Who's Your 5th Business?

Beneath the skin of every story there is complicated machinery at work. Villainous machinations, misunderstandings, motivations, desires, dreams, and needs are the cogs and gears that turn the mechanism. All these parts and pieces are what fit together, fire your characters' synapses, and keep things moving forward.

Scene 1, Act One: The Gun Goes Off

While there are no universal rules for writing, there is language we can use to talk about these nuts and bolts. Our protagonist, for example, is our lead character. The antagonist is the opposition to our lead. We can talk about character development where the cast members change (or don't), we can talk about plot arcs, personal arcs, plot twists, prologues, and epilogues.

There is a term not all of us know, though. In fact, I just came across it the other day listening to Stephen King's Revival. However, the idea of the 5th Business is now locked in my brain as a term for certain pieces of machinery I hadn't codified before, so I thought I'd share it.

The 5th Business

As Language Hat tells us, this term comes from the novel 5th Business by Robertson Davies. The title is explained by a quote on the dedication page that reads:

Those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as the Fifth Business.

What does all that mean?

Well, in the book this quote precedes, starts with a mis-aimed snowball. The action was precipitated by a character who had none of the traditional roles listed in the main cast, but whose actions meant they weren't part of the background scenery. In short, the character who threw that snowball became an agent of change. The snowball hit a pregnant woman, making her give birth early. It saddled the boy who dodged the throw with a sense of lifelong guilt. It affected other members of the cast in a profound way, acting as the nudge that pushed them onto certain tracks of development.

And now, my action complete, I'm off to someone else's story!

That is the role of the 5th Business; acting as an agent to bring about the Recognition, or the unraveling of the play. While this was an invention of the author (who attributed the quote to a Danish author in order to satisfy his publishers at the time), it is one that has a use when discussing the role of certain integral parts of your story's clockwork.

So whether your 5th Business is part of an inciting incident, or their actions are what set the stage for the upcoming events, ask yourself who they are. Not only that, but ask if they understand the events they're setting in motion, and whether they understand they are agents of your story. Because a lot of the time, the 5th Business really has no intention of meddling in someone else's affairs... but that doesn't stop their actions from crystallizing someone else's path.

Or even several someones.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing. Hopefully some folks out there find this interesting, and if you'd like to see more work from me, go and check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to support me and my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi as a one-time tip, or becoming a regular, monthly patron over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Either way, there's a lot of free stuff in it for you!

How Do You Make A Living Writing? Easy... You Need Fans

If you read any writer blogs (mine included) you'll find dozens of entries about how to get more people to look at your books. You'll find all kinds of advice on how to take advantage of algorithms, which platforms to use for the best signal boost, and how often you should update your social media... but every now and against it's important to remind yourself where your money comes from.

Because it comes from your readers. You could have a utility belt of cool gadgets and marketing theories, but when it comes down to it, without your readers you aren't clearing any checks any time soon.

There's a new one in the series? Score!

So before you get too caught up in writing a new blog post, sharing a new status update, or in putting together another ad campaign for your book, remember, those are the means, not the end.

Focusing On Fans Gives You Some Perspective

You need to hit big numbers in order to clear big paydays, but it's important to take a moment to remember that every one of those numbers out there is a person. They're someone who selected your work, and who read it. They had an experience with something you created, and they came to you looking for something particular. They gave you their time, their energy, and in a lot of cases, they gave you their money.

Thank you, Sumo_577. I will never forget you.

Aside from feeling humbled that there are people out there who voraciously consume your work (or who like it enough to review it and tell their friends about you), it helps to remember that you're not just pleasing algorithms and getting arbitrary up-views from robots. You write for people, and it is those people who constitute your audience.

Then you need to act accordingly.

That means when you're posting in a forum, remember that the people who see your words will form opinions of you. When you're on a panel, or giving an interview, think about the ramifications of what you say, and the thoughts you express. If you're frazzled and stressed, but someone got the courage to approach to ask for a photo or an autograph, remember that they support you. Be polite, be professional, and always thank them for the help they give you. Basically all the stuff I mentioned a while ago in Your Brand is Just as Important as Your Books.

There's more than just cultivating your image, though; you need to treat your readers (and potential readers) like people.

