Lone Gunman

Arti­cle and book pitches — both suc­cess­ful and unsuc­cess­ful — can give you a small insight into an editor’s selec­tion process and the sales-side of a writer’s mind, as well as help you learn to write more effec­tively. As such I’ve started to col­lect sites fea­tur­ing pro­pos­als and pitches.

A recent addi­tion to this list is the pitch data­base from The Open Note­book; a col­lec­tion of writer-submitted pitches for sci­ence arti­cles that have been accepted for pub­lish­ing in many of my favourite places, such as Ars Tech­nica, Atlantic, Lapham’s Quar­terly, This Amer­i­can Life and Wired.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is a pitch from David Dobbs, writer of the Neu­ron Cul­ture blog. Pitch­ing Atlantic edi­tor Don Peck, Dobbs wrote an exten­sive pitch for The Orchid Chil­dren that led to the pub­li­ca­tion of a fan­tas­tic arti­cle, The Sci­ence of Suc­cess. Those who fol­low Dobbs’ blog will know that this in turn led to a book deal for The Orchid and the Dan­de­lion, Dobbs’ forth­com­ing book.

As a co-editor of the open-access jour­nal The­o­ret­i­cal Eco­nom­ics, Jeff Ely has seen his fair share of aca­d­e­mic papers and their asso­ci­ated titles. Inevitably Ely has con­structed a the­ory on how to title a paper (or any­thing else, for that mat­ter) for max­i­mum expo­sure, impact and intrigue.

In his hilar­i­ous tongue-in-cheek arti­cle detail­ing this the­ory, Ely offers his price­less advice on how to decide on an aca­d­e­mic paper’s title. The con­clu­sion: keep it as short as pos­si­ble (one word, prefer­ably), avoid colons and avoid questions.

A paper titled Law and Finance is guar­an­teed to be the sem­i­nal paper in the field because if it were not then that title would have already been taken. You can go ahead and cite it with­out actu­ally read­ing it. By con­trast, you can safely ignore a paper with a title like Val­u­a­tion and Dynamic Repli­ca­tion of Con­tin­gent Claims in a Gen­eral Mar­ket Envi­ron­ment Based on the Beliefs-Preferences Gauge Sym­me­try even if you don’t know what any of those words mean. The title is essen­tially telling you “Don’t read me. Instead go and read a paper whose title is sim­ply Val­u­a­tion of Con­tin­gent Claims. If you have any ques­tions after read­ing that, you might look into dynamic repli­ca­tion and then beliefs, pref­er­ences, and if after all that you still haven’t found what you’re look­ing for, check here for the low-down on gauge symmetry.”

Two pieces of advice fol­low from these obser­va­tions. First, find the sim­plest title not yet taken for your papers. One word titles are the best. Sec­ond, before you get started on a paper, think about the title. If you can’t come up with a short title for it then it’s prob­a­bly not worth writing.

The absolute worst thing you can do with your title is to insert a colon into it. […] As in, Tor­ture: A Model of Dynamic Com­mit­ment Prob­lems. Or Kludged: Asymp­tot­i­cally Inef­fi­cient Evo­lu­tion. In the first case you have just ruined a seminal-signalling one-word title by adding spu­ri­ous speci­ficity. In the sec­ond, you just took an intrigu­ing one-world title and turned it into a yawner.

The sec­ond worst kind of title is the ques­tion mark title. “Is the Folk The­o­rem Robust?” This says to the reader: “You picked this up because you want to know if the folk the­o­rem is robust. Well, if I knew the answer to that I would have told you right away in the title. But look, all I could do is repeat the ques­tion, so you can safely assume that you won’t find the answer in this paper.”

via @TimHarford

What is a story? How can you tell bet­ter stories?

There is a wealth of knowl­edge and research into story telling, story struc­ture and tech­niques for enhanc­ing nar­ra­tive. The clas­sic text is The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces by Joseph Camp­bell, but this tome has been is crit­i­cised for being dense and aca­d­e­mic. Syd Field’s book Screen­play has influ­enced the writ­ing of many recent movies, but Field has been crit­i­cised for never pro­duc­ing a suc­cess­ful script himself.

