Writing a Software Review

As someone who works with computers and software on a daily basis, I've read a lot of software reviews as a part of my job.  As a gamer and computer hobbyist in my spare time, I've read a lot more.  I've also written my fair share of software reviews and analyses for work and various web site ventures over the years.

Several months ago, I analyzed a large number of software reviews from a variety of sources.  This included magazines, leading computer web sites like CNet and PC World, and informal reviews posted by hobbyists on web forums.  From that analysis, I compiled a structure for software reviews and a variety of tips for doing a fairly professional job of reviewing a software product.

Software Review Structure

I used a mind mapping tool to help me organize my thoughts and observations.  In the end, I decided that software reviews should follow the basic structure outlined below:

• 
  
  
  
  • A “50-foot view” or very short overview of the review results
  
  
  • Description of the software (its purpose, functionality)
  
  
  • The installation process
  
  
  • The user interface
  
  
  • What the software is like to use
  
  
  • How it compares with other products
  
  
  • How it compares with previous versions of itself
  
  
  • What its documentation and tech support is like
  
  
  • How it’s licensed and if demo/trial versions exist
  
  
  • What its technical specs are
  
  
  • What the specs are of the system you used to review the software
  
  
  • A conclusion summarizing the good and bad of the software
  
  
  
  

All of these parts aren’t necessary for every software review you do.  For example, if you’re looking at a program that has no competitors and you’re not familiar with its earlier versions, you wouldn’t bother to include a comparison to other products or to earlier versions.  Still, your goal will be to include as many of the above sections as you can authoritatively speak to.

Detailed Software Review Structure

For each of the points in the basic structure, I’ve developed a list of questions to ask yourself (and details you may want to include) to make sure you cover that particular point thoroughly.  Again, not all of these will apply to every review.  Think of them as a guideline.  Include what you think is relevant and useful for the package you’re reviewing, and leave out the stuff that’s not applicable, useful, or worth the time to research.

Below is the “fully expanded upon” list of points in the basic review structure:

• A “50-foot view” or very short overview of the review results
  
  
  
  • This should be just a very short list of bullet points, no complete sentences, and with the minimum number of words necessary to share the information.  Think of it as “If I had 15 seconds to tell someone about this software, what would I say to them?”
  
  
  • What are the product’s strengths, highlights, or best features?
  
  
  • What are the product’s weaknesses, problems, or frustrating details?
  
  
  • In 2-3 sentences, what would you tell someone who wants to buy this product or one like it?
  
  
  • This can include a 5-star or x-out-of-10 rating if you want it to
  
  
  
  


• Description of the software (its purpose, functionality)
  
  
  
  • What does it do?
  
  
  • What features does it include?
  
  
  
  


• The installation process
  
  
  
  • How long does it take to install?
  
  
  • Were there any problems installing it and getting it working?
  
  
  • Does it have any copy protection?
  
  
  • If there is copy protection, is it convenient or frustrating to work with?
  
  
  • Does it uninstall cleanly if you decide to remove it?
  
  
  
  


• The user interface
  
  
  
  • Is it intuitive to use, or did you need to consult the help or manual?
  
  
  • Can keyboard shortcuts, menus, etc., be customized to suit your needs?
  
  
  • Does the interface look modern or “dated”?
  
  
  
  


• What the software is like to use
  
  
  
  • How long does it take to launch the software and make it usable?
  
  
  • What file formats does it read and/or write?
  
  
  • Is there anything you found annoying about using it?
  
  
  • Is there anything you found especially fun or cool about using it?
  
  
  • Are there plug-ins, extensions, themes, or other “add-ons” you can get for it?
  
  
  • Did you find any security concerns (e.g., passwords stored in visible text form)?
  
  
  • Are there ample keyboard shortcuts?
  
  
  • Did you run into any glitches?
  
  
  • Does it integrate well with other products?
  
  
  • Is it easy to get patches/updates and install them?
  
  
  • Is any kind of automation built-in (scripts, macros, etc.)?
  
  
  • How long does it typically take you to do whatever it is the software does?
  
  
  
  


• How it compares with other products
  
  
  
  • Do they have features this product doesn’t?
  
  
  • Does it have features they don’t?
  
  
  • Is the other product easier, harder, or about the same to use?
  
  
  • Is it more or less expensive than the other product?
  
  
  • How do the other products technical requirements (CPU, RAM, etc.) compare?
  
  
  • What’s the other product’s “footprint” (RAM, CPU, hard disk usage) in comparison?
  
  
  • Is it faster or slower than the competitor?
  
  
  
  


• How it compares with previous versions of itself
  
  
  
  • What features have been added in this version?
  
  
  • Have any features been taken away?
  
  
  • Are any existing features harder to use now?
  
  
  • Are any existing features easier to use now?
  
  
  • How do the technical specifications compare with the old version?
  
  
  • How does the user interface compare?
  
  
  • Is it faster or slower than previous versions?
  
  
  
  


• What its documentation and tech support is like
  
  
  
  • Is the manual thorough?
  
  
  • Is the manual easy to understand?
  
  
  • Is tech support available?
  
  
  • How do you access tech support?
  
  
  • Is there an online knowledgebase on the manufacturer’s web site?
  
  
  • Were tech support staff professional, courteous, and helpful?
  
  
  • How much support comes with the product, if any?
  
  
  • Does there seem to be a big user community? (Search for web forums, newsgroups, or mailing lists where people share information about the software.)
  
  
  
  


• How it’s licensed and if demo/trial versions exist
  
  
  
  • Is it commercial, shareware, or freeware?
  
  
  • What are the license terms?
  
  
  • Is a trial or demo version available? If so, what’s missing from the trial/demo?  How long does the trial/demo last?
  
  
  • What does it cost to license?
  
  
  • Who sells licenses to the software, and who develops it?
  