That means you should climb down off your soap box, and talk to people rather than talking at people. Engage with them, and have a conversation rather than shouting out your view, thought, or ad for your book and then walking away. If someone talks about your work, take a moment to thank them. Be sincere. And, if you really want to sweeten the deal, give them something for free as a way to thank them for being one of your readers. An ebook usually works nicely, because even if they don't prefer electronic reading, it often is the thought that counts because it shows that you noticed them, and value them.

Once you get into this kind of mindset, and you incorporate it into your attitude and practices, you might be surprised how many people it draws. And especially how many readers will keep coming back (or offer other forms of support for your work) once they realize you aren't just thinking of them as numbers on your monthly royalty statement.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing installment. If you like my work, and want to see more of it, remember to check out my Vocal archive! If you'd like to help support me, then consider leaving me a small tip by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or becoming a regular patron over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Either way, some free stuff and my gratitude will both be yours! Lastly, to stay on top of all my latest updates just follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Remember, Fantasy Can Be Anything You Want

What do you think of when you hear the word fantasy? Is it hobbits and elves? Dwarves and magic rings? Knights in shining armor fighting dragons? Wizards with long beards and big staffs alongside orcs drooling black ichor as they roar and rush into battle?

Tell me this, though... do you think of grim monster hunters with muskets? Battle-ax wielding barbarians hammering at the steel skin of lost alien guardians? An abandoned noble raised by the jungle venturing into a forgotten land to overthrow its saurian overlords?

I ask, because all of that stuff is fantasy, too.

For those looking for required reading.

There's So Much More Out There

I've railed against this before, and I think it bears repeating. Tolkien's contributions to the genre, and setting the mold for what people tend to think of as high fantasy (the sort of thing with huge timelines, epic, sweeping backstories, ancient wizards, secret princes, and that sort of thing), is all well and good... but it is not all there is out there.

Tell you about a thing that happened to me a while back. I was at a convention, and found an old, plastic-bagged copy of previously unpublished Conan short stories by Robert E. Howard that was printed several decades ago. In the introduction for the collection there was a line talking how the writer hoped to see interesting work from a new up-and-comer to the genre... that up-and-comer was J.R.R. Tolkien.

Hey, everyone! Make room for the new kid!

I bring this up because for me, fantasy was more about the Weird Tales days. Where you'd have dashing swordsmen and frenzied barbarians side-by-side with lost alien civilizations, shape-shifting lizard men, Puritan witch hunters, and all sorts of other nonsense. They were all strange stories that at the time defied genre labels, as many of them mish-mashed elements of what we now think of as traditional fantasy, horror, science fiction, and others into a single story. But the thing is, no one was interested in putting a label on what was and wasn't fantasy. It was allowed to be as strange, as weird, and as unusual as the writers could conceive of, and to go in all sorts of different directions.

My thoughts, to you out there reading this... embrace that.

Want to puts guns into your fantasy setting? Do it, I would love to see more dragon hunters using high-caliber weapons. You want aliens? Cool, Lovecraft wasn't the first to do it, and he sure as hell won't be the last. You want civilizations that bear no resemblance to the traditional half-dozen square miles of pseudo-English countryside that get dug out of the Middle Ages? Go nuts! You want magic that merges with alchemy and technology? Make it happen!

And if someone tries to tell you that's "not really fantasy" then you should ask them what they would call it instead. Because gatekeepers are going to keep doing their thing, but it can be amusing to watch them sputter as they try to tell you that a story about a fictional reality with all the hallmarks is somehow not allowed to wear the same label as a story about elves and dwarves.

Don't feel you have to limit yourself thematically, contextually, or even aesthetically when it comes to the fantasies you choose to write.. because we could all use a breath of fresh air.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing installment. Hopefully some folks found it interesting, and it sparked some new ideas. For some unique takes on fantasy, consider stopping by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I help out, or heading over to Vocal to look at some more of my work. If you'd like to stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support my work consider leaving me a little tip by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular patron. In either case, there's free stuff and my thanks just waiting for you.

Want More Eyes on Your Work? Try Sideways Marketing

In order to clearly define who you are, and to make yourself easy to find for readers who are looking to buy what you're selling, authors tend to do our very best to carve out a niche for ourselves. Usually that niche is built around the genre we write in (or at least the genre we're best known for), and all the keywords we try to associate our names with. And sometimes you can get so invested in that label, and the niche that you're aiming for, that you forget your work might appeal to more than just that specific, target audience.

