Conspiracy Theories: Iran, Libya, the CIA, and Jon Stewart

This is going to be a series of posts. I’ll write them as I can, but I hope to post them on Tuesdays.


Not So Far-Fetched

Some people believe that some of things that happen in RABID are far-fetched, like “Oh, that could never happen in the Real World,” kind of things.

The world is weirder than they know. It’s craftier, it’s wilder, and it’s scarier than they dream. They watch and believe the news programs that piecemeal the world into discrete, unrelated events and never look at the whole picture for various reasons (mostly money, time, and research power.)

The recent movie Argo is outlandish and unbelievable to them. (Amazing movie. Go see it.) It's based on this book, which is flippin' $0.99 for Kindle. 

Okay, so I am talking about the second gunman on the grassy knoll? Probably not. I don’t know what happened there, and I admit that the Jack Ruby stuff is all pretty weird, but I don’t know.

But the world is not as random and is not as clear and simple as any of the blithe, facile news networks would have you believe. The Daily Show, with their amazing research staff, gets more of it right than anybody else because they make the connections that everyone else misses or is too timid to say.

TK Kenyon is a Conspiracy Nut

Okay, so the scales fell from my eyes a long time ago. Here’s some of what I know and how I know it.

When I was in undergrad, many moons ago, I seriously considered working for the CIA. My mom, who she never met a spill-it-all conversation that she didn’t like, told all her friends that I, her daughter, that one over there, wanted to do secret stuff for the CIA.

Now, I didn’t want to go be a secret agent or a clandestine super-spy and ferret out secrets overseas or turn traitors or do undercover stuff. I had no desire to be Jane Bond. I just wanted to be a bookworm in Langley, Virginia. The job title for that is “Intelligence Officer.” I wanted to read field reports and interpret them, put stuff together, mostly about biowarfare, and write more reports. (I was a microbiology major in undergrad.)

One of my mom’s friends, after a long pause, told my mom, “She should talk to [my husband]. He,” and here was another long pause, “knows a lot about the CIA.”

Yeah, he did. Because he had worked for them for thirty years. He really did the clandestine super-spy stuff.

The Spy Who Told Me: Iranian Coup, 1953

(Must be noted: my friend The Spy passed away a few years ago, so I’m not worried about blowing his cover.)

The first thing that The Spy told me about was the 1953 coup d’état in Iran that deposed the democratically elected Prime Minister and installed the Shah. Everyone knows this now, with all its sordid details, including how the CIA used the New York Times like a Bangkok butt prostitute.

The important part that The Spy told me was that the CIA had almost gotten the Shah installed, but then they had some counter-actions from Soviet-based intelligence agents. Basically, Soviet-backed demonstrations and riots in the streets forced the Shah to flee.

The CIA was about to declare the coup a failed attempt, but another agent (though I suspect that it was The Spy himself) went in and arranged counter-counter-demonstrations and riots, and the CIA-backed coup finally succeeded. They did this by influencing and paying off major imams and other leaders who could then produce a certain number of followers in the streets, whipped up to a predetermined level of frenzy.

The Spy noted with pride that the counter-counter-coup came in $100,000 under budget and several days early. 

How the World Works

The part that struck me and has stayed with me was when The Spy said that all these demonstrations that you see on the news, all these riots, at least the ones that get something done, are bought and paid-for by (usually) governments, sometimes other players.  

You talk to and pay the right people, and the crowds show up.

That is how clandestine regime change works. That is how civil wars and coups get started and run. That’s how embassies get attacked.

That’s how the world works.

Here in the US, we have fewer of these influencers, at least violent ones, though some of them include people like black activists (historically) Martin Luther King, Jr. and (contemporary) Jesse Jackson, the Koch Brothers' quiet funding of the Tea Party, or even political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

If you can convince them or pay them off, you've bought yourself an army.

Imagine 215,000 People Who Can’t Take A Joke

Imagine if the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear had turned into a riot.

It was more of a free concert, but I had an underlying suspicion the whole time that Jon Stewart was restraining himself, dampening the crowd’s emotional instability, and making sure that it didn’t turn into a riot because there were a lot of people there, all of whom were sympathetic to whatever he said.

