Author: Daniel Madison

How To Use Symbolism in Your Writing

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

From Golding’s Conch Shell to Frost’s Two Paths to Goyer’s Batman’s Mother’s Name, symbolism is an essential component in all forms of fiction. Symbols give authors a way to convey complex ideas and beliefs while providing the reader a rich, sensory experience that’s open to interpretation. Without them, stupid people would have even more trouble convincing the book club they actually understood the text. We’ll look at ways to incorporate symbols in your writing on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

What is Symbolism?

Symbolism has been around for as long as humans have told stories. You can even see them in cave paintings tens of thousands of years old in southern France, where you’ll find women depicted fornicating with oxen, likely symbolizing the chieftain “bull” who was allowed to make cuckolds of the weaker men in the tribe.

Symbolism can elevate your writing, adding layers of complexity and letting you say more with less. A blood stain can hint at an entire life of guilt. A dilapidated house like Sutpen’s Hundred in Faulkner’s Absolom Absolom can serve as a potent symbol of a character’s state of moral ruin. And while you might not be able to think of great ideas like blood or a house, the great thing about symbols is they can really be anything. 

Before we get into the advice, it will be helpful to look at some evocative symbols from famous works of fiction. We’ll look at four types: colors, objects, places and characters.

The color green is a recurring symbol in The Great Gatsby, meant to symbolize the other characters’ envy for hero Jay Gatsby’s financial and moral superiority.

For objects, we have the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter, which symbolizes every teenage boy’s desire to sneak into the girls’ locker room.

In the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien clearly designed the hellish nightmarescape that is Morodor to be a symbol for Luton.

And though you might not have picked up on it, the animals in Animal Farm are symbols of different political ideologies.

So how can we use this in our own writing? What kinds of symbols do we use and why? Is everything a symbol for something else? Let’s simplify things and look at four ways we can use symbols effectively.

Step One: Use symbols to show emotion, instead of telling

Aside from lurking around their house at one in the morning, this is an editor’s next biggest pet peeve. And while if you’re like me and verbalize intimate feelings during book signings and first dates, your fiction will be more interesting if you can hint at emotional states through symbols. Instead of having your character say “I’m so full of grief right now because my dad died,” you can have the character describe a broken baseball bat they find when cleaning the garage. Instead of your sexually repressed adolescent boy talking about girls or watching porn, be subtle and have him slide a tube of tennis balls into a rain gutter.

Step Two: Use symbols to establish recurring themes

Let’s say your story is about a character’s search for freedom. The specifics don’t matter. Perhaps they’re a slave in bondage, perhaps they live in a repressive household, perhaps the government is trying to repress your character’s ability to own a weapon that can take out of room of fifty terrorists. Throughout the book, hint at the theme of freedom with images and extraneous events: a bird flying out of a cage, tits escaping the confines of a bra, cereal escaping the confines of a sealed package.

Step Three: Use symbols to hint at darker ideas

Throughout history symbolism has also been necessary way to skirt censorship and overcome cultural taboos. Artists have had to resort to using bananas and stalagmites and oil derricks to symbolize sexual desire. But even in the relatively open-minded present-day, editors are reticent to publish 30-page scenes of hardcore anal penetration or graphic, detailed descriptions of what it sounds like when you run over a horse with a tank.

So, instead of writing a sex scene, which often makes readers uncomfortable, hint at it by describing the jelly doughnuts your couple eats the morning after. Instead of literal depictions of the horrors of battle, what about a tense scene between two soldiers’ wives back home mud wrestling?

Step Four: Leave your work open to interpretation

This is the best part of using symbols. Having trouble writing a satisfying conclusion to your book? Just make up something about a sunset or a strange dream.  Or make your character walk toward a bright light that could be heaven, a nuclear explosion, or a titty bar outside Pittsburgh.

Fiction is not a science like physics or taxidermy: there is no right or wrong. Luckily, readers don’t know that, and an open-ending drives engagement as they flock to social media to shove their interpretation down other’s throats.  

I used this to great effect in my 2019 Western Lone Mountain. The protagonist Colt Action, a late-19th century Texas Ranger, makes it his life mission to massacre the Comanches after they failed to save his son from a snakebite. The novel ends with Colt burying his pistol in his yard.

Has he renounced his violent ways? Or does he now prefer the intimacy of knives? Or is he leaving helpful clues for future archeologists? Or maybe hoping the lead somehow improves the health of his tomato garden? And to be honest, I don’t have an answer. Each of those theories I just found on my fan page could be right. That’s the beautiful thing about it.

Sick of Traditional Publishers? Start Your Own Publishing House

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

If you’ve ever seen someone drive down the street with a beautiful luxury car, or seen an unattractive person arm-in-arm with a woman who’s obviously a high-class prostitute, you’ve probably daydreamed about starting your own business. Lots of authors like the idea of being their own boss. After all, when you’re an author, you get to boss your characters around. You force them into uncomfortable situations, commit assaults against them, even murder them. It’s a rush and it can translate well to managing a workforce.

Of course, starting a company is an even bigger endeavor than writing a book. You have to consider things you may not have considered before, things like paying taxes or employees stealing from you because you didn’t get them a Christmas gift. So if you’re not sure this is the article for you, still read it to the end to boost our profile, but feel free to ignore it if you meet one of the following criteria:

  1. You only want to publish one book in your lifetime just to prove to your bitch ex-spouse that you aren’t a complete failure.
  2. You don’t like the idea of publishing the work of an author who’s clearly better than you.
  3. You think everyone should be paid a fair wage, regardless of their work ethic or personal attitude toward you and the way you dress.

Before we start, a quick legal disclaimer: this advice is not coming from a legal professional, and any potential business ventures should abide by local laws and fire safety codes. The advice expressed in this video is not legally binding and may contain fictitious elements that belong to John Lazarus and not D&E Publishing, LLC. By listening to this disclaimer, you are absolving D&E Publishing, LLC of any wrongdoing or civil liability relating to workplace safety, including mixing and storage of dangerous chemicals, building evacuation preparedness and electrocution.

