Back Story and Flawed Characters

Think this guys has some character flaws?

He dated enough to quell most rumors he was gay. Sex was okay but too messy, too intimate. And sex usually took place in the bedroom, where shoes are kept. Daniel had eighty-two pairs, a fact he preferred to keep private. He was sure that once a woman learned he had a thing for shoes she would leave and tell him to never call again. Few people saw the inside of his apartment and no one, ever, went into his bedroom.

All-in-all, Daniel Lawless was an odd man with strange passions, but not so strange that he couldn’t fit in. He discovered he could have his shoes and his music so long as he enjoyed them quietly. He was content and prepared, if necessary, to live out his life alone.

He was not, however, prepared in any way for the horror that was descending upon him and the people he had sworn to serve and protect. Modesto needed a Dirty Harry, a man of action who carried a big gun he wasn’t afraid to use, but what they got instead was Daniel Lawless, a man who carried a small gun he preferred not to use, a man who liked shoes.

When I completed CANALS, it weighed in at a hefty 200,000 words; a bit much. It was the first novel I’d completed and I thought I was the new Stephen King.

In CANALS, I did something authors are strongly advised not to do: I dumped all of my main character’s, Daniel Lawless, back story into one chapter; an “info dump,” they call it. When editing, I chopped a lot of the back story out, but left it together. I split the back story up in my second book, THE MIGHTY T. I think the story flows better that way because when you give back story, you’re interrupting the plot and you want to keep that to a minimum.

What is back story? It’s when an author explains what happened before the timeline of the book. It’s usually used to explain why someone is the way they are, why they’re motivated to do whatever they’re doing in the book.

In CANALS, Lawless is a cop who’s always mindful of what’s happening to his shoes. He kicks a dirt clod in frustration, and immediately regrets doing it because it left a mark on the leather. When he’s finally alone at the scene, he pulls a small shoeshine kit out from under the front seat of his cruiser and makes a quick repair, buffing the mark out. That behavior is a bit odd, don’t you think? I do.

Characters with quirks, or flaws, are more interesting than characters who’re perfect, or think they’re perfect. Which reminds me of a story . . .

When growing up, my older brother (and my only brother) appointed himself the family narc. I’m fifty-four now so I’ve forgotten most of the times he ratted me out, but two memories remain.

When I was about five, our family had a burn barrel for trash; we burned all our paper trash on designated burn days. I was a budding arsonist then and had been warned that if I was caught near a fire again I’d get a whooping. Some time later, on a burn day, I noticed the fire was going to go out before all the trash was burned, so, to help the family, I stirred the fire with a stick so all the paper would get consumed. I was just trying to help, right?

My brother saw me and said, “You’re not supposed to play with fire. I’m telling.” Rat! I’d hoped my mom would do the whooping because her whoopings barely hurt, but no such luck. Shortly before my dad got home, I hid in the back of the closest, which was a mistake as it made him madder to have to hunt me down and pull me out.

(Mind you, if we kids were whooped, it was always on the bottom. His paddle of choice was a foot-long ruler from New Zealand, made of ridiculously hard wood apparently only found in that country. I wanted to throw it in the burn barrel . . .)

Flash forward to age twelve-ish. I had a Daisy BB gun I used to keep the bird population in the neighborhood in check. I was told to stop shooting birds, but how could I? I was sure they were plotting to take over the block by pecking out our eyes. My brother saw me shoot a bird and ratted me out. I was relieved of my BB gun.

My friends and I used to call him “Mr. Righteous,” because he thought he was the conscious of the family. We mostly disliked him. He’s a great guy now, though. A really great guy. Go figure.

When writing Lawless’s character, I wanted the reader to think he had no chance against the monster. He’d always avoided conflict when he could; he wasn’t a womanizer, at all; he liked shoes; he drank wine instead of beer and hard liquor—he wasn’t a macho cop. And here comes this monster, an unstoppable killing machine. An impossible setup.

Modesto needed a Dirty Harry, but what they got instead was Daniel Lawless, a guy who liked shoes. Can he rise to the occasion? You’ll have to read CANALS to find out.

Formatting For ebooks and Print - Part 2: Em and En Dash

Last week I discussed the proper use of the ellipsis here. Today I’d like to tackle the correct use of the em and en dash. (By “correct use” I mean correct as I see it currently used in the fiction I’ve been reading lately and how I currently use it.)

The em dash looks like this:  —

It’s created on a Windows machine by holding down the Alt key while typing 0 1 5 1 on the numeric keypad.

The en dash looks like this:  –

It’s created on a Windows machine by holding down the Alt key while typing 0 1 5 0 on the numeric keypad. You’ll notice it’s shorter than the em dash, as the lowercase letter “n” is more narrow than the lowercase letter “m.”

The en dash is typically used when writing out ranges, like this:

The odds for my horse winning the race are ten–to–one. 

I don’t see the en dash used very often in fiction.


The em dash is typically used to point out a break of thought, like this:

A third ghost looked like the man on the Quaker Oats box. He appeared four weeks ago and was now making daily appearances, but so far had been mute. He would speak one day—they all eventually talked—and then there would be no shutting him up.

