Blaze Ward:

Blaze Ward writes fiction about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations-and who choose to stand up anyway. His stories feature plenty of action, difficult questions of ethics and morality, and heroes who earn their victories.

He's a prolific Indie writer and publisher who works mostly in Science Fiction and Light Thriller, with occasional forays into lots of other genres like superheroic fantasy.

He also edits Boundary Shock Quarterly, an SF magazine he founded in 2018, as well as Thrill Ride Magazine.

Leah R Cutter:

Leah R Cutter sold her first short story back in 1997, and continues to write and sell both fiction as well as non-fiction. She currently runs Knotted Road Press, Inc., a small sized press in Seattle. In addition to publishing herself and her husband (Blaze Ward) Knotted Road Press is also the home of more than one anthology/magazine series, including a mystery publication that Leah edits (Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem) and a science fiction quarterly publication edited by Blaze (Boundary Shock Quarterly).

Leah has lived all over the world and held the requisite odd writer jobs, such as doing archaeology work in England, teaching English in Taiwan, and bartending in Thailand. She writes literary, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and romance fiction, as well as nonfiction. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, in anthologies and on the web. Her long fiction has been published both by New York publishers as well as small presses.

Professional Storyteller Bundle by Blaze Ward and Leah R Cutter

So. You're a writer.

Do you know the bones of what makes a good story? It's not the same thing as being a writer, not at all.

How do you learn to tell a good story? There's trial and error, sure.

But there are also books like these, to help you along, making it easier to learn, to remember.

The first book in this bundle helps beginners tell better stories.

The second book is aimed at the intermediate writer. Not the beginner. Not the advanced. But the writer who is actively working on their craft and yearns to improve.

Some of the topics in the two books include:

  • The Seven Point Plot Structure
  • Understanding Genre
  • Pacing
  • Reader Expectations

Be sure to read all the books in the Business for Breakfast series.

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Chapter One-The Beginning Professional Storyteller

All good fiction generally follows the Seven Point Plot Structure. (We're going to pretend that you can't commit literary or flash fiction without it, because the attempt often ends up wandering in the desert and never making your readers happy.)

The structure has, amazingly enough, seven points to follow. They are:

1. A character

2. In a setting

3. With a problem

4. Trying

5. Failing

6. Climax

7. Denouement

The way I was taught this pattern goes back to Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith explaining how the great pulp writer Lester Dent (writer of Doc Savage, among others), banged out his stories in short order, with few re-writes, and moved on to the next one. (Something like 150+ Doc Savage novels alone over roughly 26 years, plus everything else he wrote for the various pulps under pennames. I'm told he tended to write 5000-6000 words a day when working.)

The following chapters delve into each of these points in greater detail.

For now, I want you to take a few moments to think about your favorite novel or story. It had to have worked for you, spoken to you, in order to become your favorite. Odds are, it did the same for others along the way.

The premise in fiction is really rather simple, once it is broken down. You have a main character. They can be a hero, or an anti-hero. Their job is to be the protagonist. The story rotates around their decisions.

This character exists in a setting. It might be high fantasy, low space opera, noir, western, historical, or modern. It is a place. It might be another character all by itself, depending on the story.

The main character has a problem. They must have a problem. It will generally start small, then grow, and turn out to be the most earth-shattering problem they have ever faced, and their whole future will turn on the outcome. Because, let's face it, who wants to read four hundred pages about a man making toast? (Don't get me wrong, I can think of a couple of writers who could do it, and have you absolutely on the edge of your seat, turning page after page and never able to put it down. You and I aren't them. At least not yet.)

So that character has a problem. It defies them. It defines them. They must do something. They try. I don't know what they try. Neither do you. They'll tell us when we get there. But they try.

And they fail. That thing they were going to do--so obvious, so simple--doesn't work. It thwarts them, laughs in their face. Dances around the room while they chase it.

So they try something else. This creates the try/fail loop. More later, but understand that the character must fail in order to succeed later.

Finally, everything builds to the climax. Our hero, repeatedly thwarted by the dastardly villainous toast, finally brings it to the peak of angst. And then, and only then, do they succeed. Without that tension, the audience feels robbed. Even if the toast is finally defeated in the end.

And then, at the very last, you bring it all to closure. If you are telling a love story, this is the happily-ever-after. In a hard-boiled detective story, the cops haul the bad guy away in cuffs. You close with a moment of "What does it all mean?" Again, happily-ever-after. Or perhaps the shamus stares into the camera and utters some utterly profound bit of wisdom about dreams or chess. That's up to you, but you need to give the reader something to bring it all home. Something that tells the reader that the story is finished.

That's it. Seven points. Pretty straightforward, all in all. But you should understand each point in order to use them like tools when making your chair. Because readers are going to look at your chair and judge you on those same criteria.

It sucks. It's unfair. But that is the way it is done. If you want to be one of the good ones, you have to, at a very minimum, be able to tell a story that recognizably fits the definition of a good chair. It could be a stool, a lounger, or an ottoman. That's up to you, because you're the one making the chair.

Good luck.