Imagine if those innocuous rock bands weren’t so innocuous, but they played songs that thumped on people’s heart strings and boiled their blood with indignation. Anything from “Proud to Be an American” to “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to “I Am America” to “The Big Money.”

Imagine if Jon Stewart had gone all Patrick Henry on that crowd of 215,000 people, shouting “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

Then, in the crowd, a hundred men at strategic points yelled, “To the White House! Follow me!”

It was only a few blocks away.

Imagine if some of the crowd, say 50,000 of them, had followed the instigators planted among them and started running through the streets and then scaled that flimsy wrought-iron fence around the White House.

Yes, the Marines have nice guns, but they couldn't shoot all 50,000 of the mob as they poured over the fences from all directions.

What would have happened once the mob was inside the fences?

How long would those pretty doors and windows have held if, say, some of those “spontaneous” demonstrators happened to have brought along lock-cutters or shaped charges that were supplied to them by Jon and Stephen’s friends, who in turn got them from guys they knew, all of whom had funny accents? (Probably Boston or New York accents.) 

Even a mob of 5,000 would have done the job.

Do you think that 5,000 people out of the 215,000 wouldn't have joined in?

Quite honestly, I'll bet that it would have been 200,000 people who converged on whatever the target was. 

That’s how the world works.

That’s how it happens.

That’s How It Did Happen.

And yes, a few months ago on September 11th, 2012, when a crowd of “demonstrators” attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans including US Ambassador Chris Stevens and burning the place to a shell, I thought, “A spontaneous demonstration against a stupid YouTube video, my butt. Who bought and paid-for those crowds? Al Qaeda? Iran? How long has it been planned?”

The Spy would have laughed at that rationale: A YouTube video. 

Now it’s coming out that there were some puppeteers pulling some long strings. I’m not surprised. I don’t know if they’ll ever tell us who it really was. Maybe 20 years from now when it all doesn’t matter any more, they'll tell us. 

More on what I knew and when I knew it next week.

Escaping My Ex-Publisher: What I Got Back

In 2007, my first published novel, RABID, was published by Kunati, Inc., a small traditional publishing company. I was thrilled because they had 50,000 submissions for their first round and chose 8 books for their first crop.

Yeah, 8 books out of 50,000 submissions. That’s some serious “gate-keeping,” huh?

I had been writing RABID for three years at that point. I had graduated with my PhD in molecular virology, done a postdoc in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, and had a baby. My brain was scorched. I threw all my emotional baggage in that book.

Despite that, it turned out well, I thought and I still think.

It also turned out to be almost 200,000 words.

My publisher wanted me to cut it down to below 140,000, which I did. I think it came in at 139,996, which is below 140,000 words, and that’s the important point.

My publisher also edited the periods out of my name, kind of like e.e. cummings but with punctuation rather than capitalization, so I became TK Kenyon instead of T.K. Kenyon. I had been T.K. since sixth grade, when there were three “Terri’s” (of various spellings) in my class, so two of us got to choose new names. I chose “T.K.” When I sign my name, I use T.K., and yes, I tap out two periods in there. It’s funny that some people think it’s an affectation, since my publisher did it and I really didn’t have a say in it.

That’s common with publishers: they do stuff and authors don’t have any say in it. The periods in my name, 60,000 words of my first novel, etc.

I had to cut a lot of stuff out of RABID, including stuff that was important but was not the very most important. For example, there was a lot about the community, including some instances of ... hive mind, perhaps we should call it, that happened when several of the characters were together.

This was the po-mo structure of the novel: each scene was written from one of the viewpoint characters (Conroy, Leila, Bev, or Dante,) and had to include one of the other four characters, except that each character got one soliloquy when they were alone and at an important turning point in their lives. Bev’s soliloquy is the very first scene. Leila’s is the last scene. Conroy’s and Dante’s occur at important points in the book.

When all four characters were together, or at least three of them, the community’s hive mind become active. The viewpoint become omniscient and can duck into various minor characters’ heads. I wanted to speak about the gestalt that happens when people gather.

