Welcome to the half of you who weren’t scared away by the word “prayer.”

Not the usual Storyfix fare, I’ll grant you.  But I bet you’ve uttered a quiet prayer or two – even if that’s not the label you put on it – where your writing dream is concerned.  I know I have.

Like, every morning. 

And then, one day you realized that the better prayer is to circle the issue and ask for higher understanding and a little grace. 

Maybe then the writing thing will happen.

Ever cleaned out a drawer and found something you wrote, say, ten years ago?  Something you forgot you’d even written?

Ever wanted to see one of your poems published?  Even though, deep in your gut, you know you suck?

One way to skin that cat: publish it yourself.

And call it a prayer instead of a poem.  Because a heartfelt prayer never sucks.

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Lord grant me the hope to unwrap this day as the precious gift that it is.

To embrace it with the wide-eyed wonder of a child.

As if it were my last.

Lord give me the wisdom to give this day to others.

To add a moment of warmth or some twist of loving fate.

And not need to be right, or the object of gratitude.

Or even be there when they smile.

Lord deliver strength to accept what is.

If today should be my time to bear the load,

Help me find a way to see burden as grace.

To make a lesson and therefore a blessing out of pain.

Lord grant me the will to walk with purpose.

And sway with neither storms nor winds of change.

To choose a path with mind wide open,

To make the most of every page.

Lord give me the peace that comes with knowing

That despite my frail anonymity you are here.

That if my heart can surrender and remain open,

Then today will hold no limits,

And no fear.

                                                L. Brooks 1999

Written under a flashlight on a dark and stormy night in a pup tent somewhere in the Northern California wilderness.

By myself. 

Scared shitless.

Then the really scary part started.

I came home and decided to write fiction for a living.

Prayer answered?  Still wondering.

Now here I am, writing about fiction.

The Lord moves in mysterious ways, they say.

At least now I’ve published a poem.  Such as it is.

A Writer’s Prayer is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Yeah, it really does happen.

In a few weeks I’m giving two workshops at the annual Willamette Writers Conference, one of the biggest and best out there.  Because of that, I receive email updates from the nice folks who run it, and what you see below is one of them.

Great news for all of us, even if we’re not pursuing that specific strategy.  It’s testimony to the fact that publishing is changing rapidly, and today’s long shot flyer just might be tomorrow’s ticket in.

Into what… that remains to be seen.  Because that, too, is changing. 

What isn’t changing is the criteria for a publishable story, and the various means of getting there.  Those things are like gravity… universal and eternal.

Enjoy. 

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By Elisa Klein

Don’t knock the Kindle until you’ve tried it — not just for reading, but for launching your literary career.

That’s the sage advice fromup-and-coming writer Colleen Houck.  The Salem, Oregon author, who once battled professional rejection by turning to self-publishing, just inked a three-book deal with a major publisher thanks to the wireless reading device.

At this year’s Willamette Writers Conference, Houck will inspire you with her story of perseverance and her ingenious use of the latest technology.

Undaunted by nearly 400 rejection letters, Houck turned to Amazon’s self-publishing services several years ago. She gained a following through the on-demand outlet and her series of romance/adventure novels landed at #22 on Amazon’s Kindle bestseller list. That designation brought her to the attention of an agent at the nation’s top literary agency: Trident Media. Alex Glass sleuthed out the savvy self-published author in May and quickly offered representation.

Houck remembers, “I turned to my husband and screamed: I HAVE AN AGENT!” (Alex Glass will join Houck during a recently added session at the conference.)

Houck first published her novels Tiger’s Curse and Tiger’s Quest through Amazon’s Booksurge, a service recently re-named CreateSpace. Hiring editors and printing copies of the books was expensive, but formatting and selling books on the Kindle was affordable for the author. Readers also liked the Kindle price.

Houck explains, “Readers are willing to take a risk on new authors when it doesn’t cost them too much.” Many Kindle books cost just a few dollars and some are free. A post Christmas surge (which) Houck attributes to booming holiday sales of the wireless reading device, sent her Kindle sales from 278 in December, to 4,842 in January, and 6,412 in February.

