Writing Semi-Fiction

Is there such a thing as semi-fiction?

When I first came up with it, I doubted there was such a word. I had never heard of it. Most articles or blurbs just say "based on a true story." Maybe it's just clearer to say that rather than calling it semi-fiction. Or it's a psychological thing. Who'd want to read semi-fiction? It sounds like it's half of something.

Anyway, there is such a word and I'm working on one now. Sorry, 'can't tell you what the story is but it's based on a real historical event. In fact, I've been doing so much research that it's eating into my writing time. That's okay though. Nothing's too good for an author's readers. So what's the lessons for this so far?

If you want to do semi-fiction, it would probably be better if you get every piece of information you can about the event before you write the story. There is a real problem here though. How much research is necessary? How do you know if you have enough information to begin writing?

Right now, there's no definite answer. Other authors may have begun writing with just the basic information they had at hand. Still others probably began writing and just added or revised portions of the story as new information came in. I guess it depends on what's important to them. Just come out with a story that the reader will like or be as faithful to the real story and just hope the reader will like it.

The reason may even be personal.

Have you ever read about a historical event that touched you in some way? Were you so riveted to it that you read it from start to finish in one go? Or maybe you knew about the event but didn't care so much until you read someone's personal account? Someone who was there and gave his story in such a way that you want to rewrite it so that everyone will look at it in a new light?

In my case, it was a little of everything. I had an idea for a story which was going to be fiction. Technically, it's historical fiction but not based on any real event. Then, while doing research on something technical I needed to know, I stumbled on an actual event. It had little in similarity with the original story in my head but I found the story so interesting that I began looking for more information. After several weeks, I decided I'd base my story on this actual event. After several months, I'm ready to start writing.

The additional lesson I obtained from this exercise is how to find information on the internet. The story about the actual event had links to other sources. Some were just repetitions while others gave some additional tidbits. Then I began using the search engines. I googled names, places, and dates. Right now, I've got so much information I could write another book just to recount the actual event. I just might do that too.

A historical event is a time-frame intensive story. Keep extensive notes and make a story outline based on the sequence of events. Get your names and locations right and show connections (how one event in the story affects another event). Don't forget the human element. The story may be about history but the characters were humans with their own thoughts, emotions, memories, and principles.

The most important element, however, is telling the story in such a way as to have the same effect on the reader as it did on you. In the end, a story is only worth reading if the story is interesting to you.

Book Review - Deadend

I've had a bad case of sore eye (conjunctivitis) for almost three weeks now. Only the right eye was affected (hence the singular form) and it's developed a blurriness that creates a circle around points of light. Doc says it'll go away eventually which is a relief. It's difficult to read the computer screen so I've been minimizing my computer time. I make up for the inactivity by reading books but I've read all of them already so I decided I'd download a couple of free ebooks from the internet and read with the bad eye closed. I was in for a disappointment.

I downloaded Robert C. Waggoner's Deadend, which was all of 2,452 words making it a sketch story instead of a short story. There's a Twilight Zone-quality to the story but falls flat on impact, at least for me.

There were a few misspelled words but the book is full of mispunctuations.  I can't claim to be an expert in that field but I'm familiar enough with comma use to know how important they can be. Grammar-wise, it's okay. I didn't find any sentences that tended to paralyze my tongue.

The author has some talent though. The story revolves around a series of strange experiences of a mother and her son. I actually got interested when they arrive home to find someone else living in their house. After that, the story starts to fail in the "believability" department.

I guess that's  my main problem with the book. If you come home and find someone else living in your house, what would you do? Confront him? Call the police perhaps? The mother doesn't do any of those things. She just breaks down and cries. Then she and her son decide to go to their neighbor's house but the familiar faces were not there.  Inside the house were the "strangers." They don't confront them but when they learn who the strangers are, they don't do the normal and sensible thing which is to try and escape. Instead they engages them in conversation! Most unbelievable is her son who seems excited to learn about all about the strangers. The story might have been better if mother and son had tried to escape and the strangers prevent them from doing that to avoid being discovered by other people.

Robert C. Waggoner states his location as being in the Philippines though he also says he is "out of country." I guess that means he's not a Filipino. I can't tell his nationality from his picture but he seems to be an American.

Mr. Waggoner, you've got enough raw talent to be a good storyteller. I suggest you get beta-readers to give an honest opinion before you publish. Good luck.