If only a suc­cess­ful writer would set out clearly and access­ably the the­ory behind writ­ing a good story.

Enter Dan Har­mon the cre­ator of the superb TV series Com­mu­nity. He learned his craft devel­op­ing short episodes for the inter­net TV sta­tion Channel101. Channel101 runs a monthly screen­ing of low bud­get (or zero bud­get), five minute episodes. They’re often over the top, vul­gar, and hilarious. Check out (not at work!) the ridicu­lous Laser Fart, the viral sen­sa­tion Chad Vader, and the teen drama pas­tiche The ‘Bu.

Despite the silli­ness of the episodes they exhibit a com­pelling writ­ing style that Har­mon attrib­utes to his under­stand­ing of sto­ry­telling. Har­mon wrote a series of arti­cles to teach per­spec­tive sub­mit­ters to Channel101 how to write a well struc­tured story. The basis of these arti­cles is a series of eight ele­ments that should be included in every story. The eight points are:

1. You - Who are we? A squir­rel? The sun? A red blood cell? Amer­ica? By the end of the first 37 sec­onds, we’d really like to know.
2. Need - some­thing is wrong, the world is out of bal­ance. This is the rea­son why a story is going to take place. The “you” from (1) is an alco­holic. There’s a dead body on the floor. A motor­cy­cle gang rolls into town. Camp­bell phrases: Call to Adven­ture, Refusal of the Call, Super­nat­ural Aid.
3. Go — For (1) and (2), the “you” was in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion, and now that sit­u­a­tion changes. A hiker heads into the woods. Pearl Harbor’s been bombed. A mafia boss enters ther­apy. Camp­bell phrase: Cross­ing of the Thresh­old. Syd Field phrase: Plot Point 1.
4. Search - adapt­ing, exper­i­ment­ing, get­ting shit together, being bro­ken down. A detec­tive ques­tions sus­pects. A cow­boy gath­ers his posse. A cheer­leader takes a nerd shop­ping. Camp­bell phrases: Belly of the Whale, Road of Tri­als. Christo­pher Vogler phrase: Friends, Ene­mies and Allies.
5. Find — whether it was the direct, con­scious goal or not, the “need” from (2) is ful­filled. We found the princess. The sus­pect gives the loca­tion of the meth lab. A nerd achieves pop­u­lar­ity. Camp­bell phrase: Meet­ing with the God­dess. Syd Field phrase: mid-point. Vogler phrase: Approach to the Inner­most Cave.
6. Take - The hard­est part (both for the char­ac­ters and for any­one try­ing to describe it). On one hand, the price of the jour­ney. The shark eats the boat. Jesus is cru­ci­fied. The nice old man has a stroke. On the other hand, a goal achieved that we never even knew we had. The shark now has an oxy­gen tank in his mouth. Jesus is dead– oh, I get it, flesh doesn’t mat­ter. The nice old man had a stroke, but before he died, he wanted you to take this belt buckle. Now go win that rodeo. Camp­bell phrases: Atone­ment with the Father, Death and Res­ur­rec­tion, Apoth­e­o­sis. Syd Field phrase: plot point 2
7. Return - It’s not a jour­ney if you never come back. The car chase. The big res­cue. Com­ing home to your girl­friend with a rose. Leap­ing off the roof as the sky­scraper explodes. Camp­bell phrases: Magic Flight, Res­cue from With­out, Cross­ing of the Return Threshold.
8. Change - The “you” from (1) is in charge of their sit­u­a­tion again, but has now become a situation-changer. Life will never be the same. The Death Star is blown up. The cou­ple is in love. Dr. Bloom’s Time Belt is com­pleted. Lor­raine Bracco heads into the jun­gle with Sean Con­nery to “find some of those ants.” Camp­bell phrases: Mas­ter of Both Worlds, Free­dom to Live.