Now, if you’re intrigued by the prospect of a corner office and exotic strange, but still aren’t sure if starting a publishing company is right for you, I’m going to cover a few benefits and drawbacks.

Benefit 1: Reducing Legal Liabilities

The first question any author should ask themselves before they write a book is “Can anybody sue me if I write this?” Fiction writers are generally well protected, though going through someone’s trash to do character research can be a legal gray area depending on where in the process you intercept the garbage.

However, for nonfiction writers, especially in health-related fields, your personal liability becomes much greater. To give an example, I once wrote a weight-loss guide, and well, long story short, losing more than two liters of blood sometimes results in death. While jury nullification saved me in that instance, it’s better to avoid this entirely by starting an LLC. In this case, a lawsuit against your published materials can only go after the assets of the company and not you personally. So even if you get sued, you can usually offset the loss by taking snacks out of the breakroom or making one unpaid intern do all your accounting.

Benefit 2: Increasing Your Sense of Legitimacy

All authors go through an awkward infancy where they feel like a fraud. Most of you probably told a potential sex partner at a party that you’re an author, but once you clarified that you’re self-published, that person either walked away, laughed in your face or banged your slightly more attractive best friend. Having your own publishing company completely flips that dynamic. Pretty soon, half of the people at any party you attend will at least offer you third base if you promise to publish their terrible book of poetry.

Benefit 3: Collaborations and Licensing

But beyond sexual favors, you can also collaborate with legitimately great authors. And the legal powers of your company will prevent that person from stealing your work, taking all of the credit and riding that success to the New York Times bestseller list while you’re stuck making ends meet at Panera bread in Columbus, Ohio.

Also, now that you’ve got your own company, you can print, sell and profit from any book in the public domain. And while I may have overestimated the general public’s demand for James Fenimore Cooper, you could potentially make money without doing anything at all.

Drawbacks of Creating Your Own Publishing Company

Drawback 1: Startup Costs and Expenses

When I first started D&E Publishing in 2011, it was a great time to be a small business owner. Because of the housing crash, property was cheap. But the costs can sneak up on you. Things like fire extinguishers, printing costs for building maps that reveal evacuation routes, the dozens of extension cords you’ll need to plug all of your computers into the same outlet… that stuff adds up.

Drawback 2: Managing Employee Conflicts

Most businesses ensure worker compliance through sheer apathy. Employees having absolutely no investment in the success of their company means people put in the bare minimum, but in general they don’t actively try to sabotage the company. A publishing company is a different story.

You’ll be working with lots of creative types in your company: authors, editors, graphic artists, advertisers. These types of people strongly value their labor, which is generally bad for business. At the start, it seemed D&E Publishing could hardly go a month without an artist punching a prospective author in the mouth for rejecting their cover design. I even had to stop having office birthday parties because people kept being poisoned. It took me several years to learn that the anarchy that such an environment breeds requires the boss to rule with an iron fist and closely monitor employee conversations to ensure peace and harmony. But this kind of business authoritarianism is not for everyone.

Drawback 3: Workplace Accidents Are More Common Than You Might Think

Fans of the channel will know that D&E Publishing’s first office building went up in flames in 2021 due to siphoning electricity from a nearby building. Thankfully, the courts decided that no one could possibly be that negligent and it was clear that my former business partner did it as an elaborate way to commit suicide so fire insurance covered the loss.

But even if you are protected by the law, workplace accidents generally aren’t great for morale or productivity. I had three editors need to go on leave because of uneven stairs and two others need maternity leave because of a faulty toilet seat. In a literary landscape where book trends come and go in the snap of a finger, you can’t fall behind.

Why You Should Consider Becoming a Ghostwriter

Daniel Madison1 Comment

RL Stine

Franklin W. Dixon

James Patterson

Besides being people whom I’ve followed to their homes late at night for an unsolicited interview, these are authors well known for implementing ghostwriters. They, like many others, hire people to write for them and release their work without attribution. In fact, Franklin W. Dixon is a completely fabricated person entirely, which explains why the Franklin W. Dixon I followed shot at my car tires when I wouldn’t stop honking in his driveway. Ghost writing can be a great source of work for an aspiring author, and from singers who dropped out of middle school to businesses that, as a guiding principle, dehumanize all their employees, there’s a high demand for a competent ghost writer. We’ll look at the pros and cons of ghost writing on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Before we get started, I should point out that if you are reading this article in the year 2027 or later, you can adjust your stillsuit that climate change has forced you to wear and move on to the next video, because it’s almost certain that AI has rendered all this information completely useless. This article is solely for those in the narrow window between 2024 and 2027, who still have some time to earn a little extra cash before the billionaire class unleashes their sentries to exterminate anyone making less than 50k a year.

All right, so this article will be broken into three parts: reasons to be a ghostwriter, career paths for a ghostwriter and some general advice in how to find work as a ghost writer.

Reasons to Be a Ghostwriter

The first thing you might be thinking is: John, I became a writer to become famous, so people would respect me, so everyone in high school would finally have to apologize for selling me a crushed-up bag of poison ivy and telling me it’s weed. Why the hell would I want to write a book without my name on it?

Well, for starters, fame can be a double-edged sword. For every kind, adoring fan, there will be another who pours maple syrup all over your windshield because you won’t grant him an interview for his book blog. Let’s look at some other reasons.

Reason 1: You’ll Probably Make More Than You Would On Your Own

If you’re watching this video, you’ve probably haven’t even made enough money writing this year to buy the rope to make the noose to hang yourself for your constant failure. Youth, inexperience, an overcrowded self-publishing market and ugliness are all big obstacles to overcome. But people will consume anything released by a celebrity. They’ll listen to any corporate speaker who they think will make them richer.

A successful ghost writer can easily earn 50K for a book-length project. I didn’t earn that much from my own books until two decades into my career, when I coincidentally came up with a book title identical to another popular work at the time.