The momentum was building and Houck embraced the idea of a five book series.  She explains, “In March of 2010 I was approached by a film producer who purchased the options for all five books in the Tiger series to be made into movies.  Alex became my agent by the end of May and by the first week in June the first three books in the series were sold to a traditional publishing house.”

Colleen Houck is happy to have the validation of an agent and mainstream publisher, but still sees the value of self-publishing on-demand via Kindle.  “Everybody has the right to tell a story and express themselves. In my case it was only after readers  got interested in my work and I was making moneythat industry people picked me up.”

To hear more about their journey, join Colleen Houck and Alex Glass for Kindle Success at the Willamette Writers Conference on Friday, August 6th, from 9:30 am-10 am. Their special informational session will take place right after the panel of literary agents.

The 41st annual Willamette Writers Conference will take place Friday, August 6th through Sunday, August 8th, at the Portland Airport Sheraton Hotel.  On-line registration is at willamettewriters.com.

Learn more about Colleen Houck HERE.

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After reading this, I feel I must alert you to the fact that my own new novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, is available in Kindle format HERE, at the low price of only $6.39.   Be sure and check out the reader reviews… if they weren’t good, I wouldn’t mention it.  And only two (out of 15) are from people I know.

You can read more about story — it’s an apocalyptic thriller — HERE.

Motivation: The Success Story of a Self-Published Author is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

You may have seen this.  It’s gone viral, and the star of this piece is already being limoed around New York to all the national morning talk shows after being nominated for an Emmy.

And Emmy for what, precisely?

For Best Actor in a Television Commercial.  Really. 

I didn’t know they had that category, either.  But when you see this, you’ll understand why he’s a shoo-in.

Yes, the 30-seconds referred to in the title of this post reference a TV spot for Old Spice, the most long-lived name in men’s grooming short of Gillette.

I first saw this thing sitting in a movie theater waiting for the trailers to run.  I usually get irriated when they show me advertising on my dime, and time, but this one blew me out of my seat.

You’ll see why in a moment.  And if you’ve already beheld this wonder of creativity, you’ll want to see it again.

Why Writers Should See This

That’s easy.  This spot tells an entire story, both visually and narratively.

It’s the sum of the Six Core Competencies of successful storytelling in full glory, at least if you go easy on the theme criteria in this case.  It has a killer concept, a great character, a solid structure, a great series of lightning-fast scenes, and most of all…

… the voice of the writing is on another level.

What makes this work is the sum of all these elements working together.  Click on the link below to behold this spectacle. 

Genius.

One more note.  As a writer of novels and screenplays, you not only have to summon a remarkable voice, you also need to create the vehicle of its delivery.  In other words, you need to be the writer, the actor, and the director of your story, and pull it together in such a way that the sum of the end product exceeds those parts.

Which is precisely what happens here.

Watch and learn.  Be inspired.  And of course, enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTIowBF0kE

30 Seconds of Pure Creative Genius is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Three words: thanks for sharing.

The response to the prior two Storyfix posts on the nature and placement – and the definition – of the fabled Inciting Incident in a story has been very illuminating.

Definitely a victory of quality over quantity. 

The crux of those posts was that the Inciting Incident, commonly referred to (including by me) as being synonymous with the First Plot Point, is, in fact, not quite that simply defined.

I encourage you to read the Comments, including a generic example story idea that shows how an Inciting Incident can legitimately occur at three different places in Part 1 of a story – and only one of them is the First Plot Point – each with a different context.

And how – thank you Patrick Sullivan – you can really only have one of them.  Because once a fuse has been lit, it’s lit.  It then becomes the job of the First Plot Point to explain it to us.

None of those II placement options negate the fact that there still needs to be a proper First Plot Point.  Proper, as in: it meets the stated criteria; if the Inciting Incident happens earlier than the FPP, which it certainly can, it probably won’t.

