Lessons learned: Class 5

So, as I mentioned a while ago, I commissioned some new cover art for my alien/action horror novel Class 5 and I was considering whether to make some changes to the book itself. 

Well, I didn't go through the whole book to clean it up and straighten up the language, but there were a few things I decided to 'adjust'. I'm not going to go into details about what I changed, but I can go into why I did.

Referencing Music

At one point, I describe the music playing over the radio. Rather bluntly. I list it by song and artist.

Now, music copyrights are pretty serious. Most songs you have to ask permission to use even a single line of their lyrics. Some sources suggest you can get away with a single line or two, but it's better not to take the risk.

I did consider replacing the blunt song and artist entry with a line from the song, but after some thinking, I decided it was better to just rework the line to just include the title and to make the line work better.

Character Flaws

So, your characters need flaws. It makes them more relatable to the readers and makes them easier to care about. You can, apparently, go overboard though.

It seems I did that with one of my main characters. With one little paragraph which is never referenced again, I made one of the main characters, one which everyone should feel for, unlikable. Granted, this was a fair chunk of wordage to take out, but it needed to be done, and hopefully makes the story better for it.

Getting out of the character's heads

Last, but not least, was a pretty major plot point that I glossed over. It is subtly mentioned pretty deep in the story, but it needed to be more up front, so people understood why things changed for one of the characters after a certain point. Granted, nobody ever really mentioned it, so either it was more intuitive than I thought, or it just got lost in the action. We'll see.

Well, that's how it is. If you're not able to look at your own work critically, accept that you're never going to be perfect, and that you can always learn and grow, then you really have no business writing. Nobody is perfect, but that doesn't mean you can get away with throwing out cheap work over and over. You build up a reputation and that reputation will carry through all your future work.

Before I go though, there is one last thing I want to share with you all.

I give you, the new cover art for Class 5! Courtesy of Jamie Noble of www.TheNobleArtist.com

~ Shaun

Thinking About Covers

If you're self-published, one of the things you need to think about is what you want for your cover.

Obviously, if money is an issue, your options are severely limited to what images you can find on free sites like Wikimedia Commons and Morguefile.com and what you can do with your own skill level in photoshop.

Some people cheat and try to rip ready made artwork off of Google, but seriously, don't do that. You're opening yourself up to a whole world of litigation. 

It can be difficult for writers to come up with ideas that illustrate enough of the story to entice people, without giving away major plot points. Art can be abstract, or practical, depending on the preferences of the artist and the one commissioning the work.

Now, I've been a fan of the card game Magic: The Gathering for years. There are easily 30,000 different cards, each with different art. Art that I've seen self-published authors take and try to pass off for their covers, and I have no problem admitting that I've reported them when I've spotted them.

The most recent set of cards is about a city that emulates ancient Egypt, and it has some incredible art. But the art itself isn't why I'm bringing this up. See, the company that makes the card game, posts articles on their website every day, a lot of which are behind the scenes, and one of the articles that have always intrigued me is the concept of the art.

These articles give us a view from the inside, where they commission the art for their cards with sometimes specific, sometimes vague descriptions, and let the artists take it from there.

Check them out here, and here.

If you check out the links, I think you'll see what I'm getting at. If you hire someone to do art for your cover, it pays to have an idea, but the more information you can give them, things like setting, mood, focus, the better your art will give you what you're looking for even if you give the artist some leeway.

If you're having trouble coming up with an idea for a cover, it's also a good way to get some things going. Start with the mood of the cover, or the genre, and then move on to the setting, then the focus, etc. etc. This also lets you envision the cover in the way that we authors see best, with words.

Just remember, when you hire an artist, you want your money's worth, and the easiest way to lose out is to not have an idea or direction for them to work from. Hired artists aren't going to look at your book and come up with a great cover for you on their own.

~ Shaun

Taking Risks

No other genre is as risky as Horror. (With the possible exception of bigfoot erotica.) Most fans of the genre can tell you of a scene or two that almost literally pulled them out of their comfort zone and made them wince, grimace, or even put the book down and walk away for a bit. I'm not talking about the extreme genre's like Splatterporn, either.

The book American Psycho has several scenes that people list among the most disturbing. The starved rat, for instance, is commonly listed as one of the most twisted things described in literature.

Now, I don't know how Mr. Ellis felt about it while he was writing, but it was certainly risky to write such graphic scenes. Even fans of Horror have their limits and when you write scenes that push boundaries, it's very possible that you exceed those limits. What happens then? People close your book and don't come back.

It's a calculated risk though. As the saying goes, "People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." Even some people who close the book on your scene will eventually make their way back. They may still have a need to know what happens next, or they may remember your name and try a different work.

Even if they never come back to your work, they'll remember the one they stopped at, and likely your name. If the subject of horror, or disturbing things ever comes up, you can bet your name will come up, which is one of the things you want as an author. Word of mouth is just about the best advertising you can hope for.

Still, it's a fine line, and like almost everything else in writing, it comes down to how well it's executed. If you build up a story, with characters your readers care about, escalating tension and guiding the story in a way where the horrific scene makes some kind of sense. Then the aftermath has to make sense as well.

Recently, there was a video game that was released. Outlast 2. I must confess, I haven't played it myself. I watched people do Let's Plays on youtube though. (Possible spoilers below the image!)

Outlast 2 hits on a lot of disturbing themes. They're trying to push the boundaries all over the place. There's hints of religious extremism, infanticide, demonic rituals, murder, torture, and rape. I'll be honest, just watching someone else play the game at one point left me fucking triggered. As pissed as that scene made me, I kept watching, but then, the ending. The ending was completely unsatisfying. It didn't even feel like an ending, it was completely open-ended. 

