This 60-second Jeep commercial is a perfect example of story structure.
In the space of SIXTY SECONDS, whoever wrote and edited this commercial completely demonstrated the Three-Act Structure.
The first act has our main character, Doggo, living his best life with Woman. Jogging, going for drives, hanging his head out the FRONT window–the life every dog dreams. of.
At 15 seconds, the end of Act One, Woman meets Man. Doggo is sidelined. At 23 seconds in (close enough to the 22.5 second First Pinch Point), Woman goes for a drive, WITHOUT DOGGO. Just Man.
As Doggo watches from the window.
Devastating.
The mid-point “this changes everything” moment (at thirty seconds — half way through the commercial), Doggo is back in the car, but now he’s relegated to the back seat. Man has supplanted him in Woman’s heart.
BAD news for Doggo.
The second pinch point would be midway between 30 and 45 seconds. And at 38 seconds, Woman and Man stop for a woman pushing a baby in a pram. He sees them look at each other and smile. A baby would drop Doggo further down the pecking order. He might NEVER get to go for rides again.
Nick Harding is an idealistic Private Investigator, trying to eke out a living after a spectacularly boring career in Financial Crimes with the Australian Federal Police.
The very recent widow of the billionaire founder of Dvorak Kars — Australia’s first and only EV manufacturer — hires him to root out the fraud costing what is now her company upwards of $5 million a month over the past year.
Nick reluctantly takes the case–we all have bills to pay–and quickly realises that the beatings, excessive running and cars on fire are barely compensated by the healthy day rate and the opportunity to drive one of the sweet, sweet Dvorak convertibles.
With suspects to spare — the wife, the head of security, the corporate CFO — will he figure out how millions of dollars are disappearing before he runs out of time?
Of course he will.
“Nick is a great series character. He’s charming, when he wants to be, diligent especially when he’s looking at a fat paycheck, and a bit of a dog with a bone … and very likable. This is a short, fast read, but with lots of action, a few twists and turns, and several suspects to follow. What he finds leads to a surprising conclusion.” 5 Stars
I’m in the middle (literally) of the first draft of my next Nick Harding book. I don’t have a title yet. The premise is pretty straightforward: The story opens with Nick regaining consciousness in a barn somewhere in rural suburban Sydney. He’s been whacked on the head. He can tell by the painful lump on the back of his skull and the low-grade, behind-the-eyes headache he’s sporting.
He’s got no recollection of what happened or where he was when it did happen.
Davie and Lucy, worried about his disappearance, are on their own hunt to track him down, encountering a special group of people trying to stop them. People they’ve never met before.
Odd-numbered chapters are first-person, Nick’s POV, and his efforts to get through the mess. Even-numbered chapters are third-person, POV of whatever characters I need to drive the rest of the story. Mostly Davie and Lucy, but as the story unfolds, more are added to the tale.
Right now, I’m at the midpoint of the first draft. My favourite part of both the plotting and writing process. If I do my job well, I’ve led you down a path where you think you know what’s going on, where you start having a shade of an inkling of a possible ending.
Then I give you the midpoint, and you hurt your back changing direction.
I think this one has a good midpoint. Thought about how to set it up for months.
And even though I’ve warned you, when you read the final product, it’ll still make your brain lose traction on the turn.
Sometime in July or August, the Nick Harding book I haven’t named yet will be ready to ride.
Subscribe (top right of this page) to get notifications of both pre-order and ARC opportunities.
Anyway, pre(-)orders are a boon to writers. They stack up and show as sales on the release date. If you’ve read previous books in these serieses (English is hard), or just have an abiding interest in Aussie-based, fast-paced crime fiction, check them out.
With the rotten smell of his last case still lingering, Nick is hired to find a missing person.
His girlfriend, Lucy, asks him to locate Alex Bainbridge, one of her close friends from university and a member of a group of six who have remained in touch since their time there. He is a financial journalist who often goes to the ground during investigations, but this time, he has missed a regular group gathering and has become electronically invisible.
Nick’s investigation uncovers a financial conspiracy that threatens to topple another government and exposes him to a level of physical danger he hasn’t encountered in years. ARCs will be available starting next week.
Pop over to this form (opens in a new window) and register. Since these books are both releasing on July 18, I’m looking for reviews by July 19 to help propel the launch.
If reviewing isn’t your thing, preorders also help a launch. If you’ve read previous Nick Harding books, or are in the mood for a fast-paced piece of Australian Crime Fiction, you can preorder now at Amazon | Apple | Barnes&Noble | Kobo
On the NSW Central Coast, Mac Durridge has been asked by Sophie, his on-again, currently off-again girlfriend, to look into the disappearance of her friend, Central Coast Network News reporter Linda Carmody.
Linda has been on extended paid leave from CCNN while she runs down a news story. She regularly disappears for weeks at a time, investigating this story. This time, though, she missed a mutual friend’s hen party with no excuse. Very out of character.
As an author, I was faced with a bit of a problem. I enjoyed writing two series featuring two different P.I.s: Mac Durridge, an ex-NSW cop now flogging his wares as a PI in a small coastal town, and Nick Harding, an ex-AFP Financial Crimes investigator who is now flogging his wares as a PI in a much larger coastal town (Sydney).
I didn’t know which one to work on next.
I split the baby and decided to write both. One huge crime spanning the state. Each PI gets pulled into the case independently. In fact, the first half of each book has no reference to the other PI at all. They connect at the halfway point, and by the third act, they’re quasi-partners.
All of the regular characters from past books are there, and a couple of new ones are added.
Like young Josh Cole, a thirteen-year-old, who hires Mac to find his stolen coin collection. A seemingly trivial case to open the story, yet the conclusion pivots on the information he gains from helping the young lad.
Cynthia Tanner and Joe Mason are state and federal employees, respectively, working hard on the development of Australia’s first high-speed rail network.
The dumbest thing you can do as a writer is edit your own work. And yes, I do it too, primarily for financial reasons. I have beta readers who catch a lot of things, but not everything. That’s not possible. Good editors are not cheap. And outside of traditional publishing, how do you know if the person editing is any good?
Back to the “Why Indie” post, this is tantamount to shooting myself in the foot. If I put out something with poor quality, it hurts me and every other indie author trying to gain credibility. Having an editor should ensure higher-quality work, right?
After 15 years, I’ve come up with a few tips on becoming your own editor.
First, I highly recommend buying this book. It’s an excellent guide (if you follow it).
From the blurb: Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.
Second, take your time. It’s never finished when you think it’s finished. Allocate more calendar time editing than you’ve spent writing your first draft. Make it as much, if not more, of your job as drafting the story.
Find plot holes. After finishing your first draft, set it aside for a month. Try to forget it as much as you can. Then, sit down and read through your story with fresh eyes. Keep a notepad beside you (or add comments to your document) and note each time you’re pulled out of the story for whatever reason.
Some plot holes or discontinuities can be resolved simply with an added sentence. Others may require a section to be rewritten. Sometimes, an unresolved setup in Act One must be addressed in Act Three. Occasionally, it might need to be deleted if it adds nothing to the story.
That’s okay. That’s what editing is.
Fix your punctuation. Not too many commas, not too few. Proper punctuation in dialogue.
Don’t trust spell check. An incorrect work in a sentence that is still a legitimate word won’t be flagged. See what I did there? This is less of a problem now since most spellchecking is contextual. But a decade ago? Big minefield.
My final step is to have the story read aloud to me while I read along. I edit in Word (first draft in Scrivener), and in Word, there’s a feature called ‘Read Aloud‘ in the Review menu.
Listening to your story will catch awkward word choices, missed typos, repeated words and more.
And when you’ve finished with the process, head back to the beginning and do it again.
And again.
You want people to enjoy the story, right? Don’t let them get hung up on the non-story parts.
Hello, all you happy readers. I’m calling for ARC reviewers. You can sign up for either one or both of my two upcoming books by going to this form.
[EDIT: The original form was spammed, with over 24,000 “responses” in 12 hours. I’ve added Google verification to address this issue. If you’d prefer not to go through Google, please leave a comment below with the word ‘elephant’ in it if you’re interested in being an ARC reader, and I’ll reach out to you.
Both books stand alone, so don’t feel you’ll be short-changed by reading only one of them.
Just a reminder that I’ll be managing book distribution through Booksprout.co You can sign up for a free reader account at this link.
Mac has been scrounging for cases. Business hasn’t been good.
Thirteen-year-old Josh has hired him to find his coin collection for the princely sum of $25.
He’s in the middle of that nearly pro bono case when Sophie, his on-again, currently off-again girlfriend, comes to him with a problem. Her best friend, Central Coast Network News reporter Linda Carmody, hasn’t been heard from in over a week.
Completely out of character.
Mac’s investigation uncovers a financial conspiracy that threatens to topple the government and exposes him to a level of physical danger he hasn’t encountered in years.
With the rotten smell of his last case still lingering, Nick is hired to find a missing person.
His girlfriend, Lucy, asks him to locate Alex Bainbridge, one of her close friends from university and a member of a group of six who have remained in touch since their time there. He is a financial journalist who often goes to the ground during investigations, but this time, he has missed a regular group gathering and has become electronically invisible.
Nick’s investigation uncovers a financial conspiracy that threatens to topple another government and exposes him to a level of physical danger he hasn’t encountered in years. ARCs will be available starting next week.
Pop over to this form (opens in a new window) and register. Since these books are both releasing on July 18, I’m looking for reviews by July 11 to help propel the launch.
Review copies will be made available (and ARC readers accepted) through Booksprout the first week of May until the end of June.
And not ‘self-published’, please. Independently published.
First and foremost, not a huge fan of gatekeeping of any kind. I realise that a lack of gatekeeping can equate to a lack of quality control, but when we’re talking about books, poor quality won’t result in a collapsed bridge or a sunken ship.
The market will take care of the crap. Sometimes.
It will always take care of the technical crap—the misspellings, poor grammar, shitty covers—but not always take care of writing crap—poor story structure, weak character arcs, gaping plot holes. Sometimes, inexplicably, those poorly written books become “best sellers” and “money-making movies” and “competitive drinking amongst not-so-lucky other writers”.
Anywho.
The second reason is the timeframes involved. A writer friend, part of a writers’ group I was once a member of, announced that she had signed with a small publisher. Congratulations were justifiably shared.
I don’t remember the exact timeline, but it was in the order of signing the publishing contract in January and the book would be on the shelves by the FOLLOWING MARCH. Fifteen months later.
And she’d have to arrange and bear the cost of most of the marketing.
With indie publishing, when the book is ready, the book is ready. The biggest challenge (after writing the book, and editing the book, and editing the book again) is knowing what “ready” looks like. Traditional publishing offers a layer of professional editors. They aren’t free. Their cost is factored in when your royalties are calculated. But it does buffer the author against editing mistakes. It doesn’t guarantee no mistakes, but it provides a scapegoat for the poor author.
The reality of writing is that unless you’re a top-tier author, the grunt work is on the author’s lap. So you may as well do it on your terms.
Back to the gatekeeping aspect for a closer.
Gatekeeping adds technical quality — most of the time. I read a traditionally published book where a main character’s age changed from something like 53 to 47 over two paragraphs. In another book, the main character left his rifle at the back door of a house he was entering, only to have it in his possession on the next page when he needed it.
Nobody’s perfect.
So, it’s a trade-off for me. In a couple of weeks, I’ll post about how I self-edit the shit out of my stories to lighten that weight of preconceived poor quality just a little bit for the rest of you indie authors.
I’ve already written four Nick Harding case files, but for those who haven’t read them yet, an introduction is in order in advance of the fifth, coming in July (subscribe, top right of this page, to get updates).
I wanted to veer away from the whiskey-soaked, ex-beat cop trope for my next PI. And I happened to be working (in the job that put the good food on the table) in risk management and governance when I was in the ‘what am I going to write about now’ phase.
Nick Harding is a former Australian Federal Police officer based in Sydney who led investigations into money laundering and other financial crimes. Until the regularity of it all bored his socks off. There are only so many ways to clean money. Once you knew what they were, it came down to uncovering the electronic paper trail. Or, more often than not, trails.
Boring.
AUSTRAC had the really fun work, and he couldn’t get a nose in with them.
So Nick split off on his own and set up a small (it couldn’t be any smaller) firm to help companies guard against internal financial crime. It seemed like a safe, not at all dangerous, way to make a buck.
I mean, if you don’t include the beatings, abductions, threats to friends and family and trashed cars and apartments.
Funnily enough, he’s found the danger more appealing. He now has tacit proof that his fights bring results. He sees the baddies getting cuffed. He even has, on occasion, meted out the punishment himself. A darker side of himself he didn’t know he had.
E-books can be found on all good and evil purveyors of digital stuff.
Leave a Reply