend decided to join us. We goofed around a bit out front, and then we saw two figures approaching up the block. In the great spirit of improvisation, my housemate and I worked up a plan: we would walk up to the people, acting as though we were in our fully clothed at-ease, and wish them Happy New Year’s. The creative act, in action.

Remember, it was dark and misting outside. Thus you can understand that it wasn’t until we were but five feet away from our prey and about to spring our greeting when we realized it was OUR LANDLORD AND LANDLADY, who lived only a few blocks away, and who had decided to walk over and wish us happy New Year’s. The fact that they were straight-laced, reserved people, and Eastern Europeans yet, made our calculation all the less calculating.

Well. We had perfect presence of mind and body: Run! Without saying a word, we turned and bolted for the house. Somebody at the party caught a classic snapshot of my housemate in manic mother-naked retreat into the house, eyes bulging out of his head like boiled eggs. Perhaps we thought we’d be safe inside. I literally ran into my closet and hid, lacking the benefit of clothing. I did say that I was young, right? [Read more…]

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Writing to the Beat of the Vulnerable Heart

September 27, 2016 By Tom Bentley

Malibu, humble bragging: "Pretty, oh, I’m not THAT pretty." — Malibu, humble-bragging: “Pretty, oh, I’m not THAT pretty.”

I’m editing a biography of an accomplished pediatric heart surgeon. The author had interview access to many of the parents of the children with damaged hearts, and he was also allowed to be in the operating room when sometimes superhuman attempts were made to repair that damage. What struck me (and terrified me too) was how with a factual narrative accounting of the bleak medical outlook for these tiny patients and the sophisticated efforts to save them, the book and its stories relentlessly pulled me into its emotional center.

I don’t have any children, so it wasn’t a reflex empathetic response. I think it was the unvarnished way the writing described the terrible conditions of these kids, born with severe defects in their hearts, and of the waves of terror and tedium that followed for the parents in attending to their care. Or helpless in the face of it. And then, in the operating room, a day of reckoning.

Vulnerability is the story’s core: here were children as young as three weeks old getting open-heart surgery, children as young as four years old getting heart transplants. The vulnerability of these tiny kids, the vulnerability of their parents—it was breathtaking. That emotional magnet in the writing pulled and pulled, no matter that some of the material was also technical and dry. [Read more…]

Writing Collaborations (or, Whose Hands Are on Those Pencils?)

July 26, 2016 By Tom Bentley

photo by Flickr's Kendra — photo by Flickr’s Kendra

Sometime in 2013, I received this message from a friend:

Hey Tom:

In other news, an old college friend posted a phrase on Facebook, describing a large icicle that is quite simply a magnificent book title:
“Swirled all the way to the shrub”

I can’t let it go. Here’s a crazy idea: Wanna write a short story together, with that title as the jumping-off point? I don’t have a lot of time these days, so I’m not proposing anything at breakneck speed. Could be a hoot though.

“Swirled All the Way to the Shrub”
Rick

Rick, who also has a talent and penchant for vivid—if not preposterous—character names, supplied some starters, one of which seemed to scream for the page: Pinky DeVroom. Tom, being me, approached the idea with his usual gung-ho pessimism. (Think of your favorite negatives, like, “That will never fly,” “It’s probably going to rain,” “I think I’m getting a toothache” and others. Welcome to my mind.)

But Rick, having one of those wretchedly sunny dispositions, convinced me. I’d edited his tidy 240,000-word valor-and-shame WWII epic a bit before, so I knew he had solid writing chops. We decided to try alternating chapters and devroomed from there.

The Shrub, just to keep you from dying of suspense, became the Prohibition-era speakeasy that Pinky, a Boston society-column newspaperman frequents. The era is essential, because the story starts just short of the Crash of ’29, which torques Pinky’s world, along with most of the rest of the world.

Taking Pinky from Shorts to Long Pants

We rounded the corner on the thing, though at more of a trot than a gallop. It didn’t proceed briskly, because each of us had to mull the other’s additions, considering them in light of story tone, character development and the arc of the tale, and how best to move the narrative so it was both coherent and compelling. (And because of certain sluggardly tendencies on the Tom part of the equation.) And also massaging it so it didn’t seem like was written by committee, which is tricky, and which I’ll discuss below.