There is typically no space before or after the em dash, either in print books or ebooks. I have found exceptions, though, a few ebooks. A space was placed before and after the em dash. This made short justified lines look better on the ereader screen but had little effect on long lines and no effect on ragged-right lines.

What do I mean by long and short justified lines? Because ereaders don’t hyphenate lines, when justifying lines with large words, especially on a small ereader screen, large spaces are inserted between words. This is necessary to ensure that the end of the last word on the line is flush on the right. If there’s an em dash on the line, it will appear jammed together with the words before and after it. If you place a space before and after the em dash, the ereader will add space between the words and the em dash and the line will appear more pleasant to the eye.

Your choice. I like the appearance of the extra space far better on small readers like the iPhone. It makes little difference on my iPad, though. What devices do you think your readers will use most to read your books?

An em dash is also used when a speaker has been interrupted, like this:

She checked her watch: no time for a latte, and ran into someone. Knocked hard, she grabbed a parking meter and prevented a nasty fall, said, “I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t looking at where I—”

The wall to her left puffed; shards of brick bit into her arm. Her face exploded.

This woman was interrupted by a bullet. Normally the interruption comes when another character butts in.

When used to point out a break in thought, the em dash can be overused, so apply it judiciously.


By comparison, the regular hyphen looks like this:  -

Here they are, from small to large: hyphen, en dash, em dash:  -   –   —

Formatting For ebooks and Print - Part 1: The Ellipsis

One of the biggest gripes readers have about self-published writers, aside from typos, which is gripe number one, is that their ebooks and print books look unprofessional. This post is the first of several I plan on writing about formatting books for distribution.

I have a background in typography, as a hobby. Years ago I studied typography as if it was my profession, even though it wasn’t. I bought a couple dozen good books on the subject and own about three thousand typefaces. (Could you guess I have a compulsive personality?) I had the best-looking business brochures.

Now that I’m (finally) ready to offer THE MIGHTY T as a print book, I’m hoping all those hours spent pouring over typography how-to books will come in handy.

Today I’d like to talk about the ellipsis, as it’s commonly used in today’s printed fiction. In case you don’t know, an ellipsis is used when a character doesn’t finish his or her sentence, either because they still thinking about what they’d like to say, can’t remember a word, or they drift off on purpose to allow the person or persons they’re speaking to finish the sentence for them.

For example, from THE MIGHTY T, Chapter 1:

“Shut up!” he shouted at them. “You’re gonna fuh . . . fuh . . . fuh . . . screw this up!”

In this example, Danny, the crazy sniper, is trying to say the F-word, but can’t.

Here’s another example:

“We were planning on taking the kids to Mulligans later,” Bensen said. “Drive them around the go-cart course and let ’em whack each other with golf clubs, but we can do that next Saturday . . .” He trailed off, letting Grant make the call.

Here Bensen “trails off” to allow Grant to make the decision as to whether they’ll return to the dam that night, or tomorrow. Grant picks tomorrow because it’s not urgent-urgent, and his friend already had an evening planned with his family.

I imagine that “trailing off” may not necessarily be verbal, but rather may be body language or a certain expression. Instead of explaining all that, you can add an ellipsis, followed by a few words of explanation if the reason for the ellipsis isn’t obvious to the reader.

I use the ellipsis quite a bit in dialogue because most people I hang around with don’t speak in full and correct sentences. We get distracted and don’t finish our thoughts; we open our mouths before we know what we’re going to say, necessitating a hasty retreat when we realize we might say something we’ll regret; we stutter; and we “trail off” as Bensen did. I think it adds realism to dialogue.

Typographically speaking, when printing an ellipsis you should use the ellipsis character, which is not just three periods in a row but rather the ASCII character produced by holding down the Alt key while typing 1 3 3 on the numeric keypad. (On the PC; Mac users will have to figure it out.) This produces this character:

…

Notice that it’s slightly different from typing three periods in a row:

...

The spacing is different. (In printed text, the ASCII ellipsis is wider than three periods typed in succession. It may not look the same on your computer monitor.)

After considerable study, most modern works of fiction are not typeset using the typographical ellipsis because it would look awkward on the printed page or ebook reader. Instead of the ellipsis character, typesetters now use this:

. . .

A space followed by a period, followed by a space, followed by a period, followed by a space, followed by a period—three spaces before three periods. After the last period you add another space if there are more words before the closing quotes, or any punctuation, even the closing quotes, other than a period. (See my examples if this isn’t clear.) Typographically, if the ellipsis ends the sentence you should add a final period. I just don’t see it being done, though, so I leave it off.

Why are modern novels set like this when it’s typographically incorrect? Because it improves the spacing on the printed or electronic page, especially on the printed page as all modern novels are set with justified text, not ragged-right.

“Justified” text means the last letter of the last word of each line in a paragraph lines up on the right, like how this paragraph is set. Page setting software has to add space between words to make the line stretch. Setting ellipses with a space before the ellipsis, and spaces in between each period, allows the software to stretch the ellipsis, making the line more visually appealing to the eye. 