Software for Writers

I've been alternating my writing with MS Word 2003 and OpenOffice's Writer and, so far, I don't have much to complain about. MS Word opens much faster than OpenOffice (OO) but I like OO's convert-to-pdf feature  which Word 2003 doesn't have. I know Word 2007 has this feature built in already but I haven't  got the finances to upgrade at this time.

One of the things that I had been looking for in both Word and OpenOffice is a continuous word counter. A lot of authors track their progress by counting how many words they've added to their work on a daily basis. With these text editors, you get the word count by selecting a menu item and the word count is displayed for you. There's no way to get a running word count.

When I tried my hand at writing short, 200-word articles for an online company, I was hampered by not knowing how many words I had been typing. Most times, I thought I had completed 200 words but had actually fallen short. Occasionally, I would exceed the target by a huge margin. Less than 200 words is unacceptable by the company but more than 20% over 200 words was unacceptable for me since it meant I was doing more work for the same pay. So, I started looking for another editor that provided a continuous word count.

yEdit2: If you're looking for a simple editor for making simple, specific-length articles, this is a good program. It's small and portable (you can run it from a flashdrive), and simple to set up. You set the target word count and, as you type, you get a running word count as well as a "words-to-go" countdown.

yWriter5: From the same person who created yEdit2, yWriter5 is a novel writing program. It allows you to divide your novel into chapters and scenes which are stored in a folder as separate files. Each scene has tabs where you can input who are characters  present in that scene; the location/s where the scene occurs; items or objects that are present in the scene; and tabs for scene descriptions and notes. There's also a Goals tab that I haven't investigated yet.

After using the program for more than a week, I've come to appreciate the way it had been designed. I had been having problems keeping track of my characters and even had a problem with timing. I had one event happening before a previous event when it should have been the other way around. yWriter5 provides a way for you to keep track of time frames which is really handy when your story gets complicated. One feature I really liked was the simulated sound of a typewriter as you work. For some reason, it helps me keep working. That might not be true for everyone but it does for me.

Both yEdit2 and yWriter5 are available for free downloading at Spacejock. The creator is Simon Haynes, an author as well as a programmer. He doesn't ask for payment but he is willing to take donations which, he says, is used to improve his programs. I am unable to donate at this time, so I'm doing the next best thing. I hope you like it as well as I do.

The Case of the Haunted Room

FUNNY STORIESFROM MY TRAVELS

This is an excerpt from my book Funny Stories from My Travels. I have two reasons for posting this:

• One is to test the paragraph spacing bug I mentioned in an earlier post, Blogger Paragraph Spacing. I sent them a feedback so I will be testing this bug from time to time. 
• to give you a glimpse of a part of the book that isn't included in the free sample. I hope you enjoy it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Back in 1993, I tried applying for a job at my Dad's former place of work, an oil refinery. It is located in Limay, Bataan and used to be owned by Esso, an American company. Dad left them in 1971 after Petron bought it but several of Dad's old buddies still worked there. I had an uncle living in the next town, Lamao, so it was only natural that I would stay at his place for the two days I would be in Bataan.

I naturally assumed I would be sleeping at their house. I had been to Uncle Romy's house lots of times and had no trouble sleeping there. This time, however, I was going with them to sleep at the harbor pilot's lodging house or quarters. Uncle Romy had been hired or appointed as caretaker of the building so they slept there at night.

The building was within walking distance from Uncle Romy’s house and was two stories high. I followed them through a door and entered a large kitchen. We then went up two flights of stairs to the second floor and opened a door to the left. It was a large room that looked like it could accommodate maybe ten beds or more. It was empty at the moment and a mattress had been placed on the floor at the center. This was where Uncle Romy, Auntie Guia and my baby cousin Chellie slept. It was a large mattress and Uncle Romy said we could all fit into it.

I decided to explore the rest of the building and found a door just across the corridor. It opened into a long rectangular room about ten feet wide and about fifty feet long. Three of the walls had windows with flimsy curtains on them and the windows on the long wall looked out over the street in front. The two, smaller windows overlooked the neighbors on either side. The fourth wall was bare with just a single light switch adorning it. It was a bedroom but an unusual one. The door was at one end and the bed at the other. There were no furniture, not even a chair or table. It contained just the bed. I thought about my uncle’s family making room for me on their mattress so I asked Uncle Romy if I could sleep in this one.