We ended up pushing poor Pinky around so he ended up almost at wit’s end—but we could do that: he’s just a character, not a collaborator. With your collaborators, you have to be much more subtle in your manipulations. Shrub-as-story came in at 13,000+ words (some of them good ones), and I was happy with the outcome.

But not Rick. Rick thought Shrub had all the basis of a novel. I quickly rushed out my standard equivocations (see above), though I didn’t use toothache, because in his business hours, Rick is a dentist. The man finally drilled through my defenses and we were off. Well, not exactly off, but we at least had good starting points: Our Shrub short already had some colorful secondary characters (that could be fleshed into two solid subplots), some prickly-protagonist personality issues worthy of expansion, and nascent conflicts and tensions that could hit your head like the sour moonshine served in The Shrub. [Read more…]

Characters Can Never Remove Their Tattoos (or Can They?)

May 24, 2016 By Tom Bentley

photo by Flickr's Jenavieve — photo by Flickr’s Jenavieve

In high school, I had a close-knit group of friends, many of whom remain good friends today. Except for one, a person with whom I was remarkably tight for an intense period, and then it all fell away. (Let’s call him X, because X is a fine name for something buried, though “treasure” doesn’t come to mind.) X probably had the most ranging intelligence of all my friends, the quickest wit and certainly the most ingenuity: he was the kind of a guy who would look at a dead radio, and in five minutes solder a spoon into its wiring and make its silence sing again.

But for all his charisma—and he had that—my friend had a sharp edge to him that impelled him to practical jokes, many of which seemed less than funny. He would put raw eggs in our beds that later made for soggy sleeping, soap our toothbrushes, surreptitiously tie some of our shoes together when in a group so when we got up we would stumble. He drove his Volkswagen van around a big tree in my tight backyard at mad speeds with my parents home and watching, so that it seemed like a demon’s visitation—what was that? He once dumped a full bowl of cereal and milk on me while I was sleeping, for no reason other than the feeling moved him. Because he worked in a pizza parlor, now and then he’d drive by, get out and throw entire pizzas on our roofs.

The moment that turned the corner for me was when he tied a string to our front door so that the bag of charcoal briquets that he’d tossed on the roof above would fall on one of us when the door was opened. The fact that it came down on my mother was the catalyst for what followed. All of my friends, my brother included, had some kind of grudge against him. “Remember when X spit in your drink and waited for you to swallow some before he told you?” “Yeah!”

We all had the stories. So we decided to humiliate him.

The Ambush
A couple of our group (also X’s victims) dropped out, leaving me, my brother, and two other friends, all of whom had suffered at X’s hands. Because all of them also worked part-time in that neighborhood pizza parlor (excepting me—I understood from an early age that work was unhealthy), they knew the routine: whoever was the assistant pizza “chef” would need, maybe an hour into the shift, to go to the refrigerated, locked storage shed out in the alley that flanked the shop, in order to bring in one of the five-gallon buckets of shredded cheese. We knew X’s work schedule, and we knew he would come out. We were waiting.

We were hidden in various places in the alley: behind dumpsters and the projecting side of a building. We had a dozen raw eggs and 10 water balloons. I was on top of the shed, hunching in silence, with two plastic buckets of tomato sauce. When he came out, we unleashed a fusillade of high-school-boys-mad-as-hornets hell on him, while howling imprecations.

Our work was effective. He was a miserable sight, soaked, stained, cowering. He didn’t say a word, but just stood blinking and defeated.

With that, everything changed. [Read more…]

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Shatter Your Characters: Shame Them, Guilt Them

November 24, 2015 By Tom Bentley

*Malibu pretending to be an innocent civilian*

My cat killed a hummingbird a few days ago. She brought it in, as cats will do, proud, thrilled with the hunt, mad with animality. If you have a cat that goes outdoors, you know the behavior: your pet’s standard personality is turned up ten notches to a twitching, eyes-afire clench of sinew and nerves.

In my cat’s case, she’s a poor birder, for which I give thanks. In years, I’ve only found evidence of one slain bird in our yard. She’s pleased to display the occasional vole or even a rat from the nearby fields, but I, the moral relativist, shrug off those captures with bland disgust.

