Category Archives: Guy Anthony De Marco

While every word in a flash fiction piece is important, often pulling double or triple-duty, in most cases it is the last line that makes a flash piece effective and memorable. Personally, I find flash stories that completely change because of the last line to be the hardest to do and the most enjoyable type of fiction. It’s akin to poetry in prose form.

Let me whip up an example 55-word flash piece for you:

The Final Bully
Oh, how they loved me when I arrived. Two years later and I’m the pariah, all mistakes that were not my fault.
I can’t stand this hatred.
Open the antique desk drawer, ignore the pistol.
Press the red button next to it.
It’ll take ten minutes before the planet-busting bomb shockwave reaches the White House.

It took me eleven minutes to write that. Everything up to the last two lines are there to set up the story and to allow your brain to automatically fill in the empty spaces between the words. Even the title of the piece, not part of the story according to the rules but available to misdirect the reader, can be utilized to give the final line some additional impact. The concept works today because suicides are all over the news and the toxic political atmosphere during this election cycle. This story wouldn’t be as effective if I wrote it back in 1977. It relies on the reader to bring along the news of the time into the reading experience.

The last line spins the story from where most readers expect the plot to go towards something completely different. It turns out that the final bully is an insane politician with science-fiction weaponry at their disposal. Note there is no actual clue if the president is male, female, non-binary, or even a lizard person. It is a far future event, unless we’ve invented planet-busting bombs and are hiding them in Montana. It brings along the rhetoric about presidential temperament from this year to add more background to the story without writing the words.

By making the reader think one thing and then adding a twist, the tale tends to go from a vignette towards a full story. Those last words gives a true ending. I personally find that the shorter the word count, the more important the twist is for my writing. It is also the thing that readers remember long after they’ve closed the book or surfed elsewhere on the Internet.

About the Author:

Guy Anthony De Marco is a disabled US Navy veteran speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award^®nominee; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, third-party D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.

A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Descriptive Genre Novels

July 22, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

Authorial Trust Guy Anthony De Marco Setting and Milieu World-building No Comments

Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, novels were suddenly available to the general public at greatly reduced cost. The paper wasn’t always the best quality and plagiarism was rampant between different countries — sometimes even between regions or states. People didn’t travel much and there was no Internet to bring rich, colorful multimedia presentations to someone’s eye at a whim.

Literature was their window to the world and beyond. The descriptions and eloquent language had to give the reader an understanding of places they’d never been to and most likely would never actually see. In a way, the genre novels were a combination of travel books combined with a fascinating tale.

Take, for example, the best-selling author Marie Corelli. She was read by the masses more than HG Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — combined. In her book, Vendetta, she introduces the Italian landscape with intricate detail and flowing prose. Everything is richly described that let the readers “see” through the text. Colors, sounds, smells — all were documented to bring the landscape to life.

This method of novel-writing remained active and at the top of the best-sellers list until the 1980s. James Michener’s doorstopper novels included when the Earth was forming from dust up until the actual story took off. This detailed understanding of the environment was just as important to his novels because the landscape was an important character. Alaska, one of his last novels, explained volumes of how life was like in the frozen, snowy wastelands. Without that understanding, the story would be missing something important for the reader to incorporate in their thinking.

James A. Michener's Post-1980’s, the writing landscape changed. People had less time to spend on reading and publishers pushed for stories that started when the action began. Michener and James Clavell would have a tough time getting published these days without their extensive bookselling record.

One of the reasons for this sea change can be blamed on the Internet. Instead of having an author interpret and describe an exotic location, people can fire up their favorite search engine and watch travel videos and see pictures of daily life in far-off lands. We no longer need the words. For some genres, this is a sad thing.

With the hustle-and-bustle of daily living, coupled with the constant barrage of time-absorbing activities as far away as the cell phone in your pocket, nobody has the time for a beautifully written novel. They want to jump in, read the good parts, and jump out. The older readers are the ones who miss the prose the most.

Probably the one spot where this is less apparent is the speculative fiction markets. Science fiction and fantasy are based in places beyond our experience, so the author still has to do some worldbuilding. The details, alas, are typically lacking because the publishers want the action and not the description. Sometimes it is a good thing to take a break after a wild chase and a fierce battle to rest — both the characters and the reader — by delving into some more history or landscape description. At least, it’s something I miss these days.

About the Author:

Genre Frappé

July 16, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

Guy Anthony De Marco Ideas & Plotting The Writing Process World-building No Comments

All month long, the Fictorians have been posting articles on mixing several genres together to make a book more interesting or to entice a wider audience. Here are two outside-the-mainstream ideas for you to consider.

Erotic Genre Mixing

If you’re comfortable writing and marketing erotica, you should consider combining it with the different genres. There are plenty of straight-forward erotic encounters between all kinds of individuals to choose from in the eBook marketplace. There are, however, smaller niches where your mixing in different genres can bring in more readers.

This isn’t a new idea by far. Even in genres such as Westerns, there have been plenty of years-long ongoing series that featured plenty of explicit sex between the characters. A good example is the Jake Logan series based on a man named John Slocum. Considered an Adult Western, it had by formula three explicit sexual encounters per novel. The series was penned by multiple authors under the Jake Logan pseudonym, and it ran for over four hundred novels.