Confusion continues to ensue.  Let there be clarity.

A Movie to Please the Senses and Insult the Intelligence

I love Tom Cruise movies.  I use clips from them – lots of clips – in my story structure workshops.  So much so that I get wry grins and is-there-something-you’re-not-telling-us stares.

One word: nope.  I just like his script choices (read below, nobody bats a thousand in this game), which happen to offer great structural learning opportunities.

So I couldn’t resist this summer’s popcorn blockbuster starring Cruise and Cameron Diaz, Knight and Day.  It was all it was cracked up to be by the critics – pretty much worthless as a credible story, but, somehow and nonetheless, fun. 

One of the things that makes it fun is that the actors, and perhaps the script, don’t take this story any more seriously than anyone with an I.Q. over 80 should.

That said, it’s fun to count the number of times the director screws up.

Notice in the airport scene (supposed to be Wichita) that an old 727 cargo plane without windows is waiting outside a passenger gate, as if it’s a scheduled airliner.  As if they’d rented this junker from Props R-Us on Melrose.

Then notice how, when another airplane with Cruise and Diaz are supposedly on it takes off, it’s an Airbus 320, with one engine on each wing.

Then  it magically turns into a Boeing 727 – one with windows — once they cut to the interior of the plane, including a cockpit shot showing the three throttles, one for each engine. 

Our stars boarded the airliner during the day.  Then, only a few minutes before the shootout we all saw in the trailer, during which Cruise and Diaz have the world’s most unlikely conversation, we see daylight outside the windows.

And then, about two minutes later when the plane is crashing, it’s the dead of night.

Sure enough, when the plane crashes (not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) it’s a 727, not the Airbus 320 we saw them taking off in.

Cruise radios air traffic control, using the supposed lingo of pilot-tower banter, including the word “heavy” as part of the call-sign, which identifies the aircraft as a jumbo jet.  Which, apparently Cruise didn’t know, doesn’t include an old 727 (which, by the way, are pretty rare these days).

Has this director never been outside of L.A. County?

Following the crash Diaz is rendered unconscious by Cruise (in context it makes sense) in a corn field next to the about-to-explode wreckage.  He has to flee the scene, but tells her someone will find her.

Then she wakes up in her bed – the next morning – in Boston.  As if someone found her unconscious in the corn field near Wichita, put her on the next Red Eye to Boston, located her purse to get her address, took her home, put her into a nightie and tucked her into bed before dawn.

Yep, that’s what they’re asking you to swallow.

Just sayin’.  We need to be better than the people who are writing this crap.  Or, in defense of the scriptwriter… wait a minute, the director was the scriptwriter.  He should sue himself.

Then again, it was star power and action all over the place, and I have to admit, my wife and I had a lot of laughs.  Both at it and with it.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for popcorn movies.  Now if I could only sell a script for one.

Thank God they’re setting such a low bar.

More Inciting Incident… and Stuff is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

I admit it, I spoke too soon. 

Last post I said I’d put up a killer article for Friday.  My intentions were good, but my schedule wasn’t.  Friday is over, and the egg on my face is already peeling off.

To be honest, I’m in Hawaii (Maui) with my beautiful wife simulating a second honeymoon.  That agenda, too much sun and the World’s Scariest Almost Lost My Blog moment (see last post) conspired to make this something I couldn’t get done.

Oh, did I mention getting an offer on my house, to which we needed to counter, all of which involved about seven back-and-forth trans-Pacific faxes?

And it was my birthday.  When your website crashes on your birthday, you question everything you know.

Tomorrow I’m on an airplane for 6 hours, and when you throw in the check-in time (if you’ve ever flown out of Maui you know what I mean, the security line alone is always about 300 yards long… and I’m not exaggerating), I have about an 11 hour day ahead of me.

So I’m shooting for Monday. 

I hope you’ll join me.  Because I’m going to blow a widely-accepted piece of conventional story structure wisdom all to hell.

Aloha.