And I now have no intention of buying and playing Outlast 2, even though I loved the first game. 

People have their own limits though, as I said. So what is too far for some might not be for others, who might absolutely love that you went there. 

So, when you're working on a piece and a scene seems to call for something hardcore, it's up to you whether to take the risk 

It's usually not a bad thing to challenge yourself and your own boundaries though.

~ Shaun

Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island

Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island

Well, that was fun. How was your Easter?

So, After getting Godzilla back on the big screen, we had to follow up with a new, universe-centric Kong movie. This one does not disappoint. Fair warning, even though the movie has been out for a while, there may be spoilers in this review.

This version of Kong not only has a giant monkey, but it's got some pretty heavy hitters in the acting department, starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman.

Side note: I now subscribe to the theory that every role Samuel L. Jackson has ever, and will ever play, is either Nick Fury, or Nick Fury undercover. It just makes absolutely everything even more badass.

Now, there's probably not any Oscars for acting in this movie, but these guys don't sign their names and faces onto just anything, and the movie is every bit as good as you would expect for those three A-listers to put their touch to it.

The story itself is pretty standard King Kong fair, an island that's usually surrounded by mists and storms suddenly has a break in the weather, allowing an intrepid group of explorers and military to land an expedition. Well, not quite land, almost as soon as they arrive, they manage to piss Kong off, and we're treated to a great Kong vs. Helicopters action scene. (Guess who wins.) The survivors now have to trek across the island to their extraction point before the break in the storms surrounding the island ends.

Of course, Kong isn't the only threat on the island. There is a tribe of people that live on the island that worships Kong, In addition, we're treated to glimpses of a giant octopus, a giant water buffalo, a giant spider with legs like bamboo stalks, Not everything is big though, there's also flocks of small pterosaurs to rip people apart.

The biggest threat, and the antagonist monsters in this movie though are the Skull Crawlers. Giant two-legged lizards with tongues like frogs that snap out and grab things before dragging them down its throat.

We see several small ones during the movie, before a much bigger one shows up to challenge Kong. Of course, though, once the human element is introduced, it's shown that he couldn't have defeated the creature without the bitty little humans helping out.

Unlike previous Kong movies though, this one doesn't end with the death of the big monkey after a romp through a major American city. The people manage to make their escape, now aware that the world is much, much bigger than they thought.

If you wait until after the credits, you're also treated to a final sequence, which solidifies the connection between this Kong movie and last year's Godzilla. It also offers a tantalizing hint, for those in the know, of what is hopefully to come.

You probably have one more week to see this in the theaters, so if giant monsters are your thing, it's definitely worth the price of a ride. 

~ Shaun

Revisiting Old Works

This one should be pretty short, more of an update than a blog post, just to keep fans and people in the loop on what I'm up to.

Trying to work harder on my writing, which isn't exactly easy with a full-time+ job. I am managing though. I have three short stories out on submission right now, which is a new personal record, and I have a list of open calls to write for.

Got a few ideas for new novels and novellas too, with a few false starts in place. (Hey, it's better than nothing! Words on the page is always a win!)

In addition, I'm currently commissioning some new art for my book Class 5. While I was satisfied with the current one, it doesn't exactly scream Horror, and the font needs some work. I will admit that when I first commissioned the current cover, I didn't really have a good idea to start with for what I wanted. That led to the first version (which I rejected) which had an Arizona desert that looked like a cracked wasteland, and the crashed spaceship being the Serenity from Firefly.

Changing cover art really isn't THAT big of a deal though.  It happens all the time. Look up Stephen King's Cujo on Goodreads.com, and you can see at least a dozen cover variants. 

But that's not what I really want to talk about here. I self-published Class 5 in 2013. Now that may not seem like that long ago, but in terms of skill and personal growth, it's ages. Looking through it now, as I make sure all the details I want to give the new artist are right, I can see a lot of the things that need work. It's not that a lot of these issues are technically wrong, but as much as I've grown as a writer since then, I know I can do better. 

Which brings me to my dilemma. Do I sweep through a book that's been out there for years, making changes and edits and things, or do I just leave it, as a reminder of the level I was at, at that point? 

Now, I have talked about this a little before, specifically regarding my very first book, The Unknown Neighbor. The Unknown Neighbor has tons of issues, cover, formatting, plot, tension, and even the writing itself. To get that book up to any kind of snuff would pretty much mean a complete re-write. I would be better off just taking the idea and starting with a brand new story. That said, I did consider it at one point, as well as leaving it up for sale. In the end, I pulled it without any revisions and I don't anticipate ever making it available again. 

So what's the difference now, with Class 5? Well, there really just aren't as many issues. The story and plot are good, the action too. It could use a few more details in places, but it's not that big a deal. I'm not talking about re-working anything. The main thing is taking some of the parts of iffy writing and making them better. Basically, another editing pass or two. Not that I'm completely sold on the idea just yet, but it's something I'm considering to go along with the new cover art, and I'll probably fix some formatting issues with the physical copy. We'll see.

Is that good? Is it bad? Well, as long as the story itself isn't changing, there shouldn't be a big problem. I'm not changing any details, I'm not adding or taking things out so that new readers get a different experience than the ones that read it in the past. I don't want to invalidate the reviews Class 5 already has. I just want to clean up the language so people can enjoy the story easier.

Like I said though, we'll see. In the meantime, I apologize, this turned out to be a lot longer than I planned. Still, if you want to know more, feel free to hop over to Amazon and check out Class 5 for yourself! Just click on the cover on the right side of my blog here!

~ Shaun