  
  • Are there multiple variants (e.g., Basic, Advanced, and Pro versions)?  If so, consider a table showing which features are in which variant to help readers identify which one they need.
  
  
  
  


• What its technical specs are
  
  
  
  • CPU required, recommended
  
  
  • RAM required, recommended
  
  
  • Hard disk space required, recommended
  
  
  • Peripherals required, recommended
  
  
  • Operating system(s) supported and versions supported (e.g., Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.5)
  
  
  • Does it need a network connection?
  
  
  • Does it need anything else not specifically listed above?
  
  
  
  

• What the specs are of the system you used to review the software
  
  
  
  • CPU, RAM, hard disk, optical drive, video card, OS, etc.
  
  
  • How did the review system compare to the recommended specs
  
  
  
  


• A conclusion summarizing the good and bad aspects of the software
  
  
  
  • This should be about a paragraph or two long and summarizes the highlights of all the above points.  It should finish with a recommendation (or not) for the software relative to what you get for the money, how well it does what it’s supposed to do, and so forth.
  
  
  
  

If you manage to follow this basic structure, you’ll write a review that’s thorough, detailed, and useful.  Your readers should find pretty much whatever they’re looking for in that review.

The above structure probably would not work well for video games or hardware.  It’s oriented more toward application software and utilities.

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Analyzing The Stainless Steel Rat - Part 3

In the first two installments of this series, I looked at a statistical view of Harry Harrison's novel The Stainless Steel Rat.  In this installment, I want to examine how he developed the character James Bolivar "Slippery Jim" DiGriz, the aforementioned Stainless Steel Rat.

Jim DiGriz would not appear to be a sympathetic character at first glance.  He is a career criminal.  He makes his living stealing from others, eluding the police, and committing any number of other crimes.  Yet, almost from the first page, you find yourself liking Slippery Jim.  Why?

To be certain, Jim has a few imperfections aside from his chosen profession:

• 
  
  
  
  • He's very smug and sure of himself. When he disables the police robot that tries to arrest him in the opening scene, we are told "He squashed very nicely, thank you."  Later, when the robot tries to grab him on the way out of the office, Jim says "I had been waiting for that and they [the robot fingers] closed about two inches short."  When he hears the police sirens outside, it's "a wonderful sound" and he tells us that "I accepted it as any artist accepts tribute."   At one point, he tells us "The very idea that someone could outthink me was odious."
  
  
  • He has little respect for authority or the police. When describing the reaction to his escape, he says "They were sure making a big fuss over a little larceny, but that's the way it goes on these overcivilized worlds. Crime is such a rarity now that the police really get carried away when they run across some. In a way I can't blame them, giving out traffic tickets must be an awful dull job.  I really believe they ought to thank me for putting a little excitement in their otherwise dull lives."  When he meets the leader of The Special Corps, the elite government unit that hunts down people like him, DiGriz describes him as "The old boy behind the desk".
  
  
  • He doesn't see his actions as harmful. In addition to thinking that the police should thank him for giving them some excitement, Jim also mentions that no one is really harmed by his crimes.  If he robs a bank or a business, for example, he figures they're reimbursed by their insurance company so no one really got hurt.  What about the insurance company?  They've lost money, and they're probably going to raise the victim's insurance rates, too.
  
  
  
  

Still, Jim DiGriz is a sympathetic and likable character.

Bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole says that there are seven traits that tend to make characters likable:

• 
  
  
  
  • They are admirable.
  
  
  • They are "in control".
  
  
  • They are virtuous.
  
  
  • They are "human".
  
  
  • They exhibit courage.
  
  
  • They seem like "a force of nature".
  
  
  • Reading about them is a kind of "guilty pleasure".
  
  
  
  

How does Slippery Jim stack up to this list?

• 
  
  
  
  • He is admirable in spite of himself. Jim is creative, telling us "One of the main reasons I have stayed out of the arms of the law for as long as I have, is that I have never repeated myself.  I have dreamed up some of the sweetest little rackets, run them off once, then stayed away from them forever after."  He becomes more admirable when he joins The Special Corps and agrees to take down the more dangerous, homicidal killers.
  
  
  • He is "in control" by virtue of being a skilled planner and sharp thinker. In the opening scene, he knew a police robot would come for him and had already prepared the large safe and explosive charge in the ceiling to drop onto its head, disabling the radio that would call for backup.  He had an escape panel in the wall, knew how long it would take to make it through various parts of his escape route, etc
  
  The early scene where he's prepared his escape shows him to be in control.  The fact that his carefully considered plan to trap Pepe and Angelina worked, up until the point he let her escape (showing his "human" side), illustrates this.
  
  In most situations, in fact, Jim is a "take charge" guy who not only tends to bring others around to his way of thinking but also has a strong handle on his own emotions.  At various times he tells us "I stifled that train of thought before it started", and "Think first, then act." when he's feeling paralyzed with fear
  
  • He is virtuous, in his own way. Throughout all of his criminal exploits, Jim has never killed anyone.  This is confirmed during his "interview" with Inskipp.  Jim tells Inskipp that he hasn't killed anyone that he knows of.  Inskipp confirms this by saying "Well you haven't, if that will make you sleep any better tonight.  You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you…"We see evidence of this non-violent nature throughout the book.  Jim's weapon of choice for incapacitating foes is a gas grenade.  He uses them on the occupants of the armored car he steals, on pursuers inside the department store, and elsewhere.  During the chase in the department store, he tells us that he "put an entire clip of slugs through the door, aiming high so I wouldn't hurt anyone."Even when he short-changes a cab drive "to break the monotony" he tells us "the tip I gave him more than made up the loss"… showing that he can't steal from individuals.
  
