Publetariat

This post, from PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on her Inspired By Real Life blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is PJ’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see PJ become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been writing stories and working on my novel for several months now and I am approaching the point where I am considering submitting some stories to literary magazines.  A few weeks ago, I started perusing some of the magazines listed at Duotrope’s Digest and I came across several magazines and online sites that admonish writers to avoid O. Henry endings.

The first one or two times I saw this warning, I didn’t take much notice.  But then as I began to see the same message over and over, I tried to interpret its meaning.  I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t violating some sort of unwritten – or, in some cases, written – rule with my stories.

I confess that if I have ever read an O. Henry story it has been many, many moons ago.  O. Henry was an American story writer who lived in the late 19th century/early 20th century.  He lived a short and difficult life but published scores of short stories during his lifetime.  So, I read a smattering of O. Henry stories and did some research and discovered that O. Henry endings are so notable that I found an entry referring to them in several online resources such as this site compiled by Dr. Wheeler of Carson-Newman College:

“O. HENRY ENDING: Also called a trick ending or a surprise ending, this term refers to a totally unexpected and unprepared-for turn of events, one which alters the action in a narrative. O. Henry endings usually do not work well with foreshadowing, but particularly clever artists may craft their narratives so that the foreshadowing exists in retrospect. The term comes from the short stories of O. Henry (a pen name for William Sidney Porter), which typically involve such a conclusion. Note that an O. Henry ending is usually a positive term of praise for the author’s cleverness. This is the opposite sentiment from a deus ex machina ending, in which the unexpected or unprepared-for ending strikes the audience as artificial, arbitrary, or unartful.”

Not all would agree with the assessment above that “O. Henry ending” is a positive term, as we shall see.  In trying to understand the O. Henry endings, we have to look at the relationship between the author and the reader.  I recently took a class with Stanford Continuing Education with the author Seth Harwood.  The class focused on creating suspense and Harwood explained that there are three ways to create suspense:

Suspense works best with the first two approaches because the reader has more identification with and empathy for the main character and is hoping that everything turns out ok in the end.  In the third approach, the writer has employed deception and has betrayed the reader’s trust.  Harwood went on to say that the ending to a story using the third approach is likely to be met with groans rather than applause.  Many stories that have surprise endings use this third approach.

So, let’s consider some examples of O. Henry’s writing.  Some of his most well-known stories use the surprise ending to great effect.  “The Gift of the Magi”, “The Retrieved Reformation” and “The Ransom of Red Chief” all employ some element of surprise in the ending, but we learn of the events along with the main characters and they are as surprised as we are at the endings.  This is why these stories work well.

I came upon two examples of his stories that have surprise endings that, for different reasons, do not work well in my view.  “The Girl” appears to be a story about a man proposing marriage to a girl, but in the end it is revealed that the man is not proposing marriage at all but is trying to hire a cook.  This ending had me rolling my eyes.  “The Pendulum” is a very believable story and, especially for a cynical reader, the ending is understandable, but the way the ending was written was very unsatisfactory to me.  It used a sort of literary trick in that rather than trying to explain the reason John, the main character, reverts back to the status quo, the story points to an abstract notion the author refers to as “the Order of Things.”

In further exploring why writers should stay away from “O. Henry endings,” I consulted with Seth Harwood (mentioned above) and Victoria Mixon, a professional writer and editor.  They both had some terrific insights and they can be boiled down to these points:

• Harwood pointed out that because O. Henry was so prolific and virtually all of his stories involved surprise endings, this approach is “well done and finished.”  So, literary magazines may come away from reading a story with a surprise ending simply thinking “been there, done that.”  They are looking for fresh, modern voices …”in the sense of ‘making it new’ and not just ‘new to you.’”
   
• Harwood also emphasized the point that surprise endings are “very hard to do well and all too easy to do terribly.”  The bottom line is that literary journals are looking for good writing and the writer who is relying heavily on surprise endings tends not to be focused on the quality of the writing (I’m paraphrasing).
   