Anyway, that strategy was a casualty of the Great Revision. I went back and restored a lot of that in this version of the novel.

In addition to some additions for clarity and some emotional beats that were recovered, the new version of RABID is about 155,000 words.

Yeah, it’s pretty long, but it has a lot to say.

It’s not a book that everyone will like, which is why I posted this “quiz” a while ago to point you toward whether you should bother giving it a look. I just reread it five times in a row, which is a lot to read any one book. There are some parts in there that I am really proud of. There are some scenes that I’m surprised that I survived writing.

If you read it, I hope you like it. 

Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand, of Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel

Okay, folks. Here's "Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand" of the novel Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel. 


If you haven't read Chapter Three: The Secret Police State, it's here.

If you haven't read any of the preceding chapters, start with Chapter One: The Stash House.

I finished the first draft about an hour ago. Whew. That was a slog. There's still a lot that needs to be done. I know of one scene that I'm going to cut, and at least two scenes to add, but I wrote what will probably be the last sentence. Yea!

The fact that I finished the first draft means that I'll be posting these a lot more frequently. I was always worried that I was going to catch up to myself.

This chapter includes the First Pinch, which is where we see who the Antagonist is and begin to see what they can do. We see in what ways he opposes our Protagonist and some of his weapons. In this case, the Antagonist has a really big gun.

At the First Pinch, things start to get very serious for the Protagonist, our sniper chick Angel Day, and the casualties begin.

As I said, I'm done with the first draft, and there appear to be nine major chapters plus inter-scenes, like the Prologue: Swan Dive that I posted a while ago.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand

Random Name Generators

I've mentioned a couple of times on Twitter lately that, if you know you're going to have to mass murder a bunch of characters, start with a lot of characters so you have some to choose from and some left over afterward.

But how do you name lots of characters?

Random name generators!

Some reasons to use random name generators:

• Easier on your brain. 
• Kinda fun. 
• Easy to deliberately populate your book with a good mix of ethnicities and backgrounds. 
• Hides your "naming tics," like some authors without knowing it name their characters only sweeping, romantic names, or names that only begin with the letters A-G, etc. 

Some of my favorites: 

Behind The Name : One of my favorites. Includes first. middle, and last names, plus you can restrict the search by gender, by many, many ethnicities (Maori, Catalan, Provencal, Galician, Breten, Frisian, Czech, and Slovak, to name a few), and/or by other categories. Other categories include Goth (excellent for vampyres,) Greek myth, Hinduism, Ancient Celtic, Biblical, Literary, Kreatyve, Hillbilly, Hippy, and Transformer. Includes Native American names that are real names, not like "Little Foot Redfeather" or "Dances With Wolves." Does not have a Mexican ethnicity, which is odd. Also only gives you one name at a time.

Ultimate Random Name Generator : Another favorite. Can restrict search by gender and a list of some ethnicities, including Mexican. Gives you a long list of names rather than one at a time.

Let's face it, you don't have to carefully craft the names of minor characters, especially when they're just going to all die horribly in Chapter 7.

TK Kenyon

Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel. Chapter Three The Secret Police Stat

This is the third chapter, after the Background/SetUp chapter, which is Chapter Two: The Bat Cave. If you haven't read that one yet, I'll leave it up a little while longer. 


If you haven't read Chapter One, an Ice Monster! scene, you can click here to read it now. It'll be posted for one more week, but then it will go away. 


As always, these blog posts are rough drafts. I appreciate your comments a lot but, just so you know, this is pretty much how the novel comes out of my head, although I do clean up the commas. This prose will go through another very rigorous draft plus polishing before it sees the light of day. 

The first 25% of your novel or story should set up your main character and show them as they are, with all their flaws and all their virtues. It should show the relationships that they have in place and introduce many of the major characters.

This chapter includes the start of the Big Plotline that will stretch over several of the novels in this series, as well as the start of this novel's Plotline. So far, this is a routine call-out for Angel, but that will change in the next couple of chapters. I'll probably have to shorten this chapter, mainly by line-edits, to get to the meat sooner.