  
  • He is human. During the armored car scenes, we see Jim make his first mistake, failing to realize that the same trucks were going in and out of the parking lot. Later, when he finds himself in the office with Inskipp, he is asked "Don't tell me you thought it was an accident that you ended up here?"  His response is "I had, up until that moment, and the lack of intelligent reasoning on my part brought on a wave of shame that snapped me back to reality.  I had been outwitted and outfought, the least I could do was surrender graciously."Later, when he catches up to Angelina and Pepe, Angelina (the mastermind) pretends to be a victim of Pepe's evil schemes (when in reality the opposite is true).  When Pepe tells him that the whole plan was Angelina's and he's just let her get away, he says "The cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me.  'You're lying,' I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it."  This won't be the last time Angelina fools with Jim during the story.
  
  
  • He exhibits courage. Jim goes through several tense moments escaping from the police in the early scene, including walking across a plank between two tall buildings with no safety precautions.  He sets himself up as a potential victim for Pepe and Angelina, even though they shot a hole through a previous victim's shop.  In fact, Jim exhibits courage consistently throughout the story.
  
  
  • The book itself is a "guilty pleasure". There are many people who enjoy reading about criminal capers because they enjoy secretly imagining themselves to be the ones in the stories.  For example, they vicariously live the thrill of cracking a safe, robbing a bank, or running an elaborate con.  The Stainless Steel Rat books (there are at least 10) are told in first person perspective, making it even easier for a reader to imagine being Jim DiGriz.
  
  
  
  

So, by Stackpole's guidelines, Harrison has done a great job establishing Jim DiGriz as a likable, sympathetic character.  What might be equally interesting would be to see how Harrison turns Angelina from a psychotic, cold-hearted killer into a doting wife and mother.  However, that doesn't happen in this book.  It will have to be a topic for a later article.

In Part 4, I'm going to examine Harrison's use of Dialogue and Description in the novel to paint images of the characters, scenes, and action.

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Analyzing Harry Harrison’s “The Stainless Steel Rat” – Part 2

Part one of this series looked at Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat from a purely statistical viewpoint, examining chapter length, sentence length, and various readability indexes. This installment will take a look at the craft used by Harrison to tell the story.

Analyzing the Chapter "Hooks"

I've been told that if you want your novel to be a real page turner, there are a few simple techniques that can help you achieve that. First, start each chapter with a "hook" that gets the reader asking questions like "Who is this? Why did that happen?" End each chapter with a cliff hanger of sorts that makes the reader wonder what's next. If you also keep chapters close to an average length of around 2,500 words, most readers can get through one fairly quickly. They'll get to the end of the chapter they're reading and think, "That last chapter went pretty quick. I wonder what will happen next. I'll just read one more chapter before I quit." This cycle continues chapter after chapter, and soon the reader has finished the whole book. With this thinking in mind, I took a look at how Harrison started and ended the 19 chapters in The Stainless Steel Rat. (For me, the book has always been a page-turner.)

Chapter 1 starts off with a pretty strong hook:

When the office door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been a money-maker — but it was all over. As the cop walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same somber expression and heavy foot that they all have — and the same lack of humor. I almost knew to the word what he was going to say before he uttered a syllable.

At once, the reader starts asking questions. Who is telling me this? What money-making game is over? Why is a cop coming in, and why does that make the character smile? How does he know what the cop is going to say? The rest of the chapter explains that our main character is a career criminal who has been running a scam where cans of fruit stolen from a government warehouse are re-labeled by robots and sold to unwitting shopkeepers at great prices. He knows what the cop is going to say because it isn't the first time they've tried to arrest him. The cliff hanger at the end of Chapter 1 is that although Jim has eluded the initial pursuit, he is still on the planet and might not get away.

Chapter 2 doesn't a hook at the beginning. It takes some time to explain what our anti-hero is all about, how he views his life of crime as a sort of public service, and that there aren't many like him in the galaxy. It ends with him on a different world, about to end a second criminal enterprise, only to realize that something isn't right. Someone is looking for him.

Chapter 3 starts with Jim wondering who is after him, and trying to escape from them. It ends with him receiving an offer to join The Special Corps, an elite government agency that catches dangerous criminals and solves problems that individual planetary governments can't. Jim sees this as "the end of loneliness".

Chapter 4 shows Jim finding life in The Special Corps as a new recruit incredibly dull. It ends with him discovering a plot to build a nearly unstoppable battleship and being sent to investigate it.

Chapter 5 begins with a description of the planet Cittanuvo, on which the battleship is being built. It ends with the battleship taking off ahead of schedule and escaping, and Jim wondering how he's going to catch it.

Chapter 6 is primarily there to slow down the frantic pace of action established in the earlier chapters. Jim spends time thinking about the mysterious people behind the battleship, what their motives might be, and how he might catch them. It ends with the cliff hanger that "the next four days passed very slowly", leaving a reader to wonder what happened after that.

Chapter 7 ramps the action back up, with the battleship threatening Jim's ship (which has been setup as a tempting robbery target). It ends with Angelina, who turns out to be the criminal mastermind behind the battleship's construction, escaping. Jim realizes he'll be seeing Angelina again.

Chapter 8 has Jim stealing a ship and heading out after Angelina. When an explosive device detonates on the ship just after Jim disconnects it, he realizes that he's on his own now and can't expect help from the Corps.

Chapter 9 sees Jim as an independent again, deciding how to find and capture Angelina. It ends with him finding her in a bar, pretending to be a prostitute.

Chapter 10 starts with Jim pretending to hire Angelina's services following her back to her room. It ends with Jim realizing that this was a trap, and that she knew who he was. "Then, at the exact and ultimate moment of my maximum realization and despair she pulled the trigger. Not once, but over and over again. Four tearing, thundering bullets of pain directly into my heart. And a final slug directly between my eyes." Naturally, the reader wonders how in the heck Jim can survive that.