Make That Monday is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Storyfix is back from a little trip to the digital Twilight Zone.  Rod Serling says hello… and if you don’t get that lame little joke, you’re under 40.  Good for you.

At least one person out there suffered severe anxiety, a sleepless night and a significant amount of gastronomic distress while Storyfix was hijacked by the evil Domain Gods. 

Me.

But we’re back, I’m breathing again, eating soft foods, and in dire need of a nap.

I’d like to thank my two patient and generous technical mentors for their help, both of whom are still engaged in some combination of head shaking and polite giggling.  Tolerance of the ignorant is a beautiful thing.

Yeah, the Domain lapsed.  I have excuses up the ying-yang, and when I get out of the corner and can get this pointy hat off my head, I’ll ’splain.  For now… not that important, at least to you.  What’s good for all of us is that we’re back on the job focusing on how to write better stories.

I have a KILLER post coming soon.  As in, later today.  After I go snorkling. 

As Robert Downey Jr. said in the first scene of Ironman II… it’s good to be back.

We’re Baaa-aaack… is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

I feel like Tiger Woods, but without the billion dollars.

I owe you an apology.  The post that went out on the RSS Feed last night, and was distributed via email this morning, was chock-full of typos and crappy writing.  I’m embarrassed.  And I apologize.  You deserve better.

It was late, I’m under more than a few guns, and my wife – who normally proofs me — wasn’t feeling well and had gone to bed.  Not an excuse, not even a good explanation — I should plan around these moments — but it’s all I have.  It’s just the truth.  And it sucks.

So once again — this isn’t the first time I’ve been here — I commit to doing better.  I thank the frustrated reader who brought this to my attention, and I thank all of you for hanging in there with me on this journey.

I look forward to our continued sharing of this experience.

The typos —  to the best of my shabby proofing abilities and with my wife still off the editorial grid — have been addressed, if you’d care to give it another go. 

More deconstruction of “An Education” coming on Friday.

Quick message about yesterday’s post. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Last Tuesday I posted a fun little diversion in the form of a friendly challenge: spilt a multi-syllable word into separate words and write a clever new defintion for it.

Seventy-one of you contributed over 300 examples of wit, sarcasm, biting truth and scary writing chops.  If you didn’t see it, click HERE to have more than a few laughs.  Get ready to waste some time on this, it’s hard to look away.

I said I’d pick a winner, and now I’m stuck with that chore.  There are too many brilliant ones to consider.  In fact, all of them were really clever and, for the most part, funny as hell.

Like:

Barking… bar king: last man standing in a drinking contest.

Chicago… chica go: Hispanic guy telling his girl to get lost.  Or chic ago: styles from the yesteryear.

Headroom… head room: the room in the house of a New Guinean warrior to display his trophies.

Student… stu dent: what my door gets every time I park next to Stu.

Prevent… pre vent: to roll down the car window before breaking wind.

Hospitality… ho spitality: ability of a prostitute to generate saliva.

Pinscher… pins Cher: your goal if you wind up on a reality show called, “Wrestling With the Stars.”

I could go on. 

So let’s get to it.   The only criteria I could apply in selecting a “winner” among so many brilliant entries was to land on the one that I couldn’t get out of my head.  One that made me grin every time I thought of it.

It was submitted by Trudy (email me for your ebook, your link isn’t live), who had a bunch of other good ones, as well.

The winning entry:

effluent: ef fluent: Joe Biden when he thinks he’s off mike.

Thanks for playing.

Back to business.  Later today I’ll be posting the kick-off entry in the deconstruction of An Education.

Wordplay: And the winner is… is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Let’s have some fun.

Last night I was watching an episode of The United States of Tara, Showtime’s brilliant Spielberg-produced series starring Toni Collette as a wife afflicted with multiple personalities.

Yeah, like that never happens.

What I saw that inspired today’s idea had nothing to do with the story.  As a background piece of business, an artist character was working on a series of framed posters that took a normal word and broke it into two syllables which, when viewed as two words, had a completely separate and clever meaning.