Reason 2: You’ll Learn the Business

Most writers think that writing is done in alone, in a cozy bedroom, with a nice cup of tea or coffee on the desk, a loaded pistol at your side just in case. But the majority of a writer’s work is done in office buildings, it’s in done in conference rooms and it’s done with the piles of human excrement that are literary agents and publishers. As an unknown, these people wouldn’t even take the time to spit on you, but as a ghostwriter you can make connections and learn to manipulate them in the hopes that someday, you might publish something under your own name.

Reason 3: You Can Learn Other Voices Besides Your Own

This one’s tricky because to start as a ghost writer, you have to already be able to do this to some extent. Experience has taught me that, for example, corporate blogs about risk management in finance don’t like jokes about sucking dick for meth. (The Wolf of Wall Street lied to me). But, in any case, your skills as a writer will grow and develop as you’ll need to adopt a different voice for each client.

Career Paths for a Ghostwriter

When most people think of ghostwriters, they think of celebrity autobiographies. There’re a lot of reasons a celebrity or politician might use a ghostwriter: some are lazy, some are downright illiterate, some have busy schedules and can’t take time away from tweeting about how immigrants are poisoning our blood. Or they might just need someone who actually knows and can convincingly describe what consensual sex with a woman feels like.

You have other options, though.

For example, Alan Dean Foster got his start ghostwriting the novelization of Star Wars under George Lucas’s name, before piggbacking off this success and becoming the patron saint of 70s, 80s and 90s science fiction novelizations under his own name. I tried a similar thing recently, but it turned out Dune already was a book.

You can also write: blog posts for tech companies, speeches for firearms manufacturers after a mass shooting occurs, online course materials for educational institutions that want people to know not all slaveowners were bad and film scripts for North Korean cinema.

How to Succeed As A Ghostwriter

Step 1: Build your portfolio

While it’s not as much of a struggle as proving to a Big Six publisher that your book will sell, you still need to prove to the client that you can write. Starting a blog or website is a good start. It could be on any topic, really: gardening, investment strategies, a guide to age of consent laws around the world.

Guest blogging is the next step. You’ll need to build some ties in the community. Though I wasn’t a ghostwriter, I did a lot of guest blogging in the early days of blogs just to hone my skills and do a little self-promotion. I mainly wrote about how to have a successful marriage and I had a lot of fun doing it until I had to stop once my first wife went missing.

Step 2: Read all legal documents carefully

If you do land a client, it’s important to have your lawyer pore over all the contracts. Many celebrities and organizations will make you sign NDAs or follow specific guidelines in the project. Maybe, for example, you aren’t allowed to mention that Willem Dafoe is descended from swamp people.

Step 3: Publish long-form content

Finally, if you want to make the big bucks, you’ll need to ghostwrite a full-length book, but you’ll need to prove you can do that in the first place. Self-publishing a novel shows you have the focus and commitment to devote to a several-month project.

The aforementioned James Patterson hires ghostwriters to write full-length novels. In fact, because I had so much experience writing thrillers and crime fiction, I almost considered working for him. This was after my second divorce, when I needed some spare cash for booze money. But I chickened out at the last second because I was worried James would eventually find out I was the one who kept putting print-outs of his office floorplan in his mailbox.

The Secret to Writing a Great Mystery

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Death surrounds us everywhere. Of course, how we react to it differs. Children getting blown up half a world away or elderly coworkers not showing up one day usually provokes no reaction. A rich uncle leaving behind an inheritance might inspire a jubilation that better sense tells us to quell. But let’s say you wake up one morning to find a friendly, healthy, financially comfortable neighbor has drowned in your pool. Now that’s intriguing. And intrigue is at the heart of all mystery. We’ll discuss how to become the next Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler or Dorak Seng on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Mysteries are some of the most popular books on the market and have been for centuries. But, unlike my high school science teacher, just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they’re easy.

Before we get into the advice, let’s look at some mystery subgenres and their attributes.

First, we have the hardboiled mystery, the province of snoops and private eyes, popularized by writers like Dashiell Hammett and Bill O’Reilly. The protagonists in these stories are famous for cracking wise, having a cynical outlook and having a bad relationship with police. (Which contains some kernel of truth, as it turns out police don’t like snide comments while they fish your dead neighbor out of your pool.)

Cozy mysteries represent the flip side of the coin. These are lighthearted mysteries that take often place in bucolic settings. The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency and Miss Marple books are some excellent examples. And while these stories often revolve around murder, they usually don’t dwell on gore or scooped out eyeballs or torn scrotums. Like the title suggests, they’re meant to be comfort reading. Murder She Wrote was a famous cozy mystery TV series that was originally meant to have a harder, darker tone, but producers quickly realized test audiences were uncomfortable with the idea of an elderly Angela Lansbury getting sexually assaulted in every episode.

Capers are another popular mystery subgenre. Here we’re often focusing on the other side of the law, and we’re not looking back and asking Whodunit, but looking forward and asking How will they pull it off. Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight is a highwater mark of the genre, as is my 2016 novella Slight of Hand, about a group of pygmy circus performers who try to steal Stonehenge.

Let’s look at some tips to make our mysteries their most mysterious.

Step One: Develop your sleuth

While the hook of your crime is probably the most important element, your reader won’t stay engaged unless you’ve got an interesting sleuth to follow through the crime-solving process. They don’t have to be all that complicated. Sherlock Holmes, after all, is just a really smart guy who hates Mormons and loves cocaine. But while simple, that also makes him very relatable.

You should also give them a reason for wanting to solve the crime. This could be a personal connection boredom, or it could be political.

Step Two: Plan your crime

Before you start anything though, you need to plan your crime. You need to know who did it, why and what clues they left behind. Don’t worry about it being believable. In the real world people kill because they got cut off in traffic, because God or a dog told them to, or because they didn’t show respect for where the property lines are drawn, so you can give your killer any motive you want.