Chapter 11 finds Jim coming around in an ambulance, groggy and in pain. He survived because of a bullet proof vest and a reflexive move to shield his head with his arms. He modifies his medical charts to appear dead on arrival and is taken to the morgue. He exits the hospital before being treated.

Chapter 12 finds Jim looking for a disgraced medical professional to help heal his wounds and perform plastic surgery on him. It ends with a realization that Angelina is mentally ill, and that he'll have to "follow her down the path of insanity" if he hopes to catch her. This is another chapter that breaks the action for a bit.

Chapter 13 starts with Jim taking a combination of drugs to simulate Angelina's various psychological issues. It ends with him passing out, after triggering a booby trap he set for himself to prevent him from taking human life in his psychotic state.

Chapter 14 begins with Jim realizing he's in love with Angelina and that simulating her psychotic mind was intoxicating to him ("Even while detesting the thought I felt the desire for more of the same.") It ends with executing the first step in plan to get her attention as a member of the planet's royalty.

Chapter 15 starts with Jim in the royal prison wondering if he'll ever get out. It ends with hooded figures breaking into the prison and pulling him out.

Chapter 16 finds Jim being introduced to Count Rdenrundt, who wants to take over the planet (presumably with Angelina's help). There's no way for Jim to know if Angelina is here or not, but he plays along anyway. It ends with him meeting Angelina and learning that he had killed the Count's wife, only to cause her family to threaten revenge.

Chapter 17 has Jim wondering what to do. Should he turn Angelina in or stay with her? It ends with him learning that her psychotic nature was caused by childhood taunting over her ugliness, and Jim telling her that she's not that little girl anymore (but slipping and calling her "Angelina" in the process).

Chapter 18 begins with some suspicion over an assassin sent to kill Angelina the night before. It ends with The Special Corps showing up and capturing Angelina, who thinks Jim was stalling her so that they could close in.

Chapter 19 explains that The Special Corps had been monitoring Jim all along, and waited to see what he did with Angelina before finally swooping in to capture her. It ends with Jim and Inkskipp believing they might be able to cure Angelina of her homicidal tendencies.

So we see that most of the chapters in the book follow the pattern. There is something of a mystery at the start of the chapter, and a question at the end that makes you wonder what will happen next. Chapters 6 and 12 serve as a kind of break in the action and provide readers with a chance to catch their breath.

The hooks are a bit subtle in some cases, but are present in nearly every chapter.

Coming Up in Part 3 - Characterization

In Part 3 of the analysis, I'm going to look at characterization. How does Harrison establish Jim DiGriz as a career criminal, yet a sympathetic and likable guy? How does he depict Angelina as a cold, calculating criminal, yet leave her sympathetic enough that Jim can fall in love with her? And how has Harrison set the stage for Angelina to become a major character in future Stainless Steel Rat novels?

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Jesse

Josip Novakovich's "Fiction Writer's Workshop" book suggests an exercise to help you practice your fiction writing. You're to take a snapshot of something you've seen and/or heard, and produce a fictional scene from it. The fictional scene below is based on a bit of overheard dialogue (the first quoted line) and a lot of imagination about what went behind it. The names, too, are imaginary (as far as I know).

Jesse dropped his newspaper on the table and looked at the others. They looked up from their eggs and bacon. Frank sipped his coffee.

"Says here this man got 18 years for killin' his wife and kids," Jesse announced. "Ask me, that's better than payin' child support."

The others looked at each other and they saw they were all thinking the same thing. What a jerk. But he's the boss, so what can we do? The waitress, wearing a red plaid uniform skirt and carrying a steaming pot of coffee, stepped over to their table.

"Can I freshen anyone up?"

Jesse looked up and smiled. "Me, honey." His eyes traced her figure from neck to knees. He rubbed a palm on his jeans.

She stepped closer and tilted the coffee pot toward his cup. Jesse's hand reached out toward her skirt. She stepped back out of reach. Jesse's hand dropped to his lap. A smile flashed briefly on his lips. She stepped forward again and started to pour, but stopped when his hand moved toward her.

She put her left hand on her hip, and cocked her head to one side. "It's hard to pour when I'm trying to stay away from your hand!"

"Honey, it ain't nothing us truckers don't do every day."

She scowled at Jesse. "Well, you're not doing it to me!" She walked over to the manager, who was now glancing at their table every few seconds.

Frank glared. "Why do you have to be like that, Jesse?"

The others' eyes widened. Did he really say that?

Jesse glared, and made a noise like air escaping from a truck's breaks. He sipped his coffee. His upper lip wrinkled.

"It's cold." He put the mug down and pushed it away.

"If you hadn't tried to grope her, she'd have warmed it up."

"Just havin' a little fun, Frank."

Frank looked down at his plate and moved the eggs around with his fork. If I didn't need this job…

Jesse chuckled. "You sound like my ex-wife..."

Frank's face reddened. "Well, it wasn't your ex-wife that got caught in bed with that stripper from Rascals, was it?"

"Lorraine had it comin'."

"How do you figure that, exactly?" He stared directly into Jesse's eyes. He had to hear the old man wiggle out of this one.

"Wouldn't give me any. Had to get it somewhere."

Frank rolled his yes. The others hung their heads. "She was eight months pregnant, Jesse. Came in the front door holding your two-year-old daughter, pregnant with your son, and found you banging a stripper on the couch. Classy."

"A man's got needs. You wouldn't know about that, I expect."

Frank wanted to jump across the table and beat some sense into the old man, but it wasn't worth it. He'd lose the job. The way the economy was, he might not find another for a while. With so many people out of work, no one was buying much, so there wasn't much need for truckers to haul things around. He needed to calm down. He took a deep breath and released it slowly.

"Don't you think Lorraine had needs, too?"

"I don't know what she needed, but I know what she's been gettin' for the last ten years. Eight hundred bucks a month of my money. Can't wait for them damned kids to turn eighteen and the court's off my back."