They sound sim­plis­tic. But in the arti­cle Har­mon dis­sects well known movies and Channel101 episodes explain­ing how they con­form to this structure.

Story Struc­ture Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

As a mem­ber of a pub­lic speak­ing organ­i­sa­tion I fre­quently tell sto­ries in front of an audience. Reading these arti­cles has changed my approach to story telling. Rather than begin­ning with a blank page I plan the pro­gres­sion of my story using Harmon’s eight points as sub­head­ings, and attempt to give the cor­rect empha­sis to every point.

For more insights from Dan Har­mon you can check out his web­site or twit­ter. And I highly rec­om­mend his appear­ance on Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast (bad lan­guage a plenty).

The author-editor rela­tion­ship is an inti­mate one, and Robert Got­tlieb, edi­tor of many well-loved books and of The New Yorker for five years, knows this more than most. One of the best insights into this rela­tion­ship comes cour­tesy of an inter­view with Got­tlieb in The Paris Review where the ‘ques­tions’ are actu­ally anec­dotes pro­vided by some of the writ­ers with whom he has worked over the years.

With com­ments from the likes of Joseph Heller, Doris Lessing, Michael Crich­ton and Robert Caro, the one thing that par­tic­u­larly struck me in the inter­view is how Got­tlieb con­tin­u­ously describes how to be a good edi­tor, one must also be a good reader, writer and author.

He’s hum­ble about the craft, too:

The fact is, this glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of edi­tors, of which I have been an extreme exam­ple, is not a whole­some thing. The editor’s rela­tion­ship to a book should be an invis­i­ble one. The last thing any­one read­ing Jane Eyre would want to know, for exam­ple, is that I had con­vinced Char­lotte Brontë that the first Mrs. Rochester should go up in flames. The most famous case of edi­to­r­ial inter­ven­tion in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture has always both­ered me—you know, that Dickens’s friend Bulwer-Lytton advised him to change the end of Great Expec­ta­tions: I don’t want to know that! As a critic, of course, as a lit­er­ary his­to­rian, I’m inter­ested, but as a reader, I find it very dis­con­cert­ing. Nobody should know what I told Joe Heller and how grate­ful he is, if he is. It’s unkind to the reader and just out of place.

A quote I missed on first read­ing the inter­view (but saw high­lighted on his Wikipedia entry) is this brief com­ment regard­ing his approach to editing:

You have to sur­ren­der to a book. If you do, when some­thing in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have sur­ren­dered to a book, the more jar­ring its errors appear.

Many (all?) of The Paris Review’s The Art of… inter­views are online and worth spend­ing some time with. Gabrielle from The Con­tex­tual Life pro­vides a high­light of some of the best inter­views, dat­ing back to Ernest Hemingway’s 1950s inter­view.

via @RebeccaSkloot

“Tools not rules” are what’s needed to teach good writ­ing, says The Poyn­ter Institute’s vice pres­i­dent Roy Peter Clark in Writ­ing Tools — his acclaimed book com­pil­ing fifty of his favourites.

To accom­pany this book, Clark released his fifty writ­ing tools to improve your writ­ing on his blog, and here are some of my favourites:

• Get the name of the dog and the brand of the beer. Dig for the con­crete and spe­cific, details that appeal to the senses and help read­ers see the story.
• Pay atten­tion to names. Inter­est­ing names attract the writer — and the reader.
• Know when to back off and when to show off. When the topic is most seri­ous, under­state; when least seri­ous, exaggerate.
• Learn the dif­fer­ence between reports and sto­ries. Use one to ren­der infor­ma­tion, the other to ren­der experience.
• Take inter­est in all crafts that sup­port your work. To do your best, help oth­ers do their best.

That last one, especially.

For those want­ing a more aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, the fifty writ­ing tools ‘cheat sheet’ (pdf) is what you’ll want. Whereas those want­ing some­thing a bit more sen­sory will take great plea­sure in the fifty writ­ing tools pod­cast series (that unfor­tu­nately only made it to tool num­ber 32).