What Makes a Good Cover? The example of "Haunted Stars."

I once wrote a blog on “What Makes a Good Cover,” establishing four criteria and applying them to Bradley Sharp’s wonderful artwork for my book Temporary Planets for Transitory Days. (See the image in the sidebar.) My current novel, Haunted Stars, is again privileged to showcase Brad’s work, and, though I believed the last cover could not be topped, this new one is now my favorite.

 The criteria for a good cover are these:

1.      Accuracy of subject matter. It should not mislead the reader. The visuals do not have to be exact (it’s impossible to depict precisely what’s in an author’s mind, and often the author is more vague than one assumes). An artist should be allowed to go in the best creative direction to make the image appealing, but the cover should still be tied in some obvious way to the subject matter of the book.

2.      Accuracy of mood. Even more important is to match the book’s emotions. The cover for a horror novel should not be “cheery,” and a romance book should be . . . romantic. The cover needs to suggest what the reader will feel while following the story, the primary tone and mood of the book.

3.      Visual appeal. It needs to catch attention, to grab someone perusing bookshelves or browsing online. This call can be subtle—a whisper instead of a klaxon shout—but a hook still needs to be thrown. The viewer must look again, be intrigued, by a single red leaf in a field of green, or a baby doll that has the expression of a murderer. 

4.      A creative spark, a difference, a uniqueness. Something new, a surprise, the unexpected, a hint that “You’ll get a different experience in this book.” Such a quality is hard to define, and you might not notice it at first:  a raised question presented visually, a promise of a unique reading adventure.

In all respects, Brad’s latest effort excels. For a larger view of it, go here. 

Without giving away specifics of the story, I can attest that the cover is accurate in terms of the novel’s events. From the red sun and the yellow orb beneath it, from the mountain and the jagged white formations below, to the single human protagonist in a landscape of varied vegetation—all these are taken directly from incidents in the story.

 And the mood of the picture is a perfect fit, “haunting” in all sorts of ways—the strange eye on the surface of a planet, the mysterious undefined whiteness of the spiked horizon, the layers of mist in the landscape below—all these suggest the unknown that will confront and baffle the viewer. The first book in the series was called The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes, and this motif has been carried consistently by Brad through all four covers—a lone adventurer in space who lives to encounter more alien wonders. The solitary figure is both the protagonist and the reader, for both are led into peculiar and different worlds.

 As for the visual appeal, the picture is rich and varied:

·         First, note the symmetry. You can draw a line down the center of the image and both halves almost mirror each other. The sun, the orb, the mountain, and the figure on the raised mound all form a vertical line-up. Symmetry in nature is surprising and mysterious, and thus adds to the unsettling mood.

·         This vertical thrust is balanced by strong horizontal features, from the blue-black ground at the bottom of the picture and the soft lines of distant white mists, to the hard edge of the thin cloud on the mountain (a touch I really like), and, most fitting, the horizontal banner of the title. These two directions sew each other together in an organized display.

·         And then there’s the contrast, which works perfectly. The strong white letters, the sun, the world, and the mountain stand out strongly against the dark background, as does the whiteness of the spiky formations in the center. And then, reversing the darks and lights, the bottom half of the picture uses dark foreground objects that contrast against the white background to make the figure and vegetation stand out.

·         And finally the color scheme. It’s primarily cool blues and purples, with frosty whites and intense blacks, in both the foreground and background. But then, again to provide contrast, the central globe is swirled in warm yellow-orange, and the red sun is a hot glowering ember in the sky. So there’s dynamic difference in color as well as tone.

 And for the creative spark or uniqueness, one could argue that just the design of the picture itself, how all the straight lines (in the figure at the bottom, in the jagged white formations of the center) lead to the central eye, the big ominous question of the picture, and then further upward to the title—exactly where they should lead. But the eye itself, of course, is what stands out, the spark, the grabber, the deepest mystery. What’s an eye doing on a planet?

Wow. That’s a lot for just one picture. But it all ties together.

And I’m so proud that it’s my novel which gets to wear it.