"They're your kids, Jesse!"

"How do I know that?" Jesse stood up. "It's time to get outta here. Frank, you're haulin' that load of manure up to Riley Farms. Joe, them TVs for Big Buy are yours. Marsha, I don't have to tell YOU what to do."

"No… Answer the phone, keep the books, and deposit the checks."

"That's right, darlin'. Lose a few pounds and maybe I can find something better for you to do." He winked at her and grinned.

Pig! They picked up their bills, and walked to the cashier.

The waitress looked over at the empty table. Three of the place settings had tips next to them. Next to the fourth there was only a newspaper.

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Notes from Stackpole's "Writing in the Post-Paper Era"

At Gen Con 2010, I attended one of author Michael A. Stackpole's seminars entitled "Writing Success in the Post-Paper Era". The seminar description mentions that Stackpole was "the first author to offer fiction on the iPhone/iPod Touch through Apple's App Store" and that he would give attendees "an up to date look at the digital revolution and explain how you can profit and develop your career". He definitely delivered on that. Below are my notes:

• For every hardcopy book sold, two are printed.


• The economics of publishing are such that if 25% of the copies of a book sold are digital, publishers will drop the paper version.


• If you intend to make a living writing, you need a professional web site, a Facebook presence, and a Twitter feed. All of these will help get your name out there and draw people to your work.


• If you do a blog, everything you write, tweet, or post on Facebook should be entertaining. It should also be positive, and professional. All of these things become part of your image, and you want to present the image of an entertaining professional with a pleasant personality. If you come across as a moody jerk, a loser, or a person who sulks over all their rejection slips, that's not going to help your reputation.


• You should be able to generate 500 words on pretty much any topic and make it entertaining. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be looking at writing as a career.


• A good, professional WordPress design will cost you $150-200. You should consider that an investment in your future, and not go with one of the free, cookie-cutter themes on the web. (Like the one I'm using here, I guess...)


• Buy domain names for yourself, your main character names, and book titles. That will make it easier for people to find your site and your work.


• Mr. Stackpole uses Zen Cart on his site to handle payments and shopping cart duty.


• Paypal can provide a good payment option for customers. Make sure you get a merchant account with them, though.


• Put writing samples on your web site. This will help readers who are new to you decide whether or not to buy your work.


• Non-technical documents/books priced at over $10 will pretty much not sell as e-books.


• Pricing recommendations based on his experience: $2 for up to 10,000 words. $3 for 10-40,000 words. $5 for 50,000+ words.


• He recommends a metric over "word count divided by 10,000" to represent "hours of reading enjoyment" for your work. Price based on that metric and describe your content in that terminology. The term "pages" doesn't really apply in a digitial setting. Even describing in "word count" doesn't work. What you're really selling is the hours of enjoyment someone will get from your work.


• Consumers tend to be more concerned about the time cost of entertainment than the money cost.


• We'll start seeing more digital serial stories in the future, similar to TV episodes, that are sold for casual reading sessions and priced as above.


• The three main formats you should consider publishing your works in: PDF (optional), ePub (works for all devices except Kindle), and Kindle format. Those three formats should cover just about any e-reader your customer might have.


• Stackpole recommends "Legend Maker" software on the Mac for creating the eBooks.


• At some point there is probably going to be a "big collapse" of traditional publishing. Until then you have no reason not to submit your work to traditional publishers.


• Physical books will drive readers to your web site. That's good. You get money from your web site faster. Publishers tend to pay 6-9 months after the sale of the book. Payment tends to be around $1.35 from the sale of a $10 paperback. Sell a $2 short story through your web site, and you'll pocket around $1.67... so digital publishing is a better deal for the author. More money, sooner.


• As far as editing and proofing services, for a short story, it's sufficient to have another writer look it over. For a novel, hire a freelance editor.


• A good strategy for offering samples on your site: Put up installments of a serial story free. Take them down after a week or two. Put up the next installment. Near the end, offer a digitial omnibus collection of the entire series, including the as-yet-unpublished installments. People will buy them to get the parts they're missing and read the parts not available yet.


• In the digital age, there are no "established authors" anymore. You are as established as your web store.

Mr. Stackpole offers a "Digital Career Guide" for $30 through his web store that offers more detail, recommendations, and information. I purchased a copy at Gen Con but haven't read it yet. I hope to publish a review when I do.

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Notes on Creating Conflict in a Novel

While attending Gen Con 2010 this year, I attended the "Creating Conflict" panel in the writer's track. The panelists included Anton Strout, Chris Pierson, Brad Beaulieu, and John Helfers. The seminar description was:

Make war, not peace! Ruffle the feathers of your characters. Stir the pot of emotions. Add a fistfight or two. Craft a clever and entertaining argument among your heroes. Not all conflict has to be bloody or increase the body count, but it does have to keep the reader turning the pages. Our panelists discuss the art of adding a dash of conflict to your pages.

Below are my notes from the seminar:

• Conflict drives everything in a book.


• Conflict happens whenever two or more characters (or forces, or philosophies) are in opposition.


• Conflict should build over the course of the story, starting small and growing larger.


• It's important that you, and your reader, understand "the bad guy" and why that person does what they do. You don't have to AGREE with the villain, just understand what makes them do what they do. Few, if any, human beings are intentionally "evil".


• The term "psychometry" refers to knowing the history of an object at first touch. (One of the authors used that in a story. Sounded interesting to me so I made a note of it.)


• Having characters make the wrong choice because of their personalities can help build conflict.


• In achieving a goal, the character should try an easy or obvious solution, but fail. Then try a harder solution, and fail... and so on until the goal is achieved.


• Consequences of characters' choices and actions should be explored. They might achieve their goal, but at what cost?


• Characters (and by extension, the reader) may not know the "right choice" for solving a problem.