It’s best to do your research, too. Look up how long it takes a body to decompose. Look up how one might remove traces of DNA from a corpse. Go to your local pharmacy, grab different medications and ask how many will get a 70 kg person to stop breathing. (However, it’s probably not the best idea to do this research if you a suspect under an active police investigation.) But speaking of…

Step Three: Make a list of suspects

Half the fun of a mystery is guessing which from a gallery of vibrant personalities is the real killer. Is it the wife who, though only 90 pounds, easily could’ve brained her husband from behind with a bottle causing him to fall in the pool? Is it the 13-year-old son who purpose fully mislabeled his drug stash in the hope that his dad would take the wrong kind, suffer heart failure and plummet into a neighbor’s pool? Or maybe it’s the person you least suspect, the guy with an airtight alibi, the cocky type who knows he’s smarter than the police and even leaves clues about it on the internet?

Step Four: Choose a unique setting

Post-war urban America and the idyllic British countryside are both fun playgrounds if you want to mess around with the tropes, but I’d go for something less explored. I’ve set mysteries in 30th century incestual generation ships (It’s All Relative), radical Antifa enclaves in middle America (The They/Them Murders), and I even did an espionage mystery set in caveman times (Ook The Spook).

Step Five: Leave trails of clues

It won’t be fun for the reader if they don’t feel like they can play along. Clues should not only provoke the reader, they should ratchet up the tension in the narrative. New developments can both lead the reader closer to the answer while putting the characters in more danger.

For example, imagine you’re writing about a sleuth who thinks she’s found the murderer because the same pills found in the victim’s stomach were found in the neighbor’s medicine cabinet. But when she goes to ask the pharmacist about the medication, the suspect sees her there asking questions. And she later thinks she can see his car following her home and she regrets living alone in a house with such thick walls but she doesn’t see his car on her street so she goes to bed not realizing he learned how to pick locks at the learning annex last year and with her diabetes it would be easy, oh so easy, to make her death look like an accident. 

Why You Keep Getting Exposition Wrong (Blame Freytag!)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Let’s start with a little thought experiment. Would you have sex with any random man? You might be thinking, I’m not sure John, there’s a lot of information I need. I have so many questions. How many partners has he had in the past two years? Will he get needy or is he just looking for a one-time thing? Is he of good breeding? I’m totally not gay so can we just try watching each other jack off so I can prove I’m not gay when I only get a little bit hard?

Of course, I can’t answer all the questions. There has to be a little mystery to keep it spicy as well.

This is a thought experiment I always do when I teach writing classes at the learning annex, and when I bring in Dale to the classroom, I do it to illustrate the importance of exposition. Much like your decision about whether or not you’d bang Dale, your reader won’t follow your characters through your story unless you can answer some key questions about their background, but if you give too much information away, they might get bored and lose track of the narrative. We’ll explore the correct ways to utilize exposition on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Exposition is a literary device that communicates background information to your reader. Now, according to Freytag, exposition happens at the beginning of your story, but as we’ve talked about before, Freytag was a dumbass who didn’t know shit about shit (and who also thought Polish people could only become proper human beings through German colonization and by forcing them to stop speaking Polish).

Exposition can take place at any time in the story and will often be effective if it’s sprinkled carefully throughout your narrative. There are two kinds of exposition: direct and indirect. Let’s look at an example of direct exposition.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Latifa who lived on 198th Street and Lenox Avenue. Latifa’s grandma lived across town in a rat-infested project with the dope fiends, gangbangers and Mexican pimps, and every day after school, Latifa was responsible for bringing her a fresh brick of cocaine so she and the other old ladies could cut it before it went out on the streets.”

I’ll admit this lacks immediacy. I only did it because I was going for a fairy tale vibe, as this was a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in modern-day Harlem that I wrote with one of my black friends (And I only refer to him this way because, in the end, he asked to have his name removed from the project.)

Now let’s listen to an example of indirect exposition from the same story.

“Dan reached into the drawer to find the pistol and touched the spot smeared with Janet’s lipstick. What was that shade—she must’ve mentioned it a dozen times? Mars sunrise, or something like that. Dan grabbed the gun and walked across the empty living room, peeking back as he stepped out into the hall. A year ago this would’ve been a place worth protecting, he told himself.”

This says a lot while keeping the story moving. As I explained in this video, it shows instead of tells. We learn Janet was someone important to him, either a girlfriend or possibly his mom, and we know that she’s no longer in his life, something the emptiness of the apartment clarifies. The subtlety provides a bigger emotional impact as well.

Now, we’re going to look at four different ways to provide exposition in our writing with more samples of my writing, now available for purchase on Amazon.

Example 1: Exposition through conflict

“Sally had planned everything perfectly, tied up every loose end–she even shaved all her head hair and pubes–but still she woke up Thursday morning to the police knocking on her door.”

That’s how I began The They/Them Murders, a thriller about the woke left mob involved in a series of disappearances in the suburbs of Branson, Missouri. Because it’s tied to some immediate action, it doesn’t feel like telling and while it reveals the past, a lot is still shrouded in mystique, which entices the reader. Why did she shave her pubes? Was she sliding naked through some kind of cramped tube and wanted to avoid the hairs getting ripped or pulled out?

Example 2: Exposition through dialogue

“You seem anxious. What’s wrong?” “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just that I haven’t been in this hospital since my brother died from sepsis.”

That’s from an early scene in Heartland, a coming-of-age story about one teen’s decision to become an organ donor. Dialogue can be one of the most natural ways to reveal backstory. But when you do this, make sure you don’t have people talking about something they both already know, like in… all movies. Find workarounds to this dilemma. Instead of a man explaining how he got his scar to his wife of 20 years, rewrite the scene so he’s explaining it to a prostitute.

Example 3: Exposition through newspaper articles, diary entries, emails and other epistolary devices

“Pa lost the farm today. Said we’s gon move to Arkansas soon as grandpappy funeral get over wit. Can’t say I miss em’ much myself, though.”

From Ode to Adelay, about a rural family struggling through the Great Depression. Devices like these are great ways to get across a lot of background information without it feeling like telling and without the reader losing interest. And you’d be surprised by the vast number of things you can use to convey information. Just take a look around your house: for me, that includes things like horse race results, warning labels for sleep medication, threatening letters to the IRS.

That’s all for this time. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe.

An Easy Way to Come up with Great Book Titles!