Also, Angel convinces Tony of a lot of stuff during their conversation. I think she'll probably have to do more badly in this scene, because she still relies on violence to solve her problems. She's too logical and negotiates too much, now. She should do this badly, perhaps even make the situation worse, and she should consider all the violent ways that she could solve this problem, none of which will work, of course. This will probably be a major change in the second draft.

I will probably need to add some more characters to Bravo Team, the Phoenix PD's sniper team, and Alpha Team, the Phoenix PD's assault team, but I don't want to overwhelm the reader with 30 minor characters right at the beginning, either. A tip to other authors: when you're writing a book with a high body count, start with a lot of characters so you still have some left after the bloodbath. 

If you sign up for email updates (over there on the right side bar), you'll get an update when I post Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand.

Chapter Three: The Secret Police State

Chapter 1: A Stash House NEW VERSION

Now that I'm about 42,000 words into the rough draft, I changed my mind about the opening scene. You can read the original version here.

The original version was an Ice Monster! scene, but to give the reader a taste of danger and excitement before the novel backs off and goes into foreshadowing mode. (More on that at the original post, link above.)

However, the original scene was a bank robbery, which had little to do with the plot. Here, I've changed the location of the crime to a stash house in the affluent community of North Scottsdale. A stash house is a house or other location where human traffickers kidnap the very people they led over the Mexican-US Border and then demand ransom from their families back in Mexico or points south. This relates more closely to the Border themes in the novel.

Hope you like it. I'll take comments off of moderation soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to talk about it, feel free to Tweet me. My twitter handle is @TKKenyon, and there's a button over in the right hand column to follow me.

Chapter One: The Stash House

Friends -- Do you really want to read my horrible first draft?

Friends,

Some writers post their first drafts of their novels on their blogs. Seems like I've seen a couple lately.

Should I do this? It might be fun. It might be interesting. I'd be interested in what y'all have to say about it, either that you hate some things or want to see more or something.

I'm working on the first draft of the first novel in a series. It's about a woman (Angel Day) who is a sniper for the Phoenix PD. She used to be on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team as a sniper. She likes to kill people a little too much, but the people she kills desperately deserve it. (In the first chapter, she snipes a big guy who had a shotgun duct-taped to a small woman's neck, and he was counting down to zero.)

What do you guys think?

TK Kenyon

Great Article about Picking A Title (For A TV Show)

There's a great article up at Yahoo TV about picking a title for a TV show.

Everything in there can and should be applied to novel and short story titles. It's a great article.

Some highlights:

THE DO'S AND DON'TS: Nine vital title tips from execs and producers who know you don't get a second chance to make a first impression

DON'T Be Too Witty

A title that gets executives excited may just be too cute for viewers. "We loved Better Off Ted internally," 20th Century Fox Television's Dana Walden says of Victor Fresco's critical darling that was dropped by ABC after two seasons. "We thought it was so smart and funny. We went with the witty, pithy title, and it just didn't work."

DON'T Be Too Generic

If a title feels like it could be slapped on any one of a dozen shows, it's probably the wrong title. "Every year, there are 10 shows that all sound the same," says one studio exec. "You can't distinguish them. You want to avoid those generic titles." If Desperate Housewives had been called, say Housewives, would it have become a zeitgeisty hit? 

DON'T Be too Long

Titles that are too long will get reflexively shortened -- by your onscreen guide and viewers. So save everyone the trouble and stick to a half-dozen words or less. People referred to The New Adventures of Old Christine as Old Christine. Beverly Hills 90210 became 90210. When people write, blog or tweet about How I Met Your Mother, it's HIMYM. For the latter two series‚ one a reboot with high title familiarity and the other an established hit that came into its own in a pre-Twitter era -- it's not a problem. But for a new series finding its footing and in need of constant brand reinforcement, a long title can hurt.

Read the rest at: The Strange Art of Picking a TV Show Title

Harry Potter, Othello, and The Matrix: Story Structure

This excellent lecture in five parts by Dan Wells (he of the excellent podcast Writing Excuses) on story structure is a must-see. Get out a big notepad and prepare to take notes.