This is how the haunted room looked like 
as best as I could draw it. The drawing is 
not included in the book.

He hesitated. “I’m not sure, Eric. A number of people have slept there before and reported hearing footsteps in the room. One had even run out of it in fright.”

Now, I'm not a believer in ghosts. I’ve never seen one and I’ve investigated sounds that go bump in the night and found them to be caused by natural things.

“I’ll be okay, Uncle. You don’t have to worry about me.”

After some more hesitation, he gave his consent. Auntie Guia gave me a pillow, bed sheets and a blanket. After making up the bed, I laid down and appreciated the quality of the mattress as well as the silence. I stood up, walked the length of the room to the switch, turned off the lights and walked back to the bed. It wasn’t dark since a lamppost on the street in front illuminated the room though not so brightly. I laid back down and was soon asleep.

As sometimes happens when I sleep in a new place, I woke up after several hours. I checked my watch and found it was just before twelve midnight. The air was cool and the wind was blowing, causing the curtains to billow into the room. I closed my eyes to get back to sleep.

This photo is similar to the experience in this story.
The curtains were longer than this and reached almost
to the other wall. This is just to give you an idea
about what I saw.

I woke up with a start. I had heard footsteps! They seemed to be coming from the other side of the room. I sat up with my feet on the floor, got my glasses and looked intently. The windblown curtains obscured my view of the far end of the room but I could hear the footsteps very clearly. What's more, they seemed to be inside the room and getting closer to the bed!

I didn't feel any fear. If it had been someone else, I imagine they would have been terrified, more so because the footsteps were coming from the direction of the door. Anyone trying to escape needed to go toward the footsteps.

The sound continued to come closer. I stood up and started walking slowly toward it. The wind blew the curtains and kept me from seeing anything. As if it was avoiding me, the footsteps moved from inside the room to outside the window. I looked out and saw...

A security guard.

He was walking his beat with his shotgun on his shoulder, his shoes clicking on the cement road as he walked at a leisurely pace. I suddenly understood the phenomena.

The room had a bare wall along one side, and windows along the other. The sound of his footsteps entered the room and reverberated around, making it seem that the footsteps were coming from inside the room. Mystery solved. I went back to bed and slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

Next morning, I told Uncle Romy about the source of the mysterious footsteps. He shook his head in amusement and gave a little laugh. The Case of the Haunted Room was closed.

Ebook or Print Book?

Are you still holding on to the dream of getting your book published as a print book? Are publishers ignoring you? Are you just about ready to give up?

You're not the first to have this experience. At this time, you won't be the last either. Countless authors have tried—and given up—getting their work published and quite a few have resorted to self-publishing and selling their books on their own. The expense of going it alone, however, means that only those who have money to spend can get their books out into the hands of readers.

If your purpose in writing a book is to have the satisfaction of seeing your words on a printed page, this post is not for you. If your purpose, however, is to have people read your book, then this post will offer you an alternative to having your book printed on paper.

Perhaps you've heard of ebooks. If you're like me up until about two years ago, you probably never even considered publishing your book as an ebook. Seeing your words on a screen somehow didn't have the same effect as reading it from a printed page. That notion is slowly changing.

Mark Coker of Smashwords.com and Amy Gahran of CNN both posted that more people are reading ebooks than ever before. The reason may be due to the proliferation of ebook readers like the Kindle and tablets like the iPad. Along with the increase in ebook readers comes the increase in ebook publishers and authors. Print books are slowly losing out as more and more authors and readers decide to go digital rather than traditional.

There are several possible reasons for the shift. One is that ebooks are generally cheaper than print books. In fact, some authors are giving away some or all of their books for free. Those that have prices are generally sold for the same price as second hand books even though they've been newly released.

Another possible reason is that ebooks take up practically no physical space. You can have several dozen books on your reader or laptop and your load won't feel any heavier. You can store ebooks on CDs and flashdrives which can have more than a hundred books in them. Even when you're away on vacation, you can bring a whole library of books in your bag or in your pocket.

Where do you buy an ebook? Why, anywhere you can connect to the internet. There are so many sources of ebooks that you can browse several bookstores at a time from the comfort of your chair. You can discover new authors, talented writers who had been rejected by traditional publishers.

For authors, ebooks have the potential to reach more people than print books. There are only so many thousands of brick-and-mortar bookstores and only a few thousand people are in them at any one time. By publishing their books on the internet, they have the potential to reach millions at a time 24 hours a day.

Still for authors, ebook distributors offer higher royalties than print book publishers. There's not much expense in getting your book out into the internet so the returns can be greater though you will still need to market your book. If your passion is just to write books and not really earn from them (yes, some authors do that), then writing ebooks will be the way to go.

I've noticed lately, that brick-and-mortar bookstores seem to have less books today than they did before the digital age. It used to be that I would go to a bookstore and 90% of the space was allotted to books. The rest were for school and office supplies. These days, the books take up about 50% of the floor and, in addition to the school and office supplies, toys and office furniture now vie for the customers attention. Services like photocopying and gift wrapping also take up some of the space once occupied by shelves of books.

Print books are slowly disappearing though the end still seems some distance into the future. You can wait for that day to come before you decide to publish your book as an ebook but, personally, I think it will come sooner than later. The growth of ebook publishing and reading is increasing rapidly. That favorite of traditional publishers, the text book, will one day disappear and reincarnate as bits and bytes in a computer where my son, daughters and grandchildren will be reading them without a thought of what it feels to read something on paper.

Going...?

A couple of days ago, my boss informed me that I was going to be sent to Switzerland for a workshop. I've been trying to decide if I want to go or not.

I can almost hear the cries, “BUT WHY?” Why am I even thinking of not going?

Main reason: I'm fifty and by March next year, I'll have reached the “Rule-of-Seventy.” The Rule-of-Seventy is the number-of-years-of-service plus the age of the employee. In short, by March next year, I'll be eligible for early retirement.

“BUT YOU'RE STILL YOUNG!”

Thank you, but staying young is exactly why I'm contemplating retirement. The pay's not bad and the benefits are nothing to laugh about. If all I cared about was money, I'd be happy to stay. The pressures of the job, however, keep building with no signs of letting up. Worse is when you know that there are solutions but the company is not willing or is unable to do anything for one reason or another.

So I think about retirement, and think about a future where I make my own decisions and work the way I want, doing what I want, doing what I do best.

The Urge to Write

When people learn that I've written a book, their eyes widen in amazement. Quite a few of them say, "I wish I could write a book too!"

A lot of people seem to have a dream to one day write a book. Note that this is different from dreaming to be a writer. They just want to write one book. So, if it's just one book, what's holding them back? Ask that question and the top two answers are: time and ability.

If you have a hankering to write one book, time is not a problem. You can take as much time as you want. Write a thousand or so words at a time, on weekends; 200-300 hundred words when you have time or when you feel like it; just keep at it until you finish. If it takes you five years to finish your book, that's fine. It's just one book. You're after the satisfaction of seeing your work in print or on the screen. Take the time to make it as perfect as you can make it. It's a one time thing so do it right.

To someone who really wants to write a book, ability would not be a problem either. Your spelling skills probably doesn't qualify you for the spelling bee or your writing style is something only your mother can understand but these shouldn't be a hindrance. You have two options to solve this:

1. Hire someone to proofread or edit your book
   If someone is willing to do it for free then, good for you. If not then just be ready with your checkbook. There are lots of professionals out there so take the time to look and ask. Some authors hire beta-readers or people who give your book an initial read and comment about how it might be improved. Be careful about using family and close friends for this. Family members can be very supportive but tend to overlook your imperfections. Worst is when all the comment you get is, "nice book."
2. Collaborate with someone
   You could ask someone to write the book for you. You could write and he would rewrite to improve. Eventually, when the book goes out, you include his name in the book or, at the very least, mention his valuable help in completing the book.

When the book is completed, you have a choice of going the traditional, print book, way or the eBook way. The decision is up to you. Having a printed book gives most people a really huge sense of achievement. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to get a book printed and distributed than just uploading it to an internet-based eBook distributor. You might want to read my earlier posts about publishing (Publish in Print or on the Net? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

Publishing an eBook is a fast and simple way to get your book out and, potentially, it'll reach more people than via the brick and mortar bookstores. If your intention is to just get the book out there and into people's hands with no thought of earning from it, you can give your book away for free. I don't know of a brick and mortar bookstore who would be willing to put your book on their shelves and tag it as "free."

'Got a book idea in your head? Let it out and share it. You won't regret it! (",)