Like the word warhead, for example.  Split it, and you get war head.  

The image you get from the whole word is a bomb.  The image you get from the separate word is the face of Donald Rumsfeld.

And that’s when it came to me.  This is cool.  I began playing with other words and found the exercise sort of fun.  Not only by coming up with splitable words, but with sarcastic little defintions that apply to the new creation.

Like the word carpet, for example.  Split it into car pet, and you get the image of a dog sticking its snout out the window of a moving vehicle.

Or the word earnest, which, when split into ear nest, brings to mind an image of the stuff growing out of the side of Larry King’s head.

Or — one more example — the word panache.  Split into pan ache, you have the feeling you get when your wife smacks you upside the head with a skillet.

You get the drift.

So here’s the challenge:

Give us your best shot at this.  Or shots.

Come up with a word that can be split into two syllables that, when viewed as a pair of words, have a completely separate meaning than the original word.

To spice things up, I’ll be “judging” not only the cleverness of the word(s) choice, but also the clever defintion of the new term (see examples above) as well. 

Two more examples. 

The word subdue splits into sub due: what happens when you promise someone a sandwich and it’s time to pay up.

The word sublime splits into sub lime: what you stuff into a bottle of Corona beer while traveling in a submarine.  Really.

Okay, not exactly Jim Carey, but you get the drift.

Put your best shot(s) in the Comment thread, and I’ll announce the “winner” next Monday.

Winner of what?  One of my ebooks (your choice) to the first three places.  And bragging rights. 

Tell your friends, everyone is welcome, so let’s have some fun with this.

And remember, on Monday we begin our deconstruction of An Education, a character-driven Oscar-nominated film that teaches us much about story structure in films and novels in which nobody gets blown up or kidnapped.  Just seduced and betrayed.

Donut.  Do nut.  Anybody got a one-liner that one?

A Quick Wordplay Challenge. Fun. Prizes. is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Greetings from Wenatchee, Washington.  I’m here as a presenter at the “Write on the River” writing conference, a great event in a gorgeous college venue.

I’m delivering two workshops, one on how to pump up the level of tension in our stories, the other a 4-hour version of my basic “Six Core Competencies” workshop. 

This morning I had the privilege of introducing the keynote speaker for this conference, Terry Brooks.  Should have seen the look of confusion in about 200 pairs of eyes when I was introduced.  Had some fun with that one.

And Terry Brooks… wow.  Great guy.  An iconic name in fiction.  With whom I shared salmon and writerly war stories last night.

Reason I even bring this up here…

In preparing the outline for the “high tension” workshop, I discovered a wealth of good stuff to cover.  Subtle, less-than-obvious ways to approach this critical aspect of narrative fiction. 

So much, in fact, that I’m thinking it might make a killer series here on Storyfix.  The title I’m using : “Snap, Crackle, Pop: How to Jack the Tension in Your Stories.”

Would make a revelant ebook, too.

Wondering what you think — is this something you’d like to see covered here on Storyfix?  And, is this an ebook that might interest  you down the road?

By the way, remember that recent call for ideas for topics to appear here in the near future?  I’m not ignoring you, I plan on getting to them all.  Including short story structure, by the way, which was the overwhelming majority suggestion.

Next Deconstruction

In case you missed it, I’ll be doing An Education soon.  Rent the DVD so you can follow this Oscar nominated genius story as we rip it to shreds, scene by scene. 

Also, on Monday I’ll be running the posts I received this week about the Shutter Island deconstruction.  Thanks for all the kind feedback, I think I can mark that one up as a successful effort.

Character Review

If you’re interested, my ebook “The Three Dimensions of Character” has been reviewed on The Book Connection, a popular online reading venue.  You can read the review HERE.

If you like what you read, you can learn more here… and/or – let’s cut to the chase – you can buy it here.

(Obligatory legal notice: Storyfix is a marketing affiliate of Amazon.com.)

Reader Poll… Coupla Other Ditties is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com