• The two important points to consider in a conflict: What are the stakes? Why should we care?


• Conflict should be meaningful and advance the plot.


• Conflict should start as early as possible in the story.


• During action scenes (like fights), you want a level of descriptive detail that is appropriate to what a character in that situation might actually notice. For example, during a frantic martial arts battle, we shouldn't see something like this:

The blow connected with Fred's chin, knocking his head back. As his face turned toward the ceiling, Fred noticed the wallpaper border around it. The pattern looked familiar somehow. Of course! It was the same border his mother had put around the walls in their home on the Cape. He wondered if he would ever get back to that house. The summers there were so relaxing...

(A sequence like the above would stop the action DEAD in the story, and it's unlikely anyone in the middle of a fight is going to reminisce about wallpaper and summer homes from their childhood. They might think back to a similar hit from a previous battle and how they reacted, but even that recollection is likely to be short and to the point.)

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Writing Advice from Bestselling Author Michael A. Stackpole

At Origins and Gen Con 2009, I had the opportunity to attend seminars on writing provided by New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole. Mr. Stackpole appeared at Origins 2010 as well, and once more I had the opportunity to learn from him. As always, his seminars were very informative and professionally delivered.

Due to (in my opinion) a poorly publicized seminar schedule at Origins, Mr. Stackpole's seminars were poorly attended this year. I only found out about them when I saw him in the Exhibit Hall signing autographs. Had I not seen him there, I would have had no idea he was even at Origins. His seminars weren't listed on the site where other seminars and events were listed.

For Mr. Stackpole's "Serial Fiction" seminar, I was the only attendee for the first half or so. Ever the professional, he gave the seminar anyway and I eagerly listened. Later, others showed up. Here's what I took away from that seminar:

• In a typical series of stories, 70% of the material is "case work" - or material that is there as part of the current story only. It isn't used or referred to again in the series. The other 30% is "soap opera" material, or material that shows the growth of the main character(s) over the series and provides a "pay off" for series readers who stick with it.


• Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries are a good example of series fiction


• Case characters grow much faster in serial fiction than the "mythos" (main) character


• You need to plan out ahead how many stories/books you're going to have. You also want to have some vague idea what's in them, so you can plant clues in the earlier books to use later.


• When planting details in the early books, try to avoid too many concrete details. Say "I came from a big family" rather than "I have 2 sisters and 4 brothers" because you may find when you get to the book where you plan to use that fact, it might make more sense to have 3 sisters or 3 brothers instead.


• Keep track of your world details in a file, even for background characters. That way you'll know what you've established already as you go along, and you won't have to go back to find out those details later.


• It's not necessary in serial fiction to "dot every i" or "cross every t" as far as sub-plots go. It's OK to leave the reader wondering what happened to a minor character or plot line.


• "Soap opera" material should appear in the middle of your main story


• In a 10-part story, the breakdown should be something like this:
  Parts 1-2: Case material
  Part 3: A storyline
  Part 4: More case material
  Part 5: B storyline is resolved
  Part 6: More case material
  Part 7: A storyline
  Parts 8-9: Case material
  Part 10: resolve the case and the A storyline


• Remember that every story in your series is the "first story" to some reader. Make sure that you plant enough information in each story that a reader can pick it up and get up to speed with just that story.


• You may be tempted to do a 100% mythos story, where you explore a "what if" scenario for your main character or resolve some issue from their past. This generally isn't a good idea. It tends to result in too much change for the character to keep them viable or too little story to keep readers interested. Fan fiction is a possible exception.


• Something Mr. Stackpole has done is publish a serial fiction line in ten 1,000 word sections on his web site. This collection of ten stories is approximately "novel-size" and is bundled together and published as a single book or collection. If you start selling the collection before you publish the last stories in the series, some readers will buy the collection to read those last stores (even if you give them away on your web site).


• Burn Notice on USA Network is a good example of series writing, because about 70% of each episode is case material and about 30% of it is "mythos" material. Each season has an "up or down" feel to it.

In his seminar on "21 ways to kill a novel", Mr. Stackpole provided plenty of useful advice:

• Writing to a fad is a bad idea. By the time you recognize a fad, the market is usually saturated.


• Look for "evergreen" areas like Tolkien-style fantasy, "pet fantasy" (kid with a psychic link to an animal), or time travel stories.


• Don't write things you don't enjoy reading. Readers will sense it.


• Make sure you do market research in the field you're choosing to write in. Read the current leaders in that field. See how they tell stories, what they include in the stories, and from this develop a picture of what the audience expects from your story.


• Have a long-term career plan. Know what you're writing next.


• Make sure your characterization is good. Having no (or poor) characterization is the number one way to kill a novel. Write at least two sentences about each character that describes them one way, and one that goes against that. (Example: "Dave was an expert sailor and navigator. Unfortunately, he was unable to swim.")


• Give readers enough time to connect with your characters, or you will distance the reader from them. You want the reader to feel like they can see inside the character's head, especially if they'll be a viewpoint character. Introduce them early on.


• In every book, you need at least one "normal" character, or someone who is relatively normal. If you don't, readers will have difficulty gauging how "crazy" the other characters really are.


• Don't bounce the point of view around. This disorients the reader.


• No "tin" dialogue. Dialogue has to be appropriate to the character, the setting of the novel, and the situation. Listen to how real people talk in a similar situation. Don't repeat things in the dialogue that you say in the narrative.


• Let the characters decide what's going to happen, not the author. If the story in your novel appears to die out, go back about 7,000 words. Somewhere around there you'll probably find that you made the character do something he or she would never have done. Once you fix that, you'll be able to move ahead.


• Characters have to take responsibility for their actions and there must be consequences to the choices they make.