But here, a hummingbird. A creature of darting beauty, an expression of brimming vitality in its pulsing flights. Hummingbirds are like a sudden flare in the darkness, the wow of light, the delicate lick of the flitting flame. But this one, its flame out, being flipped maniacally into the air and onto the carpet in surges by my cat, until I was able to grab it off the floor before another flick of the cruel claw.

And when I picked it up, the bird’s limp neck flashed the ruby iridescence that contrasted with its green/gold feathers—beautiful yet, but just a shiny death mask. I put the bird out in the nearby fields, and then felt a pang of shame.

This post isn’t designed to be a forum on the politics of allowing a high-level predator like a cat to roam outdoors. My cat, Malibu, was a semi-feral cat that we’d seen roaming the neighborhood for more than a year before we adopted her. As we later found out, she had survived on the kindness of strangers—and of course, on her hunting skills. What is more interesting to me now, as a writer, is the shame. Since Malibu isn’t, as we are, gifted and cursed with a sense of self-consciousness, I had to experience shame in her stead.

Shame and Guilt, Kissing Cousins
Shame—and its first cousin, guilt—are useful tools for writers (and such intrigues for psychoanalysts): instances where a character was shamed, or felt deep guilt are often motivational markers for later character behaviors. We get a fine sense of the power of shame in our early stories: when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the sudden sense of their own nakedness sweeps over them in waves of shame.

[Note: I don’t know about you, but I would have made a fruit salad out of those apples long before that wiggly fellow in the grass waggled his forked tongue at fair Eve. And I’m all in favor of some people being naked, but clothes do make the man.]

Guilt follows in scene two, when God questions why they bit into the forbidden. Not having good lawyers, each bobs and weaves for blame; expulsion from the Garden follows. (And their boy Cain had a lot of splainin’ to do later for his own guilt-laden crime.) That shame/guilt of our forbears, a backstory bear trap, became a lurking presence in many books, Biblical and not, to come. [Read more…]

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Sordid Confessions: Two Lovers (and I Love Them Just the Same)

September 22, 2015 By Tom Bentley

virtualwayfarer via Compfight cc

Two lovers, oh yeah. You wouldn’t think it from my bio photo, but I’m a major player. (I can’t say “playa” because I’m only allowed to use the Suburban Dictionary.) Two lovers, dig, and—with apologies to Mary Wells—I ain’t ashamed. But dang if I’m not flummoxed, because even sharing my keyboard between the two is daunting.

What I’d like to discuss is a surfeit of joy: working on two novels at once. (Note: the term “joy” in this instance is synonymous with “confounding,” “nettlesome” and “vexatious.”) My first lover is my old novel, the discussion of which I used to suffocate you in a blizzard of words at my last WU picnic. But as the bad penny always comes back, I have to hit you here with all two cents’ worth.

I returned from the writer’s conference where I workshopped the first 20 pages of the book, laden with 10 fellow workshopper’s comments, and those of two of the group leaders, both fine novelists. (Need I point out that 10 + 2 = 12? Obviously a jury.) Verdict: guilty of not making clear, early enough, what’s at stake for the lead characters, two of whom were introduced in alternating chapters, where each held the POV.

Sputtering Plot Flames, Rekindled

But, but, I was being subtle, I was stacking the kindling to the plot flames that would light character fireplaces, I was balancing setting, conflict, and hinted intrigue so that the gingerbread scents would pull the reader’s nose further in.

[pullquote]But, but, I was being subtle, I was stacking the kindling for the plot flames that would light character fireplaces, I was balancing setting, conflict and hinted intrigue so that the gingerbread scents would pull the reader’s nose further in.[/pullquote]

But then I read the commented chapters again—yep, not enough exposure of the character’s sinews, so readers might get a clue where they stretch or where they snap.

In my last WU screed, I suggested I might abandon this novel, because after all, I’ve been working on another, and it’s young, it’s fresh, it’s exciting! It can’t accuse me of not paying attention or not taking out the trash like this older one could. Those old novels know you so well, roll their eyes at your rhetorical tricks, know your advances might just lead to a sentence or two shifted rather than delivering a long, loving tumble through sweaty paragraphs. [Read more…]

The Heartfelt, Unpublishable, Captivating, Shallow, Sound, Abandoned, Reclaimed, Worthless, Most Excellent Potential Novel

July 28, 2015 By Tom Bentley

*Image courtesy of jeltovski via morguefile.com*

Eight years ago I sat down to write a novel, because my knees are lousy, so I couldn’t do it standing. The book’s setting is San Francisco, and its inciting incident is the earthquake of 1989, which flings together—in often unseemly ways—three characters who otherwise would have remained on the periphery of each others’ lives. The work proceeded at my standard brisk pace: I started it, stopped, muddled about, felt guilty it wasn’t going anywhere, took it up again, outlined and pretended that was actual writing, blamed the characters for not fully investing in their fates, paused, dribbled and paused.