The question, of course, is how do you broaden your impact zone to include more readers?

Well, I've changed the sign. Was sort of hoping the rest would just come.

If you've been wracking your brain over this particular question, then might I suggest something I call sideways marketing?

What Is Sideways Marketing? How Does It Work?

To understand sideways marketing, you need to understand sideways thinking. Also called lateral thinking, it's a type of problem-solving where you tend to examine preconceptions, sift through wishful thinking for potential solutions, and let your creative processes take over. It is most defined, though, by asking one, important question... why?

How does that help you sell books, exactly?

Since lateral thinking is sort of hard to wrap your head around, I'll provide a concrete example that I just had some small success with.

About a month ago, I wrote an article titled What Is The Monster in "The Ritual"? For those not familiar with the film, "The Ritual" is a horror movie with an extremely unique monster in it. A group of friends go hiking in Sweden, they wander off the path, and find themselves in the territory of a primordial creature... a god that was all but forgotten from the old days. One of its worshipers tells us that it is a jotun, a bastard child of Loki, but we never hear its name spoken. So I laid out my theory as to which of the god of mischief's children the monster was, and how its identity might be reflected in the film's creature design.

Now, when I completed this article, I did my best to boost its signal through channels that focused on horror... because, after all, it was about a horror movie. And while I got some positive results from Facebook, Reddit, and several other places where I lurk, the overall numbers were not that great. And, since the earnings for that article depended directly on the number of readers I attracted, I had to figure out some way to get more people to read it... but how?

That was when I asked myself why? Specifically, I asked why I was restricting myself to horror-specific avenues. Because while there were definitely folks interested in my viewpoint who were horror film fans, the discussion was about a modern piece of art depicting a Norse god and Norse mythology. Once I realized that I'd been the one choking my potential audience, I expanded my marketing efforts to include pages dedicated to mythology, to history, and to the lore and religion of the Norsemen.

What I found was that horror fans were passingly interested in what I had to say. But that mythology fans were quite interested in my interpretation of the monster, and the choices the creature design team had made to realize the bastard child of a shapeshifter onscreen. And that interest led to comments, discussions, and a much more sustained effort by readers to pick up my work, and see what I'd had to say.

I more than doubled the exposure, clicks, and reads in less than a day, just by including a niche I hadn't actually considered when I'd first written the piece.

It Takes Some Getting Used To

Lateral thinking is not something you just start doing one day. It takes practice, time, and effort. However, in terms of your marketing, every successful application of a sideways strategy helps create a kind of mental muscle memory. And, even better, it often helps you see future places you could expand your work into.

Sometimes it's obvious what you can do to get your work in front of more people. However, if you take a moment, and examine your strategy, you might find there are some really simple adjustments you're not making that might open the floodgates.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing topic! If you've had any great successes by applying lateral thinking to your marketing efforts, feel free to boast about it in the comments below. For more of my work (from discussions of the effects cannibalism has on the human body, to how you can make parchment paper using tea) check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me in my work, you can drop a tip in my jar by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or you can become a regular patron by going to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page and signing up. Free stuff, and my eternal thanks, await you!

Authors, Remember, You Don't Have To Re-Invent The Wheel

If you're an author, then chances are you want your stories to stand out. You want to be thought of as new, unique, fresh, and different both from those who came before you, as well as from your contemporaries. Speaking as someone who enjoys experimenting with genre mash-ups, I get this feeling. However, I have a piece of advice I'd like to share for all the folks out there getting brain cramps from their mental gymnastics.

Don't try so hard to be different that you lose sight of what you're here to do.

Seriously, it's okay to use an old mold. You don't have to start from scratch.

Store Bought Is Just Fine

Have you ever tried to cook something from scratch? Whether you were baking a cake, or making your grandmother's old meatloaf, it was probably a great deal more difficult than using store bought ingredients, and just whipping them together. And sometimes that effort is really worth it. Sometimes, though, there's no way to tell the difference between homemade and store bought. Even if you put ten times as much sweat, effort, and swearing into doing it the hard way.

Writing is kind of like that.