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Let me ask you a question? Do you think Pride and Prejudice would have been as successful with its original title: First Impressions? What if To Kill a Mockingbird had just been called Atticus? Or if A Clockwork Orange had just been called Alex and the Fantabulous Adventures of the Bowler Boys Brigade?

Titles are some of the hardest things for writers to come up with. In fact, I once wrote a 200-page mystery novel in two weeks and spent the entire next month thinking of a title before settling on The Woman in Red. We’ll look at some ways to speed up the process on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

So, what does a good title need to be? First off, it needs to be unique. Yes, it’s true that you can’t copyright titles, but this is one case where I wouldn’t condone outright plagiarism. Early off in my career, I was struggling to earn some extra cash so I took a popular book at the time and stole its title for my psychological thriller. But not only was The Satanic Verses a bad fit for my novel, it led to a whole other set of problems that I had to deal with.

A good title should also give a tiny glimpse into your style, tone, genre or content of your novel. People should have some idea what the novel is about. A straightforward title like Naked Lunch, for example, lets me know the book is erotic and promotes midday copulation.

Finally, a good title needs to be something you can Google at work. It should be obvious that titles shouldn’t be extremely profane, but it’s worth checking on Urban Dictionary to see if your title is a thing some men call their mistresses or a term for Welsh men who have sex with animals. Unfamiliar with British slang, I learned this the hard way when I titled my 2003 romance after the main character, Minge Jefferson.

Now let’s look at some steps to write better novels.

Step One: Use a character name

Lolita

David Copperfield

Anne Frank

All great works of fiction that were named after their titular character. Names can be evocative and memorable. Or, like coworkers at a company orientation, you might forget them two seconds after you hear them. So if you pick a name, try to pick one that will stick in people’s brains. Naming your book Daryl probably won’t get you a Pulitzer.

Think of names with pleasing sonic qualities or that allude to the classics. Heck, this is even the reason I chose John Lazarus as my pen name.  Well, that and my birth name is the same as one of the worst serial killers in American history.

Step Two: Be vague

Sometimes it’s good to go the other way and establish an aura of mystery with something very broad and simple. Think of something like The Old Man and the Sea or The Road. The simplicity suggests something mythic, something basic in human nature that suits the stories well. Some of my biggest successes have been with titles like these, especially The Boy and Chair.

Step Three: Mention the Setting

Cold Mountain

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Revolutionary Road

These titles already tell you a great deal about the book. If your book has a particular place that’s unique, memorably named and essential to the themes and plot, why not use that? The Butchershop on 92nd Street was probably my best-selling mob story for this reason, even though my publisher insisted it was because we tricked Joe Pesci into endorsing my book at an autograph signing.  

Step Four: Use an online title generator

With these AI tools, all you need to do is upload the complete finished draft of your manuscript, your pen name, genre, ISBN of any other books you’ve written, five books similar to yours, your address, social security number and do a quick retinal scan.

Some great titles I’ve gotten from these AI tools: I Know Where You Live, The Futility of Flesh, 1400 Pounds of Pressure Shatter a Human Skull

Step Five: Alter A Popular Phrase

Finally, one last way to create a catchy title is to take a common phrase and flip it on its head. Writing a book about overfishing in the Caspian Sea? How about A Water Out of Fish? Or how about this? Weather the Under, about a gambling addict who always betting the under on football games.

I have more. Grudge a Bear, about a hunter who becomes paralyzed after being attacked by a grizzly and spends the rest of his life trying to get revenge. Or Easier Done Than Said, about a genius mathematician who has to overcome the challenge of being born with no tongue.

Four Tips For Writing the Perfect First Chapter

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

In this installment of my 87-part series, we’re going to look at how to begin our novel. And nothing will grab your reader more than an absolutely perfect first chapter. Well, except name recognition. And a good marketing campaign by a Big Six Publisher or affiliated subsidiary. And an aesthetically-pleasing and professionally-designed cover that costs at least four figures. Positive reviews from some of the biggest newspapers and literary magazines are key, and endorsement quotes from all the main authors in your genre is essential. A catchy tagline certainly couldn’t hurt and if you really want to wow your reader…


I often tell authors that the biggest mistake a new author can make is to not write a perfect first chapter. Over nine percent of the time, that’s the reason editors will turn down a manuscript. But, you might be asking, what do we mean by the perfect first chapter? Something like Flowers for Algernon? Pale Fire? Macbeth? Sure, those are all great examples, but any type of book can have a perfect first chapter. A chapter should contain the following things:


A hook for an opening line. Think Moby Dick’s “Call me, Ishmael” or Tek War’s “He didn’t know he was about to come back to life.” In a future installment, we’ll look more closely at how to construct the perfect opening line. Beyond the opening hook, however, a first chapter should: introduce the main character, establish your tone and voice, include some dramatic action, like a death, an explosion or an abortion, be subtle, evoke a mystery but never confuse the reader, and set up a conflict but not the main conflict, which will instead arise 12.64 percent into the novel.


Today we’ll look at four tricks that can help us accomplish these goals.


Step One: Start in media res.

With ever-decreasing attention spans caused by Tik Tok and 15 second porn gifs, the readers of today need their dopamine fix fast. Recent studies show that readers decide whether or not to read your book after the first three words. So if you’re not whipping out all your literary might and dangling it in front of your reader’s face from the outset, that’s just one more novel for the orphanage bookshelves.


That’s why I suggest you start in the middle of your scene. Skip long introductions, skip backstories, skip exposition, skip character description, skip names, skip adverbs, skip nouns, skip punctuation. Start your book with a gunshot to the head. Start your book with cannibalism. Start your book with a nonsensical string of expletives.


Step Two: Don’t frontload the backstory.

Be sparing with your reveals. It’s probably not good to painstakingly detail every year of your character’s life from birth to their present age. Don’t make the same mistake I did and write a hard-boiled crime thriller where the lead detective doesn’t reach puberty until page 46.


