The Werepig Show

07.26.10

Just wrapped up a busy convention weekend (Confluence 23) with a 90 minute interview at Greg Hall's The Funky Werepig Show, where we talked about great teachers, influential editors, worthwhile causes, the craft of writing, and (of course) the books -- Visions, Veins, Vipers (Fantasist Enterprises) and This Way to Egress (Ash-Tree Press). It's all available for download at Blog Talk Radio and iTunes. Check it out . . . and share the vision!

Writing Genre Fiction: Taglines - Part 2

01.26.10

Here are a couple of good taglines I've seen recently, ones strong enough to make me pick up the book:

The city is alive tonight . . . and it's her job to keep it that way.
The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay

In the fight to save humanity, she's the weapon of choice.
Bitter Night by Diana Pharoah Francis

As for ones I've seen that didn't work, how about these:

Can the hidden colony of Marseguro survive rediscovery?
Marseguro by Edward Willett

Beneath Boston's historic streets, and ancient power stirs...
Spiral Hunt by Margaret Ronald

The two that work both end with clever twists, something that the tag for Spiral Hunt tries to do as well. But "an ancient power stirs" seems tepid, needlessly vague, not particularly ... well ... stirring.

To be fair, the tags that didn't work for me are hardly the worst I've seen. For some truly dreadful ones, let's go to the movies:

When all else fails, they don't.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra

The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92.
Suspiria

He was dead, but he got better.
Crank: High Voltage

Of course, in all fairness, I'm sure that the Crank tag is supposed to be goofy.

Coming up with one of these little verbal trailers is far from easy, something I found out when I decided to try my hand at coming up with one for Veins. I started by looking at models, hanging out in Barnes & Nobel, pulling books off the shelf, making lists of tags that grabbed me. Then, using those as models, I set about making lists of my own tags.

Since Veins is set in an abandoned surface mine, I tried coming up with phrases that dealt with scars, wounds, blood (always a good word to use when tagging a horror novel), and coal. The worst one on my list? I suppose that would have to be this one:

In coal blood.

The list was long. Two pages. More than fifty tries, but gradually something started to emerge. Near the end of the list, I came up with these:

If you abandon a wound, it will never heal.
Abandoned wounds never heal.
Some wounds never heal.

That last one made it to the cover, and I'm pleased with it. Those four words represent the essence of the book: setting, theme, and conflict. After writing them, I knew that the book would hold together. Better yet, I knew that it was marketable.

For me, that kind of confirmation is why I think coming up with your own tags is worth the effort. Doing so enables you to better understand the book by capturing the essence of your project in a kind of verbal snapshot.

I don't have a formula for writing tags. Only a process: study models, make lists.

And since the first part of the process involves looking at book covers, please let me know what you find -- the best as well as the worst.

We'll round out the week tomorrow with one more question. Until then, remember this: the only thing better than tomorrow's question are the ones I've already answered.

Writing Genre Fiction: Taglines

01.25.010

That's Adrian Rawlings and Lee Blakemore in a scene from Charly Cantor's Blood (1999), a film that Fantasia Magazine called "one of the most intriguing films ever made on the subject of addiction." It was Cantor's second film, and would have marked the beginning of an impressive career had he not fallen ill shortly after its completion. He died a few years later, leaving the world with two films, a few unproduced screenplays, and a sense of what might have been.

One of those as yet unproduced films is This Way to Egress. He finished the screenplay shortly before his death. Last week I filled you in on the origin of the title. Today I'd like to talk about taglines.

You know what a tagline is, right? It's that little phrase or clause that sometimes appears on a book cover or movie poster, an aphorism designed to attract attention, induce interest. Want some examples? Check these out:

Twilight

When you can live forever, what do you live for.

Jaws 2

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Alien

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Long a staple in film marketing, taglines have become increasingly visible on book covers. But I never gave them much thought until Charly and I had that conversation about the title of Egress. (See last week's blogs for more details.) That was the night that he also shared the tagline for the screenplay. It was simple, concise, and dead-on perfect for the story:

Reality is a contract we make with ourselves.

I thought it was an intriguing way of conceptualizing the story. More than the title. Not quite a summary.

Although tagline development has traditionally been the job of publishers and ad departments, it doesn't hurt to try coming up with a good one on your own. If nothing else, it might verify the marketability of your work in progress. It might also serve you well in a pitch session. Moreover, in this age of short-staffed publishers, the tag you come up with might well appear on your book.

And so we arrive at this week's question.

Do you have any advice on how to come up with tags for your book? How do you identify the most important ideas to represent and condense them down to a phrase?

We'll consider that tomorrow.

Writing Genre Fiction: Titles - Part 2

01.19.10

I heard a story once about how Orson Welles was excited about the look of the title Citizen Kane because it had both a Z and a K in it. I don't know if the story is apocryphal, but there's no denying that Citizen Kane is a great title, appealing to both the sense of sight and sound. Now I don't suggest that writers get bogged down worrying about such things. And yet, it's prudent to remember that the title you give your manuscript will (if the publisher doesn't change it) eventually appear on your book's cover. How big do you want that title to be? Do you want it to display well and still leave room for some cool cover art? If so, then you'll want to keep that title short. And if you can come up with a word or phrase that includes a few distinctive consonants, so much the better.

And don't forget the sound. I recall a reviewer once complaining about The Book of Baraboo by Barry B. Longyear. It wasn't that it was a bad book. (Indeed, as I recall it was, it was quite enjoyable.) It was just that the reviewer thought that "The Book of Baraboo by Barry B. Longyear" sounded funky. Then again, it's memorable.

The titles of my books for Fantasist Enterprises (Veins, Visions, and the forthcoming Vipers) were all selected to be short, resonant, and visually interesting. I thought that each might look good on a cover, and I'm pleased how the artists have begun using that initial V to create a uniform design, lending a bit of brand recognition to the books.

Your mileage may vary, but these are some of the things that I think of when brainstorming titles. There are no absolutes, no formulas for what makes one title better than the next, and you may have some very good reasons for going with a title that follows none of my suggestions. Sometimes a title just feels right to the author, as is the case with the title of my next book -- a title that at first might seem to disregard most everything I've covered these past two days. And yet, I think the title works.

Tomorrow, well talk about This Way to Egress.