Let's say, for example, you want to tell a high fantasy story. However, you want to stand apart from other entrants into the genre, so you do your best to scrape off all the serial numbers you can find. Traditional elves, dwarves, and orcs? Nope, they're gone. Then you go through the traditional bestiary, and you toss out all the dragons, ogres, trolls, unicorns, and other stuff. You flip the assumption of a human-centric world, and put a different creature at the top of the food chain. You make your own magic system, you add in non-medieval technological elements, and you put together a massive timeline of events for how your world got to be the way it is.

There's nothing wrong with any of these changes... provided they are in the service of your story, themes, and narrative. As soon as you start making changes just to be different, that's when you can end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.

And that won't get you anywhere.

As an example, say you choose to keep the basic archetypes of fantasy races (the long-lived ones, the not-quite-as-long-lived crafters and enchanters, the humans, the bigger, tougher humans who are a different color, and at least one race that's like humans, but tiny), but you rename them something specific for your world. Nothing says you can't, but you need to ask why you're putting in all that effort (and asking your readers to learn a bunch of new names and titles)? Is it because your creatures are already different enough from their store-bought variety that your readers would have trouble thinking of your red-skinned Marat as orcs, or your insectoid immortals as elves? Or is it just because you want to avoid as many familiar touch-stones as possible?

Changing something because it adds to your story, or because it supports the themes you're working with is good. Avoiding tropes that have become problematic, or even regressive, is great. However, refusing to use something because it might be considered a trope, or because someone else did something similar in their world so yours has to be different, is just punishing yourself for no reason. And worse, it's possible that if you don't use any trope, or have anything that feels familiar, your readers might feel lost instead of intrigued. So change responsibly, and make sure the changes you do make are always in the service of the story, world, and theme rather than out of a need to try treading fresh ground.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing advice. For folks who'd like more of my work, check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or dropping me a tip over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page.

5 Mistakes Authors Need To Avoid When Networking

Networking is one of the most important things you can do as an author, next to writing books. Because it's who you know that lands you opportunities in life, and if you have a robust network then you are much more likely to find yourself rubbing elbows with bestsellers, big-time editors, and successful reviewers who may be willing to reach down to your level to give you a hand up.

With that said, though, networking takes experience. It takes finesse. It's a skill, and like any skill, you need to practice it. Which is why the first thing you should do is read through this update from author Seanan McGuire. Read through it, then take a moment to absorb it. Because the incident in question is a textbook case of what not to do.

Please, for the love of god, stop talking.

And, just to hammer home the points (some from observation, others from personal experience) here's some more stuff you should not do.

#1: Do Not Hard-Sell People You're Trying To Connect With

If you have a strong hard-sell game, that's great. Save it for the readers you're targeting when you make hand sales from a booth. When you're trying to make a connection with a fellow author, an editor, or even someone who's a Name in your genre, leave your car salesman impression at home. Because I guarantee you that they have already had to deal with this situation more times than they can count, and all you're going to do is piss them off. Worse, they'll remember you as the pushy guy, and that will get doors slammed in your face instead of held open.

The best thing you can do when approaching people you hope to connect with is to be friendly and casual. Tell them you admire their work (a nice, neutral opener), and if you're in-person (say at a convention or similar event) mention something you saw them talk about. If they seem eager to talk, and a conversation starts, run with it. If not (you caught them in the middle of doing something else, you're at a signing table with a line behind you, etc.), this is not the time to try to crowbar yourself into their good graces. It won't work, and will achieve the opposite of what you want.

#2: Don't Make It All About You

Have you ever been at a dinner party, and there's that one guy who seems to have this compulsive need to make everything about him? No matter what you're trying to talk about, he needs to put his two cents in, and re-focus the attention on him. You know how annoying that is?

Well, you're being that guy.

Authors big and small hear it all day, every day. No matter what forum they're in, what social media group they're part of, or what convention they're attending, someone always wants to talk their ear off about how they really want to be a well-known author. They just need an agent, a shot at pitching to a better publisher, or someone to take a look at their manuscript. And chances are that we might sympathize with you, but if you're just talking about yourself, what you're here for, and what you need, that is quickly going to turn into a song no one wants to hear.

Take a breath, and relax. Try to see who you're talking to not as a business opportunity, or a potential stepping stone. Realize they're a person, and treat them as such. People are more likely to help out those who treat them with dignity, rather than those who just want something from them.