Maybe pick one or two key moments from your character’s past that relate to the events unfolding in your first chapter. If your character is eating a sandwich, maybe then would be the time to talk about their high school job as a school cafeteria bully. If your character is in the middle of a high-speed car chase, maybe you should talk about the advice their high school driving instructor gave them. If your character is an American high school teacher, talk about their regret over failing to have prevented all those school shootings.


Step Three: Opinion, opinion, opinion, opinion.

There’s nothing more important than voice. If the current media climate has taught me anything, it’s that people naturally follow loudmouths who incessantly provide their unsolicited and uninformed opinions. Follow suit and standout in an overcrowded literary marketplace by being as loud, brazen and obnoxious as possible.


Or, look for contrasts and unexpected viewpoints. Maybe your radical Islamic terrorist wants to retire and open a bakery on the West Side. Maybe your homosexual wedding planner makes a plan to kill himself. Or how about this opener, from my 2009 bestselling drama, Storming The Gates of Heaven: “All my life I hated immigrants… until I realized I was one.”


Step Four: Make the first domino fall.

As I used to tell my students attending my workshop at the learning annex: “You don’t have to bring the storm in the first chapter, but the storm should be visible on the horizon.” After all the applause, I also explain that prize fighters don’t throw haymakers in the first round and starship captains don’t divert all power from the shields to the phasers for the warning shot.


While conflict is the driving force of all fiction, you need to take your time here. What if James Agee’s A Death in the Family had given us A Death in the Family in the first chapter? Where would we go from there?


So, for example, instead of starting with a bank robbery, start with a bank security officer watching an employee orientation video. Instead of the death of a father, start with the near-death experience of a beloved uncle. Instead of dumping a bunch of information on your reader, be sparing with the details and don’t even finish the sentence that you are writing so that…

Eight Writing Tips I Wish I Knew Years Ago (or even a few days ago, really)

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Without further or any ado, let’s get to the mailbag.

Ted B. from Burlington, Vermont writes:

John, I’m a young novelist and I’m currently in talks with a publisher about getting my first book released. But unfortunately, all the weeks I’ve spent writing my book, sitting in front of my computer, locked up in my home office, has led to a pretty bad porn addiction. How do you think I can get rid of that?

Great question, Ted. I’m of the opinion that anything can be addicting: alcohol, Chinese food, the terror you inspire in your employees who know you could fire them at any instant because you work in a state with “at-will” employment.  

Addiction really isn’t about the substance, but is rather indicative of deeper personal issues and traumas. Unfortunately, that stuff is difficult and expensive to deal with, so instead I suggest finding other, healthier things to think about when masturbating. Connect it to your writing. Masturbate every time you come up with a great plot twist. Masturbate for every sharp line of dialogue. Masturbate every time you think of a great word without having to use a thesaurus.

Aileen W. from Rochester, Michigan writes:

John, I’m a somewhat successful writer who has self-published a few novels and writes for different literary magazines. But I find that sitting all day writing has caused many painful cysts to develop on my thighs, buttocks and genitals. How do you deal with this problem?

Thanks for that question, Aileen. First of all, lubrication is essential. If I know I’m in for a writing session that’s going to last for more than two hours, I slather my nether regions in a silicone-based lube and then put on some loose fitting silk pajama shorts that allow my skin to breathe. A copious amount of snacking can lead your humors out of balance as well. An espresso followed by a shot of olive oil should suppress your appetite.

Ed G. from La Crosse, Wisconsin writes:

John, I recently wrote a story about a man who cheats on his wife because she got really fat. In the end of the story, he realizes his mistake and decides cheating on her was the wrong thing to do. Anyway, I showed my wife this story because I wanted her opinion, but she thought it was autobiographical just because I named the characters after myself and her. And now our relationship is falling apart. What should I do?

Wonderful question, Ed. It’s one of the unfortunate realities of being a writer that it will destroy four or five of your relationships, especially if your partner is heavily involved in the writing process. As I said in this video, if you really need a beta reader, I suggest contacting inmates at your local prison.

If you really want to save the relationship, lying is probably your best option. You could say it was actually written by a friend from work who wanted feedback from a female perspective. I assume you aren’t actually cheating, but if you are, make sure you lie about that as well. And make sure to make yourself feel like the victim.

Jeffrey D. from Milwaukee, Wisconsin writes:

John, I recently signed a deal with an indie publisher. I was understandably overjoyed at having my work published, but the company said they don’t want my portrait on the sleeves of any of my books. They said it was to save on printing costs, but they also stare at their feet every time they say that. Am I being paranoid? Or is something else going on here?

As a member of the good-looking person’s club, I can’t say I relate. But as a publisher who’s been on the other side of this situation, I will say it may not be because you’re “fuck ugly,” so to speak. We had one author at D&E Publishing who we wouldn’t put on our book sleeves because he had profane and possibly racist facial tattoos. And we had another writer named Shinichi Sayama who turned out to be a white lady and we didn’t want to disappoint readers expecting a Japanese person.  

Belle G. from La Porte, Indiana:

John, you’ve spoken a lot about the experience of being a young and hungry writer. I’m at the point in my career where it’s tough to make ends meet, even with a girlfriend who works full time and pays for all the rent, utilities and groceries. Anyway, I’m wondering, if I add a lot of product placement, will it earn me some extra cash? Should I set the story in a Subway?

Of course you should set your story in a Subway restaurant. Subway is a great location for generating conflict, just like it’s a great place to get a tasty, affordable sandwich meal, like the Sweet Onion Teriyaki Chicken combo for the low, low price of 6.99. With over 20,000 convenient locations in the United States, it’s the type of setting that would be believable and easy to relate to. With sandwich of the day deals Monday through Sunday, there’s never a dull moment at Subway. There’s a New Way to Subway.

Elizabeth B. from Hungary writes:

John, I’m a feminist writer who loves the way your absurdly misogynist fiction is such an obvious dismantling of the patriarchy. Recently, I met a guy who got me an interview with a top literary agency. Things seem to be going great, and I’ve had great feedback regarding my manuscripts. Very close to a final deal. But this guy’s been pretty tight-lipped about his connections in the publishing industry. And a few days ago he came to my front door with a blood-covered gun and told me to hide it for him. What do you think I should do?