• Mixon put it very well by saying, “…there is a big difference between surprising the reader and tricking them.”  This comes back to the description above of the three ways to build suspense and the need to avoid the third approach.  The element of surprise is a mainstay in literature and when it’s done well, “You do that with an ending that throws a whole new light on the story while at the same time feeling like the inevitable conclusion this story must have been headed toward all along.”  (Mixon also promises me that she will be writing about this very topic in her upcoming book!)

I hope this post has provided you with some insight about the perils of surprise endings.  Thanks for reading!

With this cross-posting, the very knowledgeable yet down-to-Earth Mick Rooney joins Publetariat’s roster of regular contributors. 

Today, publishers are looking more to cut back on the amount of titles they release and focus their marketing clout and expenditure on extracting as much as possible from the branding of high-end authors. That doesn’t mean mainstream publishing editors aren’t open to new authors with an original book or voice. It just means the playing field is getting a little less hospitable.

There seem to be a lot less players on the playing field and the substitution bench is getting crowded and our publishing managers are getting evermore conservative, unwilling to risk a late substitution from an unproven player in an effort to hold out and still win the game. Author solutions services will often use this argument to hook you into their services. Consider that almost all writers you read started out as unknowns, published a first book, broke the so-called mold, achieved what you might consider impossible or hopeless, but remember, they almost all did it by pursuing the commercial route, either directly, or via a literary agent. They, and the people who represented them, read their first book, believed in their brand, and managed to connect and sell it to readers.

Certainly, we are seeing more and more books coming out through alternative channels, be it self-publishing, or the flourishing array of small presses, some with as little as three or four titles per year. Unfortunately, authors who explore alternative routes to mainstream publishing often don’t have a brand—scratch—aren’t a brand of themselves—even heavier scratch—don’t even understand what a brand is in publishing of any route.

Dan Brown is a brand. Jodi Picoult is a brand. Stephen King is a brand. Hell, British comedienne, Jo Brand, is a fucking brand in name as well as comic execution. Double hell, Sarah Palin’s even got her political PR team to turn her into the ultimate Hockey Mom-Rottweiler brand and one day she could be your president! All the above players have been ploughing the playing field for a long, long time. They understand PR, media, and most of all, creating their own brand.

Picoult has deftly rattled off novel after novel about family and relationships, posing moral and philosophical dilemmas for many years—what if I gave birth to twins and they turned out to be reincarnations of Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both just as much? That’s Picoult signature and brand and she is wonderful at what she does. Think the Jerry Springer show on sedatives. And Picoult, more importantly, knows it, and so does her agent and publishers. Having a brand is one thing—having people around you or the ability within yourself to exploit this is entirely another.

In my 2010 predictions, I said we could see authors who enjoyed moderate success at commercial publishing houses find it increasing difficult to win over their editors with their latest opus. Indeed, I qualified that by saying we will see some big enough names jump from the mother ship and join the burgeoning independent family. Canongate did a great job in the UK with Obama. But the independent family is not necessarily self-publishing per say—rather the area of publishing where the medium-to-small press is not only deft at involving the author in every facet of book publicity, but damn well expects it.

The self-publisher must do this as a given. It’s not some publishing culture clique, vogue down them indie parts of the city—it’s a fucking financial necessity—resulting in a sink or swim book. Broadly, I do welcome the approach of a well-thought out, condensed, homogenised, marketing campaign, and so should any passionate author worth their salt—provided their new-found small press is not, in turn, running the legs off the author as if they were some form of new marketing donkey (read camel if you want to be upmarket) for the solution to the rigours of economic decline and creating a bottom-basement publishing empire…eh, from the bottom up!