#3: Don't Push Your Card

When you've got a business card, the urge to offer it can be an almost overpowering. After all, that's what you have it for, right? However, if you're trying to get your foot in the door with someone you want as a contact, look for the signs that they're interested before holding out your card. Once it's been offered, they'll probably take it, but you should try to be sure they aren't just going to throw it out once your back is turned.

If someone asks for your information, and has a pen out to write it down, that's a great time to offer your card instead (provided it has the info they're looking for on it). Ditto if someone is interested in a project you've completed, or wants to get in touch with you later. Or, you know, asks for your card. But don't jump the gun, because that will be seen as pushy.

Business cards are like bullets. Sure, you can spray them everywhere and you might get a hit or two, but if you're patient, you can make each shot count.

#4: Invading A Group

This one applies directly to Seanan McGuire's tweets, and I want to emphasize it here. If someone is already involved in a conversation, or is part of a group discussion, you would really be better off to try later if you're looking to connect for networking purposes. Especially if it's clear in the non-verbal cues (chairs turned inward, circle is complete, no empty spaces, etc.) that this is not a group that's looking for more voices to join it.

You might be able to slip in quickly to get a word in edgewise ("Hey, I really liked that panel you were on," or, "Sorry to interrupt, but could I get a quick autograph?"), but no more than that. Now, you might want to take this risk in the event the group invites you to join, but don't depend on that. If no one extends an invitation after you've delivered your greeting, asked your question, or made your minor request, keep walking. Do not stand there and keep talking. Even if everyone in the circle is wearing a patient smile, you're actively damaging any goodwill you might have managed to accumulate, and you're only hurting yourself. Several minor interactions are better than one, long conversation, because then you'll feel familiar and accepted. So exchanging a pleasantry or two on day one, asking for an autograph on day two, and then getting a conversation on day three would work a lot better than trying to skip ahead to fit all your dialogue in.

#5: Being Just Another Attendee

This one might seem a little on the elitist side, but one of the big mistakes that I see a lot of folks making when they try to network (particularly at events) is that they just come as any old attendee. If you really want to stand out, you should consider volunteering. Because an endless stream of people may go by on the attendee side of the table, but if you're on a panel with someone who had insightful things to say, or you shared a signing table with someone, or a volunteer made sure you always had a bottle of water when you needed one, that makes you stand out. A lot.

Three dozen people might have tried to get this person's attention as attendees. But if you were in their bubble in a professional capacity (or even as an official part of the event), then you're a lot more likely to be noticed, acknowledged, and fondly recalled. Even if all you did was share a table in the green room, and talk sports over hot dogs. You don't have to be famous to get in on this action, either. Just be willing to throw your hat in the ring, and do your best!

That's all for this week's installment of Business of Writing. Hopefully it helped, but if there's advice I missed, or questions you want to ask, feel free to leave it in the comments! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive. To keep up on my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to support me, then Buy Me A Ko-Fi or drop some change in my cup on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Either way, my gratitude, and some free stuff, will be yours!

Make Sure Chekhov's Gun Is Actually Loaded (Trimming The Fat in Your Story)

If you've ever read a book or watched a movie where your perspective lingered just a little too long on that gun hanging over the bar early on, then you've felt that little tightening of the skin between your shoulder blades. That feeling is because you then you understand what Chekhov's Gun is. In short, it's when something seemingly insignificant is introduced early in a story (someone mentions the owner keeps a Magnum under the counter, there's a lingering camera shot of a creepy book on a shelf, etc.) that will become important later on.

Because, as Chekhov himself asked, if the gun never goes off then why are you wasting our time making us look at it?

The bigger the gun, the more important this question becomes.

Trim The Fat

Every aspect of a story is there in service to that story. Got a scene where your lead is having coffee with her girlfriend? Then that scene should have dialogue that sets up plot points, actions that reveal important aspects of character, or at the very least it should introduce additional members of the cast. Otherwise all you're doing is faffing about, wasting your audience's time and risking the interest you've oh-so-carefully cultivated.

As an example, I'll walk you through a story that didn't keep things nice and tight. The horror film Nails.

You have now seen everything you need to of this film.