Well, first of all, congratulations. There’s nothing more exciting than an up-and-coming author getting her first deal.

Secondly, there’s nothing to worry about. I’d just make sure you do the following things: first, check to see if there are any serial numbers on the gun. Make to file those right off. Keep it in the safest place you know. For me, that’s either my gun safe or the ankle holster I keep with me at all times. After any handling, always wipe clear the fingerprints. I hope that helps.

David B. from New York City writes:

John, I find that writing all day has made it hard for me to find the energy to provide sexual pleasure to my partner. We’ve tried to get her to achieve orgasm by just shouting dirty insults while I’m at my writing desk, but I find it distracts me from my edits anyway and it’s only really worked once or twice to get Shandra off. How do you manage to balance your writing workload with your literal loads?

Ah, yes the eternal struggle: John, how do I balance writing with my career? How do I balance writing with remembering my children’s names? How do I balance writing and my running this Fortune 500 company?

First off, your original solution shows that you and your partner care for each other. I love that you’re both willing to experiment. But don’t forget that writing can be an inherently sexual experience. See if your love making can find its way into the writing process. For example, write an erotic scene based off your relationship that your partner can get off to. If you’re more scientifically-inclined, maybe you can link up the rhythms of your typing with some sort of vibration device. Be creative. The literary world is your slut shed.

Peter S. from Yorkshire, England writes:

John, I’m a professional writer in a small town who decided to earn some extra cash by teaching creative writing classes for adults at the learning annex. You talk about your teaching experience a lot on the channel. One of my biggest problems is that, after a recent lesson where we did a critique of a student’s war memoir, that student got upset. In the two weeks since, I’ve had several dead animals shoved into my mailbox and generally have the feeling that I’m being followed. How would you handle this situation?

Well, whatever you do, don’t send a bunch of state troopers on a hunt for him through a Pacific Northwest forest.

In all seriousness, I find in these cases the best course of action is to stalk them back. Now this person will probably be proficient with arms, so your only hope is to bring enough firepower to overcome your skill deficit. If you’re stealthy enough, though, it won’t come to that. Consider using decoys if it’s in your budget. They can stay at home pretending to be you while you stalk the stalker who’s stalking the fake you. I hope that helps.

Writing Advice From Some of Your Favorite Authors

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

My past few articles focused mainly on personal grudges and vendettas, so I’ve decided to put the focus back on you, the readers, by answering some of your questions. In today’s mailbag installment, I’ll field questions from readers who paid the three-dollar enrollment fee on my website to get a chance to send me a message. We’ll make resolutions for personal improvement, or failing that, promises to bring our enemies down to our level, on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Let’s take a look at our first question.

Asa A. writes:

John, My son is an aspiring writer. But whenever I try to tell him I wish he’d branch out from writing stories about small animals being tortured, he gets very upset. As a writer, what kind of feedback do you value most from readers?

Feedback can be a tough thing. I became a writer for a few reasons, but mostly so others would like me and pay attention to me and constantly tell me how awesome I am. But of course, you can’t expect all people to respond to your work that way. Some people are just idiots who don’t understand good writing, and some are people who do understand good writing, but just want to insult you because they think it’s funny or they want to put you in a negative light to promote their own writing.

In any case, the feedback I like is when people tell me my work turned their life around. As a good friend once told me, saving a life is as exhilarating as taking it away.

James D. writes:

John, my marriage is falling apart and it’s largely your fault. My wife inexplicably loves your books but I don’t see the appeal. I feel like I couldn’t really love someone who likes what you do. So my question is, What’s your favorite book you’ve written? If I read that and liked it, it might just save this marriage.

That’s a tough choice. While Spilled Milk was the first book I published on an actual label, and Twilight was, for some reason, my financial breakthrough, I’d have to say Zodiac was the book I was most proud of. For those who haven’t read it, the novel is about the Zodiac killer, a fictional serial killer who plans to kill twelve different people over a twelve-year period, using each animal of the zodiac. I thought it was a clever concept and I really had to get creative and push myself as a writer to think of ways a rat, a rabbit and a rooster could be used to kill someone.

Emily W. writes:

John, my coworkers were upset that I wrote a fictional short story for an online magazine that used their real names and addresses. Should I not have done this? Do you base your characters on real people?

Oh, all the time. Pretty much any villain I write is at least somewhat loosely based on my father or the prostitute who helped raise me. If there are women in my life who, you know, I’d like to have sex with but can’t because they’re married or lesbians or certain laws prohibit me from doing so, I find it helps to live out that fantasy in my writing.

Eva E. writes:

John, writing for me is just a hobby at the moment. I have a great job designing algorithms for healthcare companies that decide which patients should live and which should die. But part of me wants to make writing a full-time job. I worry about deadlines, though. How do you deal with the pressure of meeting deadlines?

This really was never an issue when I was a young writer. I was so motivated and on so many productivity-enhancing amphetamines that I wrote faster than my editors could keep up. But in my middle age, I have slowed down a bit.

There are some small hacks you can use. You can tell your publisher you misread the date, you can tell them your kid got sick, or you can puff out the middle section by copying and pasting excerpts from the Canterbury Tales. Editors usually only read the first and last pages of a manuscript, anyway.

Johnny S. writes:

John, do you ever consider the reader’s perspective when writing?

No.

Anri. O writes:

John, I’m a self-published author with a few books out and mostly good reviews. But one person keeps giving me the harshest reviews on social media. It’s either my step-dad, mad that I refused his sexual advances, or my boss, mad that I keep advancing on him sexually. Anyway, how do you deal with bad reviews?

An author can’t let bad reviews get to them. Unless you know the reviewer personally, then you absolutely can. My lawyer says I shouldn’t give you any advice about your specific situation, but I will share something that worked for me once.

I had this one reviewer who constantly review bombed all my books on all the online bookstores. But their big mistake was using the same username on all these platforms. After a little social engineering, I learned it was actually a person from my own publishing company upset that, because of a clerical error, they hadn’t been paid in five months. Talk about a “the call is coming from inside the house” moment. Now, I don’t care what you say about me personally or about my ability to lead people as a boss and make sure they receive at least minimum wage. But leave my works of art out of it, you know. We eventually agreed to have that worker be compensated for time unpaid plus an extra month’s salary if they promised to take their reviews down. So it all worked out in the end.