• Characters should grow, not just change. Growth is an attempt to alter behavior based on external factors, and the change made through growth is permanent. It may be some type of experimentation. It may even be a decision not to change something if that change would take the character away from who they are.


• "Nobody cries over change." but they might cry during growth.


• Make sure the story has an emotional "heart". Show the characters reacting to the good and bad things that happen, and how the events affected them.


• Predictability = Boredom


• Your story must have a plot. Even if people don't like your characters, they must be able to latch onto your plot. If they can't, they'll walk away from the story.


• If your research activities are stopping you from writing, you're doing too much research.


• Don't "file the serial numbers off someone else's novel". Don't just re-tell a Shakespeare story. You want the reader to say "I didn't expect THAT to happen!" or "I've never seen THAT before!"


• Make sure you examine the consequences of things in your stories. If you have a device in your story that replicates physical objects easily and cheaply, there's a definite impact on the economy in that world.


• Things in the story, like character and place names, should fit together and flow well.


• Think about how you choose to name things. The word "pope" has a particular meaning to Catholics, but not to other religions. The word "elder" means something to Mormons. The word "league" in reference to measurement has a specific meaning.


• Make sure the cultures and subcultures in your world get along.


• Sticking to your original outline can kill your novel. Make sure you give it a chance to grow naturally.


• Make sure you have an appropriate head-heart-hand mix. The "head" is the puzzle part of the story. The "heart" is the emotional core. The "hand" is the action.


• Try to have sentences of 12 words or less.


• "Show" as much action as possible and "tell" very little.


• Be careful with math and units of measure.


• Make sure the mechanics in the story are right. Don't have characters putting tinfoil in the microwave or talk about the "hammer" on a pistol that uses clips.


• Don't give an editor the opportunity to say "no" to your novel.


• Don't revise as you go. Wait until you have the draft finished.

If you found any of this useful, you'll undoubtedly like the various writing tips and guides Mr. Stackpole sells through his web store. I've purchased a few of these in the past and found them very useful. They generally include a bit more information than is communicated in the seminar, and are distributed in PDF format - which makes them easy to adapt to electronic readers like the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Kindle, and others.

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Writing Advice from Bestselling Author Aaron Allston

While at the Origins 2010 game fair, I had the opportunity to attend some writing seminars by New York Times bestselling author Aaron Allston. Mr. Allston has published many novels, including a variety of novels for the Star Wars and Terminator franchises, as well as his own "Doc Sidhe" series. On Mr. Allston's home page, he posts information about projects he's working on and includes a link to an online store where his writing can be published in eBook formats.

Here are some of the bits of advice Mr. Allston shared during his "Style and Mood" seminar:

• Write all the way through a novel or story from beginning to end without stopping or editing any more than absolutely necessary. This will keep you from walking away from the work or getting bored with it before it's finished.


• Do not set out to create "art", especially in the beginning. Set out to tell the story you want to tell. As you perfect your craft, you'll get better and your work will begin to approach what others (and you) will see as "art". If you set out to create "art" you'll never achieve it, always comparing the work you're doing to some lofty goal.


• A genre is a way of deliberately limiting your writing to appeal to a specific subset of people. This is why some literature teachers don't see science-fiction as art, as it isn't designed to appeal to "everyone" but just to fans of that kind of work.


• Mr. Allston recommends watching the show Dexter as an example about someone who is trying to be "human" and isn't.


• Avoid writing "the shocking truth". He gave an example from a news story about a woman who had been attacked with an ice pick and didn't realize it until she got home, when she discovered "the shocking truth" that there was an ice pick stuck in her back. This kind of phrasing is trying to tell the reader (or viewer) how to react to the story, rather than sharing the facts and letting the reader react based on that.


• Avoid the use of adverbs and adjectives like "the pain was excruciating". That's not a very clear image. What is "excruciating" exactly? Better to use a description like "it was like having someone scrape off part of a vertbrae with a file". We may not have a good mental image of "excruciating" but we can probably envision that "scraping" example very clearly.


• Similarly, if someone is described as wearing "red shoes" it may be accurate, but if there isn't more to the selection of the color than that, it's a useless detail. Why did the person choose red shoes? What do those red shoes make the people around the wearer think of them? Is the wearer tasteless? Is the wearer trying to attract attention?


• When you're reviewing and editing your work, look at every adverb and adjective. Consider replacing it with an expansion like the "scraping" example above. Don't do too many of those, however. Maybe 1-2 per chapter of a novel is enough.


• Mr. Allston feels that Robert Heinlein was a master of brevity in dialogue and description.


• Manage dialogue without any euphemisms for "said", such as shouted, uttered, murmured, or "ejaculated". Find other ways to let the reader know who is speaking, such as the characters' word choice, sentence structure, or dialect.


• If you have written a scene and there is unwanted emotion in it (e.g., the bad guy looks more sympathetic than the hero), use the "Perry Mason" technique. In that show, the victim of a murder is always depicted as a bad person, so that the audience and the other characters in the story don't get too upset about them dying. By making the victim appear to be "awful" you can remove the emotional reaction to their death. Similarly, you can downplay any emotional reaction by offsetting it with other feelings.


• Humor is anything that tends to make people laugh. Comedy is a genre, where there tends to be a setup and a punchline. People in a comedy say and do things just to set up the joke, things that a normal person in that situation might not do.


• During action sequences, sentence and paragraph length should be shorter. Descriptions should be the minimum necessary to depict what is going on.


• If you use time dilation (making something appear to happen in slow motion), don't overdo it. A paragraph or two at the most should accomplish what you need. Even if the hypothetical time dilation continues on for quite a while, it's not advisable to continue it in the text.


• There shouldn't be large blocks of dialogue during action scenes.


• In an action scene, if a character is doing something unexpected or unusual, provide only the minimum amount of exposition necessary to explain the action. For example, if a pacifist picks up a gun, show them hesitating to do it but realizing it's necessary to protect a loved one, then move on to pulling the trigger.