So, Nails opens up with a little girl in the hospital being seen to by a gigantic orderly. He's trimming her nails, and saving them in a little envelope. A little creepy, but it's shot so that he seems sweet, if a little odd. We fast forward to our protagonist (blonde personal trainer whose husband is a coach) being hit by a car and put in the hospital. She wakes up to a concerned child and husband, unable to speak, and confined to her bed. She might make some kind of recovery, but she's partially paralyzed, and a lot of stuff is broken.

Then, to make matters worse, her room is haunted.

We hear weird stuff, and catch glimpses of a ghost that resembles the orderly we saw earlier... except, you know, all deadified. Protagonist is next-to-hysterical, and though no one believes her, closed-circuit cameras are installed in her room. This settles her for a bit, and she talks to the hospital shrink. He lets drop that a man did commit suicide by hanging himself in her room's closet. This sets off a whirlwind of investigation montages, and our bed-bound blonde discovers that the orderly who killed himself was a giant of a man referred to by the staff as Nails, for his bizarre habit of saving the clipped toe and fingernails from children he cared for. It was made clear that everyone thought he was harmless, despite the fact that he'd come to the hospital himself as a teenager, raving and clawing himself practically down to the bone. He got better, and when he did, he was given a job at the facility that had healed him.

Then dead children started turning up. Nails fell under scrutiny, and his suicide was seen as an admission of guilt.

Our protagonist brings this up to the psychiatrist, who gets super-shifty about the event. She tries to tell her husband, but starts getting the feeling that he's cheating on her with one of the college co-eds on his team while she's in the hospital. And, of course, Nails is getting bolder, and hurting her more and more. This culminates in Nails finally going on a rampage, killing the co-ed, our protagonist's husband, several staff members, chasing our protagonist and her daughter through the hospital, until he finally kills our protagonist.

That's all fairly straightforward... but there was so much time wasted on pointless side plots that never pay off.

For instance, the whole thing about Nails' brutal self-harm and his intense psychotherapy regimen. We get a few, brief glimpses of it... but that's it. We never find out what happened before he came to the hospital, what was wrong with him, and why it suddenly stopped. It doesn't tie into what his ghost might want, or why it's picking now to suddenly get active. We spend way too much time with the psychiatrist hemming and hawing about Nails, setting up the possibility that the shrink was actually the one killing the children and using Nails as a fall guy, because that goes nowhere, too. We even find out that our protagonist was, in fact, the little girl Nails was taking care of in the opening scene, but absolutely nothing is done with that connection. She didn't rat him out to the cops, and he's not seeking revenge on her. She didn't know he was innocent but kept silent. She didn't even see him die and repress the memory. Hell, we never even confirm that her husband is cheating on her! All it would have taken was a single slip of the tongue, and a shot of the car his co-ed athlete drove to close the circuit on her injury, and make it seem that the hit-and-run was actually the mistress trying to take her out so she could steal her husband.

But no. All of these things are just mentioned, and then dropped like a dead salmon on the kitchen floor.

All told, these dead-end scenes waste between 20 and 40 minutes of our time. That is a lot of dead space for a film of this length. It's space that could have been used to decide what was actually going on, and to genuinely raise the stakes and tension (as well as providing some much-needed structure). For example, is Nails a secret child-killer rising from the dead to finish what he started with the last victim who got away? Was he a wronged man whose spirit was re-awakened by the proximity of the man who framed him, and he's trying to reach out to our protagonist to get her to help him? Does Nails feel betrayed by her, and thus his spirit is trying to get vengeance? Was his torture and pain as a teenager symptomatic of an unquiet spirit that needed to get closure? Is her husband cheating on her, or is it all in her head?

We don't know. And, to make matters worse, we waste so much time on all of these un-fired guns that we forget there's a story being told, and it all sort of devolves into mush. Generic, unsatisfying, and overall confusing.

If You Aren't Using It, Get Rid of It

A writer's mind might be a hoarder's paradise, but when it comes to the story on the page you need to make sure that if you don't need it that you aren't wasting your reader's time with it. If you managed to hook them, and they're turning pages, then make sure you don't squander their good will. Get to the point, keep it tight, and make sure the safety is off on any plot pistols you walk past.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post. Hopefully it helps some folks out there who's been wondering how to quit shooting blanks in their stories. For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become one of my patrons. There's free stuff in it for you, in addition to my undying gratitude.