Angela W. writes:

John, I can’t stand the sound of your voice and I hate your videos, but I did end up reading your most recent book, Glossolalia and Other Stories, and I was surprised to find it witty, insightful, poetic and exactly the opposite of how you come off here. Anyway, what authors did you dislike at first but grew into?

Well, scifi writer John Scalzi was somebody I didn’t really like. Not because of his books, but because he threw me out of one of his book signings for trying to secretly endorse several books on the D&E label. But then years later, we were actually on the same panel at a book conference and we hit it off. Ended up going to a strip club later. Lovely guy.

Finally, we have Scarlit S. who writes:

John, I want to start writing, but my boyfriend says I’m too racist to be a writer. So my question is, what’s one thing you’d give up to become a better writer?

Well, first of all, lots of great writers are racist: Ayn Rand, Margaret Mitchell, HP Lovecraft. So even though I don’t agree with your views, don’t let that stop you.

But for me, this is an easy decision. I’d give up one of the children my first wife claims we had together before she ran off.

Your Guide To Creating Subplots

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

If there’s one thing I hope you’ve learned from this channel, it’s that a writer’s main job is to write a compelling story. If there’s another thing I hope you learned from this channel, it’s that writing really isn’t all that important and you shouldn’t get so caught up in your writing that you neglect being a good father or husband or boss or citizen or motorist.

And a truly compelling story isn’t just one story, but several stories that overlap, intertwine and culminate in a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts.

A subplot is a secondary storyline that runs beside the main one. A good subplot should do some of the following things:

  • deepen characterization
  • add nuance
  • activate your themes
  • enhance your worldbuilding
  • get other writers in your writing group to stop laughing at your stories behind your back
  • remove the need for you to follow literary agents to their house
  • get you good reviews on Amazon more reliably than the Chinese company you paid to post fake positive reviews.

Readers get bored with just focusing on one narrative. Even this video series exemplifies this. Fans of the channel will know that while the main thrust of my videos is to teach you good writing techniques, I try to keep things interesting by adding several subplots: for example, my office being burned down by my business partner’s reckless disregard for fire codes, and my ongoing feud with Tabitha Cartwright who acquired the rights to most of my backlog after she got me out of some child support payments. And fans will know my biggest subplot is about my desire to get back with my second and favorite wife. In today’s video, I will illustrate why subplots are essential by adding a story about how I got her back.

Now Let’s look at some key tips to writing good subplots.

Step 1: Know the type of subplot

This is going to be a longer than usual step, so if you want to go get a snack or double check that you locked your gun safe, now might be a good time. The first kind of subplot is the mirror subplot. Here, a secondary character faces a similar conflict to the main character in the main story, but often with a different outcome.  In my story, Jane Donovan, both the main protagonist and her husband have to grapple with sexual feelings toward others. Jane, however, is able to control her urges and realizes her family needs her. Her husband, on the other hand, rawdogs fourteen different yoga classmates, sex workers and school teachers and ends up dying of syphilis.

The foil subplot depicts a character who is actively working against the main protagonist. It doesn’t always have to be the main anttagonist. In the Lord of the Rings, both Boromir’s and Gollum’s subplots serve as foils. The foil can even be accidental. In Son of Sam I Am, a side character is also chasing after the serial killer, but he disrupts the police’s search by visiting the crime scenes, getting sexually excited and contaminating the scene with his DNA.

Then there are flashback subplots. These stories often give us insight into the motivations or the backgrounds of the main character or the villain. The flashback in A Man Called Ove leads to a heartbreaking realization about the main character’s wife. The flashback in my time-travel thriller There’s No Place Reich Home reveals that character doesn’t want to kill Hitler to save the Jews or prevent World War II, but rather because his name is Douglas Hitler and he’s tired of being ridiculed and attacked.

And then we have the romantic subplot, which was invented to sell more movie tickets to women and men who don’t get erections from large explosions. The romantic subplot should ideally complicate things for your main character, just as my obsession with my second wife delayed several of my book releases and got me hit with a restraining order so for many years I had to rent a car if I wanted to drive by her house.

Step 2: Write character driven subplots

In all of those examples, the subplots are driven by character motivation. Subplots are all about introducing new goals and obstacles, either for the main character, their allies or their opponents. A subplot should also flesh your thinner characters out. When I first wrote, the coming-of-age drama House on Pain Avenue, Daniel’s brother Derrick wasn’t much of a character. I mostly had him laugh at Daniel’s jokes so the reader would understand that he was funny in case my jokes didn’t always land. But he lacked motivation, so I gave him a side plot about him and his fraternity poisoning the dean.

When I talk about my second wife on here, you mostly here about her from my perspective: how great I thought her tits were, how she opened me up sexually, how she was the first woman who ever made me laugh. But if I were treating this video like a novel, I’d mention how she ran away from home at seventeen, not from abuse but to start her own gambling business.

Step 3: Make sure your subplot has its own arc

A subplot is not just filler like you might put into your second wife’s new boyfriends gas tank. It needs to be resolved in some way, possibly in connection with the main story, or even as a side note in your epilogue. If you can take the reader by surprise, all the better.

So to finish my subplot, I’ll bet most of you assumed I became a better person, apologized for my indiscretions and got my wife to leave her boyfriend and take me back. But that would break the other essential rule of fiction writing: don’t be a cliche.

Luckily, that’s not what happened. Instead, I used today’s sponsor, Eros Escorts, to hire someone with a vague resemblance to my wife. After some hair treatments and other cosmetic procedures, the resemblance was uncanny. Over a period of a few months, I trained her to act the part and talk the part, giving her speech lessons and a script from which to recite her lines. And after this process, we both decided we were meant for each other. It’s been a terrible drain on my writing and this channel, but, well, this is one subplot that I’m pretty sure is going to have a happy ending.