During his seminar on plot analysis, Mr. Allston provided information including the following:

• The "point" of your story should be something you can express in a very short sentence, like "Family pride leads to murder."


• The "themes" of your story are ideas that you explore or express during the course of the story. These can generally be summed up in a single word, and there should be from 1 to 5 in a story.


• "Arcs" (usually character arcs) are the personal progression of a character, from the beginning to the end of the story. These should not be an external change, like a new job, but a deeper and more profound internal change (like Scrooge going from a grouchy old miser to a decent, generous guy).


• "Scenes" or "Events" are things that happen in a story in a confined space and time with specific characters involved. If you change the location, it's a new scene. Change the time period, it's a new scene.


• If a scene in the story isn't accomplishing something to move the story along, it should go.


• Scenes in a story generally do one or more of the following:


• 
  
  
  
  • Establish characters: Their conflicts, names, descriptions, etc.
  
  
  • Establish facts: Any back-story, history, off-screen events that happen, or time-critical information getting to characters
  
  
  • Reiterate or Re-establish facts that were already established, such as showing a subtle fact seen earlier more clearly, or allowing characters who weren't present earlier to learn of a fact and react to it
  
  
  • Point to the future: foreshadowing and scenes that set up a situation now for a pay-off later (e.g., picks up some papers and later finds a winning lottery ticket in them)
  
  
  • Complicate matters: Add obstacles the slow things down, or a "quest" that the character must finish to get something needed to resolve the main conflict. These can also include "reversals" where we learn that something isn't what we thought it was (e.g., drug dealer is really an undercover cop).
  
  
  • Move things along, facilitating progress in the main story: This can (and where appropriate should) include the character looking at the options to solve his or her problem and choosing one, with the possible repercussions of the choice spelled out.
  
  
  • Reposition characters: Move them physically or emotionally where you need them. For example, getting them on a bus so they're across town at the right time, or having them get bad news that makes them sad at a critical time.
  
  
  • Address one of the themes: For example, if "loyalty" is a theme, test a character's loyalty in some way.
  
  
  • Address the point of the story: For example, show the good guy becoming corrupted.
  
  
  • Address a character arc: A spineless character has to make a choice that helps him grow, or chooses the wimpy option and sets himself up for failure later. Characters should, by the way, fail in at least some scenes. If they always win, it becomes melodramatic.
  
  
  • Wrap things up: resolve a sub-plot, resolve the main plot, or reveal something like a character realizing he no longer wants the thing he's been pining for the entire novel. Deliver a pay-off from an earlier scene. Give emotional closure.
  
  
  
  


• Having multiple purposes to a scene can misdirect the reader. You can introduce something seemingly minor (e.g., an unplugged clock radio) that comes into play later (e.g., character is unsure of the time something happened).


• During your review of the story, analyze each scene. Does it accomplish something? Can you hide additional things in the scene for a pay-off later? Should there be more action or a theme expressed? Does the scene accomplish "enough" to move the story along?


• Good examples of plotting include: The Godfather 1 and 2, It's a Wonderful Life, and "A Man of Prosperity"


• An example of how a scene can serve multiple purposes... Imagine that you've established that Kate and Jack are a married couple. Jack lost his job and is forced to work a crummy part-time job that he hates. Kate is the major breadwinner. Each night, she comes home from work, takes a nap, wakes up, fixes them dinner, they talk for a bit, and go to bed. One day, Kate wakes up to find her alarm clock didn't go off. It's not completely unplugged but it's unplugged enough to be "off". It's dark, and she hasn't fixed Jack's dinner yet. She comes out and finds him watching his favorite show. She apologizes to him. He blows up. He follows her around berating her. At one point, he grabs an old clock off the wall, shoves it in her face, and asks her if she sees what time it is. Tells her he's been waiting around for her. Smashes the clock over her head. In fear, she runs to the bedroom and locks herself in.
  
  What did this scene accomplish for the story? It depicts Jack's chauvenism, his tendency toward violence, and the couple's rocky relationship. It showed a fight between the couple. It also establishes something more subtle: the time that the fight took place. Jack showed her the clock before smashing it, so Kate saw the time. Imagine now that Jack's boss, whom he hates, shows up later in the story as murdered on that day and time. Kate believes she knows where he was. But does she? Her alarm clock was unplugged. Jack could have set any time he wanted on the smashed clock before she saw it. The show he was watching could have been on his DVR or VCR. The scene also therefore establishes reasonable suspicion in Kate's mind that her husband might be the killer. The reader will likely focus on the argument and violence, not thinking about the time on the smashed clock or the unplugged alarm clock until much later.

I thought Mr. Allston did a great job explaining his points and providing concrete examples of what he meant by each point.

I look forward to learning more from him at a future seminar.

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I’m a NaNoWriMo Participant This Year!

I first heard of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) last year, but never bothered to investigate it or learn much about it because I figured there was no chance I'd be able to write a novel that would be worth anyone judging for a contest.

As it turns out NaNoWriMo isn't exactly a "judged" contest. It works something like this... Starting on November 1, you begin writing a 50,000 word novel. If you complete and submit that novel by November 31, you're considered a "winner". You receive a "web badge" and downloadable certificate you can print out. Not exactly the greatest prizes, but there are some corporate sponsors offering nice prizes. The makers of the Macintosh writing software "Scrivener" are offering a substantial discount to the winners on December 2, 2009. An on-demand publisher will print a free "proof" copy of your book and bind it for you. They'll also optionally help you sell it via Amazon.com and other outlets.

If you're curious and want to check in on how I'm doing and what I'm writing, here's my profile on the NaNoWriMo site. As of this writing, I'm way behind the goal. On the other hand, I only really started this effort on November 4, so I'm about 3-4 days behind most other participants.

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