Before I’d gotten very deep (well, the deepest part of the shallow end of the scribbling pool), I’d decided I wanted a multiple point-of-view perspective from the three central characters: one first person, and two in close third person. That felt like the best way to tell the tale, and had a writing challenge in it for me. Thus, I perspectivized thusly. Doing the math: I added up the characters, setting, murky-but-sketched-out story arc, two substantive subplots and the opportunity to write. The sum of the figures: Zero, because I kept pausing in the work. Long pauses.

For a couple of years, I fiddled with correcting the first six or seven chapters, outlined some more, thought about it and then not, and called that all writing. (And when I’ve had enough bourbon, I call a rosebush a horse too.) After about two and half years, because I am slow on the uptake, I shamed myself into writing a mere half-hour a day, on weekdays, and was able to finish the damn thing in a few months. I’d read several bushels of novels (even self-pubbed an earlier one) and I thought this resembled one. Four beta readers agreed, and after revising from their considered comments, I sent it out to agents. This is a good way to get some yard work done.

A Chorus of Nos
There are a lot of ways to say “no”: many are gracious, some blunt, some are merely the answer of no answer at all. Even the maybes (a fair number of partials, a few full manuscript requests) ended with the shade drawn slowly down. Notwithstanding that 50 or 60 agents could be plumb crazy or boorish philistines, there seemed to be a clue that perhaps the work was wanting in some way. The work needed more work. I attacked this challenge vigorously: I put the novel on my hard drive’s shelf, to breathe.

So the thing slumbered for another long while, while I blandly pondered self-pubbing. Having spent a couple of years here at WriterUnboxed, where the tutelage of eagle-eyed savants like Don Maass, David Corbett, and Lisa Cron can’t help but inflict one with exquisite writerly pain, I began to see that there might be a couple of rips in the novel’s fabric that might necessitate some sewing. With a whaling harpoon. [Read more…]

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A Writer’s Eyes Are Always Open

May 26, 2015 By Tom Bentley

Photo by Peter Forster/Wikimedia Commons

Writers are made, not born. Writers are born, not made. Writers are born without maids. Whichever nature/nurture boxing glove you decide to swing in that battle, I hold that there are some distinct methods to cultivate a writer’s eye, and that those cultivations can result in sweet writerly fruits. (Please excuse that the last sentence mixed its metaphors with a waffle iron rather than a whisk.)

Our lovely kitty image above is figuratively indicative of my intent: as a writer, you must always look at situations with your writer’s eyes. But each eye must have a different focus, while still giving you a clear picture. Before I get into the wherefores of bicameral write-sight, let’s underscore one fundamental: there are stories EVERYWHERE.

No matter if you’re a poet, a journalist, a short-story scribe or a Tweetin’ fool, stories saturate your day—they are in your neighbor’s mail (don’t look without permission), your boss’s impatient gait, how your daughter wrapped your Mother’s Day present, why coins feel cold, a bat’s favorite breakfast, and how endless calls from AT&T about expanding your network offerings make you want to scream.

Stories Are Everywhere
Stories are not the province of the high and mighty movers and shakers; stories rest there too, but they are much the stuff of the commonplace, the cupboard, the errant gesture, the box left on the bus bench. You just need a writer’s eyes to see them.

So back to those bicameral distinctions: You need what I like to call a crazy eye and a calm eye. One eye is your open-to-all experiences self, your id eye, and the other is objective, your superego eye. A small example (and in a larger sense, how stories lurk in everything): You see a brightly colored bird. Your crazy eye opens—is there a story there on how the male birds are most often the ones with the wild plumage? Maybe an article on who the Audubon of today might be, if such a specimen exists.