I have several reading apps on my iPad;  most allow me to view the text with either ragged-right or justified paragraphs. Writing the ellipses as I suggest improves the appearance of ragged-right paragraphs, though perhaps not as much as with justified paragraphs.


I hope you’ve found this information helpful. Obviously, it’s better if you can afford to pay someone to format your manuscripts for you, but if you have to do it yourself, you might as well do it right.

Cops: The Feds Vs. Locals

“People,” Johansen said to the group, after she and Grant walked into the room. “This is the detective from Modesto I told you about, Grant Starr. Detective Starr, will you tell us what you know about the unsubs?”

Grant spent the next ten minutes telling a gaggle of agents and officers from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies what he knew about Samuel Raimes, III, which wasn’t a lot, and what he suspected. 

“So,” someone in a fed shirt said, “you don’t have any evidence. Your case against this guy is all circumstantial.”

“No, we have some evidence,” Grant said. “Not on Raimes, but we have solid evidence on the woman, Mindy. We have her fingerprints and she was ID’ed by a witness. We think she was here this morning and killed the two dam operators. They were knifed, which is her MO.

“We also got some prints off a steel shed they put up in La Grange. One of them came back army, a guy who was discharged after getting caught with drugs. His and another set of prints were found on evidence at the house of the MID guy who got killed the same night the TID guy got killed. So we have that, too.”

“But against the guy, Raimes, you got nothing,” the fed said.

“Well, hell,” Grant said, a little pissed off at the fed. “At least I got something. What’d you bring to the party?”

“I just got here.”

“Well, until you have something, I suggest you shut the fuck up.”

“Hey…” The guy stood, and Grant took a step his way.

The noise level in the room ratcheted up: feds sat up and thrust their shoulders back, making their chairs creak; locals snickered and pivoted to look at the fed, who was ten inches shorter than Grant.

Johansen stood and said, “Guys, a pissing match isn’t going to help us find the unsubs.” Grant and the fed continued their stare-down. “This is a national tragedy, the worst thing since 9/11. Let’s try and keep our heads here.” She placed a hand on Grant’s chest, not pushing, touching.

This scene from THE MIGHTY T takes place at the New Don Pedro Dam in La Grange, California. The terrorist who calls himself John Lightfoot had just successfully attacked the O'Shaunessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy, causing a near-catastrophic flood. The feds have moved in and taken over the investigation.

Detectives Grant Starr and Ralph Bensen were at Don Pedro when the flood hit. Grant needed to call his chief but Don Pedro has no cell coverage, forcing him to ask to use a landline in a building Homeland Security has taken for their headquarters. He tries desperately to avoid Area Supervisor Barbara Johansen, knowing if she sees him he'll likely get sucked into Fed World and lose half the day.

Grant finds a phone and makes his call. He and Bensen are about to enjoy some free fed snacks, coffee and pastries, when Grant hears Johansen's voice calling him from somewhere down the hall. She asks him to brief a gaggle of cops and he gets sucked into Fed World, as he feared he would.

I'm not a cop, nor has anyone in my family, to my knowledge, ever been in law enforcement. What I know about how well federal cops get along with local cops I learned from TV and novels—so take this as fiction if you like. I imagine the locals don't like it when the feds march in and take over investigations; it's gotta be a pride thing.

I took advantage of this real, or imagined, animosity to create some conflict in my story. Stories without conflict are dull. I was pulling for Grant, of course; he shoulda punched the weasel fed in the nose!

Is Having a Print Book Important To Ebook Sales?

I published two ebooks this spring but as of yet haven't had a print book up for sale. I've dragged my feet on this because... For several reasons, I suppose.

The cover art for CANALS is O.K. for an ebook but would not work for print because the resolution of the image is too low. I'll have to find a new image, or pay someone to make one for me. I hadn't even planned on releasing CANALS because I thought I would write only in the action/thriller genre. Those plans changed and some months CANALS sells better than THE MIGHTY T.

The cover art for THE MIGHTY T is ready to go, I think. I just need to finish the back cover. I dragged my feet on that because I was waiting for some good blurbs, or testimonials. I have those so I am without that excuse now.

My last excuse is my archaic computer and software. I think this Windows XP computer is six or seven years old and the software is even older. I use Word 97, for crying out loud. I used to use PageMaker but haven't for ten plus years. I formatted THE MIGHTY T for print on an old copy of MicroSoft Publisher. I plan on turning the document into a PDF with a print program called PDF995--old school. It wouldn't work with Word but it seems to be working with Publisher.

I know that I've lost a few sales by not having a printed copy available but I'm not sure how many. THE MIGHTY T could be marketed locally, because it's set locally, and in the San Francisco area, because the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is owned by the City of San Francisco. I need a print copy to properly market locally.

Now that I've rambled on, I'd like to get some feedback from others, writers or readers.

For writers who have printed copies of their books, has it helped your overall sales and your ebook sales?

For readers, would you buy an ebook if the printed book wasn't available? (Especially if you prefer printed books.)