Speedy Gonzales, mousey nemesis of Sylvester the Cat, takes us back to his cartoon world to demonstrate the necessary elements in a successful story. They include developing a plot, defining the characters, identifying the best point of view for any particular story, and then building a story arc that meets the expectations of your readers.

 Yes, dear would-be writer, your new guide is Despereaux, a little mouse who dreamed of becoming someone’s knight in shining armor. He is ready to show you the tricks of learning the facts before you start writing the story. He’ll lead you through clarifying your timeline and questioning those details that “everyone knows.” He’ll also teach you a few things about exploring archives, reading old newspapers, and prowling in cemeteries.

Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse” sets the melancholy mood for this chapter that takes you back to English class. We’ll look at errors that destroy your story line, and then turn to the nitty-gritty of grammar errors – dangling modifiers, passive voice, weak vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation. It’s all called editing, and you must learn to do it.

Author Carolyn Schriber takes a closer look at recent self-publishing innovations that have opened the gates to mainstream book publication. Pre-Orders available now, with Kindle release date: Wednesday, November 15.

As I started thinking about story arcs, I ran across this set of guidelines. It was put together by someone who does a lot of reviewing, and as a reviewer myself, i can clearly imagine the kind of book that spurred him to compose it.  It appeared as part of a longer article, which you might find at: www.writermarkstevens.com, but even without the rest of the article, his point is clear: “Think about your reader, not yourself. The important question is not what you want to write, but what your reader wants to read.” You don’t have to follow these rules – unless, of course, you hope to sell your book!

Hope I can keep them firmly in mind for the next thirty days.

    •     Keep it simple.

    •     Give me one character with a strong point of view.

    •     Show me that character’s attitude about one thing.

    •     Don’t give me blah.

    •     Or ordinary.

    •     Give me edge; risk.

    •     Convince me that the story starts on this day.

    •     Rivet me with a colorful detail. Or two.

    •     Decide why I want to spend a few hundred pages with your main character and give me one reason to engage in the first few pages.

    •     Help me see, taste, smell, touch. Make it sensory.

    •     Avoid using dialogue that is only designed to fill readers in on the background lives of the characters. (Just don’t!) This is dialogue as “info dump.” It’s deadly.

    •     But, mostly, keep it simple.

    •     Really simple.

    •     No, really.

Camp NaNoWriMo is almost here ! Just two more days before we hit the keyboards.  And I'm almost ready. My camp shirt hangs in the closet. My Scrivener files are set up with a chapter-by chapter tentative outline, character sketches, a few pictures that show the period, a historical timeline, and a collection of articles on relevant historical events. The opening chapters are written (in first draft form). Now I'm looking ahead, hoping to complete the 50,000 to 70,000 words it will take to finish an early draft of this manuscript. Will I do it? Who knows? But I'm going to try. I've been at this business long enough to know that nothing works as well as just applying seat of pants to computer chair.

But besides the novel about antebellum Charleston, I have a new idea bouncing around in my head this morning, and I'm thinking -- ever the optimist, she is! -- that I can accomplish both at once.  Here's what's cooking around the campfire.

One of the interesting highlights of doing the April or June Camp NaNoWriMo experience is the casual atmosphere. Participants write, but they also toast some imaginary marshmallows and exchange scary stories with the other campers. The program assigns us to "cabins," in which we get to know ten or twelve other campers. I asked to be assigned to a cabin with other writers of historical fiction, and then, hopeful to the end, to people who were close to my own age. The last time I did this, my cabin contained some thirteen-year-olds who got homesick or bored and disappeared after only a few days.  My match-ups this year are much better, although it's hard to find other writers in their late 70s. So my cabin holds mostly those who want to write historical novels. We have three or four other retired women, several in their mid to late thirties, and a few who won't talk about their age (maybe that's a give-away!) Four of us have already published; the others are still newbies.

And we have our own little bulletin board where we can share ideas, doubts, questions, and mutually-helpful ideas. Several of our newcomers have already expressed some anxiety about two areas -- not knowing what to write and wondering about the possibilities of self-publishing. i think, perhaps, I can be of help in both areas. 

I'm going to limit my cabin bulletin board postings to tips on writing and publishing. We're limited to 600 characters, so these will be short. However, I can link them to longer posts on each topic here on this blog. And who knows? Maybe by the end of the month, I'll also have a good start on that updated second edition of "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese" that I've been thinking about and promising for a couple of years.

Can I finish the first draft of a novel in thirty days? Sure i can! Can I  do two of them at once? That remains to be seen.

This piece of advice isn't new. You hear it over and over again.  The best way to market a book is to write another one -- and then a third and a fourth. To prove the point take a look at supermarket and drugstore paperback books. The same author names appear over and over again. Best-selling authors may have two or more books in the top ten lists at the same time.  And the explanation is simple. Authors become popular, not because they sell more books, but because they write more books than their contemporaries. 

Think like a reader for a moment. How many times have you finished a book and wished you could lay hands on the next one immediately? Have you ever wished you could tell a writer to hurry up and publish the next volume? What's the first question authors are asked when they appear at a signing or book talk?  Chances are, the question is "When is the next book coming out?" And until a new book appears, the fans of one story will go hunting for older volumes they may have missed. That's when your books take on a life of their own.

When I look back at my own reading habits, a clear pattern emerges. I nearly always chose the thickest book I could find, because I knew that once I started reading, I wouldn't want to stop. Early favorite authors were (and this is really going to date me!) James Michener and Carl Sandburg in his novelist period. Both produced great sweeping sagas of history, following the experiences of one family through multiple generations. A bit later I devoured the Brother Cadfael series (Edith Pargeter), the Plantagenet tales of Thomas Costain and Sharon Kay Penman, and Diane Gabaldon's "Outlander" series. In each case, the newest book had its own conclusion but carried the hint of further stories to come. And I wanted them all--right then! How frustrating it was to finish reading 800 to 1200 pages and know that there was still more to come. The only thing worse was falling in love with an author's characters, only to find that the author himself (like J. D. Salinger) had quit writing entirely.

Looking back now, from Michener's worlds to the Harry Potter series, I can understand those long waits between books from the author's point of view. Readers only want to know what happens next. Authors, however, must deal not only with the demand for more but with a feeling of responsibility to the characters created. I first felt the pressure with my current release, "Damned Yankee."  My editor sent me her final revisions, with a comment that I needed to start the next volume because she wanted to know what happened next. Shortly after the book's appearance, a reviewer mourned that she was going to miss the characters she now knew so well. The audience was waiting; it was time to start writing again -- for both my readers and for me.

So, a final lesson learned: Keep writing. Your audience is waiting, and your series will create a living and growing community of readers.