The idea of the adult-oriented genre novel is a relatively unexplored niche. Writing a Space Marine novel series? You could have the teams be chaste and virginal as they sling lead or energy beams around, or you can add in some adult interactions as one would expect in a more realistic lifestyle. Maybe the protagonist falls in love with an underground freedom fighter, only to discover they were a spy all along. The adult interactions between the characters will create a bond that is far more heartbreaking and emotional than if they were friendly acquaintances when the truth comes out.

If you decide to go this route, it is important that you indicate the adult content in the marketing material. Some people prefer have a sex-free reading experience, and if you have a surprise orgy halfway through the book, you might get hit by poor reviews.

Non-Fiction Blended with Genre Fiction

This is another under-represented area that is open for exploitation by a savvy author. The most common mix for this is known as Alternate History, where the author sets up actual historical events and adds in a “What If?” event that veers from what actually occurred.

For example, did you know that there was an actual Emperor of the United States? Emperor Norton I lived in San Francisco and declared himself the Emperor plus the Protector of Mexico in 1859. The citizens of San Francisco loved him and his “official” decrees, and many dignitaries stopped by to say hello. Now imagine writing a story where the United States government was overthrown and he was actually elevated to political power. How would life be different now?

You can combine plenty of ideas with different genres to create some unique combinations. One good example was an anthology edited by Fictorian Travis Heermann called Cthulhu Passant. This charity project combined Lovecraftian horror with the game of chess. Each story had both elements, and at the back of the anthology the editor appended a quick primer on chess moves and terminology.

If there is something you are proficient in, consider marrying it to one of the genres to create something new. William Gibson combined science fiction with marketing in his novel Pattern Recognition. The movie The Last Starfighter combined arcade-based video games and science fiction. Consider combining what you do for a day job or hobby and how it can be tossed into a blender to make a delicious Genre Frappé.

About the Author:

June Wrap-Up!

June 29, 2016

E. Godhand

Believability Crime Detective Science Fiction Doing Good in the World Emily Godhand Guy Anthony De Marco Jace Killan Kim May Kristin Luna M.J. Carlson Marta Sprout Mary Pletsch Nathan Barra Science Fiction Suspension of Disbelief Writing Tools No Comments

Hey Folks,

I’d first like to thank every one who contributed a post to this month, Fictorian and guests alike!

The idea of a month devoted to not just research collection (because we’d like to spend more time writing instead, right?), but also some new concepts and ideas we might not have thought of to apply to our stories, thus making them more believable, realistic, or even helping us think of what might be true in the future.

Overall, I hope that our information was useful.

Some of my favorites (and there were many), in no particular order:

I started us off with a discussion on why realism and accurate information was so important in media.
Mostly because I was chased by a black bear once, and man, was I ever glad I read Little House on the Prairie.

Buuut also you know not everyone in your story is going to know the most accurate information, or maybe the readers are so used to an inaccurate trope that realism would cause them to cry foul. So sometimes perfectly accurate information isn’t the most important thing to the story.

Kristin Luna explored how gender can influence perceptions of risk-taking characters, particularly young women. We take risks! But perhaps not in the same way as young male characters might.

Guy Anthony De Marco gave us a 101 on proper terminology and use of firearms. Particularly, please don’t have your character take the safety off the revolver unless they’re removing their finger from the trigger. Just…why.

Marta Sprout wrote an excellent guest post on how crime scenes should, and shouldn’t, be investigated.

Kim May implored us to do our research on the particular culture of an Asian character instead of writing them into a stereotype.

If we don’t care enough to get it right then we offend readers of that ethnicity — thus losing them as readers — AND we mislead and misinform the readers who aren’t familiar with that ethnicity. Also, by misrepresenting that group we’re ultimately contributing to the cultural oppression of that group — even though we don’t mean to.

I shared how to look for, and write about, a character drowning. Also please watch out for everyone at the pool. Even if they’re a strong swimmer. But especially watch the little ones because I had to pull a kid out who was panicking and that was so scary for them. Pools are supposed to be fun and safe summer memories.

I also wrote about the moving definition of ‘death’ and that lead to a whole exploration of what exactly cryonics are, how it all works, and what one might do with that sort of technology in their story.

M. J. Carlson gave us a Top 10 list of the most used (and misused) injuries in fiction in his very informative guest post.

Mary Pletsch talked about how misconceptions about the military and soldiers can not only lead to inaccurate plotlines and failed missions, but contribute to ugly misconceptions around real service members.

Nathan Barra had so much on how one can accurately portray scientists outside of the stereotypical tropes that he had to split it into Science Fact and Fiction Part 1 and Part 2.

In Healing in Science Fiction, Jace Killian emphasized how quickly technology can change, and the importance of doing your research on current issues when anticipating future technology.

That’s what we have for June! Stay tuned for an interview with an amazing person tomorrow and check back in July as we discuss genre!

– Emily Godhand