Branch out: think about your first flight on an airplane. Could one of your characters have an overwhelming aversion to flying on airplanes, so that a scene on one in which he breaks down is pivotal to a story? What did Leonardo da Vinci have in mind when he designed that prototype flying machine? [Read more…]

Interview: Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt

March 24, 2015 By Tom Bentley

Today’s treat at WU has two faces—I wouldn’t be able to show you their hands, because they are typing too fast. Welcome to Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt of Sterling and Stone, the wide website umbrella that houses their “story studio” of fiction imprints, blogs and podcast. Together, along with their other partner David Wright, they have produced an astonishing array of novels and stories over the past few years, averaging over a million and a half words a year. And popular words, from looking at their Amazon pages. Their genres run the gamut from westerns, horror, fantasy, and thrillers to children’s books. (And naughty stuff too, for large children.)

Their 2014 Write, Publish, Repeat self-publishing guide has hundreds of positive reviews; I’m one of the happy readers that regards it highly. Today we’ll discuss with Sean and Johnny how they work as writing collaborators, their remarkable productivity, and how they promote their work. And whether Sean will open up a winery. From now on I’m going to sit under their keyboards and just catch the discards—should be worth at least three novels.

Jumping right in, you call your main site, the Sterling and Stone site, a “story studio.” Will you explain that for the Writer Unboxed audience in terms of your imprints and the fact that you guys write in various genres, from horror, fantasy, to even children’s stuff. [Read more…]

Editing, Uhh! What Is It Good For?

January 27, 2015 By Tom Bentley

I’m closing in on finishing a book about how to see as a writer [note: wear glasses], and there’s a little section on editing in there, from which some of this is excerpted and massaged. (Porter, I feel the gorge rise: the horror! Another book about writing! But no, no, this one’s different: For the print version, the pages will be made of sloth tongue; for the ebook, every time you finish a section, a zephyr of electrons will tingle your nether parts.)

Because I’ve been an editor as long as I’ve been a writer, and that “long” is now measured by archeological tools, I feel my thoughts on editing have as much credibility [note: dubious] as those on writing, so, forthwith:

Let’s consider a nice serving of mashed potatoes, hot and buttery. Most cooks probably don’t think too much about preparing their potatoes, so it’s often a rote task, hurried through to get to the entree. But what if those potatoes were served with panache, with some kind of style point or spicy twist? Say you were served potatoes with a tiny derby hat on them. You’d remember those spuds, wouldn’t you?

You’d probably remember them even more, if under the tiny derby was a clump of hair. Wouldn’t that clump drag what was an interesting expression of creativity into an unappetizing corner? The reason I bring up potatoes, odd hats and unwanted hair is a point I want to make about editing. Competent editors are able to shape the standard serving of potatoes so that it’s without lumps, smooth and palatable. Good potatoes, but still just potatoes.

Better editors recognize when a piece of writing has a derby hat in it—they would never take that hat out, robbing the writer of a unique angle or voice. They’d find a way to allow the hat to fit snugly in its potato surroundings, fully expressive of its quirk and charm, without it seeming unnatural or foreign. And of course, a good editor would remove that hair—typos, kludgy expressions, dully passive voice, et al—posthaste. [Read more…]

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High School: The Tattoos Your Characters Can’t Conceal

November 25, 2014 By Tom Bentley

This guy was in the Hillbilly group in my high school

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” Alas, in looking at the short-sighted, petty gyrations of our politicians, “terror” doesn’t quite capture the dystopian menace. But I want to use Mr. Vonnegut’s subtext here to illustrate some thoughts about characters in your stories.

High school was a yeasty time: a time of turbulent yearnings, of bad complexions, of emotional cliffs, of hormonal bombardments. Enemies were defined and reviled, friends formed and clung to, selves agitated and supplanted. An overheard compliment might make you Zeus for a day, but a single smirk the next would fling you to some dark hall of Hades.

Terrifying as those times were, their living imprint aligns with Vonnegut’s terror. Or maybe Faulkner’s, when he said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I think we carry a lot of high school with us, for better or worse. But as writers, we have a little trick to exorcise time’s weights: we can inflict our characters with some of those emotional roilings, no matter if those characters are sixteen or sixty. Because, even if they are deeper under the skin, the tracks and tracings from those emotions aren’t really past.

And because I so much like to talk about myself, and no one is in the room to shush me, I’ll draw on my own high school squirmings as the basis for this exploration into character and motivation. [Read more…]