Structuring Series Fiction - What You Can Do

When writing a series, the simplest structure is the most obvious: chronological—one  protagonist with many stories, given in the order in which they happened.

Of course, the protagonist has to have a profession or interest that generates recurring plots which lead to resolutions—an investigator, explorer, skip-tracer, “fixer,” consultant, body-guard, discoverer, trouble-shooter (even cook and librarian). Then each novel’s independent story takes place after the previous book’s completed narrative.

As long as the protagonist’s personality is consistent and interesting, and the encounters with different events remain plausible, this is the most useful and common format. (Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe.) Let’s describe it as: Changing plots/Unchanging protagonist.

But if the lead character remains too much at the same age and in the same state of personal development, the series can become unrealistic. After a while the protagonist seems frozen in time, more a narrative device than an actual person, even though the plots are still changing and unique.

So a way to counter this sameness is to have the protagonist also change and develop—through aging, varying relationships, marriage, divorces, deaths of close friends, moving up the ladder of rank and position, temporary or even permanent changes of location. These developments make the protagonist seem more like the reader, growing over time. (Joe Leaphorn, Anna Pigeon, James Aubrey, George Smiley.) Most series today fall into this vein. Let’s call them Changing plots/Developing protagonist.

Another series variation is to have a recurring background plot that grows too, a “deep story” lurking behind the surface events of each volume’s independent story that does reach a resolution—like, for example, repeated encounters with a particular antagonist (Moriarity, Karla, Luthor). You then get  independent stories along with the hook of a continuing plot. Furthermore, if the protagonist’s development is dependent on how that deep story eventually, or never, resolves, then even more interest can be generated (the uncovering of parentage, unknown spouses, secret past motivations, old mistakes and present consequences— as in The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Broadchurch).

Let’s describe these as Changing plots/Developing deep plot/Developing protagonist.

In all these cases the movement is still linear and chronological. You might encounter an occasional flashback here and there, even a whole book that relates a major past event, but still the series is based on a forward movement in time.

Yet a series can also go in both directions—back in time to pick up significant events, and then forward  to lead to greater resolutions. The “deep story” in this case occurs in both the past and the future, leading into a set of complications that unveil what happened in the past and determine what occurs in the future. This series would not be a linear arrow but more a spiral, a focusing in on major revelations about the deep mystery plot but also, in conjunction, unveiling how the changing personality of the protagonist (related to both the past and future) is also finding itself.

This is the very thing I’m trying in the series I’m writing now, the “Mykol Ranglen” set of science fiction books. The order in which they were published is not the order in which the stories occur. The series began “in the middle” with The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes, then went back in time to speak of a near forgotten event in the protagonist’s past, In a Suspect Universe. Then the following book wasvery different, a collection of poems supposedly written by the protagonist himself (he’s a writer), Temporary Planets for Transitory Days.

These poems were mostly independent but they referred to events in both novels—and to events in books yet to be written. The collection itself, in the fictional world of Mykol Ranglen, is meant to be “published” after the events of the first novel, though this isn’t indicated in the collection. The current novel that will be released soon, Haunted Stars, is both a sequel (to In a Suspect Universe) and a prequel (to The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes). After that, the next two novels planned to be written (I’m halfway through one of them now) will finally be actual sequels to the first book.

Complicated? Not really, since each work tells a stand-alone story. But the series has been fascinating to write because it re-evaluates and re-establishes itself, raising new questions about both the protagonist and the world(s) he lives in. The stories can be read for strictly their “face” plots, the independent sagas for each book. But if one is willing to look a bit more closely (like, for example, at the connections between the prose events and the poetic reactions to them), then a deeper form of narrative play and understanding can result.

Series fiction is like genre fiction. A writer must always provide what the reader expects (more information and plot about a known protagonist), but at the same time balance this with what can surprise the reader. As in genre fiction, one walks the line between being different and being the same, always needing to answer the plea from the reader: “Give me more of what I like, but also surprise me.”

So, if an arrow is too straight and uniform for your set of stories, then maybe try a spiral. It’s still a series, but in a tantalizing different way.