Dr. Kenyon’s Daily Writing Apple is a daily writing prompt to help you with your fiction work-in progress, instead of an unrelated writing exercise in creative futility that asks you to write about an elephant or how some other character feels. Subscribe via Atom Posts at http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default (LINK) or Like on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Kenyons-Daily-Writing-Apple/157414557652275 (LINK).

Tweet with me onTwitter: @TKKenyon. I tweet where to find excellent free fiction on the internet daily! 

Good other posts to read: 

Kurt Vonnegut explains story structure: http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/09/kurt-vonnegut-explains-story-plots-for.html 

How to introduce a character: http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-introduce-character-in-your.html 

Mad Men Me!

Me, as I see myself, on Mad Men. (Any similarity to real life may be coincidence.)

What is your character's lack and compensation?

All good, round, deep characters have a flaw. Sometimes it's a tragic flaw; sometimes, it's a fatal flaw. Other times, it's the shattered facet that keeps a character human.

So what's a flaw?

Often, it's a lack of something.

If a character feels a lack of something, it motivates him. Often, nearly always, this character has a goal that symbolizes, to him/her, the satisfaction of this inner, private need.

It could be love (too many to mention), success, money (all the Nero Wolfes), affection for his family (It's a Wonderful Life,) , a family, safety from a criminal (Silence of the Lambs), a certain level of society (The Great Gatsby,) etc.

In short, it is anything that threatens your character's sense that s/he controls his/her own destiny.

When a person is aware of such a lack, they are ill at ease. They try to compensate. More on compensation tomorrow.

Your Main Character and Books

What kind of fiction does your main character read?

Do they not read fiction because "it isn't real"?

Do they read only horror novels with lots of slippery blood and torture of young women? Even if your MC is a young woman?

Do they read only bestsellers that the NYT picks out for them?

Do they not read fiction but have an extensive library in the living room so it looks like they do?

Only DWMs? Only living LBGT writers of color?

Only highbrow lit that Oprah thinks is too tough for her viewers?

Only sword and sorcery fantasy? Even if they're a brain surgeon? Or a Wiccan palm reader, to get ideas?

Only 99c ebooks, to spite the major publishers? Or because they're chinsy? Or because they like new writers? Or because they won't read a publisher that published Snookie?

Only $15.99 ebooks because those self-published writers can't be any good since they haven't jumped through the appropriate hoops and paid their dues?

Ways to Tag a Character: Attitude

There are four major ways to tag a character: 

1) Appearance 

2) Speech 

3) Mannerisms 

4) Attitude -- also called traits: the habitually apologetic, the fearful, the easy-breezy laugh, the careful vanity, an obsequiousness ingrained from surviving rounds of layoffs, an ex-general accustomed to snapping orders and immediate obedience, preoccupation with a single subject (golf, babies, one's own health, a religion or political stance, a perfect lawn, fishing, retribution for a minute perceived wrong or for the murder of one's child, etc.) quick to take fey offence at any perceived insult to his status in the peerage, an innate bravery when the most powerful wizard in the world keeps trying to kill you.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Ways to Tag a Character:

There are four major ways to tag a character:

1) Appearance

2) Speech

3) Mannerisms --  clutching a sheaf of sliding papers, spinning a e-reader like a basketball, a toddler who scowls, a servile but furious house-elf, a girl who flutters, an eye-dodger, an earlobe-tugger, a tic, a twitch, a hand-washer, a doodler, a nose-picker, an ex-smoker who can't let go of a phantom cigarette, a seat-squirmer.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Ways to Tag a Character: Speech

There are four ways to characterize.

1) Appearance.