Bob Miller and HarperStudio have been getting this new strategy of publishing right over the past twelve months. If you want an author to do some of the donkey marketing work, with finesse, then the publishing partnership/contract needs to recognise this and reward the author through an increased royalty share. There are some really strong UK publishers in the independent field well-placed to adopt some of these strategies. Salt Publishing has had a real go at it, but economics have played much of a part in 2009 and it looked touch and go for them for a while. They are not out of the rapid waters yet, and I seriously feel they need to look at their royalty structure to survive (single digit royalties just aren’t cricket in the independent game anymore) and pick up the really big fish from the mainstream arena if they are to see out 2010 and really develop as a true independent of great promise.

There are other great pretenders, Two Ravens Press, Snowbooks—I equate them with publishers like Soho Press or Soft Skull Press (arty, urban and eclectic), or their musical equivalents of the early 1980’s, Rough Trade and 4AD, highly independent but crucially with a definitive branding and an extraordinary ability to identify that brand and the creators of it, through to reaching out to an audience/reader and connecting with them.

So whatever the origin and the route to readership, independent publisher, small press or self-publishing author—what’s the brand and how do we identify and find it?

Well, it’s not the norm; otherwise we wouldn’t have independent operating authors or publishers. We’d just be selling plain vanilla ice-cream all the time. But, just sometimes, someone likes their vanilla with cherries in it, or curious wee green bits—we taste first, savour and enjoy, before we actually discover the wee green bits are pieces of pistachio nuts. It’s only then we ascribe a tag, a flavour, a definition and a brand to them. Good marketing and branding starts out with absolutely nothing, and ends up with something glorious and unique. Bad marketing starts out with something and tries to make it something it will never be. Bad marketing will never separate the wolf from the pack, nor the gem that sits amongst the stones at the bottom of the sea. So, again, what leads to good branding, identifying and selling the idea of a book?

Branding is not one book, as such, but its inception and origin must at least start there.

Every publisher and agent you will contact wants you to tell them everything about your book in one concise short sentence (that’s about 0-12 words, tops, 15 words, and after that I’ll have to kill you). It’s tougher than it sounds. Try it. If you can’t; two things, one, maybe your book needs a sharper focus. Its core idea and branding should shine through after just a few pages; and two, maybe you don’t understand your own book as well as your readers can define it.

Creating something often allows us to overly immerse ourselves in the result of our endeavours, and we don’t see our book’s simple necessity and message. It’s also what a good editor worth their salt is looking for—something clear, unique and different. This is also the true definition of what independent publishing is.

At large publishing houses, often a promising manuscript will have to be read by an editor, then, outside readers, and ultimately, the commissioning editor before it is passed to the sales and marketing team. A manuscript can fall at any of the latter hurdles, but it helps if the first key editor sees the light shining from your manuscript. Too often, set formulas, and prescribed ideas of manuscripts that went before can influence what falls on the commissioning and sales desks. This is why a skilled literary agent who believes in the merit of your work and can see the branding possibilities of your work and can help to push and guide a manuscript through these treacherous waters.

So, how does Jodi Picoult fair in our branding exercise? OK, 15 words max.

“What if I gave birth to Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both equally?”

Holy shit! Just in at 15 words. I think this can still be tweaked, but what the hell. I found my first novel Academy really difficult to market and brand. It was a highly complex, historical and dark novel. My subsequent book was far more esoteric and experimental, and, yet, advanced copies and readers presented its tag and branding within a few days—where cruelty meets beauty—four words.

Branding one book can be difficult. I think it gets easier the more books an author writes. And so, it should if the author is making defined and progressive development in their books and writing style. I am lucky in my time to have met and even befriended a great many authors. One thing is clear when we discuss branding for an author and their books. It takes time. There is no author I know of, and I mean no author, who writes successfully full time and managed to achieve it after a book or two. Those who do manage to write full time have long identified their brand and managed to connect that brand with an established readership after about four or five books whether they have achieved it through mainstream, small press, e-publishing or self-publishing.
 

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog.