My brain nearly exploded – in a good way – during the
LoneStar.Ink writers conference in Dallas this past weekend. I’ll have more
in-depth reports on the wonderful presenters later this week, but in the
meantime, treat yourselves to a few (very few!) selections from the menu of
yummy facts, sites, and craft information on tap.
Bestselling thriller/mystery writer (and former CIA
employee) Traci Hunter Abramson worried that the (brief) weekend
shutdown of the federal government would delay her former employer’s mandatory
vetting of her latest novel. In the meantime, she offered her audiences an
array of sites guaranteed to make crime writers salivate:
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| Traci Abramson |
- www.cia.gov Even if you’re not plotting a spy mystery, who can resist a virtual tour of CIA headquarters? (Click on the “about” section of the site.) And even non-thriller books set in other countries can benefit from the CIA’s wealth of information about populations, maps, world leaders, and more. (Click on “library” for a jaw-dropping wealth of information.)
- www.fbi.gov Abramson recommended this site as a great source for story ideas. Or try:
- www.intelligencecareers.gov for information on what kind of people a plethora of agencies are looking for. And how to tailor characters to match.
At first, I was skeptical of the “Cast Calculus Trope”
Donald J. Carey, (aka Don Carey, software engineer turned fiction writer)
promised would help differentiating our casts of
characters. Abandon all fear of tropes, as long as, like superpowers, you use
them wisely and for good! In the meantime, revel at:
- www.TVTropes.org to analyze your pop culture favs of all media varieties.
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| Kathleen Baldwin |
- Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers, by Lisa Cron
- Creating Blockbusters! by Gene Del Vecchio
- Scene & Structure, by Jack Bickham
Worried that you still can’t quite pin down your
story? Fantasy writer David Farland mentioned this site:
· www.dramatica.com but only to note that
there are things it still doesn’t get. Still, the free demo download looks
tempting.
I notice I’ve used a lot of hyphenated words in this
post. Which makes me wonder what editor Lisa Mangum of Shadow Mountain Publishing would say. First, of course, she’d clean
up stylistic issues with FileCleaner, available (for a small fee, she says),
from:
Then she would open a dictionary. She prefers Merriam-Webster (free online), but
whichever dictionary you use, be consistent! And check the Chicago Manual of Style. (Note to self, she’s a fan of the Oxford
(serial) comma, the bugbear of this former journalist. Sigh.)
After all that, do you feel ready to send your cherished manuscript
into the world? Check out this source for literary agents, from romance author
Laura Drake:
· www.AgentQuery.com A searchable free
database of literary agents
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