2) Speech -- New Yawker or Southern drawl; an affected 19th-century manner, the vocabulary of a wharf whore or a Georgia preacher's wife; an autodidact or a lazy bum; a manager of a factory farm with a master's in ag science and a minor in botany/genetics or a dirt farmer; do-diddy rappin' or the King's English; and stutter, stammer, or clenched throat. One's profession, hobbies, religion, family, background, and education change speech.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Ways to Tag a Character: Appearance

There are four major ways to tag a character:

1) Appearance -- cobalt blue eyes, burnt sugar skin, emaciated physique with umbrella-ribs torso, grimy fingernails, mango orange hair, mourning black hoop-skirted dress, sunburn on one side of the face, only wears designer business suits, dark roots under platinum Marilyn Monroe blonde hair, mom ponytail, a fat toddler grown six feet tall, a lightening bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, an Adonis but for his crooked teeth, a wretch but for her kind and clean smile, chest hair like a tiny bear skin rug glued to his skin, bald and lumpy like a golf ball, one eye higher than the other, a brass prosthetic nose, huge herpes lesion on his upper lip, etc.

More to come.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

How to Introduce a Character in Your Story or Novel

To introduce a character, whether the main character at the beginning or a new character somewhere in the middle, you need three things:

1) The character must be a character. 

They can't be flat or shapeless. They can't be neutral or wussy. They have to be for or against something. That's important. You have to give your reader something to react to. You can have them hate or love the character, but the reader has to have a reaction.

2) The first time he appears, the character should perform an act that characterizes him. 

This goes back to Sunday school: don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. Your reader will watch what the character does, and it should be something important. Is he a thief? Have him steal something. Is he honest? Have him give back a nickel to make correct change. Generous and sweet? Have him over-tip the waitress after charming her.

And make that waitress important later.

If he's not generous and sweet, have him charm the waitress and then stiff her.

That doesn't mean to make the charecters flat. You can add contrast later, and should. Just show what they essentially are, in their core, first. More about adding contrast in these posts:

http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/contrast-makes-your-writing-more.html
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/07/3d-characters-easy-formula.html

3) The characterizing act must be both pertinent and characteristic. 

That means you should show the most important characteristic of your character, not a side characteristic. If he's supposed to be courageous, don't show first how kind he is, etc.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Even 3D Characters Have One Dominant Trait

We've discussed several times in this blog how to make your characters seem three dimensional.

Easy Formula for 3-D Characters
Character Complexity
Naming Your Characters

However, if you have too many contrasts and nuances, you can end up with character mush.

For that reason, it's a good idea to identify a dominant trait in each of your major characters that will predominate during the story.

A story is an enactment of what is, most probably, the worst and or most exciting thing to ever happen to your main character. When this one major stimulus occurs, one part of your character's personality will determine their reaction.

Your main character should be heroic in some way. For him/her, choose a heroic trait, like bravery, or kindness, honesty, or compassion, or maternal/paternal/fraternal/sororital bonds. The Seven Cardinal Virtues are an easy list. I like the ones first espoused by Aristotle and Plato: temperance, wisdom, justice, and courage, supplemented by the three virtues from the New Testament: faith, hope, and charity/love.

Your other characters, co-protagonists, antagonists, etc., can have heroic, anti-heroic, or neutral traits, such as the seven deadly sins (PEWSLAG: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony,) or any of the heroic ones above, or such neutral ones as stupidity, ambition, recklessness, introversion or extroversion, etc.

More about characters and how to introduce them, next.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Complex Emotions in Fiction

Complex emotions are easy.

Characters should not have just one emotion at a time. Mix them up and describe the shades between them.

Happiness can be tinged with nostalgia, remorse, satiety, loneliness, euphoria, triumph, vindictiveness, condescension, schadenfreude, earnestness, desire, sexual desire, or hysteria, etc.

Anger can be mixed with hate, schadenfreude, envy, stupidity, berserker rage, annoyance, self-aggrandizement, irritation, ignorance, suppression, or vindictiveness, etc.

Describing the whole, round emotion makes your characters seem 3-D.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

What you need to have in order to write a darn good novel

Got a life?

In order to write, you need to have a life.

You do have one, even if you're trying to make the family's ends meet. You don't have to run with the bulls in Spain or get killed in a Greek civil war. Be mindful of your own life: the drama, the people, the symbols, what people are working through, how they do things.

That's all fodder for the mill.