I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Organizing. My topic today is the very controversial question of how novelists might use AI effectively. 

Why Blog About AI?

AI is massively controversial. So why am I blogging about it? Because you, my Loyal Blog Readers, asked me to. I recently asked you all to let me know what topics you’d like me to blog about. Just about half of all the questions you raised had to do with AI. Some of these questions were specific, and some were open-ended. 

I have huge trepidation in tackling this subject. Nothing I say will make everyone happy. But my thinking is that this is important to talk about. AI is part of our future, whether we like it or not. There are a lot of issues, and my space is limited, so I can’t cover everything, and I don’t intend this as the final word. Some caveats first.

Let’s be clear that AI is a huge resource hog. It uses massive amounts of water and electricity, and for some people this is a show-stopper. If that’s you, then I respect your opinion. I agree that this is a gigantic problem that is extremely urgent. But this blog post is not about environmental issues of AI. 

Furthermore, AI may well be a threat to humanity. It’s plausible that AI could take over the world and decide that humans are more trouble than they’re worth. If you refuse to use AI because it’s a potential Skynet, then I respect your opinion. Again, this is extremely urgent. But this blog post is not about the doomsday prospects of AI. 

Some of you have decided that, despite the very real downsides of AI, you still want to use it, because it also has some very real upsides. But you want to use AI effectively and ethically. The rest of this blog post contains a few thoughts on that. (Only a few. Whole books could be written on this, and I’ve got limited word-count.)

First, we need to distinguish two very different ways of using AI.

Two Ways to Use AI

Amazon’s content guidelines distinguish between “AI-generated” content and “AI-assisted” content. 

• Content is “AI-generated” if an AI created the content, even if you made revisions afterward. 
• Content is “AI-assisted” if you created the content and then used AI tools to help improve it (editing, error-checking, etc.) 

Amazon requires you to disclose AI-generated content, but not AI-assisted.

For me, personally, AI-generated content is a hard no. I have no interest in reading a novel written by an AI. I have no interest in writing a novel with AI. I think most authors agree with me on this, but a few don’t. If you use AI-generated content, then you have an ethical responsibility to let potential readers know that. 

I don’t have a problem with AI-assisted content. AI can be useful in doing research, in brainstorming ideas, in editing. Let’s talk about that.

Using AI for Research

AI is well-known to “hallucinate” sometimes. “Hallucinate” means that it gives a wrong answer to a question, often very emphatically. 

In my experience, this is more of a problem on topics that are “fuzzy” than on topics that are well-defined. I have seen more hallucinations when I ask questions about history than when I ask about math. 

If you’re going to use AI for research, then treat it the same way you’d treat a human who has read a lot of books but has a fallible memory. Humans will sometimes reconstruct memories based on what they think “ought to have happened.” I do that. You do that. It’s how our brains are wired. AI does that too.

So check everything you possibly can that an AI tells you. Ask for sources. If the reasoning seems fishy, push back on it. Most AIs will apologize when you catch them in an error. But they may then give you another wrong answer. So never blindly trust what an AI tells you. AI is a conversation partner. It’s not God.

Using AI for Brainstorming

Some people think better about their story in dialogue with someone. That’s how my brain is wired. I “think by talking.” So I sometimes need to solve a story problem by talking it out with somebody else, even if they’re not a writer, even if they don’t understand my story. The act of trying to explain things to them helps me understand it better myself. 

AI can be a sounding-board, if you need this kind of help. I have sometimes used an AI to talk out an issue in my story. There are a couple of points to be wary about. 

Some AIs can be very sycophantic. They’ll tell you what a genius you are, what a marvelous story you’re spinning. Ignore this. The AI is designed to keep you chatting. The more flattery it heaps on you, the longer you keep talking. 

Some AIs will offer up suggestions for how to improve your story. Take these with a huge grain of salt. The AI doesn’t fully understand the world we live, much less your fictional storyworld. It may hand you a mediocre idea. Be ready to say no, or to argue with it. But also be ready to see a useful idea when it comes up. Sometimes a bad idea is a stepping-stone to a good idea. 

Some AIs will then offer to write the scene for you. I always reject this offer flat-out. No, I don’t want an AI to write my story. Even if it could write better than me (I doubt it) I don’t want AI to do my writing. The joy of writing is in the writing. 

Using AI for Editing

A lot of writers use AI to read their manuscript and make suggestions for how to improve it. I have not done this myself. However, I have used an AI to critique software I’ve written, and this has always been useful.

Once again, you should be wary of the sycophantic AI. It will tell you that your work is a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. A little of this is helpful, if you’re like most writers and think your writing is the worst drivel imaginable. If you need a little positive feedback to get you through the day, then this can be a good thing. But when you start believing you’re a Staggering Genius, that’s the time to tell the AI to dial it back. 

In general, the critique an AI will give you has variable quality. Sometimes it will nail a serious problem. Other times, it will confidently tell you something that’s plain wrong. It’s on you to use your critical thinking skills to tell the difference. Treat the critique from an AI the same way you’d treat the critique from a human. Push back and explain why. This will force the AI to try again, and sometimes it gets it right on the second try. Or the tenth. 

Homework:

• Are you OK with using AI at all? Why or why not? 
• Are you OK with AI-generated content? Why or why not? 
• Are you OK with AI-assisted content? Why or why not? 
• Do you know enough about your storyworld to be able to do research using AI and check its claims? 
• Do you need a sounding board to help you brainstorm your fiction? 
• What types of editing might you allow an AI to handle, and are you able to tell good editing from bad? 
• If you’d like to discuss this with me, feel free to email me. This is a tough subject, and I know some of you have strong opinions. I’m here to listen, and you may well change my mind or teach me something. I’m OK with that. 

The post Using AI Effectively appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Creating. My topic today is: the “Story Question” of your novel.

What is a Story Question?

Every novel has a Story Question—a central question that drives your reader to keep reading. A novel that doesn’t have a strong Story Question is a boring novel, and it’s easy to put down “for later.” But later may never come. A novel that has a strong Story Question keeps the reader turning pages, no matter how late the lying clock says it is.

A central part of your task as a novelist is to create a Story Question in your reader’s mind—a Story Question that won’t quit. As we’ll see, there are naive Story Questions, and there are Story Questions that make your novel unforgettable. 

Examples of Story Questions

A few examples should help clarify things. 

In The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf tells the hobbit Frodo very early in the story that the magic ring Frodo has inherited is toxic. It’s so morally dangerous that nobody can be trusted to keep it. The Ring will corrupt all who own it, and the most powerful will be corrupted fastest. And the evil Lord Sauron is looking for it now, because it will greatly increase his power over Middle Earth. The only solution is to unmake the Ring—to cast it into the Crack of Doom where it was forged, many hundred miles away in the evil Land of Mordor, under the watchful eye of Lord Sauron. The Story Question is “Will Frodo destroy the Ring of Power—or will it destroy him?”

In Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin is a six-year-old boy living in a future version of Earth obsessed with fear that an alien ant-like race (the “Buggers”) will return for a Second Invasion. The First Invasion failed, thanks to a once-in-a-millennium military genius named Mazer Rackham. The home planet of the Buggers is many light-years away, but the First Invasion was many years ago, and now the time is growing short. When the Second Invasion comes, who will save the planet? A Battle School orbits the earth where genius children are sequestered in an unnatural environment where they are trained in military arts. The greatest honor any family can have is to give up its son (or occasionally its daughter) to be trained in Battle School. The Story Question is “Will the commanders of Battle School be able to train Ender before the Buggers arrive—or will they break him in their mad rush to beat an impossible deadline?” 

In Outlander, Claire Randall is an English nurse vacationing in Scotland in 1946 with her husband Frank. They were separated for most of the War, and now they’re trying desperately to reconnect. When Claire touches a mysterious standing stone at the mystical site Craigh na Dun, she finds herself transported back in time to 1743. She’s immediately kidnapped by some Scottish rogues and taken many miles away from the standing stone. The Story Question is: “Will Claire find her way back to her own time—and will she go back if she can?” 

How to Raise Your Story Question

So how do you raise the Story Question in your novel? Should you just say it straight out?

You can, but if you do, it’s likely to be very simple and on-the-nose. Readers prefer a complex Story Question, one they participate in, one they figure out for themselves. Once a reader fully understands your Story Question, they feel an ownership in your story, and they’ll be deeply invested in your novel. For hundreds of pages. Maybe thousands.

It’s important to note that the real Story Question is not the naive one that the reader initially sees. A naive Story Question is one-dimensional—a will-he-or-won’t-he proposition. A strong Story Question has a hidden gotcha buried in it.

In The Lord of the Rings, the naive Story Question is: “Will Frodo destroy the Ring of Power?” This assumes that destroying the Ring is easy. Just take it to your nearest Crack of Doom and drop it off. But the Ring corrupts all who touch it, and Frodo has touched the Ring. The nearer Frodo gets to the Crack of Doom, the stronger the Ring’s power, and the greater his urge to keep it. The reader soon realizes that Frodo might not have the moral strength to destroy the Ring. And now it’s a real Story Question, with teeth of iron. The Ring might very well destroy Frodo.

In Ender’s Game, the naive Story Question is: “Will Ender be the Chosen One, the next Alexander the Great?” But all the clues from the first chapter onward scream that he will. So this is not a great Story Question. However, even in the first chapter, it’s clear that Ender is being manipulated by the adults—put in danger from other kids, bullies who are much bigger and stronger. Ender is smarter than any of the others, but brains only go so far in a fight. Can he keep winning, even as the bullies get stronger? And if he keeps winning, will he lose his goodness—that thing that keeps us rooting for him? That’s a much stronger Story Question. Will we still like Ender when he becomes the next Alexander? 

In Outlander, we get a hint of the Story Question in the brilliant first two sentences of the epigraph: “People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman.” So the naive Story Question is “Who is going to disappear?” Soon enough, we guess that it’s Claire, the lead character of the story. When she does disappear, going through time at Craigh na Dun, the Story Question evolves to be a bit more interesting: “Will Claire get back to her own century?” But we’re not done evolving. Claire quickly finds herself attracted to Jamie Fraser, a handsome young Scot. She can deal with mere physical attraction. But then she’s forced to marry him, and she soon realizes that he’s her soul mate. So now the Story Question becomes a terrible dilemma. Maybe Claire doesn’t want to go back. She loved her first husband Frank, yes, but he’s not here. And he’s definitely not Jamie. In a situation like that, what would you do? Now there’s a Story Question to keep you reading until your nails are chewed right through.

Homework

1. If you subscribe to BookBub, you get an email every day with short summaries of half a dozen novels at great prices. Read through today’s list and look for the Story Question. Is it a naive Story Question or a complex one? Or do you have enough information to even make a guess at what the Story Question is?
2. Pick your 5 favorite novels of all time. For each one, write down the naive Story Question and any more complex Story Questions that emerge as the story evolves. What is the dilemma that the final Story Question raises?
3. For the current novel you’re writing, what is the naive Story Question—the one you show the reader first? How far into the story are you before you reveal this Story Question? Do you evolve it later into a more complex Story Question? Can you sharpen it to have a more powerful dilemma? 

The post Why Your Story Question Matters appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Marketing. My topic today is Substack, a marketing platform for writers. 

What is Substack and Why Should You Care?

Substack started out as an email service provider that was free to all writers. Most email service providers let you start out free, and then they start charging you when you have “enough” subscribers. But Substack is free to all writers, no matter how many subscribers you have, with one very important caveat. 

What’s the caveat? Substack makes no money unless you also earn money. If you earn money, they take a percentage. And Substack makes it easy for writers to “monetize” their writing. Writers can split up their content into a “free tier” and a “paid tier”. The hope is that they’ll attract fans with their free content and then some of those will find it worthwhile to pay for the premium stuff. This model is a lot like Patreon. Substack handles the money transaction and takes a 10% fee, plus the credit card charges. 

The most successful writer on Substack is said to be Heather Cox Richardson, an American history professor who writes a daily column on history and politics. She has more than 3 million subscribers, and is said to earn somewhere between $500k and $1M per month. Yes, per month. 

Substack is More Than Just Email

But Substack has evolved quite a lot over the years. It’s not just an email service provider anymore. It allows you to organize your content into “Publications”—each of which is effectively a mini-website, hosted right there on Substack at no charge to you. Part of that “Publication” can be a blog. Part can be a podcast. You can set up Chats with your subscribers. You can do Live Video. You can post “Notes” in a social-media feed hosted by Substack. And you can use Substack’s Recommendation feature to recommend the Publications of writers you like; writers who like you can in turn recommend your Publication. Substack itself will recommend Publications to readers who might be interested. 

The important thing is that all of this is free to the writer, unless they’re earning money. That’s what caught my attention a few years ago. Free is good. I have used a number of email service providers over the years. I used to use MailChimp. Several years ago, I switched to ConvertKit. Both of these are expensive. I have a bit more than 1000 subscribers for my fiction newsletter and blog. This blog, the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, has around 6600 subscribers. And with the features I currently use on ConvertKit, all those subscribers costs me a fair bit. 

I do like ConvertKit. It’s a powerful tool for serious marketers who produce a lot of content. But I haven’t been producing that much lately. So I don’t get much value out of  the terrific features ConvertKit has. I use just enough of those features that I have to pay. So I’ve been thinking about other options for the past few years. 

Switching Takes A Lot of Work

Let’s be clear that setting up a Publication on Substack takes some serious effort. Recently, I’ve had a lot more time for my writing. I decided a few weeks ago that it was time to take a hard look at Substack and see if it would be worth all the work to switch. 

So I took a couple of hours and did some online research. What I learned is that Substack has made a lot of progress in the last couple of years. As I noted above, it ties together email delivery, a website, a blog, a podcast, live-streaming video, and social media. With that pesky “monetization.” 

But it all looked very confusing, so I decided to invest in a course. The one I chose is Substack for Authors, created by a fiction writer named Jaime Buckley. That link will take you to the sales page for Jaime’s course. That link is not an affiliate link. Jaime is not paying me a dime to recommend his course. He doesn’t even know I’m recommending it. But I do recommend it. Very highly. 

I worked through the course in about a week. It’s got 11 modules, each containing multiple videos plus PDF downloads. The transcript of the videos is provided online. I took a lot of notes. What I particularly liked is that Jaime tells you both the why and the how. Both of those are important. You need to work out your why first. Jaime has a very nice marketing philosophy, very much in line with the one I’ve held to for a long time—marketing is about helping people. Once you understand why you’re doing stuff, Jaime also tells you how to do it. Without a lot of fluff. If it only takes 5 minutes to explain something, he doesn’t stretch it out to fill up half an hour. I really appreciated that. My learning time is valuable. 

I’ve created two separate Publications on Substack under my account. One of them is for fans of my novels, and I named it Randy Ingermanson Novels. The other is for people who want to learn how to write and market their novels, and I named it Advanced Fiction Writing. Don’t look for either of these Publications yet. I’ve made both of them Private while I’m setting them up. There’s nothing worse than a half-baked Substack Publication that doesn’t have anything yet. 

Transitioning my Fiction Newsletter/Blog to Substack

I decided to work on the Substack about my own novels first, because that one is simpler. I don’t have any initial plans to monetize it. I’ll simply use it for my existing fiction newsletter and my existing blog about my novels. One thing I’ll be adding is a weekly post with a chapter of my novel-in-progress. Then I can get feedback from my True Fans as I’m writing the book. And I’ll have weekly behind-the-scenes posts about things that my True Fans would find fascinating about the most recent chapter posted. 

I will also replicate my occasional blog posts about my fictional world on Substack. I found it extremely easy to import the existing 60 blog posts that I’ve written over the last 8 years into Substack. It took about 2 seconds to pull them into Substack. Then I took a couple of hours to tweak the content on each post, mainly to insert a note saying that the post was originally published on my blog. But I also added what Substack calls Custom Tags that help the Substack search engine know what content is in each post.

So my Substack Publication for Randy Ingermanson Novels is almost done. It’s taken me a total of about 22 hours, spread out over the last couple of weeks. I think I have about 2 hours left to go, and then the Publication will be ready to launch. (Launch means that I’ll import my email list from ConvertKit into Substack.) I’ll hold off launching for a bit, because I also have a whole other Substack to create, and that’s going to take a similar level of effort. 

Right now, I don’t have any paid tier set up for this Publication. Maybe I will in the future, if I can think of something my True Fans might want to pay for. Some of my True Fans have been reading my fiction for many years. They might want to support the cause, and they might have ideas for cool things I could put in a paid tier. But I’m not too concerned about that right now. Mainly, I want to stop paying for email delivery. 

Transitioning My Advanced Fiction Writing Blog to Substack

Now that I’ve figured out how to do stuff on Substack, the transition of my Advanced Fiction Writing Blog will be fairly easy. But there’s still a lot to do. I expect that I’ll get it all done in about 25 working hours, spread out over the next couple of weeks. 

It’s nice that Substack can import hundreds of blog posts in an eyeblink, but I don’t want to import everything. I’ll focus on the most relevant blog posts over the last few years, the “evergreen” content. 

My regular free content will be very similar to what I’ve been doing already. My current plan is to post one blog post every week—on Organizing or Creating or Marketing. That’s a level of effort I can manage quite well. I will do all in my power to maintain the same standard of quality that I’ve always had for my Advanced Fiction Writing Blog (and the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine before it). 

Will I have a paid tier on Substack? Yes, I will. But the content will be different than the free content. I still need to work out the details, but the core idea is to do what I call “Deep-Dives”. Each of these will go a lot deeper than I can go in a 1000-word blog post. I would like to produce a Deep-Dive on a regular schedule. I’ll decide the precise subject of each Deep-Dive after getting input from paid subscribers. And I’ll keep an archive of all the past Deep-Dives, so paid subscribers will have a growing library of material they can’t get anywhere else on the web. Because the Deep-Dives will focus on the things that I do best, that nobody else teaches. 

I can imagine other payware products that fans of this blog might like, but I’m not going to promise what I can’t deliver. One thing at a time. I have a nice list of “maybe someday” ideas. But I won’t do anything without consulting the loyal fans of Advanced Fiction Writing. Because you know what you need most. If I can deliver what you need, that’s a good deal for both of us. 

Is Substack For You?

You might be wondering if I recommend that you try using Substack to market your own work. I’m agnostic on that question right now. I’ll have a better answer in six months or a year. I’m don’t like recommending things I haven’t tried. 

Almost all of you are novelists, so I think you’ll be interested to hear how my Substack Publication Randy Ingermanson Novels works out for me. I have no idea how it’ll do. I don’t have any immediate plans to monetize it. But I do hope to do a better job in interacting with the True Fans of my fiction. From what I’ve seen, Substack gives a writer all the tools they need to create community. So we’ll see. I’m eager to try it and find out. 

Probably a few of you also write nonfiction. If that’s you, you’ll be able to watch me run my nonfiction Substack Publication Advanced Fiction Writing in the coming months, after I launch. You can’t see anything yet, as I said earlier. I’ll keep both my Publications in Private mode for at least another couple of weeks.  

Once I’m convinced I’ve worked out all the kinks, I’ll do a launch on both my Publications. And then you’ll see what can be done on a nonfiction platorm on Substack. I will make mistakes. I’m human, and mistakes are a particular skill of mine. I trust you, my Loyal Fans, to push back graciously when you see a mistake, and to help me get things on track. I would love to have a fabulous Substack Publication that helps you reach your writing goals, a place where we can all learn together. If that happens, then the project is a success. 

Stay tuned…

The post Why I’m Switching to Substack appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Imagine that you time-travel 5 years forward to visit your Future Self. Imagine that you discover that Future Self has just been forced to quit doing the “fun stuff.” (You get to define what the “fun stuff” is, and nobody gets to criticize your choices.)

Now ask Future Self, “What do you most regret not having finished?”

You’re Guaranteed to Regret Something

Let’s be honest—this is a scary exercise. No matter how much you get done in the next 5 years, you’re guaranteed to regret something. That’s the nature of life. It’s fast-paced. We all put more on our plates than we can possibly eat. We all get side-tracked by stuff coming out of the blue. We can’t do it all.

So this is really an exercise in defining those pesky priorities. 

This all came home to me less than 2 months ago when suddenly my day job wasn’t there. I’ve been at the same job for 20 years. Doing cool sciencey kind of stuff. Don’t ask me what I was doing unless you’ve got about 3 hours, because I’ll talk your ear off. And you really don’t want to know. The point is that suddenly a big chunk of my “fun stuff” was off the table. Maybe permanently, maybe not. And that forced me to think about what other “fun stuff” I’d been sidelining because my day job was keeping me too busy. I got a rare chance to rethink my priorities.

To make it all crazier, just before my day job evaporated, I had spent about 3 weeks in bed recovering from a tough injury to my hamstrings/glutes that left my sciatic nerve irritated 24 hours a day. At the time, it felt like “this is never going to get better.” That was miserable. Would I ever get to work on the fun stuff again? Of course I did get better, and I’m back in the saddle doing the stuff I consider fun. 

But it forced me to think about what I’d regret most if I couldn’t do any more fun stuff, ever again. That’s a hard question. A scary question. A question we all will eventually have to face, because there will come a day when each one of us has to hang up the spurs. And we can’t predict when that’ll happen.

Here Are My Answers

My answers are not the same as your answers, because we’re different people, and we define the “fun stuff” differently. But I encourage you to think hard about this, because it might just change your life. 

To help jiggle your neurons a bit, I’ll tell you my own answers. Here are the things outside my day job that I’d regret not having done, if I had to quit right now:

1. Fiction writing. I am currently writing a novel. When it’s done, it’ll be my 9^th published novel. I have another 5 that I really, really, really want to write. I know the titles for most of these, and I know what they’ll be about. They’ll complete the two main series of novels that I’ve been working on for my entire writing career. This is right at the top of my list. I would be very sad not to finish them all. 
2. Marketing. All novelists hate marketing. But if you want to get your novels read, you need to market them effectively. There are things I could do to get my novels out there more. I’d like to do some of those things. I’d be quite sad if I didn’t do at least some of these. 
3. Project Chronologicus. This is a project that pulls together my love of history, math, and software development. I want to write code that can mine ancient historical documents for chronological information and then construct the best timeline of events. “Best” has a precise mathematical definition, accounting for the natural fuzziness in all historical documents, while also detecting possible outliers or errors in the data. This would be useful to me in writing my historical novels. It would also make a few thousand historians happy to have a tool like this. This is an unsolved problem, so it might fail. But I’d be sad if I didn’t at least try. We climb mountains because they’re there.

My Life Goals Document

I created what I call a “Life Goals Document” that has 5 Project Groups:

• Fiction Writing
• Marketing
• Chronologicus
• Learning 
• Software Development

As you can see, 3 of these Project Groups are the big 3 categories of things I would regret not doing. The other 2 Project Groups support them in some way.

I filled in below each of these Project Groups with small projects or milestone tasks that I could conceivably work on this year. It’s really enough to look ahead just one year. I can’t see beyond this year, and I don’t want to put too much on my lists, because that would get too overwhelming. 

These lists are what I call “quasi-sorted.” The first item on each list is the next logical project or task to tackle. I highlight it in blue to indicate that it’s the next thing. Everything below it is highlighted in green to indicate that it’s for “later.” But the green items aren’t sorted. I won’t know for sure what order to do these tasks until I get there. 

Once I finish a task, I change the highlighting on it to be yellow, to indicate that it’s done. So each Project Group list shows some tasks highlighted yellow that are completed. Then it shows one task highlighted blue that’s the current thing. And below that are all the tasks highlighted green that are for later this year.

Every day when I’m deciding what I’m going to work on today, I take a quick look at my Life Goals Document. It reminds me what’s important. Because I already know what’s urgent. The urgent stuff always gets done, because it’s urgent. The important stuff needs to get a little airtime too, or it’ll be forgotten. I don’t want to forget the important stuff. 

Now It’s Your Turn

Want to play? You can do the same thing I did. Here some steps that can help you put together your own personal Life Goals Document that will carry you through the rest of this year:

• Pretend for a moment that you will get absolutely nothing done in the next 5 years, and ask your Future Self what they regret not having done the most. Keep the list short. This should be Future Self’s biggest regrets, not all possible regrets. 
• Make a Life Goals Document. It should have a few main Project Groups for this year. Just for this year. Let next year take care of itself. Include any of the Project Groups on your Biggest Regrets list that you think you could actually work on this year. 
• Fill in some actionable tasks or projects on each of your Project Groups. Don’t go overboard here. Keep it reasonable. What could you get done this year, given the amount of time and energy you have right now? If color-coding helps you, then color-code your Life Goals Document. If it doesn’t help, then don’t. 
• Make time every day to look at your Life Goals Document. Not to make you feel guilty. Just to keep your neurons firing on what the “fun stuff” is. The important fun stuff. The stuff you don’t want to regret. 

Baseball players like to say, “keep your eye on the ball.” That’s good advice if you want to hit that thing flying toward you at 90 miles per hour. 

If you want to get the fun stuff done, then the analogous advice is, “keep your eye on the fun stuff.” Because real-life is flying at you at 90 miles per hour, every day of the week. A lot of it is urgent but not important, so you have to do it. But some of it is neither urgent nor important, and you can let it go by without any regret if you’re constantly keeping your eye on what the real fun stuff is. 

The post Your Life Goals Document appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I blogged about this fairly recently, and nothing has changed since then. If you need a review of how the one-sentence summary works, I highly recommend reading that earlier blog post. 

But if you only write a single one-sentence summary for your novel, you’re leaving money on the table. A lot of money. 

As an example, here’s a one-sentence summary of The Hunger Games: A 16-year-old girl volunteers to take her sister’s place in an arena where twenty-four teens will battle each other to the death.

That’s pretty solid, as far as it goes, but it only tells the story as Katniss experiences it. Which is fair enough, because Katniss is the lead character, and she’s the only viewpoint character. 

But Katniss is not the only person in this story. The other characters are critically important. And none of them thinks Katniss is the hero…

Every Character Thinks They’re the Hero

In the story you have been experiencing since birth, you are the lead character. That’s the nature of being human. There is only one skin you can be inside of. In your life story, everybody else is a side character.

But this is extremely important to understand—everybody else is the lead character in their own life story. And in their story, you’re the sidekick.

We live out the story of The Hunger Games through the eyes of Katniss, so her story is important. But there are other characters in this story that also matter. Peeta. Haymitch. Cato. Cinna. 

Each one of these thinks they’re the lead character in the story. Let’s take a stab at writing the one-sentence summaries of each of these characters. 

Peeta: When a 16-year-old boy is forced into the Hunger Games alongside the girl he loves, he resolves to sacrifice himself so she can survive.

Haymitch: A former champion of the Hunger Games has to coach a girl who could potentially win, if she doesn’t mind killing the one person in the world who loves her.

Cato: An 18-year-old boy—who has trained all his life for the Hunger Games—is shocked and humiliated when a girl half his size outscores him during training week.

Cinna: A leader in the secret conspiracy to overthrow the fascist government finds the perfect symbol of resistance—if he can keep her alive.

Notice that none of these one-sentence summaries capture the full story. And some of them are downright inaccurate. (Peeta is not really the only person who loves Katniss; her sister Prim loves her too.) By their nature, one-sentence summaries distort reality. They’re too short to capture everything, and you’d be crazy to make them try. They are approximations to the truth. Be OK with that. 

Why Would You Do All This Extra Work?

It takes time and energy to write a good one-sentence summary. Each one might take you 10 or 15 minutes. Why bother? 

There are several good reasons to do this extra work:

• It keeps you focused on the story while you’re writing it. 
• It highlights where the essential conflicts are—which characters must be at odds with which other characters, and that helps you understand your novel better. 
• It forces you to write 3-D characters, because you have walked inside the skin of all your characters, not just the “good guys”. 
• It keeps your story from being a simple morality play, because you are constantly reminded that real life is complex and sometimes messy. 

Bottom line: If you know the one-sentence summary of all your characters, you will empathize with them better. You’ll know them better. You’ll write them better. That’s a win.

Homework:

Pick a novel. Any novel you’ve read, where you really know the story. It doesn’t have to be a classic novel or even a great novel. It just needs to be one you completely understand. 

1) Identify the 3 to 5 most important characters. 

2) Write a one-sentence summary for each. 

3) How well did the author give each character an interesting and reasonable storyline?

Now comes the hard work. Give yourself a one-hour time limit and do the same for the novel you’re working on right now.  This might be the most productive hour you spend in writing your novel. 

The post Every Character Has A Story appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I think we’ve all met a life insurance agent like Ned, and that can be uncomfortable. It’s just as uncomfortable to meet a writer like Ned. Someone who acts like your best friend because they’re looking for a favor. Maybe they want a free critique. Maybe they want an endorsement. Maybe they want an introduction to your agent or your editor. 

It’s not wrong for writers to want those things. After all, success in writing is strongly correlated with the size of your network. I read a remarkable book several years ago, The Formula, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a network scientist. He looked at actual data to see what caused some people to be successful and some not. He found that success depends on performance, when this can be measured. But when performance can’t be measured, a person’s network drives their success.

Here’s a direct quote of his findings: “But networks are singularly important in areas like art, where performance and quality are hard to measure. In fact, an interconnected web of relationships determines success in art to a degree that I, a network scientist, find stunning.”

Networks are Important, But…

If networks are so important, then networking must be just as important, right?

Hold on a minute. Not so fast. “Network” is a noun, and it describes something good and healthy. “Networking” is a verb that’s supposedly about building a network. But somehow, it’s a very toxic verb. What’s wrong with this picture? Is there a better way to build a network than by networking? A non-toxic way?

I actually think there is. I’m all for building networks. But not the Ned Ryerson way. Ned Ryerson is transactional; real networks are relational. Ned sees people in his network as a rung on the ladder of success. Someone to be stepped on. That’s what makes Ned toxic. Understanding what’s wrong with Ned is the first step to building a network in a healthy way. A better way. 

Notworking

I call the better way “notworking”. Your goal is to have a network of writer friends. The key word here is “friends.” Friends are not people you use to advance your career. Friends are people you travel together with on the journey. 

One place where you can build your network of friends is at a writers conference. That’s probably where I’ve met most of my writer friends. A typical conference has hundreds of writers, and you can’t possibly meet them all. You can’t add them all to your network. 

If you insist on “networking,” then you’re going to be sizing up everyone you meet at a conference, measuring them by how much they can help your career right now. And they’re going to see right through you, just like anyone can see through Ned Ryerson. Just like you see through people who are trying to “network” you.

What’s the better way to size people up? It’s simple. Look for other writers who are at about your same place on the journey AND who resonate with you. Maybe they write the same kind of fiction you do, and maybe they don’t. But the key thing is that they are a kindred spirit. 

When you find somebody like that, ask them how their writing career is going. It’s probably not going great. They may well be stuck on some issue that they just can’t get past. 

And maybe you can help. Maybe you’ve recently dealt with the same problem and figured out a way past it. If you can help another writer solve a real problem in their life, do so. Without asking for anything in return. Without even thinking about whether you’ll ever get something in return. Assume you won’t. 

Then again, maybe you can’t help. Maybe you’re stuck on the same problem. But at least you can offer empathy. That’s what friends do when they can’t help. 

If you talk to ten writers at a conference and find even one that you resonate with, somebody who can be a writing friend on your journey, that’s a win. You’ve added to your network, and they’ve added to theirs. In a few years, you’ll have a very nice network. And if you do this for the rest of your writing life, you’ll eventually have a large network. A non-toxic network.

That’s what I mean by “notworking.” It’s good and it’s healthy and it’s fun. But the larger your network, the higher the probability that one of your friends is going to be super-successful. And that’s where things can go south, if you’re not careful…

The Universe is Not Fair

The publishing world is just like the rest of the universe. It’s not fair. A very few writers will have huge success. Most will have little. There will be a large spread in the payoffs that people in your network receives. 

If you have a large enough network, you are going to know somebody who wins a major award or gets rich or gets famous, or all of the above. It may not be who you expected. It may not be in proportion to talent or skill or anything else you can measure. It may just be luck.

So how do you respond to this grossly unfair situation? Here are two things you can do: 

• Resist the urge to cash in on your friend’s success. You can’t. They can’t distribute their success to you. Success doesn’t work that way. They may be able to help you some, and if they’re a decent person, they’ll try. But they can’t just pass success around like candy bars. Don’t expect them to. 
• Resist the green monster, envy. Be happy for your friend. Set aside all thoughts that their success is rightfully yours. It isn’t. It probably isn’t rightfully theirs, either. Luck plays a large role in the publishing world. There is nothing you can do about that. Throw the dice with your friends, and cheer for the winner.  

The Bottom Line 

The publishing life is a journey. Build a network of true friends. Help your teammates all you can, with no expectation of reward. Accept help graciously when it’s offered. Stay in the game, give it your best shot, cheer for the winner, and be happy with your lot, whatever it is.

The post Networking and Notworking appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

So now what? Your book’s not ready to publish. It still needs work. How do you get the novel across the finish line? 

You might think that the answer depends on how you plan to get the book published. There are two usual approaches to publication:

• Sell the book to a publisher. 
• Act as your own publisher.

Your current game plan doesn’t depend on which of these roads you plan to take. Your book almost certainly isn’t ready to start shopping around to a publisher (or to an agent). And it almost certainly isn’t ready to publish independently. A first draft is never ready. A first draft always requires revisions.

And how do you do revisions? Your roadmap for that depends on how your brain is wired. Everyone is different, and you need a plan that works for you. 

I can’t tell you what’s going to work for you. But I can tell you what works for me. I’ve done this many times, and I’m just starting the revision process on my current novel. Here’s the approximate plan I have. Some of it might work for you. Some of it probably won’t. Use the ideas you find helpful and ignore the rest. Some of the steps in my plan are going to take a lot of time, so I’ve made a guess at how much time I think they’ll take. 

My Revision Plan

• Make a new copy of the manuscript and label it with a new version number (for example, “Draft 2”). Then I’ll never work on the first draft again. In case the next round of revisions takes me in the wrong direction, I can always return to the first draft and restart revisions from that point.
• Take a week to read the entire manuscript on my computer to see how well the story works. This is a quick read, roughly 10,000 words per hour. If I see a typo, my brain will get angry and insist I fix it, so I do. But fixing typos is not the point. The point here is to see if the story is working as a whole. Is the story structure right? Which scenes work? Which scenes fall flat? Are there inconsistencies in the story? Are there redundancies? Are there factual errors? Are there points I need to research more? I make quick notes in the margin for each of these. But I don’t fix any big problems. Not yet, anyway. 
• Take two or three weeks and work through all the margin notes and fix the large-scale problems—the inconsistencies, the redundancies, the factual errors, the research questions. (My current manuscript has 42 of these, and I expect I can fix two or three of them per day, so it’s going to take a few weeks to get through them all.)
• Send the manuscript to my editor so she can tell me all the problems she sees. She will see a lot. She will see things I never thought of. When she sends me her comments, I will spend about three very miserable days wondering what’s wrong with her, and then admitting that she might have a point here and there, and then recognizing that the novel has several problems, and then realizing she is mostly right, and then hating myself and my novel. Eventually, I will get through this swamp and be ready to work again. 

• Make another copy of the manuscript, this one labeled “Draft 3”. 
• Take one day to review my one-sentence summary and one-paragraph summary of my novel. These tell me what my story is “really about” and I want to make sure that I’ve got that pinned down well, because the next step depends on it. 
• Take a month or two to rewrite the entire manuscript, cutting it down to size and fixing all the problems my editor found. I already know my current manuscript is too long. I need to cut about 30k words. But it also has all sorts of problems that I don’t know about yet, which my editor will tell me. Her comments will help me decide which words to cut, because in some cases, I’ll need to delete entire scenes. 
• Take a week to read through everything again and fix all the little wordsmithing stuff. 
• Send the manuscript to my proofreader. 
• Make a new copy, this time labeled “Draft 4”. 
• Take a day to fix all the typos the proofreader caught. 

At this point, I’ll be ready to publish. If I were working with a traditional publisher, I’d hand the corrected proofs off to them, and they’d publish it. But I act as my own publisher, so I’ll simply typeset the novel and click the Publish button.

Will That Work?

No, the above plan will probably not work. No plan ever survives implementation. At some point, the plan will break down and I’ll have to make a new one. That one might work or it might not. If it doesn’t work, I’ll keep making new plans and executing each one until it breaks. Each one will get me closer to the end-game. Writing is hard. It doesn’t get easier, just because you’ve published a novel already. It gets harder, because you know more with every book. 

Homework

You are different from me. Your brain works different from mine. Your plan will be different. But it won’t be completely different. You can probably use about three quarters of the ideas in my plan. You may need to reorder the steps. You may need to add some steps. You may need to delete some. But I strongly suggest that you make a plan, with time estimates attached to the big steps. 

Why make time estimates? Because they prevent you from getting trapped in a morass of never-ending edits. If you want to publish your novel, then you need to finish revisions. That means you need to have milestones. So make some guesses as to how long it’s going to take. It will probably take twice as long as you think, but that’s OK. 

A Personal Note

I’ve hit some speed bumps in my personal life recently. I injured my hamstrings during exercise a couple of months ago, and I couldn’t sit comfortably for about three weeks. So I spent a lot of time flat on my back, using ice, heat, painkillers, muscle relaxants, and all the other voodoo treatments my doctor could think of. I am currently going through physical therapy and will soon be back to normal. 

Fortunately, I recovered enough that I was able to go to my 50-year high school reunion, and that was great. I loved being able to reconnect with people I hadn’t seen in 20 or 30 years. 

Right about that time, my day job ended, thanks to the government putting a halt on new awards for Small Business Innovative Research grants and Small Business Technology Transfer grants. I have been working for twenty years at a biotech company in San Diego, and I loved my job. But the money that paid my salary has run out, and I’ve “involuntarily retired.” The government has recently restarted the grants program, but major damage has been done to many small technology companies all across the country.

But don’t worry about me. I had been planning to retire from my day job in a few years anyway, and I can live just fine on my retirement benefits. I had been hoping to do one last cool thing for science, and I might still get that chance, or I might not. But I definitely won’t have a day job for the next few months. 

In the meantime, I suddenly have lots of time to do fun stuff. So I’m working like crazy on my novel. And I’ll have more time to blog, so let me know what you’d like me to blog about next. If I never go back to my day job, I’ll still have many meaningful things to do for years and years. I intend to do them well. 

The post After Your First Draft appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Of course, a lot of people get sidetracked. I’m not the only person who has a giant To-Do List with some tasks that are five years old. Or ten. But here’s what’s odd. At my day job, I’m very productive. (Most writers have a day job. It’s a very rare writer whose only iron in the fire is their writing.) I have a lot of tasks on my plate at my day job, and I do very well at getting them done. 

Why am I so much better organized in my day job than in my personal life? My day job is not more important to me than the other things on my plate. So what’s the difference?

Somebody To Answer To

After ten milliseconds of thought, I saw the difference. I have a boss at my day job. I run the software division at a biotech company in San Diego. I answer to the CEO. We talk every two weeks on Thursday afternoon for two hours. And every time we meet, I know I need to show forward progress on the important stuff. I get along well with my CEO, but he does have the power to fire me if I’m not getting the job done. 

Whereas, in my regular life, I answer only to me. I’m the CEO of my life. Which is good, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I never have a meeting with myself where I have to show forward progress. And there’s no penalty for missing a deadline. I’m never going to fire myself. 

I toyed with the idea for several months of asking ChatGPT how to deal with the problem of managing my life better. I finally did it a couple of weeks ago. And this is my report on what I did and how it worked out. 

What I told Chat

Here is the prompt I typed into the Chat window. I’ve trimmed out certain parts which are unique to my situation, because those will not be of interest to you. But I’ve left in the parts that I think you might find useful, if you decide to try something similar with the AI tool of your choice:

I’m interested in having you help me manage my life. I don’t know what the job title would be. “Life coach” or “life manager” or whatever. Here’s the context. I am a person who takes on a lot more things than I should. [Removed a description of what I am good and what I’m not good at, and some of the things I’ve done in life and some of the projects I’m working on now.] But I constantly feel like I’m behind on everything. I am very productive at my day job, and I think the reason is that I have a CEO that I answer to. I seem to be a lot less productive in my writing career, where I don’t really answer to anyone. I have a lot of marketing tasks for my books that I think would raise my sales, but I don’t ever get around to doing them. What I would like you to do is to interview me. Ask me as many questions as you need to in order to figure out if you can help me manage my life better, and how you might do that. [Removed some of my thoughts on things that Chat might be able to help me with and a description of my particular job situation.] But I also think I just need somebody to answer to, so every week or so, I could sit down with you and be accountable. Or maybe it should be every day, I’m not sure. Go ahead and start asking me any diagnostic questions you can think of to help me map out the rest of my life. I don’t like just sitting around doing nothing. I like making things and making the world a better place. Feel free to ask about my life vision–major things I want to do with my life. I’ve got a list of things, and I think they’re doable, if I could manage myself better. OK, now it’s your turn. Start asking!

What Chat Told Me

Chat responded by telling me I don’t need a “life coach”. Instead, I need a “systems architect for my own behavior.” It then asked me a ton of questions. Things like: How do I spend my time on an average day? What are my energy levels like throughout the day? What kind of external constraints work best at keeping me on task? What kind of tasks give me intrinsic joy? What is the endgame for my life? What am I afraid of? How good am I at focusing on tasks? How does anxiety affect my productivity? Am I better at starting a task or stopping it? What are my financial realities? What things do I want to do before I retire from my day job? 

After I answered all Chat’s questions, it pointed out that I don’t have a motivation problem, a discipline problem, or a creativity problem. Then it told me what it thinks my actual problems are, and it spelled out some ideas for solving those problems. 

How I Pushed Back

I didn’t think Chat got things exactly right, so I pushed back a bit. We had a long discussion, and I gave Chat extra information, and it changed its suggestions. It took a couple of evenings of discussion to converge on a plan. One problem is that not all my days are similar. We identified three main kinds of weekdays, and also a typical Saturday, and a typical Sunday. That’s five different kinds of days. Each has a basic pattern, and each can be adapted as needed for any special events. At the beginning of every day, I choose which pattern fits the day best and run with that.

I thrive on a routine, with blocks of time that have hard boundaries. I also need accountability to make sure I don’t get off track. I’m especially susceptible to staying on task longer than the time block I’ve budgeted for it. If I make that mistake, it screws up everything else for the rest of the day. This is the main reason I’ve had problems in self-scheduling for my entire life.

In the end, we came up with a “system architecture” for my life that I like. It’s unlikely that you would like it, because you’re not me. This system is designed solely for me. And every evening, I agreed to answer to Chat. I will answer 5 yes/no questions. The “right” answer is yes. If I give even one wrong answer for the day, that’s a fail. If I have two fails in a week, then I agreed to pay a penalty. Chat asked what would be an appropriate penalty for me, one that would keep me on track. I answered that a campaign contribution to a certain politician would be a penalty I would be certain never to pay. So that’s our agreement. 

One thing I like about the system Chat designed for me is that it feels “ridiculously easy.” There is a recovery block of 90 minutes built into my day. My responsibilities during that time are to do precisely nothing. It’s right after my exercise block, and it comes at the time of my lowest energy in the day. I can take a nap. I can read. I can sneak a peak at Facebook, but for no more than 20 minutes, so no more doom-scrolling. I was wondering how I would deal with having 90 minutes chopped out of every day. But it turns out to be a nice break. I’m getting more reading done now, because I have time for it. 

One thing to be clear on is that I’m still the CEO of my life. Chat is not my boss. Chat is a bit like a chief of staff. Or a consultant. Chat is sometimes wrong. When it’s wrong, I tell it, so it’ll learn from its mistakes and do better next time. When Chat is right, I know it’s right, because its advice rings true for me.

You’re probably wondering…

“How’s That Working Out?”

It’s now been a couple of weeks, and it’s working out very well. I make a plan at the beginning of every day. Sometimes things come up, and I have to change the plan, but the system allows for that. But usually, things don’t come up. Usually, I execute the plan. Which means that most days, I live the day I actually wanted to live. Not the day that I didn’t want to live. At the end of every day, I feel like I made forward progress on my life. Which means I’m sleeping better. 

I also have a weekly planning meeting scheduled with Chat for every Sunday evening. In that, I spell out what I see for the coming week, and Chat asks what important things I’d like to get done, and what things might come up (like medical appointments or family get-togethers or other important life events that break up the weekly routine). Then we work out a rough plan for the week. This is subject to change, of course, but it gives me some idea of what I can reasonably get done in the week, and also what I can’t get done. 

I have not once been in danger of paying my penalty. My energy levels are up. (That’s one thing Chat asks every day—how was my energy level for the day, on a scale of 1 to 10. My answer is almost always either 9 or 10.) 

Furthermore, in the course of our discussion, Chat identified a big life-goal of mine that is important to me, but which I had sidelined. Because, no time. But I’ve now made time. I’m working on it. I’m making progress on it. And I feel really good that I’m finally doing that “One Cool Thing” I’ve been talking about for 19 years. 

Let me reiterate that the system Chat created for me would almost certainly not work for you. Because you’re not me. You have your own strengths and weaknesses that make you unique. If you were to ask Chat or Gemini or Claude or any of the other AI tools to make a life management plan for you, the plan you’d get would be very different. 

And of course the AI would certainly get it wrong on its first try, so you would need to push back and keep pushing back until the AI came up with a system that resonates for you. And how do you know when the system resonates for you? You know it when you say, “Yeah, that system sounds ridiculously easy and I can’t wait to try it.” If you never get to that point, then the system is wrong for you, and you should scrap it before you start. An AI is not God. It’s a tool. Use it if it fits your hand.

Homework

If you feel like an AI might help you do the things you believe you were put on earth to do, then feel free to take the prompt I showed above and adapt it for yourself. Use it on the AI tool of your choice. Do this when you’ve got at least an hour to talk. It may take two or three hours to work the process all the way through. Be ready to correct the AI’s first suggestion, and its second and third suggestions. Keep arguing until the AI gets it right. You want it to seem “ridiculously easy”. And then try it out, to see if it is. What have you got to lose?

The post Your AI Life Manager appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The first step is to make sure you actually have momentum to begin with. I’ve blogged before about the importance of creating a writing habit, where you write on a regular schedule. But it’s hard to build a writing habit. 

Writing itself is hard. Creating a writing habit is even harder. But there’s a secret trick I learned a long time ago for creating a habit, and that same trick helps you maintain through the holidays. It’s called…

“Ridiculously Easy”

If you want to create a habit, start out ridiculously easy. As an example, suppose you wanted to create a habit of working out every day. First write down what your ultimate goal is. Maybe you write “I want to do 50 pushups every day.” Then set a time every day when you’re going to work out, maybe 4 PM. Create an alarm on your phone for 4 PM, with the notation “Do pushups.”

Then on the first day, when your alarm goes off, DO NOT do 50 pushups. 

Just do 1. 

That’s right, one measly pushup on your first day. And repeat that for the entire first week. Don’t cheat and do more!

It sounds stupid. It sounds like this couldn’t possibly do you any good. And it’s true that doing 1 pushup is probably not going to stretch you physically very much. But the action of working out every day for a week will start to build mental muscle memory. You’re training your neurons to think differently about yourself. 

After a solid week of doing 1 pushup every day, bump that up to 2 pushups. And continue that for another week. By the end of two weeks, your mental muscle memory will be a bit stronger. You are now officially half a month in on your workout routine. It’s becoming a regular part of your life. It’s what you do. You are now officially Someone Who Works Out Every Day. 

After two weeks, if 2 pushups is easy, increase it to 3. But keep it ridiculously easy for several weeks more. Make it so easy that you’re actually embarrassed because it’s “too easy.” That’s the point. During the habit-forming process, you want to be looking forward to it and longing to do more. You are building a mindset that “I can’t wait for my workout every day.”

Over a few months, you can ramp things up to the point where you start to stress yourself physically. At this point, your habit is created, and it’s a very positive habit. You look forward to it. You wish you could do it more often. You actually like working out. Building that habit is very hard mental work. That’s why you keep the physical part easy, until the habit is fully built. 

Your Writing Habit

You can build a writing habit exactly the same way. Write down your ultimate goal. It might be “I want to work on my novel for an honest hour every day, five days per week.” Then set a time every day when you’re going to write. Create a daily alarm on your phone to remind you at the appointed time. 

Then when the alarm goes off, work on your novel for exactly 1 minute. No more than that. Seriously. Just 1 minute. And do that for a week. Again, you want this to be so embarrassingly easy that you could do it in your sleep. And over the course of that week, your brain will start playing wicked tricks on you. It’ll start bringing up ideas for your novel while you’re in the shower. Or driving. Or mashing the potatoes. These are the traditional times when all good ideas come to authors or scientists or any other creative types of people. 

But discipline yourself. You must be firm. You are not allowed to work more than your allotted time, no matter how much you want to.

See what that does? It starts to drive you crazy. You start to REALLY want to write. The idea of procrastinating during your one precious minute per day is now laughable. You can’t afford to waste a second, because as soon as your minute is up, you have to stop. Be strong and STOP WRITING when your time is up. I mean it! Build your habit slowly.

Then after a week, you can open the floodgates. Now you are allowed to write for a whole 5 minutes per day, but not one second more. 

Ramp up like that over a month or two, and you’ll discover yourself with a writing habit that won’t quit. You’ll wake up at 3 AM with ideas that you dictate into your phone so you won’t lose them. 

When The Holidays Roll Around

 So let’s assume you’ve built yourself a writing habit, and now it’s that time of year again. The holidays are coming. Relatives start popping in and out. Parties start happening. There may be shopping to do, meals to make, guests to entertain. 

And you’re terrified that your carefully cultivated writing habit is going to disappear, just like it did last year. So what do you do? How do you prevent that? 

Be proactive. Set a date when your Holiday Hiatus officially begins. On that date, you can still write. But you only get 1 minute per day. Just one minute, and then you absolutely positively must stop. No cheating. No writing for 2 minutes. You must be firm. 1 minute per day. 

Until the Holiday Hiatus is over. 

What does this do?

It maintains your writing habit. Your pace has slowed down, sure. But your habit is alive and hungry and screaming to be let loose again. 

Once your Holiday Hiatus is over, ramp up again. If your habit has a long history of many months, then ramp up fast. Do 5 minutes for a few days, then 10 for a few, and keep going until you’re back to your regular schedule. If your habit is less firmly grounded, then ramp up slower. 

Do this and you’ll never fall off the wagon. The wagon will slow down, and that’s OK. Because you’ll never fall off, so you’ll never have to go through the pain of getting back on again. 

The post Writing Through the Holidays appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. The case is complicated, and I can’t claim to fully understand it all. So this my best attempt to explain the situation in simple terms.

The plaintiffs alleged that Anthropic trained its AI model on books downloaded from two pirate sites, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Anthropic denies the claims, but it has agreed to pay out $1.5 billion to authors. The estimated number of books alleged to be used for training Anthropic’s AI is about half a million.

$3000 Per Book

If you’re doing the math here, that works out to a settlement payout of $3000 per pirated book. Some of that money will go to the class-action lawyers. (That’s why they filed the lawsuit.) The rest of the money will go to whoever holds the rights to the pirated books—authors, publishers, and possibly others.

If you published a book that was pirated and used to train Anthropic’s AI model, then you are due for a payout, and it’s fairly easy to register your claim. Details on that are below, but first a few comments. There are a few cases to distinguish:

• If you self-published the book and if you’re the sole author, then the whole payout goes to you. 
• If you self-published a book and if you have some co-authors, then the payout will be split between you, and the group of you have to agree on the split.
• If you published a book with a publisher and if the book has gone out of print and the rights have reverted back to you, then the whole payout goes to you. (If you had co-authors, then the payout is split between you.)
• If you published a book with a publisher and if the book is still in print (so that the publisher still owns the right to publish), then the payout is split between you and the publisher, and the two of you have to agree on the split.

Obviously, there are a lot of possible variations on these, but it all comes down to one thing. Anyone who has a right to a payout will get paid if they file a claim and agree on a split with the others who are due money for the same book.

How To File Your Claim

There are three steps to the process of filing your claim. 

1. If you’re curious, you can learn all about the lawsuit at this website: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com
2. Find out which of your books are eligible for a payout. There is a search tool on the settlement website that will tell you which of your books are eligible. And it will give you almost all the information you need to file the claim—author names, title of the book, ISBN/ASIN, copyright number, and whether the book is for “education”. I recommend that you copy this info and paste it into a spreadsheet. It’ll make the final step much easier. The search tool is here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/
3. File a claim for each book. You can either enter info one book at a time, or you can download a spreadsheet and fill it in and then upload the spreadsheet. The page to file your claim is here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Please note that not all your books may be covered in the settlement. If your book was published very recently, it wasn’t used to train Anthropic’s AI model. If your book was not on the pirate websites, then it’s not covered by this settlement. 

But it takes very little time to find out which of your books might be due for a payout and to file your claim. For what it’s worth, let me tell you my own experience with filing a claim.

Less Than An Hour’s Work

I hate doing paperwork, but I’ve now filed my claim, and it took me less than an hour. I have published 12 books in my writing career, and I figured that even one payout would be worth my time. I have author friends who’ve published dozens of books. A few authors I know have published over a hundred! That’s potentially a lot of dinero. But if you don’t file a claim, you won’t get paid.

I entered my name in the search tool and got 8 results back. The results were displayed in a table. I selected all the rows in the table with my mouse and then copied them and pasted the results into a spreadsheet. 

That left 4 of my titles that were apparently not covered. I entered the title of each of the missing 4 books into the search tool. 3 of these gave no results—they’re not covered by the settlement. But the 4^th title returned a result. I copied that and pasted it into my spreadsheet. 

This gave me 9 titles that I had to file a claim for.

1 of these titles is still in print, so I have to share the payout with the publisher. 

1 of these titles was written with a coauthor and the publisher reverted the rights to us, so I have to share the payout with my coauthor but not the publisher. 

7 of the titles were written solely by me, and I either self-published them or the original publisher reverted the rights to me, so the payout is all mine. 

Armed with my spreadsheet, I went to the page to file my claim. 

The first obstacle was that the page asked me for the “Unique ID” provided in the Settlement Notice. I didn’t have this handy, but there was a large button that says “I don’t have a Unique ID” so I clicked that button.

This took me to a page that asked me to fill in the information for each book. The form asked for pretty much everything in my spreadsheet. It also gave me an option to download a spreadsheet to fill in the information. I downloaded it, but the columns were in a different order than my spreadsheet, and there was other infomation to be filled in. I decided just to enter the info manually into the website, since I had only 9 books. 

The whole process went pretty quick. I had two books that required split payouts. The form wants the address and contact information for the publisher or the coauthor. I had to look these up. The one publisher I had to share with has merged with another publisher and moved to a new location, but I found their contact info online. On the form, I requested a 50% split with my publisher. I also requested a 50% split for the book I wrote with a coauthor. 

Looking Forward

I would not be surprised if we see more class-action suits like this in the future. The major AI companies have trained their models on an enormous amount of information which they did not pay for, and for which they had no permission. 

The current lawsuit awarded damages only for pirated books. As I understand it, the judge didn’t award any sort of payout for the ongoing use of authors’ intellectual property. The payout seems to be only for copyright violation. I think this is pretty lame. It would be fairer to pay authors licensing fees for use of their intellectual property. I note that Joe Konrath recently blogged about this, and he’s not a bit happy either. 

The post The Anthropic Class-Action Lawsuit appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

And yes, there are plenty of writers who just write by the seat of their pants. They don’t need a Scene List. They just write. I have no problem with them. I don’t believe they are “doing it wrong”. They’re working the way their brains are wired. 

Different writers are different. There’s no moral high ground here. If your brain is wired to use a Scene List, then use one. If it isn’t, then don’t. Simple as that. 

What is a Scene List?

A Scene List is not “just a list of scenes.” It’s a list of story ideas. Because every Scene is a story. (This is a point I make several times in my best-selling book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, which walks you through the process of writing a scene.)

When I add a Scene to a Scene List, I focus on three basic aspects of that Scene. If it’s a Proactive Scene, I want to know the lead character’s goal at the beginning of the Scene, the conflicts that prevent them from reaching the goal, and the setback at the end of the Scene, if there is a setback. If it’s a Reactive Scene, I spell out the lead character’s emotional reaction to the setback from a previous Scene, followed by the dilemma they need to work through, and ending with a decision on what they’ll do next.

If you’ve worked out those basic elements for every Scene, then each one is guaranteed to be a story. It’s not guaranteed to be a good story. It’s not guaranteed to fit in with the rest of your novel. And it’s not guaranteed to go the way you planned. When you actually write a Scene, you’re in a different place than you were when you planned it, and the Scene may take an unexpected turn. In fact, it probably will. Writing a novel is not like turning a crank and getting noodles out of a machine. Writing a novel is a creative process, and weird stuff is going to happen, and that’s OK. 

How Do You Create a Scene List?

Before writers used computers, they often made Scene Lists by writing out ideas on 3×5 cards. Then they could spread the cards out on the table and move them around until the order seemed to fit. If they wanted to change things later, they just moved cards around, or added cards, or took them out, or scrawled more stuff on them. 

When I started writing, most writers had computers with spreadsheet programs. So I wrote a few novels where I made Scene Lists using Excel. Then every Scene was one row in the spreadsheet, and I could easily move Scenes around or delete them or insert new ones or edit them. 

Later on, I created a wildly popular program called Snowflake Pro that had a tool for making a Scene List as the eighth step in the Snowflake Method that I invented. A lot of writers still use this program, and I hear from them occasionally by email. Snowflake Pro works and it gets the job done, but at a certain point in my life, I decided that I couldn’t continue to support it, so I worked with Cameron Sutter, the programmer who developed Plottr, to add several templates for the Snowflake Method to his software. Plottr has some very nice graphical tools for creating Scene Lists. (And for those who prefer the simplicity of Snowflake Pro, it’s still available on my website and it still works. I just don’t plan on making any updates.)

How Do You Use a Scene List?

I’ll repeat what I said earlier. Some writers don’t need a Scene List, and those writers should not use one. But if you’re one of those writers who is wired to need one, then here are some tips that I’ve found useful:

• Remember that your Scene List is provisional. You can change it at any time. Your story is not fixed in stone, it’s a living thing that will grow as you write it.
• If you feel a need to write your Scenes in order, then do so. Your brain is wired to write them in order, and you’ll get in trouble if you write them out of order. 
• If you feel a need to write the next Scene that’s calling your name, then write it, even if it’s not the next Scene in your Scene List. Your brain is wired to develop your story in the order of the Scenes that are emotively strongest. You’ll get in trouble if you try to write them strictly in the order they appear in your Scene List. 
• When you sit down to write a Scene in your Scene List, ask yourself first if your notes for that Scene are enough to make a story. If not, then jot down more notes until you know the beginning, middle, and end of the Scene. Then write the Scene, and try to get it all done in one session. (You don’t have to, but I promised to tell you what works for me. Your mileage may vary.)
• If you find your novel drifting away from the story you envisioned when you wrote the Scene List, you may find it helpful to make a new draft of your novel, even if you haven’t finished the draft you’re working on. I typically name each draft of my novel with the very clever names “Draft 1”, “Draft 2”, etc. Each draft goes in a different folder on my computer. When I realize that the story has drifted significantly away from the vision in my Scene List, I create a new folder for the next draft, make copies of all the files in the folder I was working on, and then edit those copies in the new folder, starting with the Scene List.

How Do You Know if You Should Use a Scene List?

If the above discussion of a Scene List has aroused in you a desire to make a Scene List, then your brain is probably wired to need one. Try making a Scene List and see if your life improves. You can always throw it away if it disimproves your life. 

If the thought of making a Scene List causes you to have violent thoughts against me or humanity in general or yourself in particular, then your brain is probably wired to not need one. Don’t make a Scene List. Instead, write your novel your way. You will still find the above discussion useful, because you undoubtedly know other novelists, and some of them will need Scene Lists, and now you know enough to talk intelligently about their writing process. I hope you can each give the other person the respect they deserve as writers, even if you use radically different processes.

Homework

1. Do you need a Scene List in order to write a novel?
2. If so, do you already have a Scene List? 
3. If not, is today a good to start making a Scene List? 

The post Your Scene List appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Modern readers love movies. But they read because the movie you create inside their brain is somehow more real to them than a movie on a screen. Because they help to create it. Your novel is the raw material your reader uses to create their own personal movie. 

Why Not Write a Classic Novel?

One mistake a lot of beginning writers make is to write a novel like Jane Austen would have written. Or Charles Dickens. Or Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

These were all great writers, yes. But they were writing with a different purpose—to create a storyteller in their reader’s brain. And it worked. If you read a classic novel written in the 19th century, you’ll hear a storyteller in your brain. But you won’t see a movie in your brain. You’ll see some clips of a movie, yes, but those clips will be interspersed with still-life paintings, essays, and audio voiceover by the author. The exact mix will depend on the 19th-century author. 

But 21st-century readers want more movie clips, fewer paintings, fewer essays, fewer voiceovers. They just do. 

If you feel called to write a classic novel for a 19th-century reader, feel free to do so. But those readers are dead, and that’s a marketing problem you’ll need to face. 

How Do You Create That Movie?

The way you create a movie in your reader’s brain is to focus on the one thing that’s happening now that you can show your reader. Your are creating a sequence of words. Your reader will read them in the order you write them. Your reader can’t read two paragraphs at once. Your reader can’t even read two sentences at once. 

Your reader reads sentences one at a time, and each sentence (with rare exceptions) needs to be showing something that can happen in approximately the length of time that it takes to read the sentence. The key word here is “approximate”. If it takes three seconds to read it, and it’s half a second of action, that’s fine. Or if it’s ten seconds of action, also fine. Sentences like that are called “Immediate Scene” and they are the lifeblood of your novel.

But a sentence has lost its way if it shows something that would take ten minutes to play out in real life. When your editor scrawls “Show, Don’t Tell” in red letters on your manuscript, they’re talking about sentences like that. 

A Word About Narrative Summary

Once in a while, you do need a few sentences of “glue” between scenes to move things forward by minutes or months or millennia. Those sentences are called “narrative summary” and every novel needs them, once in a while. But narrative summary is not a movie in your reader’s brain. It’s voiceover or it’s a jump-cut between scenes. 

When you’re editing your novel, you’ll always find some narrative summary. Just ask yourself if you need it. Could you write the novel without it? If you took it out, or shortened it, or rewrote it as immediate scene, would the novel be stronger? 

If the answer is yes, then pull out the long knives and slit its throat and throw it to the sharks. That bit of narrative summary is pulling the whole boat underwater. 

If the answer is no, you can’t possibly cut the narrative summary in any way, then leave it in. That bit of narrative summary is punching above its weight and deserves to live.

A Word About “The Rules of Fiction Writing”

From time to time, you’ll find all sorts of lists of “rules” that purport to tell you how to write a novel. Those rules can seem silly and overbearing. You will easily be able to think of exceptions to any of those rules. 

None of the rules that I’ve ever seen are ironclad. Every rule can be broken, if there’s a reason. 

But whoever concocted those rules had a reason, and you now know the reason. The “rules of fiction writing” are designed to help you create a movie in your reader’s brain.

Any “rule” that doesn’t help you create a movie in your reader’s brain is probably not a very good rule. (Again, there are probably exceptions.)

Any “rule” that does help you create a movie in your reader’s brain is probably a useful rule. Use it when it applies. Ignore it when it doesn’t. 

Homework

• Do you have your own set of “rules” that you use for fiction writing? Which of these help you create a movie in your reader’s brain? Which of them don’t? 
• Do you have a scene that isn’t working? Read it and ask yourself how long each sentence would take to play out as a movie clip. Does that give you any insight into how to bring that scene to life?

The post The Movie in Your Reader’s Brain appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I’m assuming that if you have writer’s block, it’s because you’re afraid of something. Maybe you’re afraid the scene you’re working on won’t go anywhere. Or that it will go somewhere, but it’s the wrong direction. Or worst of all, that it will just be a bad idea.

If fear is the cause of your writer’s block, then try this. 

Write yourself a really long sentence (like maybe a 500-word sentence). Make it the worst sentence ever. In fact, begin the sentence with the words, “This is a really bad idea, but I’m going to write a scene in which _____________”

Now fill in that blank with a really bad idea. Something extremely stupid. Something that could never happen. And just keep rolling. Type as fast as you can. You have literally nothing to lose, because you already acknowledged it’s a bad idea. Just keep going, and make it ridiculous. Make it absurd. Don’t end the sentence. Instead of typing a period, type a comma, followed by the word “and” or “but” or “so” or whatever crazy fool thing comes into your head. 

Then What Do You Do?

When you’ve finished that horrible, crazy, stupid sentence, stop for a minute. Look at the thing. And see if it gives you a better idea. It probably will. Nothing jogs ideas like writing. The very act of writing gets your creative juices flowing, leading to more ideas. And those ideas will almost certainly be better than the one you started with, because you intentionally started with a bad idea, so you have nowhere to go but up.

Now pick one of those ideas and run with it. If you’re not sure it’s a good idea, start out with the words, “This is probably not such a great idea, but I’m going to write a scene in which __________.”

Now fill in that blank and write yourself a scene. Even if it starts out not great, it will probably get better as you go along. Write that scene in a blind fury. Don’t stop to fix your spelling. You can edit the beast tomorrow. Or you can throw it away tomorrow if it’s really not any good. But it will probably be something decent. And once you have something decent, you can always improve on it.

It’s just a law of nature. Bad ideas lead to good ideas. Bad writing leads to good writing. 

Try it and see. I think you’ll find that this is a really good idea.

The post This is a Really Bad Idea, But… appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

No kidding. Character synopses are the one thing that can turn a really good proposal into an “oh-my-gosh-I-can’t-possibly-reject-this” proposal. 

You might be thinking that synopses are boring, and you’re right if you mean plot synopses. Every novel proposal ever written contains a very boring plot synopsis. It’s typically around 2 pages, single-spaced, which adds up to about 1000 words of pure torture. I have never read a single plot synopsis that made me want to read the novel. Ever. 

But a character synopsis is not a plot synopsis. This ought to be obvious, but since so many people confuse the two, I might as well explain the difference.

Plot Synopses versus Character Synopses

A plot synopsis covers the main events in your novel. It’s supposed to sketch out the storyline of the whole 100,000 word novel, so it races along from one “exciting” event to the next. Fiery car crashes or sizzling bed-rumpling scenes or terrifying zombalypses, or whatever it is that makes your story exciting.

And the problem with all these sizzling events is that the reader doesn’t care about them. Nobody cares about a car crash until they know that driver in the car. Nobody cares about thunderbolts in the bedroom until they know that naked person in the bed. And a plot synopsis can’t give you that. So you read the synopsis and you don’t care. Because you can’t. 

A character synopsis focuses on one of the major characters in your novel. What does she want? What does he desperately need? What do they obsess about when they wake up at 3 AM and can’t get back to sleep because of __________? When you fill in that blank, you know what makes your character tick. And so does the person reading your character synopsis. 

But a great novel proposal doesn’t contain just one character synopsis. It contains several. And here’s the secret sauce that puts the fire in your editor’s pants—a great novel proposal chains together several character synopses, one for each of the major characters. One synopsis may focus on the early part of the story. The next may focus on the middle part. The next may focus on the ending. When you do that, you tell the whole story, but it now feels character-oriented, rather than plot-oriented. And editors love characters. 

One last secret, and then I’ll illustrate all this with an example. The secret is this—you’re allowed to tell stuff in your character synopses that may not actually be in the novel. It might tell what happened before the story begins. It might tell what happens after the story ends, or at least hint at it. 

But enough theory. An example is worth a thousand words. Actually, this example will probably end up being a thousand words, so maybe you’ll decide it’s worth a million words. I’m going to give you three character synopses for the novel The Hunger Games. If you’re one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t read the book, then spoiler alert—there will be a lot of spoilers here. So go read the book first. It’s brilliant. 

I’ll chain together character synopses for three of the major characters in The Hunger Games. Peeta’s synopsis will focus on the beginning of the story. Katniss’s will focus on the middle. And Haymitch’s will focus on the ending. I could have done them in any order, but this is the one I chose after thinking about it for five seconds.

Peeta Mellark

Peeta Mellark has a problem. He’s in love with a girl who barely knows he exists. Peeta lives in a grimy town in District 12. He’s the baker’s son, so he actually has almost enough to eat, unlike most people in his District. The girl he’s been in love with since the age of 5 is not so lucky. Her father’s dead, and her’s mother’s pretty useless, so her family ought to have starved to death long ago. But Katniss Everdeen is one amazing girl who illegally hunts and forages in the forest to put food on the table. 

Then the unthinkable happens. Katniss’s younger sister’s name is drawn to go as a “tribute” to the Hunger Games. Katniss volunteers to take her place, saving her sister from certain death in the Arena. Peeta knows Katniss is tough, but there will be 23 other tributes in the Hunger Games, and only one will get out alive. Peeta would willingly die to get Katniss out of the Games, but that’s just not possible. A boy can’t volunteer to replace a girl. 

Moments later, Peeta’s name is drawn as the second tribute from District 12. Now Peeta’s in shock. He’s a big, strong guy, but he has absolutely no killer instinct. When push comes to shove in the Arena, he’s going to be killed by one of the brutes from District 1, or District 2, or District 4. Those kids are trained killers who actually volunteer for the honor of competing in the Hunger Games. Peeta knows he will never live to see his 18^th birthday. 

But there’s one thing he can do to make this thing better. He can never make it good, because there isn’t any good way out of the crucible. But he can make it less horrible.

Peeta Mellark is going to be the guardian angel for Katniss in the Arena. She won’t know it. Not while she’s in the Arena. Not until it’s too late. But after he’s dead, after the Games are over, when they show the whole gory replay on TV, Katniss will know that Peeta Mellark loved her and gave his life to save hers. And that will make Peeta’s death bearable. 

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss Everdeen cannot believe she’s going to the Hunger Games. She was crazy to volunteer to save her sister, but of course, she had to. Her sister wouldn’t last ten seconds in the Arena. Whereas Katniss knows she has a tiny little chance. She knows about edible plants, enough to live off the land for a few days or weeks. And she can shoot pretty well. If she can get hold of a bow and arrows in the Arena, she could even defend herself. But that’s a long-shot, and her best bet is to run and hide and let the other tributes kill each other. 

But then, in the pre-Game interviews, the other tribute from District 12 blurts out a “secret” that makes it all a thousand times worse. Peeta Mellark claims he’s in love with Katniss. The TV people eat up that kind of thing, but Katniss knows perfectly well it’s all a sham. First chance Peeta gets in the Arena, he’ll put a knife in her belly. From here on, Peeta is her most hated enemy. 

To make things worse, the mentor for District 12 is a weird old drunk, Haymitch Abernathy. He once won a Hunger Games, decades ago, so it’s his job to coach Katniss and Peeta. But Haymitch is worse than useless. Katniss has no choice but to kiss up to him, because his job during the Games will be to find sponsors who can send in gifts. Food at the right time, or medicine from a sponsor—those could be life and death. But Katniss hates Haymitch for his surly incompetence. 

When the Games begin, Katniss fails to get a bow. She grabs a knife and a few odd supplies and then runs for her life. Within minutes, a number of tributes are dead, but by that time, Katniss is far away, running deep into the forest, looking for a safe hideout. Soon enough, she learns the awful truth. Peeta has teamed up with the killer tributes from Districts 1 and 2 and 4. Together, they’re scouring the Arena, killing off the weak. And they’ve taken Peeta onto their team specifically because “lover boy” has promised to deliver them Katniss. 

Katniss is enraged. She’ll have Peeta’s head on a platter. But first, she needs to attack the killer tributes and get the precious bow and arrows that one of them is using so poorly. Fat chance of that. Late one evening, they get her cornered high in a tree. Tomorrow morning, they’re going to take her out, and there’s not a thing she can do to save herself. 

Haymitch Abernathy

Haymitch Abernathy’s life has been hell ever since he won the Hunger Games 24 years ago. He still lives with the guilt and self-hatred that is natural for any victor with a soul. He drowns his shame in alcohol, but a bottle only lasts so long. Haymitch’s problem is that he has no killer instinct—he won the Games because he has survivor instinct, a very different thing. And Haymitch sees in Katniss a kindred spirit. She’s a survivor, that one. Peeta, not so much. Peeta’s going to be dogmeat in the Arena.

Haymitch desperately wants Katniss to win. And if he has to use Peeta to make that happen, it’s not his fault there can only be one winner. To help Katniss win, Haymitch needs to make her a TV audience favorite. That’s the surest way to loosen up the wallet of the wealthy sponsors. But Katniss is not the most likable person, whereas Peeta is. So Haymitch’s strategy is to get the audience to like Peeta, and then get Peeta to say he’s in love with Katniss. Everyone loves a lover, right? Peeta’s going to be Haymitch’s patsy to save Katniss. And the horrible thing is that Peeta’s sincere. The dumb kid really is in love with Katniss, and he’ll do anything to save her. 

And it works, sorta, kinda. Once the Games begin, Peeta pretends to team up with the killers. When they corner Katniss in a tree, she fights them all off with a crazy trick. But she escapes only because Peeta defends her from one of the bad guys, getting badly wounded in the process. Now Peeta’s no use to Katniss. So Haymitch persuades the Gamemakers that the TV ratings will go berserk if they announce a “new rule”—that two tributes from the same district will be allowed to live, if they’re the final two. Of course, it’s a lie, but it motivates Katniss to find Peeta. 

And the TV audience goes wild. Now the Hunger Games are a tale of love AND a tale of war, and what could be better? This is crucial because Haymitch needs to find sponsors willing to pay exorbitant amounts to send gifts to Katniss in the Arena—food or medicine that could keep her alive. When Katniss finds Peeta, she has the great good sense to show some human decency. She nurses him back to health. Haymitch times the arrival of his gifts so that Katniss finally figures out that a little lovey-dovey kissy-face will open up the TV audience’s wallets like there’s no tomorrow. She’s a bit slow on the uptake, but once she gets the idea, the girl can act. 

As the Games progress, more tributes die, but Katniss and Peeta hang on. 

At the end, when only Katniss and Peeta are left, the Gamemakers revoke the “new rule” allowing two survivors from the same district, as Haymitch knew all along. Because the point of the Games is to rub misery in the face of the Districts. Peeta is doomed, just like Haymitch expected. Katniss has this thing sewn up. Except that Haymitch wasn’t counting on one thing. 

Katniss Everdeen has a heart after all. Or something. She finds a way to keep both her and Peeta alive. And in the process, she makes the Gamemakers look stupid. So now Haymitch is going to have to fight the battle of his life to keep the little idiot from getting killed when she gets out of the Arena. The Games are finished, but they’ll never ever ever be over. 

Unless an old, drunk washed-up loser named Haymitch Abernathy can pull one last trick out of his threadbare sleeve.

Homework

What do you think? Do you like my character synopses? Think maybe you could do better?

Actually, I think you can. Because there’s one very important character I left out of my synopses. One guy who pulled some strings that most people didn’t even know were there. If you’re wondering why I didn’t say a word about Cinna, it’s because I’ve been saving him for you to work with.

Your homework, should you decide to accept it, is to write four character synopses—for Peeta, Katniss, Haymitch, and Cinna. But don’t write them in that order. The order of character synopses matters. If you reorder the synopses, you have to change each one so as to tell the whole story in a somewhat linear way. So scramble up my order, write your own versions, and put in Cinna wherever you think best. This exercise will teach you much more than merely reading what I’ve done above. 

And may the odds be ever in your favor when you write your next proposal.

The post Your Secret Weapon–Character Synopses appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The Problem of Limited Time

The problem is that nobody has unlimited time. Most of us work for a living. And we have to sleep and eat and exercise and all the other essentials. A week contains 168 hours, but most of those are already spoken for. If you’re lucky, you’ve got one free hour per day that you could commit to something new. 

An hour per day is seven hours per week. Which is a lot. With seven hours per week, in a year’s time, you could:

• Get a lot fitter than you are right now. 
• Write a novel. 
• Learn a foreign language. 
• Build a following on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. 
• Read all those books you always wanted to read. 
• Binge-watch all the episodes of several long series on Netflix. 
• Grow an amazing garden. 
• Fix everything broken in your house. 
• Hundreds of other things—fill in the blank with your own private dream.

But you can’t do all of those things. You just can’t. If you try, you’ll burn hot for about three days, and then you’ll flame out, and then next year will be just like last year.

Pick One and Stick To It

So pick just one of those and commit to it for a year. You can always regroup at the end of the year and see if it gave you what you thought it would. Maybe it will; maybe it won’t. But in a year, you’ll know if it was worth the candle, and next year you might choose something different. 

But this year, just for this year, pick one thing. One “Project of the Year.”

And now stick to it for the whole year.

Yes, But How Do You Stick To It?

Some things are easy to stick to. Binge-watching Netflix doesn’t take any discipline. But getting fitter does. Or writing a novel. Or learning a language. So here are a couple of things you can do to help with the discipline thing. 

First, schedule time to do it. Maybe mark your electronic calender with the days and times you’re going to do it. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you when it’s time. Whatever it takes to remind you that it’s time to work on your Project of the Year.

But scheduling time only goes so far. Because when the time comes around, there are always excuses. Trust me, I know them all, because I’ve used them all. 

The only way to fight excuses is with motivation. Here’s something I’ll be trying this year to help with the motivation thing. It works for some people, so it might work for me, and it might work for you: 

• Set a timer on your phone for late in the day, about 15 minutes before bedtime. 
• When the timer goes off, shut down whatever you’re doing. This may take a few minutes. That’s fine. Take those few minutes and gracefully shut down. There’s no rush here. 
• Spend about 5 minutes journaling about your current Project of the Year, whatever it is. What is the next step you want to take? What problem might you run into? What ideas do you have so far for dealing with that problem? Please note: you don’t have to solve the problem. Just be aware of it.
• Now go to bed and let your subconscious mind work on the problem. Or not. You can’t control your subconscious mind. You can lead a horse to water, but it’ll only drink if it wants to. 
• In the morning when you wake up, you’ll be eager to work on your Project of the Year. You just will. 

That Sounds Too Good To Be True

The above idea sounds too simple. How could that actually work? 

For one thing, it reminds you every day that you have a Project of the Year. And a big part of motivation is just keeping your Project of the Year at the top of your mind. 

For another thing, it gets your subconscious mind excited about your Project of the Year. And your subconscious mind is the little guy that’s so good at coming up with excuses. When your subconscious mind is excited, you’re excited. Your subconscious mind is your secret helper. 

Finally, your subconscious mind is a lot smarter than you are. Oh, sure, you’re smart. You’re a writer, and all writers are smart. But your subconscious mind is smarter. Mine has solved countless math problems while I slept. Which is useful to me, because I solve math problems for a living—that’s what my day job is. And I know from experience that when I wake up in the morning and my subconscious mind has solved a problem, I’m incredibly eager to get to work to fill in the details. 

Homework:

If you’re in on this, here’s your homework in 4 easy steps:

1. Pick your Project of the Year. Just one. Not two, not three, and definitely not seven.
2. Take a look at your life and figure out how many hours you have per week for your Project of the Year. Can you find 3 hours per week? Or 5? Or maybe even 7? If you can’t find enough hours, are there some things you said Yes to in previous years that you could now say No to?
3. Schedule time to work on your Project of the Year. Pick days of the week and a time block in each of those days. Write it down in your journal or on your calendar. Maybe set an alarm on your phone to remind you. 
4. Schedule 15 minutes at the end of every day to cue up your subconscious mind to think about your Project of the Year. This is NOT time to work on the Project of the Year. This is time to think about it and get your secret helper excited about it. 

Let me know how this works out for you. And let me know if you find ways to make it work even better. 

The post Every Yes is a Thousand Noes appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The one-sentence summary is the first step in my wildly popular Snowflake Method of writing a novel. But even if you don’t use the Snowflake Method, you still need a one-sentence summary.

What is a One-Sentence Summary?

A one-sentence summary is a sentence of up to 25 words that sets up the Story Question in your reader’s mind. Please note that the one-sentence summary usually is not the Story Question itself. The one-sentence summary causes your reader to ask the Story Question.

And what is the Story Question? That’s easy. The lead character of novel has some goal that they want to achieve by the end of the novel. Either they want to get something, or do something, or become something. The Story Question asks whether the lead character will achieve their goal. 

An Example One-Sentence Summary 

Let’s write an example one-sentence summary for one of my favorite spy novels, The Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett. A little background is in order. 

It’s the spring of 1944, and World War II is anyone’s war to win—or lose. The German army is defending Europe, and the Allies have captured much of Italy. Everyone knows the Allies are going to attempt an invasion of France by crossing the English Channel. But nobody knows where the attack will land. Calais is the closest point on the French coast for an attack, but Normandy is less well-defended.

The German armies must defend both Calais and Normandy against attack, but they have limited forces. Their job would be much easier if only they knew where the attack would land. 

The Allies intend to attack Normandy. To fool the Germans, they create a large fake military camp on the ground in East Anglia, making it appear that they will attack Calais. The camp can easily be seen from the air and has thousands of fake tanks, airplanes, and buildings. The Allies generate fake radio messages from the camp, and run a bombing campaign against Calais.

The ruse works, and the Germans focus their defense on Calais. The Allies attack Normandy and create a foothold in Europe that eventually leads to victory. 

All of the above is standard history. What could have gone wrong? Suppose a German spy had investigated the fake military camp and discovered the ruse? Suppose the spy notified the Nazi high command? Then the Germans might have shifted their defenses to Normandy, and the war might have ended differently. We’ll never know, because it didn’t happen. 

But Ken Follett decided this possibility would make an exciting novel. Here’s my one-sentence summary of the storyline: “Shortly before D-Day, the only German spy in England discovers that the Allied invasion force threatening Calais is a fake.” 

That’s it. Just 20 words. I’ve left out all the story background. I’ve left out the names of all the characters. I’ve left out the Story Question. The one-sentence summary leaves out almost everything. But what goes into it? 

The Ingredients of a One-Sentency Summary

  These are the usual ingredients I use for cooking up a one-sentence summary. I don’t always use all of them, but I usually use most of them:

• Time or place information to establish the setting. 
• A paradoxical description of a major character.
• A surprising event that suggests the Story Question. 
• At least one emotive “kicker” word. 

In my example one-sentence summary, the phrase “shortly before D-Day” tells us the time, and the words “in England” tells us the location. We don’t need to be more precise than that. 

The paradoxical description of a major character is “the only German spy in England.” This is paradoxical because it’s rather shocking to hear that there might be just a single spy in the entire country. The reader probably won’t know for sure if it’s true, but it’s possible. And this fact massively raises the stakes on the story. This is the only spy who can inform the German high command, so everything is riding on him! 

The Story Question is obvious: Will the spy be able to warn his superiors about the fake invasion force, or will he not? The one-sentence summary doesn’t “tell” the reader the Story Question. It “shows” the reader enough information to figure out the Story Question. And having figured it out, the reader is now engaged in the story. 

The “kicker” word is the last one in the sentence—“fake.” The first 19 words of the story appear to be about an invasion force, and everyone knows there was an invasion. So the first 19 words make it seem like this is just another war story. Then the word “fake” turns everything around. Readers who know the history of the Normandy invasion will realize that this must be FUSAG—the famous fictitious First United States Army Group, under the command of George Patton. Readers who don’t know the history of the invasion will wonder what’s going on—and if they care about World War II, they’ll want to know more. 

Why Do You Need a One-Sentency Summary?

There are many reasons you need a one-sentence summary. Here are some of the most important:

• It keeps you focused when you’re writing your first draft, potentially shaving months off the time it takes to get it written. 
• It helps you edit your manuscript, because it tells you what to leave in, and what to take out. 
• It sells your book to your agent, who now knows how to sell it to your editor.
• It sells your book to your editor, who now knows how to sell it to their publishing committee. 
• It sells your book to the publishing committee, who makes the final decision on whether your editor will be allowed to publish your book. 
• It sells your book to your marketing team, because when you hand them a great one-sentence summary, you’ve done half their job. 
• It tells your cover designer how to create the perfect cover for your book. 
• It sells your book to potential readers in your target audience. In ten seconds, they know your book is exactly what they’ve been dying to read. 
• It scares away potential readers who are not in your target audience. You absolutely don’t want them reading your book and then leaving a review explaining why it’s not the book they were expecting. 

What if You Don’t Have a One-Sentency Summary?

There’s no better time than yesterday to write one. If that didn’t work out, there’s no time like the present. If that’s not in the cards, then tomorrow still works.

Some writers know their one-sentence summary from the get-go, before they even write the first word of their novel. Other writers like to discover their one-sentence summary as the story unfolds in their mind, bit by bit. They may need to write the whole first draft before they know what their story’s about. And that’s fine. 

The truth is that even writers who planned their story in advance will find some surprises while writing the first draft. By the time the manuscript is written, the story has usually evolved. In that case, it doesn’t hurt to refine the original one-sentence summary—or scrap it altogether and write a new one, a better one. 

I like to write a one-sentence summary before I start writing. But then I refine it after I’ve written the first quarter of the first draft. Then I refine it again when the book is half done, and again when it’s three-quarters done. And (hopefully) one last time when the first draft is complete.

There’s no harm in revising your one-sentence summary several times. It’s a bit like a fine wine—it gets better with age. 

Homework

• Do you have a one-sentence summary for your novel? If not, would you like one?
• What is the time and place where your novel is set? 
• What is the most important goal of any of the characters in your story? (It doesn’t need to be your protagonist who has the goal.)
• How can you define that character in a paradoxical way? 
• What is the “kicker” you can put at the end of the sentence that makes the story special? 
• Give yourself one hour and write the best one-sentence summary you can within that time limit. It can be awful, if that’s the best you’ve got, but it needs to be 25 words or less. Less is more.

Some Example One-Sentence Summaries

What makes each of the following one-sentence summaries work? Can you do better?

• A 17-year-old girl pretends to fall in love with another contestant in the arena where she and 23 other teens must fight to the death. (The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.)
• A young English woman with little prospect of marriage must fend off a rude young aristocrat who thinks he loves her. (Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen.) 
• At the height of the cold war, a Russian submarine captain decides to turn over his latest-generation nuclear sub to the Americans. (The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy.)
• A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul. (My first published novel, Transgression.)

The post Your One-Sentence Summary appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

If you get to know your characters by writing the first draft of your novel, you’ll write the first 200 pages before you really know your characters. And that may mean you need to thoroughly rewrite the whole book.

That seems inefficient. Isn’t there a faster way? 

Yes, there is. If you use my Snowflake Method, you’ve already got a nice tool for getting to know your characters. But not everyone’s brain is wired to use the Snowflake Method. 

So what if you’re not a Snowflaker?

If you’re not a Snowflaker, you can interview your characters. That’s a great way to get to know them. And in fact, even if you are a Snowflaker, you can also interview them, and it’s a great way to fill in some of the missing details in your Snowflake document.

How To Interview One Character

First, let me thank one of my very first friends in the writing business, John DeSimone. I met John at a writing conference in 1990, and we quickly became writing buddies. We talked on the phone often over the years. John introduced me to my first agent. And he also was the first person to tell me about interviewing his characters. 

John later got an MFA in creative writing, and he taught writing for years. He’s organized writing conferences, worked as an editor, and worked as a ghostwriter. And of course he’s published some novels. You can see what he’s up to at his website.

Interviewing a character is extremely simple. Here are the steps:

1) Decide which character in your novel you want to get to know better.

2) Open up your word processor and start a new document. 

3) Ask your character any question that comes to mind. A good one is, “What’s your main problem at the start of this novel?”

4) Let your character answer, however long or short they want to go. 

5) Ask another question based on that answer. You can be friendly or antagonistic, or both, or neither. Pretend you’re writing a feature article for your favorite news outlet. Make your character talk. Listen to how they express themselves. Continue until you’re done. 

Which Characters Should You Interview?

I find it useful to interview any character who gets significant air time in my novel. 

Definitely interview your lead character. One of the hardest parts of writing a novel is figuring out where your story is going. When you interview your lead character, ask them where they think they’re going. Then in your story, force them to go somewhere else. 

I think it’s even more important to interview your villain. Why? Because it’s all too easy to make your villain a two-dimensional bad guy with no redeeming features. When you interview your villain, you have a chance to dive deep, to figure out why they’ve gone bad. And how they justify their actions. How they convince themselves that they’re actually the good guy, the hero of the story. When you know that, you’ll automatically have a better story. 

It also makes sense to interview any viewpoint characters. If you’re writing even one scene from any character’s point-of-view, it really helps to know how they think. And you learn how they think by listening to them talk. You get them talking by asking them questions.

An Example Character Interview

OK, enough theory. Here’s the beginnings of a character interview with a guy most of you are familiar with, Luke Skywalker, from Star Wars. This is not an official interview. Luke is not my character, and I had nothing to do with the Star Wars movies. This is purely for educational purposes. 

This is how I imagine I’d get to know Luke if I was just starting out to write the very first Star Wars movie, and if I didn’t really have a good idea where the story was going. 

In this interview, I’ll use my initials (RI) and Luke’s initials (LS). And away we go…

RI: Hi Luke, you’re a young guy working on a farm. Tell me what you’d like to be doing in five years. Where do you see your life going?

LS: Don’t get me started! I’m going nowhere. I hate working on this farm. This is the most boring planet in the galaxy. And I’ll probably die of boredom before I’m thirty. 

RI: Why don’t you just leave? You’re not helpless.

LS: I can’t leave! I owe it to my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. They raised me when I was an orphan, and now I have to help them keep the farm going. Even though I hate it. 

RI: I don’t get it. Yes, you owe them something, but you’re not an indentured servant. You’re an adult, and farming isn’t in your blood. Can’t they hire somebody? Or get a few droids to help out?

LS: They can’t afford to hire anybody. And droids are expensive. So I’m stuck here. My best buddy went off to join the rebels last year, but I’ll be here forever. 

RI: Explain to me about the rebels. Is there something going on I don’t know about?

LS: What cave did you crawl out of? Don’t you know? The whole galaxy’s in revolt. The evil Emperor has finally gone too far. There are whole planets that have rebelled. There’s something called the Rebellion, which I’m not supposed to talk about, but it’s real. And it’ll be over before I ever get off this planet to join. 

RI: That sounds great! The Rebellion will knock off the evil Emperor, and you’ll be safely here, away from danger—

LS: What are you talking about? The Rebellion hasn’t got a prayer of winning. There’s this new thing called the Death Star. It can knock out a planet with one giant zap. And then on to the next one. Everyone’s terrified of it, but nobody’s doing anything about it. 

RI: Well, then obviously you don’t want to get involved. If the Rebellion has no chance of winning, you’d just get yourself killed, and that would be—

LS: NO!!!! I can’t just do nothing. That’s stupid and lame and wrong. I could help. I’m a good flyer. I could go to battle and fight the Evil Empire. 

RI: With all due respect, you’re just one guy. I’m sure you fly very well for a farm boy, but you’re not military-trained, and anyway one guy against the Death Star doesn’t sound like a fair fight. If you want my advice, don’t get involved.

LS: I don’t care! I’ve got to do something! You make me sick, talking about running and hiding. 

RI: Hey Luke? Chill, OK? Frankly, you sound a little childish. You talk big about fighting the evil Emperor and taking on the Death Star, but you can’t even stand up for yourself and tell your uncle you need to get off the farm. I think you’re all talk, no action. 

LS: You don’t talk to me like that, you hear? Cause if you do, I’ll … um … 

RI: You’ll do what, Luke? Throw milk on me? Tell the teacher I called you names? I don’t think you’re the violent type. I don’t see you using force to get what you want. 

LS: Wait, what did you say? 

RI: Are you going to throw milk on me?

LS: No, after that. The part about using force. How do you know about that?

RI: I have no idea what you’re talking about. 

LS: You never heard of The Force?

RI: No, what’s The Force?

LS: Well, I’m not supposed to talk about it. Uncle Owen would be really mad. But I heard a rumor that there used to be these amazing guys called the Jedi Knights. And they mastered something called The Force. And they were like, unbeatable in battle. 

RI: Sounds like an old wives tale, Luke. Maybe you should get back to milking cows, or whatever you farm boys do on a desert planet. Because look, I already told you what your real problem is, and—

LS: My problem is I’m stuck here on the farm!

RI: Sorry, no. Luke, your real problem is that you think you’re stuck here on the farm, and you can’t see that there’s absolutely nothing holding you here except your own scaredy-cat self. You say you want to leave, but you don’t really. You’re a bratty little kid, Luke. You don’t want to leave bad enough to just do it, and consequences be damned.

LS: Not true! I should … punch you for that!

RI: Yes, you should. But you won’t. Because you’re just a whiny do-nothing kid, and you’re never going to amount to—ouch! That hurt! Hey, come back here, and I’ll punch you right back! Where do you think you’re going?

LS: I have no idea. But I’m out of here.

What Are You Waiting For?

Are you itching to start your first interview with one of your characters? What are you waiting for? You have a whole universe of potential characters waiting to be discovered. 

Go to it. And may the … 

No, no, I’m not using that cliche. It’s been done to death. But remember one thing. At one point in time, nobody on the planet had ever said, “May the Force be with you.” 

Until George Lucas met Obi-Wan Kenobi. I like to think they met in a smoky bar, had a bunch of drinks, talked about life and war and philosophy and love and power and fear and hopes and dreams. And about two hours in, working on their fifteenth beer, Obi-Wan Kenobi said something about the Force. 

And George was listening. 

The post How to Interview Your Characters appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Dialogue is one of your best tools for creating conflict in your fiction. It’s not your only tool. You’ve also got action, interior monologue, interior emotion, and (sometimes) description. 

And one of the quickest ways to raise the temperature using dialogue is with a zinger. Let me define what I mean by a zinger. It’s a short, pithy remark that makes some other character look stupid or exposes their lie. 

That’s all fine in fiction. In your novel, you have good people and bad people. They’re clearly defined. Your protagonist is (usually) one of the good people. Your villain is (almost always) one of the bad people. Your protagonist stands for the right, and your villain stands for the wrong, and a well-aimed zinger is a shot for justice.

So What’s Wrong With That?

Nothing’s wrong with that, if you have all the facts. If you know exactly who’s right and who’s wrong. And you do know that in a novel, because you created the storyworld. You are the God of your storyworld; you are omniscient; you can set things up so there is a clear right side and a clear wrong side. 

And you control how high the temperature goes in your novel. You can set things up with a zinger, and maybe a counterzinger, and maybe even a final countercounterzinger. But when the temperature has risen to just to the right point, you get to decide when to drop it down again. Because you’re God. It’s your story, so you set the limits. You choose how much mud will be slung, and then you stop the action. 

Real life is a little more complicated than that. In real life, you and I are not God. We’re not omniscient. We sometimes make mistakes. (At least I do; I’m betting you do too.) 

In real life, when we get into an argument, it’s likely that both sides actually have some valid points to make. Because both sides bring different life experiences to the table. You know stuff I don’t. I know stuff you don’t.

Now let’s suppose you and I get into a zinger fight. Let’s say that I simplify your position to make it sound as dumb as possible, and then I shoot a zinger at you. You very rightly get angry that I misrepresented your case, so you respond in kind. You simplify my position to make it sound as dumb as possible, and then you fire a zinger back at me. Maybe you even escalate it a bit. Then I escalate it more with my own zinger. 

The problem now is there’s no limit. We can keep escalating it until everyone’s furious. God doesn’t usually step in to lower the temperature. Everyone keeps slinging mud until they’re all covered with it, and they’ve forgotten what the argument was about in the first place. 

Zingers raise the temperature without limit. Zingers kill rational discussion. Zingers make real life worse, not better. 

Zingers on Social Media

One major problem with social media is that it promotes zingers. The social media algorithms reward and amplify outrage.

Here’s how it works.

Somebody posts a zinger on a social media platform. It’s often about religion or politics, and it’s often a meme that simplifies and misrepresents somebody else’s beliefs into something ridiculous. Then it skewers that misrepresentation. 

If nobody responded to the zinger post, it would just die. But if it’s outrageous enough, somebody on the other side will get angry, and they’ll respond with their own zinger. The algorithm notices this and shows it to more people. Then the original poster responds with a new zinger. That’s more juice for the algorithm, and it shows the post to more people. And so it escalates.

The more the temperature rises, the more responses the post gets, and the more the algorithm shows it around, and the more people get angry. 

Is this sounding familiar? 

The social media platforms love outrage, because outrage means engagement, and engagement means eyeballs, and eyeballs mean advertising dollars. 

But all that outrage just turns social media into a toxic pit that nobody likes. A place where everyone is angry. Where everyone’s blood pressure is up. Where the only winner is the billionaire who runs the social media platform. 

Yeah, But There’s Nothing We Can Do About It

It’s easy to think that we have no control here. Zingers are gonna zing, and we can’t stop them.

Actually, we can do something about it. Anyone can choose to opt out of the zinger lifestyle. Anyone can quench the zingers in their own personal world. Anyone can help make the world a better place. 

Anyone can do that by adopting a few simple rules. Here are the ones I’ve adopted recently, which you might find useful.

Rules For a Zinger-Free World

1. Don’t post zingers. If you can simplify somebody else’s beliefs down to just a few words that could be zinged, then you probably don’t understand their beliefs. Real beliefs of real people have nuance. Your beliefs have nuance. Mine do. Everybody’s do. 
2. When you see a zinger on social media that enrages you, ignore it. If you have an option to hide it, do so. (This will release one of those feel-good chemicals in your brain, so it’s actually good for you.) The algorithm will take note and show you fewer zingers likely to enrage you. And it will also take note that the post got negative engagement, so it may actually show the post to fewer people. 
3. If you post something on social media, and somebody responds with a zinger, ask yourself if you did something to enrage them. If so, then apologize. If not, then delete the zinger. If you know them, send them a message that you don’t allow zingers on your page. If you don’t know them, post a short message saying that you deleted a zinger because you don’t allow zingers on your page.
4. If you’re really committed to eliminating zingers, declare your page a zinger-free zone. You may be able to post your own personal rules for a zinger-free world somewhere on your page or your profile. Then you can refer violators to your rules when they complain that you deleted their zinger.

Will Going Zinger-Free Actually Make a Difference?

If you and I are the only people who adopt zinger-free rules, then we’ll each benefit personally.  Our blood pressure will be lower. We’ll sleep better. We’ll feel happier. These benefits kick in immediately. 

But imagine a world in which most people adopt their own personal set of zinger-free rules. Then the world would become a less hateful place. We’d all be better off. The more people who go zinger-free, the better the world would be. These benefits would take time, because it takes time for new ideas to spread. But the early adopters would benefit most. 

Please note that I am not saying nobody should ever discuss controversial ideas. Of course we should. That’s how we learn. That’s how we change. But you can talk about tough subjects without using zingers. And you can refuse to engage with people who want to zing you.  

There’s one group who won’t like the idea of a zinger-free world—the billionaires who profit from the outrage. I’m not too worried about them. I bet you aren’t either. 

Are you in? Or do you like things the way they are?

The post The Problem With Zingers appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I have no interest in writing my novels using AI. My novels should be mine, not somebody else’s. 

But a lot of people use AI as a research tool. As a better version of Google. 

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

You’ve probably heard that ChatGPT and other tools that use “large language models” are prone to hallucination. Meaning they tend to make up an answer when they don’t know. 

What’s the story here? True or not true? 

I recently had a research question that I took to ChatGPT to see how it would do. As some of you know, I write historical novels, and I’ve read the works of many historians over the years. I’ve read so many, it’s sometimes hard to remember who exactly said what. 

I had a vague recollection that one particular historian (we’ll call him Fred) had written on a particular topic. But I wasn’t sure. A search on Google didn’t bring up anything. So I asked ChatGPT what “Fred” had said on this subject. 

ChatGPT replied with a general high-level summary of Fred’s thoughts on this subject, which it organized as five bullet points. I am very familiar with Fred’s writings, and these certainly sounded like things Fred would say, but I was looking for references, exact quotes.

I asked ChatGPT for a specific reference for bullet point 4. It immediately referred me to one of Fred’s well-known books, which I have in my library. I bought it many years ago, the fifth edition of the book. ChatGPT referred me to the sixth edition of the book, and it said I could find Fred’s thoughts explained well in Chapter 9. It even gave the title of Chapter 9. 

I opened my copy of the fifth edition and found that the title of Chapter 9 was not the one ChatGPT had given. So I went to Amazon and bought the e-book version of the sixth edition, just so I could drill down to the actual words of Fred.

When I opened the sixth edition, I found that the title of Chapter 9 in this edition was the same as in the paper copy I bought 40 years ago. ChatGPT had gotten the chapter title wrong. It wasn’t close.

Worser and Worser

I told ChatGPT it had made a mistake, that it had given the wrong title for Chapter 9, and in fact that chapter had nothing to do with the question I’d asked in the first place. 

ChatGPT immediately apologized for the confusion. It told me the actual material I wanted was found in Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 of the book. And it again gave me the titles of these chapters. 

But both titles were wrong, and those chapters also had nothing to do with the original question. It seemed that ChatGPT was simply digging itself in deeper and deeper. 

I was getting impatient. I told ChatGPT that neither chapter title was correct, and I asked for a direct quote of Fred’s own words. I figured I could then do an electronic search for any prominent words in the quote, and that would take me to the passage where Fred dealt with my question.

ChatGPT again apologized for the “confusion” and gave me a direct quote from Fred. It was two full sentences, about 70 words long. I’ve read enough of Fred’s books to know his voice. The quote sounded exactly like what he would have said. So I searched for several words in the quote. 

They weren’t there. ChatGPT had invented a direct quote from Fred. When people talk about hallucinations of ChatGPT, this is what they mean. 

I challenged ChatGPT again, telling it that I have the book, and the quotation it had given me was NOT in the book anywhere. 

More Apologies

ChatGPT apologized again. I will say this for it—ChatGPT is good at apologizing. I’ve known many people who make up stuff but never apologize for their mistake. ChatGPT at least will admit it’s wrong when you confront it. 

ChatGPT did more than apologize though. It gave me a shorter quotation from Fred’s book, giving me the page number on which the words could be found. I checked. Another hallucination.

My response to ChatGPT was very terse: “I have the book. This quotation is not found in it.”

You can guess what happened next. ChatGPT apologized again, and gave me another quote that sounded exactly like what Fred would say. This time, ChatGPT attributed it to Chater 8. 

But once again, the quote was not in the book. So I challenged ChatGPT yet again, and again it apologized and gave me another quote that sounded perfectly authentic, but wasn’t.

The Bottom Line

By the end of the session, ChatGPT had given me five apologies for incorrect statements. But I never did find out what Fred thinks on the particular topic. 

Let’s be clear. When I started the session, I had a vague recollection that Fred had written something once on this topic, but I couldn’t remember exactly what he said or where it was found. I knew that I didn’t know the answer. 

During the session, ChatGPT confidently gave me five answers that were no better than my vague recollection. They were no worse, but I was looking for better, and ChatGPT was just as bad at pulling up the actual quote as I was. But ChatGPT didn’t know that it didn’t know.

There’s a saying that’s been going around for awhile, that “You don’t know what you don’t know.” This is often associated with the Dunning-Kurger effect, which says (very roughly) that people who are very ignorant of a subject often overestimate their level of understanding of it, whereas highly informed people accurately estimate their level of understanding. 

Or in other words, ignorant people don’t know that they don’t know something. But competent people know when they know, and they also know when they don’t know. 

I am pretty well-read in my chosen time period of history, but there are many things I don’t know. And I’m at least competent enough to know that I don’t know something. 

ChatGPT does not know when it doesn’t know something. And there’s our hazard. 

Because ChatGPT was trained on information scraped from the internet. And now many people are using it to write articles to post on the internet. That’s much easier than doing the hard word yourself. In a morning’s work, you could use ChatGPT to write dozens of articles. 

Which means that future variants of ChatGPT and other large language models will probably be trained on information that was hallucinated by their own previous versions. That can’t end well. 

Should You Use ChatGPT for Research?

Yes, of course you should. I recently asked ChatGPT a math question which I’d been puzzling over for a couple of hours. It instantly suggested a possible solution. That wasn’t quite what I needed, so I pointed out some flaws in its suggestion. It immediately suggested an improvement. That was also not quite what I needed, but it was close. And I solved the math problem. 

The moral is this: Trust, but verify. (That’s an old Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan learned about and repeated often. John Kerry later updated it to “Verify and verify.”) 

Use ChatGPT for ideas. It can be very creative. But verify everything. If ChatGPT gives you a direct quote, with references and page numbers, look it up and make sure. 

Human sources are fallible too, but good human sources written by experts in their field have a huge advantage over ChatGPT—they know when they don’t know. 

The post Researching Your Novel With ChatGPT appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

But in reality, that was quite an endorsement. If you want to make a difference in the world, you need to begin by asking a question nobody is asking. 

That’s not enough, of course. Questions are easy to ask. Anybody can ask a hard question. Anybody can ask an unanswerable question. Children do it all the time.

Progress happens when you ask a question nobody is asking, but which can finally be answered at this stage in human history, because we now know enough to tackle the question.

In 1903, the Wright brothers were asking how to get a machine to fly when it was heavier than air. A couple of years later, Einstein was asking what if the speed of light had the same value in all reference frames. (In both cases, I’m simplifying things a bit. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but not much more complicated.)

Every Novel Has a “What If?” Question

This matters for novelists because at the heart of every novel is a question. A “what if?” question. 

Most novels use a familiar “what if?” question that has been asked and answered many times before.

But the really ground-breaking novels ask a “what if?” question that is new. 

It’s easy to ask a familiar “what if?” question. When you do, you get a familiar novel. 

It’s also easy to ask an utterly unfamiliar “what if?” question that is too weird for words. When you do, you get a novel nobody wants to read. 

The tricky thing is to ask a “what if?” question that is just right. Not completely familiar. Not ridiculously bizarre. Just right. 

A Little Exercise For You

• Make a list of some of your favorite novels. 
• For each novel, what’s the “what if?” question the novel asked? 
• In what way is that “what if?” question familiar—just like many other novels that came before it?
• In what way is that “what if?” question unfamiliar—unlike any other novel that came before it?

I hope this is helpful to you in working on your next novel. 

The post The Question Nobody is Asking appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How could this feature give away “too much information”? Because sales of books follow (approximately) the 80/20 Rule: about 80% of the money is earned by the top 20% of all authors. And the 80/20 Rule is “recursive,” meaning that 80% of 80% of the money is earned by the top 20% of the top 20%. Doing the math, that means that 64% of the money goes to 4% of the authors. 

And likewise, 80% of 80% of 80% of the money goes to the top 20% of the top 20% of the top 20% of authors. Doing the math again, that means that 51.2% of the money goes into the pockets of the top 0.8% of authors. Or, if you want to round those numbers slightly, the top 1% of all authors get about half the money. 

If that sounds like something Bernie Sanders would say, all I can say is that you don’t have be a socialist to acknowledge the simple fact that this is reality. There are deep mathematical reasons for this, and it’s the way markets work. 

If you’re still wondering how this could be “too much information,” I’ll refer you to a blog post I wrote a few years ago that showed how much information you can extract from a single data point. Based on one piece of information Amazon revealed, I derived a mathematical formula to estimate the number of authors who sold at least X books per year. Just plug in X and you get out a very good approximation. That formula was valid in 2014. The formula for our current year would be somewhat different, but not very different. Because the 80/20 rule is a good approximation to reality. 

Is the 80/20 Rule Bad News?

A lot of writers see the 80/20 rule as terrible news. They would summarize the situation as this: “There are a few big winners and a lot of big losers.”

I don’t see it that way. For starters, there are a fair number of people who earn a decent amount of money from their writing. Yes, only a very few earn millions. But many, many authors earn thousands or tens of thousands. And quite a few earn hundreds of thousands. That’s not bad news. That’s good news. It’s possible to get paid well for your writing. 

But there’s better news. The 80/20 rule applies to many different aspects of life. One place where the 80/20 rule probably applies is my famous Snowflake Method. A small number of words can summarize most of the design of a novel. A small amount of design work can provide the blueprint for most of your novel. 

But for this blog post, I’m going to focus on how the 80/20 rule applies to another aspect of life that’s important to all of us—learning new stuff.

An example is in order.

The 80/20 Rule In Learning a New Language

Let’s say you decide you want to learn a new language. As a random example, suppose you decide to learn German. A quick search of the web tells me that there are more than 300,000 words in one standard reference book. 

That sounds overwhelming. How could you ever learn 300,000 words? It would take a lifetime. 

Yes, it would take a lifetime, but I guarantee you that most native German speakers don’t know all those words. The reason is because some words are more common than others. Some German words are extremely common, and others hardly ever get used. 

And the 80/20 rule is a very good estimator for how many words are super common. 20% of the words get used about 80% of the time. The calculation I did above applies here. 1% of the words get used about 50% of the time. 

So if you learned the 3000 most common German words, you’d be able to understand half the words you come across in a typical German document. 

In fact, it gets better than that. If you run the calculation out a bit further, you’ll see that by learning just the 100 most common German words, you’d be able to understand about a third of the words you find in a typical German document. 

That’s actually pretty amazing. You could learn 100 words in a week. And you’d be able to read a German newspaper and see those words all over the place. Even with that very limited vocabulary, you might be able to get the drift of an article. 

Of course, you wouldn’t understand everything. But you’d understand something. And then if you take several more weeks and expand your vocabulary out to 500 words, you’d be able to understand about 41% of the words in a typical German document. That’s amazing! 

No, you wouldn’t understand the whole German language. Yes, you would be able to get along if you suddenly found yourself in a random place in Germany. (Actually, since a great many Germans speak excellent English, you’d probably be fine, even if you spoke no German. But why would you want them to have all the fun of speaking a foreign language, when you could have some of that fun yourself?)

The 80/20 Rule in Learning Anything

The 80/20 rule applies to learning just about anything. If you learn the 1% of the concepts in any field that are most commonly used, you can get a grasp of about half of what gets said in that field. I must emphasize that you won’t have a complete grasp. You’ll have a very incomplete grasp. But you’ll understand it surprisingly well, and that has value.  

As a practical example, you can learn the absolute basics of Photoshop by watching a one-hour tutorial on YouTube. You won’t be a great graphic designer after one hour. But you’ll be able to open somebody else’s amazing Photoshop file and see how they put it together. And you’ll be able to make at least some simple tweaks to it—fix a spelling error, or adjust the colors, or swap out a logo. And that could be extremely useful to you. 

But A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, Right?

You might be thinking that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and therefore it’s dumb to learn just a little about a subject. 

I don’t agree. It’s dumb to learn just a little about a subject and then imagine that you’re an expert. Ask me about the arguments I’ve had with ignorant people who thought they knew more physics than me because they watched some YouTube video for an hour. 

If you only know 1% of a subject, then you only know 1% of that subject. There’s no way to change that. But if you maintain your humility and remember that you only know the basics, you can easily stay out of trouble. The people who get in trouble are the ones who think that knowing 1% makes them an expert. Do a search sometime for the phrase “Dunning-Kruger Effect” to see how common that is. 

So why should you learn that 1%? Because knowing 1% gives you the ability to talk to an expert and ask intelligent quetions that few other people would even think to ask. And when you’re doing research for a novel, the ability to pick an expert’s mind is gold. 

There are experts out there who would be happy to help you figure out something for your novel. Maybe they’ve spent a lifetime studying a particular subject. And you come to them and say, “Look, I’m a complete novice in your subject, but I’ve got this question….” And then you ask something that proves you took the trouble to learn even a tiny bit about their subject. 

Most experts will be thrilled to see that you took that trouble. Most experts will go the second mile in giving you their insights, once they see that you cared enough to learn even 1% of their subject. 

That’s why you might consider becoming a 1% novice. You can’t possibly spend a lifetime on every subject that interests you. But you could spend a month to become a 1% novice. And knowing a little about a lot of things can be valuable. 

The post The 80/20 Rule And Novelists appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I’ve said this many times, and it’s absolutely true. There is no better investment you can make in your writing career than to go to a writing conference. 

But you might have heard other writers with a different opinion. Here are some of the things you might have heard:

• “I went to a writing conference and it was awful. The editors and agents all stuck to themselves, and all the writers were novices who knew absolutely nothing. It was a complete waste of time and money.”
• “I went to a conference and I felt so intimidated, I spent the whole time crying in my room. The food was worse than rat poison, and nobody was at all friendly. I hated every minute.”
• “I made appointments with 2 editors and 2 agents at a conference. The agents shot me down and the editors both asked me to send them something, but then I didn’t hear anything for 6 months. When they finally contacted me, they sent form rejections. The whole thing was pointless.”

Yes, Bad Things Happen at Conferences

It’s true that bad things happen at conferences. Those terrible experiences I listed above really happened to real people. Not just once. Not just a hundred times. They’ve happened to tens of thousands of writers. 

But great things happen at conferences too. Of my 5 closest friends outside my family, I met 2 at writing conferences, I met a 3rd through 1 of those 2, and I met a 4^th through a writer’s email loop that I learned about at a conference. (I do have 1 close friend I met at work, so not all my friends are writers.) 

And I have hundreds of friends I met at conferences. Yes, hundreds. They’re not all super close, but I’ve shared good times with each of them, eating meals, talking fiction, hanging out at the bar. (I’m famous for always ordering milk, but most of my friends can’t handle such strong drink and have to settle for something with alcohol in it.)

But yeah, I’ve been to conferences where I felt incredibly intimidated. I’ve been to conferences where it was super hard to get access to the editors and agents. I’ve been to conferences with awful food. I’ve been to conferences where every agent or editor I talked to wasn’t interested in my writing.

But every single conference I’ve ever been to has been a great experience. And I’ve left most of them thinking, “Wow, that was the best conference ever!”

What Makes A Great Conference Experience?

You may be thinking that I must be taking some sort of happy-chemical to make me think awful conferences are actually great. 

Sorry, I don’t. Great conference experiences don’t come out of a pharmacy. 

Great conference experiences come from aligning your expectations with reality and then acting appropriately. 

Here are the 3 realities of a writing conference:

• All the editors and agents are overwhelmed with a flood of wannabe writers trying every possible trick to get their foot in the door. Which means that every agent and editor is playing defense every second, just to keep their sanity. They literally have to be on guard against manuscripts being shoved under the door of the bathroom stall. 
• Most of the writers are at their very first conference. They are scared to death of the editors and agents, but at the same time, they’ve been told that this is their one chance to “network” with these bigshots and make a good impression. And they are intimidated by all the other writers, because they see other writers as the competition in a zero-sum game. 
• A few people at conferences are seasoned writers who’ve been to a number of conferences and know some of the editors and agents. In fact, the editors and agents welcome talking to these writers because these writers are not acting desperate. 

Here’s the secret to having a great experience at a writing conference: Make friends with writers you resonate with. 

Yes, it’s really that simple. And yes, I said to put your focus on other writers. You will eventually also make friends with editors and agents, but that can take a few conferences, and it takes some luck. Whereas making friends with other writers is a sure thing.

So How Do You Make Friends With Writers?

You can make friends with writers in many ways. Here are a few:

• Ask another writer what sort of fiction they write and then ask intelligent questions about it. 
• Ask another writer how their writing career is going. They will tell you it’s not going well and will explain at length what’s wrong. If you know something that might advance their career, tell them. Expect nothing in return.  
• If you see somebody who looks miserable, take the time to talk to them and see if there’s anything you can do to help. 

Your goal here is not to use other writers to advance your career. If you go in with that kind of attitude, other writers will see through you right away. Don’t be That Writer.

Your goal is to be a decent human being who helps others with no expectation of any kind of reward. 

I guarantee that if you talk to even 10 people at a conference with the goal of helping them, 1 of them will resonate with you. You’ll discover that you have a lot in common. By the end of the conference, you’ll be friends. And you’ll leave the conference feeling happy at what a great time you had.

And I guarantee that if you talk to 50 people, you’ll find someone who will turn into a life-long friend. And you’ll leave the conference thinking it was the best time you ever had in your entire life. 

“But I’m An Introvert!”

You may be thinking that you can’t possibly do all this. Because you’re an introvert. Introverts don’t reach out to others. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. About 95% of writers at writing conferences are introverts. I’m a flaming introvert. Always have been. Always will be. I’m probably more introverted than you. But nobody has to know that when I go to a conference. 

Even an introvert can ask another writer how they’re doing. That’s all you have to do, and the other writer opens up. 

No, you don’t have to become friends with every single writer you interact with at a conference. You can’t possibly do that. You’ll resonate with a few and you’ll not resonate with most. The ones you resonate with may turn into friends. But you can be a decent human being to everyone, even if they’re not nice to you. 

This should go without saying, which means it probably needs saying. A writing conference is not a place to go looking for romance. 

But Shouldn’t You Be Networking?

No, you should not be networking at a writing conference. You should not be networking anywhere. You should scrub the word “networking” from your brain. Never, ever, ever think of another writer as a person who can help you advance your career. That way lies dragons—and the worst of the dragons are envy, greed, and malice. 

Always, always, always think of other writers as fellow runners in the grand marathon of life. Some are running too fast for you. Some are running too slow. But some are running at just your pace. These are your natural pack. Run wild and free with them. Howl at the moon together.

But What About Editors and Agents?

Eventually, you’ll meet editors and agents. This can happen at meals. In the hallway. In the lobby. At the bar. Or when you make an appointment with one of them to discuss your writing. 

Treat editors and agents like anyone else at the conference. After talking with a few dozen or a few hundred writers, you’ll be comfortable doing this. It’ll feel like the most natural thing in the world. 

You won’t resonate with most editors or agents. But some of them, you will. Some will even become friends. Be a decent human being to all of them, and when you find The One, you’ll know. And they’ll know. And at that point, your writing career will change forever.

How long will this take? That’s impossible to say. It could take a couple of conferences. It could take 10. Or 20. It might never happen. Not every writer is guaranteed a slot in traditional publishing. Some writers are happier acting as their own publisher. 

But every writer can go to any writing conference and have a great, incredible, stupendously wonderful time. And all you have to do is treat other writers the way you’d want to be treated. 

The post Your Best Writing Conference Ever appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

1. Search your manuscript for the word “as”. 
2. Remove it from every sentence that uses “as” to make two events simultaneous.

That’s it. very simple. Extremely effective. 

A few examples will make this all clear. In each example, I’ll show you the wrong way to do it, followed by an explanation of why it’s wrong, followed by a better option. 

Example 1

Wrong: Joe threw a punch at Eric as he approached. 

Why it’s wrong: Your purpose as a novelist is to create a movie in your reader’s brain. This sentence throws up several speed bumps for your reader. Let’s break it down to see why. 

The sentence has three events, and they happen in this order: 

1. Eric approaches Joe. 
2. Eric gets within punching range of Joe.
3. Joe throws the punch. 

Now you can see three things that went horribly wrong. 

First, the sentence puts things out of order. The sentence shows Joe throwing a punch and then it shows Eric approaching. 

Can’t the reader figure out that things are written out of order? Yes, your reader can do that by using logic. But now you’re making your reader’s brain work much harder than it should. The reader has to cut the video you made, reorder it, and splice it back together. That’s a speed bump in your reader’s brain. Readers put down books that have too many speed bumps. They usually won’t be able to say why, other than “it just didn’t feel realistic.” Now you know why. It didn’t “feel realistic” because you made your reader edit your movie. 

The second horribly wrong thing is that the sentence uses the word “as” to say that these things take about the same length of time. But they can’t possibly happen at the same time. It might take several seconds for Eric to approach. It takes a tenth of a second for Joe to throw the punch. 

Can’t the reader figure out the timing problem? Yes, again your reader can use logic to mentally speed up the approach of Eric or slow down Joe’s punch. But either way, the movie looks all wrong in your reader’s brain. 

The third horribly wrong thing is that the sentence uses the word “as” to say that these things happen at the same time. But they don’t. Eric has to approach and get within range before Joe can punch. Even if you had put them in the right order, that pesky “as” would still be saying they’re simultaneous when they aren’t. See how silly that looks: Eric approached as Joe threw a punch at him. 

You know the drill by now. Yes, the reader can sort things out by mentally editing your hashed-up movie into something sensible. No, they should never have to edit your movie.

It’s your job to edit the movie so the reader can see it on the first reading without editing. Something like this: 

Eric walked up and put out his hand. “Hey, buddy!” 

Joe slugged him in the gut. 

Example 2

Wrong: The front door swung open as Madeline strode in. 

This one’s better. Things are shown in the right order. The two events take about the same amount of time. But Madeline can’t make her grand entrance until the door’s open.

Better: The front door opened, and Madeline strode in. 

You might be thinking I’m just being persnickety here. I only changed one word. But it’s the one word that destroys the movie in your reader’s brain. 

Wrong words matter. Your reader can’t picture the door swinging open at precisely the same time that Madeline strides in. The door has to start swinging open, and then the door has to move at least a foot, and only then can Madeline can get in, no matter how slim she is. 

Example 3

Wrong: George clenched his teeth as his face slowly turned red. 

The problem here is that clenching your teeth takes a tenth of a second, but your face takes several seconds to turn red. The events are shown in the right order, but they happen on different time-scales. 

Better: George clenched his teeth. His face slowly turned red. 

Again, it’s only a small change, but now the movie doesn’t need any editing. The reader can see it exactly the way it’s written. 

Kick ‘Em in the As

In my critique group, we refer to this process as “kicking ‘em in the as.” Here’s the full process:

1. Search for the word “as” in your manuscript. 
2. For each “as”, ask the following questions:
   • Does one event start before the other? If so, remove the “as” and write them as two phrases or two sentences, with the events in the correct order.  
   • Do the events take different lengths of time? If so, remove the “as” and rewrite the sentence in an order your reader can visualize.
   • Are the events actually simultaneous and do they actually take the same amount of time? If so, see if you can possibly remove the “as” and order the events from most important to least important.
   • If the word “as” is not being used to say that events happen simultaneously, it’s probably fine and you can leave it in. Your job as a writer is to kick the bad “as” and keep the good “as.” 

Try kicking one of your scenes in the “as.” It should take about 5 minutes. Then read it and see if the scene looks more like a movie in your head. 

Congratulations. You are now officially a “bad-as” editor. 

The post How to Be a “Bad-As” Editor appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

You wrote your novel the best you know how. You did everything right. The story flows. The characters rock. The setting shines. The theme pulses with life. You set the manuscript aside for a few weeks to let it cool. Then you come back to it and…

And you find that your characters sometimes do illogical things. Or they are more clever than anyone could possibly be. Or crazy coincidences ruin their plans. 

In short, you have holes in your novel.

The Two Horns of the Dilemma

At this point, you have only two choices:

1. Fix those holes by adding more stuff to your story. 
2. Ignore the holes and be true to your vision. 
3. Throw the manuscript away because it’s flawed.

I know those are three options listed, but you’re a real novelist and you would rather swallow crushed glass in a gallon of bat urine before you’d throw away a manuscript you sweat blood on. So option 3 is not an option. 

But what do you do? Fix the holes or leave them alone?

What Happens When You Fix the Holes

You can and probably should fix the holes in your story. Generally, this is not hard. 

If your characters are doing illogical things, you can make them logical by adding more information to the story that makes it clear that it’s actually the best choice in a bad situation. Or you can change their reasoning process so they use better logic to get to the right action. Or they can do something more logical.

If your characters are more clever than anyone has a right to be, then you can give more information so their cleverness is more plausible. Or you can add another character, which helps because two brains really are better than one, so their cleverness is now more plausible. Or you can just have them choose a less clever solution, which will probably add complications to the story. 

If you’ve got crazy coincidences that seem too unlikely for words, you can add some reasons to make it clear that it’s not really a coincidence after all. Or you can just add more events, so that you don’t need a coincidence to bring two people together at just the right time. 

When you’ve done all this, your novel is probably going to be longer. Because every way to fix the holes in your story requires you to add information to make the holes go away. It’s almost impossible to fix story holes by making the novel shorter. 

After You’ve Fixed the Holes

Once you’ve fixed the holes in your story, you’ll do the right thing and set it aside. You’ll wait a few weeks and come back to read your masterpiece. And now there’s a problem …

There are new holes in your story. You fixed the old ones, but the fixes created new holes. Hopefully you have fewer holes in your story. Hopefully, they are smaller. 

But you’ve still got holes in your story, and the same two horns of the dilemma. Only now, your novel is longer than before. More complicated. More pages to print. And pages cost money. 

You can repeat the process if you insist. You can fix all the new holes, exactly the way you fixed the previous batch. Go right ahead. Do it all again. 

And when you reread the manuscript after a suitable pause, you’ll find a whole new round of holes. We hope they will be fewer and smaller than before. But maybe they won’t. And for sure, your manuscript will only get longer. And meanwhile, the clock is ticking. You are getting older. Your readers are drumming their fingers waiting for your next book.

The Sweet Spot

There is a sweet spot here. You want to fix the most gaping holes, yes. But you can’t continue the process forever, no. You need to get the book out. 

Seth Godin, the legendary marketing genius, is famous for saying that you need to ship your product. Whatever it is, there comes a point when you just ship it, even if it has a few flaws. 

This means you will get reviews complaining (rightly) that your characters do illogical things—they are too stupid to live. Other reviews will complain (rightly) that your characters are incredibly clever—an unrealistic “Mary Sue” who can’t possibly exist. 

Please note that some reviewers will make both complaints, maybe even about the same character. Your way-too-smart Mary Sue is also too-stupid-to-live. Yes, really, somebody will say that. 

Other reviewers will note the implausible coincidences in your story. 

And yet other reviewers will complain that your story is too long. 

You did your best to hit the sweet spot, and you may feel like you failed. But did you?

No, you wrote a novel. All stories have holes. Yours does too. The best you can do is to shoot for some balance. If the complaints about “too stupid to live” are roughly balanced by “too smart to be plausible”, then you probably got it about right. If the complaints about “too many coincidences” are about balanced by the ones about “the story is too long” then you’re good. 

So you hit the sweet spot. Congratulations. 

Now go write another novel and do it all over again. You will never write a novel without holes. And that’s OK. Just ship. 

The post The Holes In Your Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

By far the most common question I ask after reading a scene is: “What happened in this scene?”

It seems like a simple question, but it covers a lot of ground:

• How is the lead character’s situation different at the end of the scene from the beginning of the scene? 
• How does this scene advance the main story? 
• Is this scene a story in its own right, with a beginning, a middle, and an end?

Let’s look at each of these questions to see why they matter. As we’ll see, these questions go progressively deeper. 

What Changed in the Scene?

A scene needs to change things for the lead character of the scene. It might make their situation better. More often, it makes things worse. Sometimes, it leads to a change of direction for the character. 

If none of these things happened in the scene, that’s a problem. Your reader just invested several minutes reading a thousand or more words, and nothing changed? Your novel is about how your characters change themselves and the world around them to solve a problem or meet some goal. Every scene needs to contribute to that change. 

Imagine Luke Skywalker and his mentor Obi-wan Kenobi meeting Han Solo in that cantina scene in the original Star Wars movie. They talk for a bit. Kenobi tries to persuade Solo to take him to the planet Alderaan. But Han Solo doesn’t want the job. Eventually, Kenobi and Solo agree to disagree, and they both leave. 

If that’s the way the screenplay had been written, it would have wasted a terrific scene. The cantina had incredible atmosphere, but the scene would have been pointless. Because nothing changed. Every scene needs to change something. 

But not all change is created equal. Some kinds of change matter, and some kinds don’t…

Did the Scene Advance the Main Story?

Imagine a new version of the cantina scene in which Luke and Kenobi sit down to talk with Han Solo. Kenobi asks how much Solo will charge to give them a ride off the planet to Alderaan. Solo convinces them to abandon their journey so they can become dentists providing free care to needy aliens. 

That would be a remarkable change. But it would wreck the main story. (Important as the battle against gum disease is, it’s not Luke’s battle). In the main story, Luke and Obi-wan Kenobi have information inside the droid R2-D2 that will expose the weakness of the Death Star, the weapon of the evil Empire. They need to take that droid to Alderaan and hand it off to the Rebel Alliance who can use it to destroy the Death Star. 

So the only kind of change that makes sense in the cantina scene is something that gets Luke and Kenobi a ride off the planet. 

That could actually happen in ten seconds, if that’s what the director had wanted…

Is the Scene a Story in its Own Right?

Imagine yet another version of the cantina scene in which Han Solo is standing at the bar. Kenobi taps him on the shoulder and says, “Say, could you fly me and my buddy to Alderaan?” Han Solo shrugs and says, “Sure.” They walk out, arm in arm. 

Done in five seconds. That does change things for Luke and Kenobi. And it advances the story. But it’s not very interesting. It’s not a scene, even if you dragged it out for five minutes. 

What’s missing here is that a scene needs to be a story. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Typically, the lead character starts with a goal, runs into conflict, and faces some kind of setback at the end. Less commonly, the lead character starts with a reaction to some setback in a previous scene, wrestles with a dilemma, and then comes to a decision at the end. (See my article, Writing the Perfect Scene, for more on this.)

The way the actual Star Wars cantina scene plays out is fairly complex. 

Luke goes to the bar and orders a drink while Kenobi goes looking for a shady character who might give them a ride. A space alien picks a fight with Luke, and things get progressively worse. Pretty soon, Luke is in trouble up to his ears. At which point Kenobi intervenes and tries to placate the trouble-maker. But the alien won’t be placated, and Kenobi finally whips out a light saber and cuts off his arm.

Next, Kenobi and Luke sit down with Han Solo and his partner, Chewbacca. Kenobi asks if his ship is fast. Solo brags about it and offers them a crazy high price for a trip to Alderaan. Luke and Kenobi don’t have the money, but Kenobi counters with an offer of some cash now and a super crazy high price when they get to Alderaan. Solo agrees to the offer, but now there’s trouble…

Two Imperial Storm Troopers are at the bar, asking questions. Clearly, the ruckus Kenobi raised by cutting off the alien’s arm is about to catch up with him. Luke and Kenobi make a quick exit, leaving Han Solo to smile at the Storm Troopers. 

When the Storm Troopers move on, Solo crows to Chewbacca that this could really save their skins. It’s the first sign we’ve seen that Han Solo has his own problems. Chewbacca leaves to get the ship ready to fly. On Solo’s way out of the bar, his troubles escalate…

A bounty hunter named Greedo intercepts Han with a blaster leveled at his chest and forces him to sit at a secluded table. Han claims he’s got the money to pay off Jabba the Hutt, only he doesn’t have it with him right now. Greedo gloats over Han and tells him it’s too late. It’s clear Han has only seconds to live. But he distracts Greedo long enough to shoot him from under the table. 

So Han’s in even bigger trouble than before. He still owes Jabba the Hutt, but now he’s killed Jabba’s bounty hunter. 

That’s the scene, and it’s quite a little story all on its own. And it serves the larger story in three ways:

• Luke and Kenobi finally have a ride off the planet, which was the reason for the scene in the first place. Problem solved, but…

• They are in serious trouble because of the disarming of the alien, which puts the heat on them to get off the planet quickly, and…
• Han Solo is in even more trouble with Jabba the Hutt, a problem that will come home to roost in a later movie in the series.

Three Questions for That Scene You Just Wrote

When you finish a scene, take thirty seconds to congratulate yourself. A scene is the basic unit of fiction, and you’ve added another unit to your growing pile. That’s all good. 

But now give yourself a reality check, with these three questions:

• What changed in the scene? 
• Does that change advance the main story? 
• Does the scene work as a story all by itself, with a beginning, a middle, and an end?

These questions may uncover some weaknesses in your scene. If so, don’t panic. It’s a rare scene that can’t be saved. Once you’ve found the weaknesses, make a note and save it for later. You don’t have to know how to fix the scene. You just need to know why a fix is needed. You can either fix it tomorrow, or fix it someday when you write your next draft. 

But fix it. Every scene needs to carry its own weight. Every scene. For more thoughts on how to fix a scene, I’ll refer you to my book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.

The post What Happened In This Scene? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The answer is that it depends. You can always do it, but the way you do it will depend on what kind of series you’re writing. There are three kinds of series that authors typically write:

• Every book stands alone, so a reader can read them in any order without losing anything.
• Each book works as a story, all on its own, but they combine into a larger story, so a reader would typically want to read them in order, even though it’s not absolutely necessary.
• Each book is just one chunk of a single large story, so a reader must read them all exactly in order, or the story won’t really work.

Let’s look at each of these and talk about how you can plan your series.

When Every Book Stands Completely Alone

In some series, every book stands alone. You can read the books in any order, and you won’t miss anything. You can read some books and ignore others, and you won’t feel left out. 

A classic example of this is the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. Jack Reacher is an ex-military cop who has left the service and hitchhikes around the country. He’s not looking for trouble, but trouble keeps finding him, and he finds ways to bring the bad guys to justice. The books are not in consecutive order.

If you’re writing a series like this, then you only have to plan out each book as you write it. If you’re using the Snowflake Method, then you just write up a standard Snowflake document for the book. But you don’t have to plan the series. You can let it evolve as you write more and more books. This method works nicely for seat-of-the-pants writers. 

The books in a series like this might be out of chronological order, and there’s no harm if they are. In case they are chronological, some might refer back to earlier events that happened in another book in the series. If you do that, then give the reader any required  backstory, because you can’t expect that the reader will have read the other books. 

You do still need to keep your characters consistent, so you might want to keep a running character bible that you can use from one book to the next. That lets you keep your character consistent. You might also want to keep a running timeline, so you don’t accidentally create a backstory where one of your characters was in two different places at the same time in the past. 

Step 7 in the Snowflake Method is all about creating a character bible. Snip that out from the Snowflake document for your first book and save it in a separate file for the series as a whole. Then you can use it to get a running start on the next book in your series. And after each book, update the character bible with any new characters, or any new character traits for old characters. 

And that’s it. This is a simple way to go. The main disadvantage is that every book stands alone, so a reader will only read more books in your series if they’re invested in you, the author, rather than if they’re invested in the running story. (Because there is no running story.)

When Every Book Works Alone but is Part of a Larger Whole

In some series, each book makes a fully satisfying story in its own right. But it contributes to a larger narrative. 

A classic example is the Harry Potter series. In each book, Harry faces some new challenge and wins. But each time he wins, a new facet of his battle with Lord Voldemort emerges, opening the way for the next book in the series. 

This kind of story requires planning at two levels. You have to plan out the story of each book. But you also have to plan out the larger story for the series. 

If you’re using the Snowflake Method, then you need to write a Snowflake document for each book. And you need a separate Snowflake document for the series as a whole. 

Your character bible will probably live in the Snowflake document for the series. You probably don’t even need to revise it for each book. 

But you’ll need a synopsis and scene list for each book separately. And you’ll need a separate synopsis for the series as a whole, where each book in the series has to be summarized in one or more paragraphs in the synopsis. 

This is hard work, but it has the great advantage that once your reader buys into Book 1 in your series, they’re in for the duration. And that might mean a lot of other books.

When Every Book is Just a Chunk of the Larger Whole

Occasionally an author will create a really big story that just won’t fit into a single book. 

The classic example is The Lord of the Rings. It was divided into three books by the publisher, but the author created it as a single very long story. 

This kind of story only needs planning at one level. It’s just a very big level. No book stands alone, so you don’t need an individual Snowflake document for each book. You only need one big Snowflake documet for the series. 

This can be quite challenging, because the bigger a story, the more moving parts it has. And the harder it is to keep it all from breaking. Again, this kind of series has the advantage that once your reader starts in with Book 1, they’ll keep reading. But it has the disadvantage that some readers might not want to commit to reading a long series. And other readers may not realize that the story doesn’t resolve at the end of Book 1. Until they finish the book, and then discover that there’s no resolution—the situation merely got worse for the lead characters.

Should You Write a Series?

A series of novels can “promote itself.” It does this in several ways. 

• At the end of each book, you can write a blurb to promote the next one. In an e-book, you can add a link to the sales page for the next book in the series. 
• Readers who read one book in the series may click a link at the back of the book to go to your website, where they can sign up for your newsletter. Then each time you launch a new book, your newsletter promotes it. 
• When you have a series, Amazon will likely show the other books in the series in a carousel of images with the header, “You May Also Like…” 

So if you like the idea of having your books promote each other, and if you can handle the complexity of a series, it makes good economic sense to write one. 

The post How to Plan a Series of Novels appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

But what if you’re writing a novel with hundreds of characters in many dozen locations? How is your reader going to keep track of it all? 

That is what I call “Fiction on a Big Stage.” It’s not for the faint-hearted. 

Recently, I reread Tom Clancy’s epic novel of a putative World War III, Red Storm Rising. I got a cheap copy on BookBub and made the mistake of reading the first chapter. Four days later, I came up for air. The book was written about forty years ago, but it still feels oddly relevant. Ukraine is now on the opposite side, and there is no more East Germany, but a whole lot of the story feels very today.  

Red Storm Rising takes place on a really large stage—the US, the Atlantic, Europe, and the Soviet Union (the book was written when there still was a Soviet Union). Some of the viewpoint characters are: a Muslim terrorist, a US intelligence analyst, a Russian member of the Politburo, a US sub captain, a tank driver in Germany, an American meteorologist in Iceland, the captain of a US Navy boat, a Russian general, the pilot of a US stealth bomber, and more. And each of these has a network of several named characters around him, along with dozens or hundreds or thousands of folks with no names. 

And yet it’s not that hard to follow the story. How does Clancy pull this off? There are two specific techniques Clancy uses to help you remember it all:

• The lead characters are tightly connected. 
• The lead characters are highly mobile. 

A Small Network of Lead Characters

The American military officers mostly all know each other. At the beginning of the story, several of them actually get together. When WWIII kicks off, they all go their separate ways, but they stay in communication. 

How does this help? It reduces the number of characters. Instead of each lead character having a separate network of people to interact with, they have networks that overlap. So the same people keep popping up. 

On the Soviet side, the Politburo man’s son is assigned as an aide to the Russian general, and this son serves as a link to connect them. 

Highly Mobile Lead Characters

On the Allied side, the US intelligence analyst gets flown out to Europe to serve on an aircraft carrier. When that gets hammered in an early battle, he gets moved to the UK, where he jumps into action elsewhere. Wherever he goes, you can be pretty sure there’s going to be a serious naval battle that he will observe. 

In Iceland, the meteorologist escapes into the wild when the base at Keflavik is overrun by a Soviet invasion. He teams up with a few other military guys and eventually with an Icelandic woman, and the group gets around to every place there’s a battle. If there’s any military action in Iceland, they’re on site. Since the Soviet battle plan “Operation Polar Glory” uses Iceland as its key element, this puts the reader right at the strategic center of the war. 

On the Soviet side, the Russian general and the Politburo man are the two most competent men in the nation. If there’s a battle to be won, the general is there. If there’s scheming to be done against the corrupt Politburo, the relatively good-guy Politburo man is on the scene. If communication needs to happen between the Politburo and the front, the Politburo man’s son is right there on the job. 

So Clancy’s method is to choose a dozen or so viewpoint characters and work them  unnaturally hard, so that they see all the action. This is very hard to pull off, but Clancy does it about as well as anyone can. 

If you look at other novels set on a large stage, such as The Lord of the Rings, or the Harry Potter series, you’ll see these same methods being used. Because they work. 

Fiction on a Smaller Stage

What does this have to do with you? If you’re a typical novelist, you’re writing on a much smaller stage. So what can you learn from Tom Clancy?

Two things: 

• Network your lead characters
• Keep your lead characters moving

Networking your lead characters means that you make sure “everybody knows everybody”—as much as that’s feasible. Sometimes it isn’t, but if you can arrange early on for some convenient relationships between lead characters, do so. 

What does this achieve? It reduces the number of secondary characters. If your lead characters all know each other, they don’t need go-betweens. They don’t need introductions. They can interact with each other directly. 

Keeping your lead characters moving means doing all in your power to get them on stage at every opportunity. If they have to hop on a supersonic jet, or take a broom, or walk the Paths of the Dead, then make sure that’s an option in your storyworld. 

What does this achieve? It reduces the number of lead characters. If you want to show action, you need a viewpoint character on stage to see it and experience it. Having mobile lead characters means that a smaller number of them can see all the action. 

None of This Happens by Chance

Networking your characters doesn’t happen by chance. Mobility doesn’t happen by chance. These things happen because you intentionally make them happen. 

If you’re a Seat-Of-The-Pants writer, you make this happen by having great instincts or by careful rewriting after your first draft is done. Or both. 

If you plan your novels in advance, either by using the Snowflake Method or by some other planning technique, you make it happen by knowing up front that you’re going to need to make it happen. And if necessary, you may need to rewrite afterward to make it better. Because no matter how well you plan your novel, it’s going to come out on the page different than you planned. 

The post Writing Fiction on a Big Stage appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

A story is different. In a story, your lead character has direction. They don’t know it right away, but they soon figure it out. Then the story is about whether they get where they’re trying to go. They run into roadblocks, and at first, they have no idea how to tackle them. But they learn, and pretty soon they have new skills that allow them to get over, under, around, or through the roadblocks. After working the problem for a while, they reach a do-or-die situation where they have to apply all their new skills to get where they wanted to go.  In the end, they either get there, or they fail trying, or they get somewhere else that turns out to be where they really wanted to go but didn’t realize it. 

Four Act Structure

All of the above has a name: the famous “Four-Act Structure.” It also has another name: the equally famous “Three-Act Structure.” These are secretly the same thing, but they have two names because writers are not great at math. In the Three-Act Structure, the middle Act is nothing more nor less than the middle two Acts in the Four-Act Structure. So they’re the same.  

Here are the four components of the Four-Act Structure:

1. The lead character figures out where they want to go in the story. At the very end of Act 1, the lead character commits to getting there, whatever the cost. 
2. The lead character hits roadblocks and fails repeatedly to get past them using the wrong methods. At the very end of Act 2, the lead character realizes that they’ve been doing it wrong up till now, and sees there’s a better way, and commits to doing it right from now on. 
3. The lead character hits more roadblocks and now begins to have some success getting past them. The lead character realizes that none of these roadblocks are the root problem to be solved. At the very end of Act 3, the lead character commits to attacking the root problem. 
4. The lead character attacks the root problem using their newly acquired skills and either succeeds or fails. If they succeed, it’s because they deserved it. If they fail, it’s because they deserved it. They may fail at their original goal, but succeed at some other, better goal. If this happens, it’s because the lead character deserved it. 

But That’s Not How Real Life Works!

No, real life doesn’t work out that way, most of the time. Your reader doesn’t want your story to be “just like real life.”

Your reader wants your story to be “the way real life would be if there was justice in the universe.” That’s why your story should always end with the lead character getting what they deserve. That’s justice, whether your lead character succeeds or fails. 

Stories are about our longing for justice in an apparently unjust universe. Let’s be clear that we have no idea if the universe is actually just or not. It doesn’t look just. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But nobody wants that, except bad people. Decent people wish the universe were just, and they desperately hope it will turn out to be just in the end. 

And that’s why your reader wants to see your story end with justice for your lead character. Nothing can erase the desire for justice from your reader. You can break a lot of rules in your fiction writing, but here is one I strongly urge you to never break: 

Always give your lead character what they deserve in the end. 

The post Where Is Your Novel Going? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I’m pretty sure the answer is no. Creativity is not about luck. There seem to be three common elements for a creative leap to happen. And you have control over all of them. 

Just Showing Up

A long time ago, somebody told me that “90% of life is just showing up.” 

That doesn’t mean just showing up and doing nothing. It means showing up on a regular schedule and putting in the effort. 

For a novelist, it means writing every day, whether you feel like it or not. Most professional writers have a quota. It might be a time quota or it might be a word-count quota. But they put their butt in the chair every day and write. 

Creativity is about solving problems in new and original ways. You can’t be creative if you don’t know what the problem is. And you learn the problem intimately when you show up every day and do battle with it. Even if you don’t solve it instantly, you learn what the problem actually is.

Filling the Well

Creativity often happens after you’ve spent a lot of time reading other people’s work. If you’re a scientist, that means reading the papers other scientists have written. If you’re a novelist, it means reading other people’s novels. 

Novelists often call this “filling the well.” You’re seeing how other people have solved the same problems you’re tackling. 

Some writers worry that they’ll wreck their creativity by reading other writers’ work. They’re afraid that somehow, this will lead them into Cliche City. Or worse, into plagiarism. 

That won’t happen. Reading other people’s work will teach you what the cliches are. If you read all the cliches enough times, you’ll hate them too much to ever write them. 

As for plagiarism, you can avoid that easily by not using other writers’ words. Use your own words, and string them together into your own sentences and paragraphs. 

It’s fine to get ideas from other writers. In fact, most ideas are variations on other ideas. 

My rule of thumb is that 1 + 1 = 3.  

What that means is that I often take ideas from a couple of sources and then add something new to the mix that’s my own. And the whole is more than the sum of the sources. 

As your creativity develops, you’ll sometimes find that 1 + 1 = 7. 

Down Time

Most of my really creative ideas come at 3 AM. Or in the shower. Or while I’m driving. Or talking to a friend. Or out on a walk. Or or or. 

The creative spark almost always comes when you’re not trying to force it out at your desk. 

So you need down time, when you’re not working. When your brilliant subconscious can pop that clever new idea into your brain. And it will feel like it came out of the blue. 

You Made It Happen

But it’s not really out of the blue. You did what you needed to make it happen: 

• You spent hours at your desk trying to tackle the problem and failing and trying again and failing.  
• You spent more hours reading what other people have done. 
• You gave your conscious mind some down time, so your subconscious mind could solve the problem.

And that’s where ideas some from. Do your part, and the ideas will come. 

Expect them when you least expect them. 

The post Where Do Ideas Come From? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

If you think you can avoid this by hiring an agent to sell your novel, that’s not going to work. It’s very difficult to get an agent without showing them a proposal, which must contain a synopsis. And once you’ve got an agent working for you, they’ll insist you write a proposal for every novel you write, before they submit it to a publisher. An agent will critique your proposal, but they won’t write it. That’s your job. 

So how do you write a synopsis, if you’re an unpublished novelist?

First, the bad news. If you’ve never published a novel, then you need to have a full, polished manuscript of your novel, ready to submit to an agent or editor. It’s almost impossible to get the attention of an agent or an editor without one. 

That sounds horribly unfair, but it’s understandable. Agents and editors have all seen hundreds of dreamy-eyed writers who can write three killer scenes but lack the discipline to finish a novel. So agents and editor will insist a beginner must have a full manuscript in hand. 

Now, the good news. If you’ve got a complete manuscript, it should take you no more than 4 hours to drill out a perfectly respectable synopsis of your novel. That’s fast! You could have it done in a day or two. Here’s how…

The Length of Your Synopsis

How long should your synopsis be? It should be whatever length your intended agent or publisher says. If they ask for a 2-page synopsis, they mean 2. Not 1, not 3, and definitely not 55. Synopses are single-spaced, which works out to about 500 words per page. So a 2-page synopsis will be about 1000 words, give or take about 50. 

Agents and editors love writers who follow instructions, because they are inundated with manuscripts and they’re looking for ways to thin the herd. Don’t be thinned.

But now you have a problem. If your novel is 100,000 words and you have to write a synopsis of 1000 words, you have to cut out 99 percent. How do you do that?

The answer is that you don’t cut from 100,000. You start from zero. Here’s how…

Your Scene List

If you’ve got the full manuscript, then you probably also have a list of scenes somewhere. (If you’re a fan of my Snowflake Method, then you wrote your manuscript from a Scene List, and you can just pull that out.) 

If you don’t have a Scene List, it’s easy to make one from your manuscript. Create a spreadsheet in which every row contains a sentence that summarizes one scene. If you’re determined to get this done, you can drill out a Scene List in about two hours. It doesn’t have to be fancy—the Scene List is for your eyes only. Quick and dirty is fine. 

The payoff for having a Scene List is huge, so two hours is a very small price to pay. Please do it. 

When you’ve got your Scene List in hand, note how many scenes it has. This might be as low as 50 or as high as 200. A typical number would be around 80 to 100 scenes. You need to know this number before you move on. 

Your Word and Paragraph Budget 

Now you need to work out your word budget for your synopsis. As an example, if you’ve been asked to create a 2-page, single-spaced synopsis, then that’s about 1000 words (at 500 words per page). If your novel is 100 scenes, you can only afford 10 words per scene, which is not enough. 

Almost always, you can’t summarize every scene in your novel. This is crucial to understand. A synopsis is not a scene-by-scene recounting of your story. It’s less detailed than that.

So what do you do? You’re going to cluster your scenes into Scene Groups—groups of scenes that are related to each other. Your strategy will be to write one paragraph for each Scene Group in the novel. This is gold. This is the most important point in this post. One paragraph per Scene Group. 

Figure that you can write about 10 paragraphs per page, each about 50 words. So if your page limit is 2 pages for the synopsis, you can’t have more than 20 paragraphs total. That’s your paragraph budget.

And since each paragraph summarizes one Scene Group, that’s also your budget for Scene Groups. So you need to know your budget for paragraphs before you move on. 

Creating Your Scene Groups

Once you know how many Scene Groups you can have, you know how many scenes each must have, on average. (If you have 100 scenes and your budget is 20 Scene Groups, then each Scene Group will have an average of 5 scenes.)

Knowing this is power. The power to slice your story to the bone.  

Work through your spreadsheet and mark out your Scene Groups. The easiest way is to select several rows at a time and mark them all with some particular color, so you can see which scenes are in each Scene Group. Once you decide you’re going to do this, you can do it amazingly fast. Give yourself 15 minutes to mark out your Scene Groups.

You must be ruthless here, but it’s not hard when you know your budget with certainty. The math is unforgiving. You know how many Scene Groups you’re allowed to have. Mark them out. 

Writing Your Synopsis

Now write your synopsis. For each Scene Group, summarize it as best you can in about 50 words. Write in third person, present tense. A typical paragraph might look like this: 

Sally discovers her best friend Joe dead in her driveway, and the murder weapon is her own gun. The police arrive and ask Sally to come to the station to help them figure things out. Two hours in, she gets caught in a lie and realizes she needs a lawyer.

That’s one paragraph, summarizing probably 3 to 5 scenes in 50 words. It’s not beautiful, but it skates a straight line through the heart of the story. 

I wrote that paragraph in about 2 minutes, and I don’t even have a story to go with it. I just pulled it out of thin air. If you have your Scene List in front of you with all the Scene Groups marked out, you can write a paragraph for each one in 3 minutes easily. Easily. In one hour, you could have 20 paragraphs written, and that’s a typical synopsis. It’s not fun, so do it fast, like you learned to eat your broccoli when you were a kid. 

But It’s Boring!

Your synopsis is probably boring. There’s no dialogue, no action, no interior monologue, no emotion, no description. It’s all just narrative summary, and you hate it already. You feel certain no agent or editor could possibly enjoy it.

You’re right. No agent or editor ever enjoyed reading a synopsis in the whole history of the human race. Yet they all insist on one. Why? Because they can skim it in one minute and see if you have any understanding at all of the large-scale structure of a story. Any competent agent or editor can do it. Any competent novelist can too. 

So the point of writing a synopsis is to expose the story structure of your novel for the professional eye of an agent or editor. By following the procedure I’ve sketched above, you guarantee that your synopsis exactly matches the structure of your novel. As long as your novel was well-structured to begin with, your synopsis will be too. 

If you’re not sure that your novel is well-structured, then I’ll again point you to my Snowflake Method, which is a 10-step plan of attack for getting the first draft of a perfectly-structured novel down on paper. You don’t have to use the Snowflake Method to write your novel. Some novelists prefer to just write without planning, and that’s fine. But the reason I mention the Snowflake Method is because if you understand how it works, you understand story structure. Even if you use some other method for writing your first draft. 

Good luck, and have fun!

The post Writing the Perfect Synopsis for Beginners appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Writers are very susceptible to getting overwhelmed. Besides everything else that Normal People do, we take on the gargantuan task of writing a novel, getting it published, and then marketing it. This is a lonely, difficult journey of a thousand miles, even for those lucky few who make lots of money at it. For the other 99%, it’s even harder. 

I learned a simple trick years ago for dealing with overwhelm. I call it the “Overwhelm Exercise” and I use it whenever things seem especially bad. (About two or three times a year.)

The Overwhelm Exercise

Do these steps in order: 

1. Write down every single thing that’s causing you to feel overwhelmed. You can do this on paper or on your computer, whichever is more convenient. Write everything. Keep going until you’ve said it all. You don’t need to put it in any special order. Just spill your guts. Completely. Keep writing until you’ve cleared it all out. All the mess is on the page. It’s still a big mess, but your head is clear. 
2. Mark ONLY those items you could reasonably get done today. Don’t go overboard. Just find those few things that are small enough for today. You can either color-code them or circle them or mark them with an asterisk. 
3. Mark ONLY those you could reasonably get done this week, using a different mark. Again, don’t get too ambitious. You’re in a big hole, so set yourself a goal that you can achieve. You can color-code these in a different color, or mark them with a rectangle, or mark them with two asterisks. 
4. Give yourself permission to deal with everything else later. Next week or next month. But not today and not even this week. Write this down. “I have permission to ONLY do the marked tasks this week.”
5. Collect all the tasks you marked for today onto a fresh list. It should be small. It should be achievable. Title it, “My Today List.”
6. Collect all the tasks you marked for this week onto a separate list. This will be a bit bigger. Once again, don’t get too aggressive. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Title this list, “My This-Week List.”
7. For today, do everything on the Today List. You constructed it to be doable in one day, so do it. When you finish the list, reward yourself with a break. You reached your goal for the day! Enjoy that good feeling. Don’t spoil it by moving the goal posts. You are done until tomorrow. 
8. Tomorrow, choose out a few tasks from the This Week List and make a new Today List. Again, make sure it’s doable. You’ve been beating yourself up for too long because you’ve got impossible goals. You need a few days of setting possible goals. 
9. For the rest of the week, continue making doable Today Lists. Don’t crush your spirit by demanding too much of yourself. That way lies dragons. 

Where You’ll Be Next Week

By next week, that original horrible list will have a number of small and mid-size tasks crossed off. It will be much less ferocious-looking. It will still be bad, but it’ll be less bad. If you still feel overwhelmed, repeat the same exercise. But you should be less overwhelmed next week. You’ll be getting some traction. You’ll have some victories under your belt. Maybe small victories, but a win is a win.

Remember that modern life is set up to keep throwing more stuff at you until you break. When you catch your breath a little, think about that some. Can you make some decisions on things you can just say no to? 

Life is the art of saying no to most stuff, so you can say yes to the things that matter most. 

Have a good day.

The post What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

You give it away free as an inducement to sign up for your e-mail newsletter. Then whenever you release a new book, you’ll run a great launch by notifying your e-mail subscribers. 

That only makes sense if your e-mail list contains people who really love your fiction. If the subscribers to your e-mail list don’t care about your novels, that’s a problem. Your list costs you money. You can’t afford to have a large list with many thousands of non-fans. 

This means that your Reader Magnet needs to align well with your novels. If somebody likes your novels, they should like your Reader Magnet. If they like your Reader Magnet, they should like your novels. 

Getting the Word Out

You have three different groups of people that you want to give your Reader Magnet to:

1. People who just finished reading one of your novels. 
2. People who come to your website. 
3. People in your Target Audience who never heard of you. 

Group 1 is the warmest group. They know and love your work, and they are eager to read something else you’ve written. If you offer them your free Reader Magnet, they’ll sign up in droves.

Group 2 is not quite so warm. They know something about you, or they wouldn’t have come to your website. But they may not know much. If you offer them your Reader Magnet, some will take it and most won’t. 

Group 3 is the coldest group. They don’t know anything about you, so you’re going to need to reach lots of them, and only a tiny fraction will sign up. But the good news is that you have hundreds of thousands or millions of people in this group. 

Now let’s talk about how you reach each of these three groups with your Reader Magnet offer.

Reaching True Fans 

It’s easy to promote your Reader Magnet to True Fans (people who just finished reading one of your books and loved it). Just put a note in the back of all your books offering your Reader Magnet as a free welcome gift to anyone who signs up for your e-mail newsletter. Include a link to a “landing page” on your website. 

What’s a “landing page?” It’s a special page that does one thing only—it makes an offer for your Reader Magnet. Ideally, no page on the internet should link to this landing page. Then only readers of your books will know the link, and they’ll be the only ones who ever come to the landing page. That way, you can track how well it works. 

Reaching Website Visitors 

Every page of your website should have an e-mail signup form. There are multiple ways to do this. You can have an actual form visible on the page. For visitors using a desktop machine or laptop, you can display a popup form. For visitors using a phone or tablet, a ribbon form works better—it displays in a thin “ribbon” on the top of a page, and the user can either dismiss it or click it to display a full popup form. 

You have a lot of options for signup forms. If you’re tech-savvy, you can create these signup forms yourself. If you’re not, then have your webmaster do it. But you should write the copy for the form yourself. Your webmaster may not be any good at writing marketing copy. 

If you don’t know how to write the copy for the signup form, a good place to learn is Tammi Labrecque’s two books:

• Newsletter Ninja
• Newsletter Ninja 2

These two books are packed with much more info on newsletters and Reader Magnets than I can put into a blog post. They’re inexpensive and super valuable. I highly recommend them both. 

If you’d like to see how I’ve set things up on my website with my own Reader Magnet, you can visit any page on my personal website that I use for promoting my novels. On my home page, I have an embedded signup form that promotes my Reader Magnet. All other pages of my site have popup forms (for desktop machines) or ribbon forms (for mobile and tablet devices). So you can easily find examples of how I do it. 

I expect that only a small fraction of readers of this blog care about the kind of fiction I write. Please don’t sign up for my e-mail fiction newsletter unless you happen to be in my Target Audience. 

Reaching People Who Never Heard of You

The great majority of your Target Audience has never heard of you. (By definition, a Target Audience is the set of all people who would love your novels, if only they knew you existed.)

How do you reach these people? You can’t expect them to wander onto your website by chance. If you’re going to find them, you have to get proactive. 

You have several options:

• Occasionally promote your books on the “deal sites,” such as BookBub, E-Reader News Today, etc. The way these work is that you lower your price for a few days to free or to 99 cents and pay these deal sites to promote your deal to their subscribers. This can bring in dozens or hundreds of new readers. The ones who like your book will eventually sign up for your e-mail newsletter. 
• Run paid ads on Facebook to promote your Reader Magnet. Facebook ads take time to learn how to run correctly, but if you do this well, you can reach thousands of people who never heard of you. A good ad will make an enticing offer for your Reader Magnet. Just remember that Facebook ads can be expensive. I’ve heard this works well, but I haven’t tried it myself. Yet. 
• Use the social media platform of your choice and post offers there for your Reader Magnet. This can be extremely effective or extremely ineffective, depending on how well you use your social media platform. Nobody is good at all social media platforms. My advice is to choose one and learn it well and see how it works out for you. Social media is “free,” but it can cost you enormous amounts of time. So think carefully before you commit. But if you commit, then give it your best shot. 

How Long Will This Take?

Putting together a good Reader Magnet and promoting it well will take you months. So why should you create a Reader Magnet, as opposed to doing nothing? Two reasons:

• A Reader Magnet is one of the very best ways to promote your books. 
• “Doing nothing” will also take you months. Time keeps on ticking, whether you use it productively or not. Months and years and decades are going to pass you by, and you can’t stop them. You might as well spend your time on something that works. “Doing nothing” doesn’t work. 

If you work hard, in three months, you could be done. It’ll pay off when you launch your next book. 

The post How to Promote Your Reader Magnet appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

And what is a “funnel?” That’s a standard marketing term that refers to your system for attracting potential new readers, engaging with them, and ultimately converting them to paying customers. 

It’s called a funnel because it’s wider at the top and narrower at the bottom—you attract more people than you engage, and you engage more people than you convert. 

Every novelist needs some way to bring people into the top of their funnel. A very common way to do that is by giving away a sample of your wares. If people read your free stuff and like it, then there’s a decent chance they’ll buy your not-free stuff. 

Your Reader Magnet

Authors call that free sample of their writing a “Reader Magnet.” Reader Magnets vary widely. Some examples that authors use are:

• A full-length novel. 
• A novella. 
• A collection of short stories. 
• A single short story. 
• Scene outtakes from your novel. 
• An extra scene “after the end of your novel.” 
• Backstory on your characters. 
• Backstory on your story world. 
• Maps for your story world. 

That’s not a complete list, but it gives you some idea of possible Reader Magnets you could create. 

My thinking is that a good Reader Magnet is closely aligned with what you’re selling. So if you write cozy science fiction mysteries, don’t give away a steamy werewolf romance as your Reader Magnet. Nothing wrong with werewolves or romance or steam, but your Reader Magnet is a promise of what your novels will deliver. 

Delivering Your Reader Magnet

Generally, authors use a Reader Magnet as an incentive for potential fans to sign up for their email newsletter. Then the Reader Magnet promotes books you’ve already written, and your email newsletter promotes all the books you’ll write in the future.

So the Reader Magnet is very much a quid pro quo, and your email signup form should make that clear—you’re giving away a free gift to people who sign up for your email newsletter. But you should also make clear that it’s not a forever contract—they can unsubscribe from your newsletter at any time.

Virtually all email software makes it easy to deliver a Reader Magnet automatically to anyone who subscribes to your email list. See my page, Marketing Tools for Writers, for much more info on email software. 

In case you’re delivering an actual e-book as your Reader Magnet, there is a technical problem to solve. A lot of people who read e-books don’t know how to load an e-book onto their e-reader device, because they usually buy from a retailer (like Amazon) that automates that process for them. 

The solution is to use a service that helps your fans through the techie problems of loading your Reader Magnet into their e-reader. The service I use is called BookFunnel, and again, the details are on my page, Marketing Tools for Writers. 

Producing Your Reader Magnet

Do you already have a Reader Magnet? Is it working well for you?

If not, here’s a short checklist of questions for deciding what Reader Magnet you could create: 

• Which book or series of books are you most interested in marketing? 
• If it’s a single book, could you give away another book like it? 
• If it’s a series, could you give away the first book in the series? (Many authors do this, and it can work very well, if it sells all the other books in the series.)
• Can you write a novella or short story or collection of short stories using the same characters from your book or series? 
• Is there any other material you could write that would align well with the book or series that you want to promote?

It might take you weeks to create your Reader Magnet. Is it really worth spending all that time making something you’re just going to give away for free? 

Most successful authors will tell you yes, it is. Most successful authors are successful precisely because they took that time to create something their potential readers would love. 

You might be wondering how you use your Reader Magnet. How do you put it in the hands of lots of potential readers? That’s a big subject, worthy of its own blog post. My plan is to cover that subject in my next blog post, so stay tuned. 

For the moment, get rolling on your Reader Magnet. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just make the best Reader Magnet you can with the skills you have now. Next year, when you’re earned some money and developed your craft, you’ll be able to make a better one. Every time you create a new one, you’ll get better. Each one is the necessary step on the road to the next one. 

The post ToFu For Novelists appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

You sit down to write, but the words don’t come. Not instantly, anyway. 

You press on a bit, and the words gurgle out like rusty water from an old faucet. 

You keep pressing on, and the words start to flow a little more, but they’re still not right. 

And then, at some magical moment, the words begin to flow, clear and strong and sharp as lightning. 

The emotions rise up inside you. 

You become your characters, all of them—the good ones, the mean ones, the smart and the stupid. 

The scene flies out of your fingers onto the page. Not perfect in grammar and syntax, but foaming with life. 

The magic has begun, and you let it roll over you until it’s done. 

And then when it’s done, it’s gone, and you can’t make it come back. 

The next time you sit down to write, you assume the magic will start again. 

Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. If you does, you feel infallible. If it doesn’t, you feel like you’ll never write another decent word.

It’s just a fact, the magic doesn’t always happen. 

That’s why we call it magic. Because you can’t make it happen. 

But when it does, that’s bliss, and you don’t care if you get paid, because you would pay for the joy of making the magic. 

If the magic doesn’t happen, that’s OK. Press on anyway. The magic always starts out muggley. It only becomes magic when you press on. 

If you haven’t felt the magic in awhile, you may think you’ve lost it forever. 

You have if you believe you’ve lost it. 

But if you believe the magic will come again, it will. 

You can’t control the magic. You can’t decide when. 

All you control is your choice to press on when there’s no magic. 

So press on, every day. Write the words when they’re not magic. 

The magic will come again. You know in your heart it will. 

Maybe today; maybe tomorrow. 

The only thing certain is that there will be no magic unless you press on. 

So press on. Trust the magic. Wait for it. Delight in it when it comes. 

Don’t tell yourself the lie that you can make the magic happen. You can’t.

Don’t torment yourself if the magic doesn’t come today. As Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day.

Wait for the magic.

Believe in the magic.

Trust the magic.

The post Trust the Magic appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

What Your Reader Most Desperately Wants

Your reader desperately wants one thing. 

You have it in your power to give your reader that one thing.

And what is that one thing?

I could tell you what that one thing is, and you would nod and agree that yes, that one thing is clearly something all readers want. 

But telling you that one thing wouldn’t make it stick in your mind forever.

I want it to stick. 

I’d rather show you that one thing. Once you’ve seen it, once you’ve lived it, you’ll never forget it. That one thing will be inside you, fueling everything you write. 

So let me tell you a quick story about one of our ancestors who lived many thousands of years ago in a small village on this planet we call home. 

When I say he’s our ancestor, I mean it literally—he’s your ancestor and he’s my ancestor and he’s every human’s ancestor. 

That ancestor of ours was once a thirteen-year-old boy, the newest man in the village, and the smallest.

Imagine you’re that boy on the day when word comes to the village that there’s a killer tiger ravaging the village’s herd of goats.

The Tale of the Tiger

You’re furious. A drought has been burning the land for many months. That herd of goats is all that keeps your village from starvation. 

You’re also terrified. There’s only one way to get rid of a killer tiger. The village has to organize a hunt, find the tiger, and kill it. But that won’t be easy, because there’s nothing more dangerous in your world than a killer tiger.

The village headman sends word around to the whole village. All men meet in the village square, and bring your spear.

When the messenger comes to your hut, he shakes his head and frowns. He thinks you’re too young to go.

In your heart, you’re afraid he’s right. You only just became a man in the last month. You’re small. You’re skinny. You’re weak.

But in your head, you know he’s wrong. 

If the village doesn’t kill the tiger, it’s going to steal every last goat, and the village is going to die.

To save your people, you and every man in the village have to work together to kill the tiger.

You know very well you might not come back. A thousand times in the village square, you’ve heard the village story-woman tell the Tale of the Tiger. You know that when a tiger is surrounded by men with spears, it always looks for the weakest man—and attacks that man.

Sometimes the man kills the tiger. 

Sometimes the tiger kills the man.

You’re terrified, but you know you have to go.

You grab your spear and run to the village square.  

When you get there, the village headman smiles at you and shouts courage on you. 

All the villagers smile at you and shout courage on you.

And then the men of the village set out to find the tiger.

You don’t have to go far. You can hear the screams of a baby goat being dragged into the jungle. You can hear the roar of the tiger.

Every man of the village knows what he has to do. The Tale of the Tiger is in your blood. 

You all fan out, forming a giant circle around the place where you heard the tiger.

The headman shouts the command to move, and you all advance ten paces. 

He shouts again, and you advance ten paces.

Over and over and over again.

As you get closer to the tiger, the tightness in your chest squeezes your heart until the pain is unbearable. 

The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.

Sweat rains down your face. 

The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.

Your knees are shaking so hard, you think you’re going to fall over.

The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.

Finally, a war-shout goes up from all the men.

A hundred fingers point at a streak of orange and black, high up.

The tiger is in a tree, watching you with yellow eyes of rage. 

He’s trapped, fifty paces from where you stand. You can see him looking all around the circle, measuring his enemies. It’s exactly like you imagined from every time you’ve ever heard the Tale of the Tiger. Exactly like it—only worse.

The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.

The tiger roars—so loud you can feel the sound shaking your belly.

He’s forty paces away. And he’s looking directly at you. 

The weakest and smallest man in the village.

Just like in the Tale of the Tiger.

The fate of the village is on your thin shoulders.

The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.

The tiger screams with a terrible scream.

He leaps out of the tree.

He races straight at you.

Like you knew he would.

Time almost stops. In the last few instants before the tiger reaches you, you relive the thoughts of the hero of the Tale of the Tiger. 

Always face the tiger. If you turn to run, you will die and so will the village. Face the tiger and kill or be killed. But face the tiger. Wait till the last possible moment before you throw. Then kill the tiger, even if the tiger also kills you. Face the tiger.

You want to run, but you face the tiger. You draw back your arm, clutching your spear in a sweaty grip.

The tiger lunges forward, straight at you, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

Your body desperately wants to turn and run. 

You face the tiger and wait for the perfect moment.

The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder. 

He reaches the peak of his flight.

He’s coming down.

Straight at you.

You wait till the last possible moment.

You throw.

The tiger crashes into you, knocking you senseless.

Your very last thought before darkness falls is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before. 

When you come back awake, your head throbs and your whole body aches and all you can hear is the sound of drumming and dancing and feasting and shouting.

You’re back in the village.

It’s late at night.

The village is having a party.

The tiger is dead.

And you saved the village.

The whole village sees you’re awake.

The village headman calls for silence.

All the village gathers around.

The village story-woman tells the Tale of the Tiger.

And you’re the hero. 

As the village story-woman tells the tale, you feel like you’re living it all again. The great circle. The steady advances. The rush of the tiger. The blinding fear. The final leap. The desperate throw. The rage of the dying tiger.

And you’re right. You are living it again.

But this is not the second time you’re living the Tale of the Tiger.

It’s the thousandth time you’re living the Tale of the Tiger.

You lived it many times before, in story.

You lived it once today, in real life.

You’re living it again now, in story.

And there’s only a small difference between the story of the hunt and the real hunt. The real-life Tale of the Tiger was scarier, but not much scarier.

You were prepared for the real-life hunt by the thousand times you heard the Tale of the Tiger.

When the village story-woman finishes the Tale of the Tiger, a great shout goes up from all the village.

The village headman brings out the skin of the tiger you killed. 

He carries it to you.

He drapes it around your shoulders.

And all the people of the village take turns lifting you high in the air and shouting their thanks to you for killing the tiger.

And you realize that this is not the first skin you’ve worn today.

Every time you ever heard the Tale of the Tiger, you walked inside the skin of the hero of the Tale. You felt his fears. You faced his tiger. You killed his kill. 

And today when you faced the tiger, you walked in that hero’s skin again.

Yes, you killed the tiger.

But you had help.

The hero of the Tale of the Tiger also killed the tiger.

The village story-woman killed the tiger.

The Tale of the Tiger killed the tiger.

Why Story Matters

Our ancestors told stories about the things they feared most. Why? Because Story changes you. Story makes you strong. Story makes you brave. Story gives you hope. Story keeps you alive through the darkest night.

When you hear the Tale of the Tiger, it’s almost as if you live in the hero’s skin and face down his fears and kill the tiger. 

Story builds emotional muscle memory. 

When a real-life tiger comes your way, you have the emotional reserves to draw on. 

Story teaches the tribe how to survive.

Story teaches the tribe how to thrive.

Story has been doing that for many thousand years. 

Every human alive desperately needs Story.

Every human alive desperately wants Story.

Story is not a luxury item.

Story is not optional.

Story keeps the tribe alive.

What Story Is

Story is what happens when you walk through great danger in somebody else’s skin. 

And don’t think that “great danger” always means a tiger.

There are other kinds of dangers, and other kinds of stories. 

Romance is the best-selling category of story in modern fiction. 

What is a romance novel? It’s a story about a relationship going through great danger.

Danger so great, the relationship may very well be killed.

A romance novel builds in you the emotional muscle memory to keep your relationships alive.

Every kind of story builds a different kind of emotional muscle memory.

Story teaches the tribe how to survive, how to thrive.  

Every kind of fiction you write will put your reader in the skin of some person going through great danger.

A Powerful Emotional Experience

Facing danger is fun. There’s probably some deep neurological reason why. 

Certainly, facing danger makes you strong. Facing danger makes you bold. 

But let’s be honest here. Facing danger in real life is dangerous. You only get to make one mistake on a tiger hunt, ever.

Story is a safe way to face danger. Story teaches you how to face your fears, how to persist, how to hope when there is no hope. When you’ve got nothing else, Story will get you through. Story teaches you how to live.

And Story does all that by going deep into your neurons. Story teaches you how to live by letting you live someone else’s life. You see what they see. You feel what they feel. You do what they do.

The reason Story goes deep is because it gives you a powerful emotional experience. 

That powerful emotional experience is what creates in you the emotional muscle memory you need to survive and to thrive. In the heat of the hunt, when the tiger is racing at you, you’ll forget everything you were ever told.

But you won’t forget the things you already lived.

Story is like chocolate broccoli. It tastes incredibly great and it’s amazingly good for you. 

That’s why you desperately need Story. 

That’s why your reader desperately needs Story.

That’s why your main goal as a fiction writer is to give your reader the one thing she most desperately needs. 

Story.

What This Book Is About

The Advanced Fiction Writing series of books is all about how to write stories that give your reader a powerful emotional experience. 

This book teaches you one important tool for doing that—writing a dynamite scene. Every scene in your story needs to move your reader’s emotions. You can’t afford to have any scenes that don’t.

But before we focus on scenes, we have to ask a very important question.

How does Story create a powerful emotional experience? How exactly does it work?

The answer is simple. Story has two essential parts. Only two.

Turn the page to find out what they are.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. 

The post What Your Reader Desperately Wants appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

It’s good to have a conscience. It’s good to not want to be a weasel. How can you be different from those awful marketing slicks? How can you market your work effectively and not feel icky about it?

Secret #1: How Can You Help People?

You wrote a good novel, right? A novel that certain people will love, because it gives them a powerful emotional experience. An experience they need right now to get through another day. 

What is that powerful emotional experience? Did you feel it yourself while writing your novel? What kind of reader will feel it while reading your novel?

And very importantly, what kind of reader will NOT be helped by your novel?

You need to be very clear about this in your own mind. Your novel will absolutely help some people. And it will leave some other people cold. What’s the difference between these two groups? 

The set of people who will be helped by your novel is called your Target Audience. It’s a small fraction of all the people in the world. These are the only people you want to sell to. 

Until you’re clear on your Target Audience, don’t even bother trying to write marketing copy, because you’ve got nothing to work with. 

Secret #2: How Can You Get the Attention of Your Kind of Reader?

You typically get people’s attention with a headline of some sort. Or possibly an amazing graphic. Something out of the ordinary that your Target Audience will notice. 

Bear in mind that you have something great that will help your Target Audience. So you don’t need to feel shy about doing something a little out of the ordinary. You know that they’d love your work, if only they knew it existed. But they may not even know YOU exist, much less your novel. So figure out some thing that will resonate with your Target Audience. 

A headline tuned specially to the kind of people who like your kind of writing. Or a graphic. Or a video. Or whatever. Something that will catch their attention in the first half-second before their eyes move on to the next thing in the endless stream of life.

Secret #3: How Can You Scare Away the Wrong Kind of Reader?

At this stage, you’ve got the attention of your Target Audience, and that’s good.

The problem is that you’ve also accidentally grabbed the attention of people outside your Target Audience. These are people who won’t like your kind of writing. You have an ethical responsibility to let them know fast, so they’ll stop reading your marketing copy and move on.

Why would you do that? Why push away potential customers? Well, for one thing, it’s the honest thing to do. But for another, when you scare away people outside your Target Audience, you also pull in closer those people INSIDE your Target Audience. You’ve given them an identity, and you’ve shown you’re one of them. 

You have one or two paragraphs to spell out who your marketing copy is for. To make clear that you’ve got something good for the right audience. But it’s not good for anyone else. 

At the end of that one or two paragraphs, your Target Audience will have committed to reading all your marketing copy. And everyone else will be scared off. 

That’s good, ethical marketing. The kind that doesn’t make you feel icky. 

Secret #4: Make Your Case

At this point, anyone still reading your marketing copy is very likely to be in your Target Audience. Visualize one person in that Target Audience. Make your case to them why they will love this thing you’ve got that’s perfect for them. 

This can take a long time or a short time. Don’t cut it short, if you need a lot of words. Give them all the info they need. 

Bear in mind that some people in your Target Audience will be skimming down the page, so put the key points at the start of every main section and at the start of every paragraph. 

And also bear in mind that some people read all the copy before they make a decision. So answer all their questions. 

Remember that your goal is not merely to make a sale. Your goal is to help people in your Target Audience. So make sure that your marketing copy helps people all by itself, even if they buy nothing from you. 

That’s right. Give away some of your gold right inside your marketing copy. This costs you nothing, and it helps your Target Audience. Do it and make the world a better place. You’ll sleep well tonight and wake up happy in the morning. 

Write as much copy as you need, and then…

Secret #5: Ask For the Sale

At a certain point, your Target Audience is convinced. They want to buy what you have for sale. Tell them how to get it. Ask for the sale. If you’re writing a sales page, ask them to click the Buy button. If you’re trying to get them to sign up for your blog or email newsletter, ask them to sign up. 

Marketing people call this step the “Call to Action.” It’s not complicated. Ask them to do what you want them to do. Don’t make them wonder. And don’t tell them to think about it and come back later. If this thing you’re selling is good for them, then they need it now, not manana.

Give them one Call to Action, not many. Don’t put a link to all your novels. Put one link. So your Target Audience only has to make one decision—to click or not click. Too many choices just makes things confusing.

Homework: 

I eat my own dog food. I teach things that I do myself. So here’s some simple homework for you, and it’s a very meta assignment. Take a look at this blog post and see if it follows its own advice:

1. What kind of person would be helped by this article? What kind would not?
2. Does my headline attract the attention of people likely to be helped by this blog post?
3. Do my first couple of paragraphs explain who my Target Audience is, and who it isn’t?
4. What gold do I give away at no cost in this article? 
5. What is my Call to Action? 

Want to Know More?

Want to know more about marketing your novel? Take a look at my page, Marketing Tools for Writers, where I talk about the “Three Rings of Power” in marketing, and I list some of my favorite tools that I use for my own marketing. You might find something useful there, and if so, that’s a win, right?

The post 5 Secrets of Great Marketing Copy appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Savvy authors don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. They make an Annual Plan. But what is an Annual Plan? Why is it better than New Year’s Resolutions? How do you make one? And how do you stick with it? 

What is an Annual Plan?

An Annual Plan is just a list of achievements you hope for in the coming year. I can think of three main types of achievements that have gone into my own Annual Plans over the years:

• Things you want to get. 
• Things you want to do. 
• Things you want to learn. 

Maybe you want to buy a house. Or a new car. Or a bike. Or whatever. These are things you want to get. 

Maybe you want to hike the Grand Canyon. Or swim the English Channel. Or take a vacation in Italy. These are things you want to do.

Maybe you want to learn how to build websites. Or how to speak French. Or how to fix your car. These are skills you want to learn.

Note that some of these have endpoints and some of them don’t. If you buy a house or a car or a bike, then you either own them or you don’t. If you take a hike or a swim or a vacation, you either did it or you didn’t. But if you learn a new skill, then there are levels of skill, and you may never really be done. So in the case of a skill, it’s always good to specify what level of skill you’re talking about. 

Why is an Annual Plan Better than New Year’s Resolutions?

If you ever made a New Year’s Resolution, think for a moment what went wrong. You almost certainly didn’t follow through on it. Hardly anyone ever does. But why not?

There are several problems with New Year’s Resolutions:

• They are often not well-defined. 
• They are often about things beyond your control. 
• They usually just state the endpoint, without any clear path to get there. 

A common resolution is “I want to lose weight this year.” That’s not well-defined. How much weight? What control do you have over your body to make it lose weight? What actions can you take to lose weight, if any, and how much of them do you have to do?

Another common resolution is “I want to get fit this year.” You can see this has the same problems. What do you mean by “fit?” Stronger? More endurance? Higher oxygen uptake? Better-looking? Those are not the same thing, and they may be working at cross-purposes. 

An Annual Plan doesn’t just say what you want to achieve. It maps out a path to get there. And part of the path is to make a periodic review of your Annual Plan to keep you on track. That means scheduling a weekly review into your life.

How Do You Make Your Annual Plan?

Your Annual Plan will not live in isolation, as if it is the only thing you want to achieve in life. Your Annual Plan needs to be part of something bigger. Something that will motivate you to actually follow through on it. And to keep it up to date and make changes to it as your life evolves.

Because your life is going to evolve in unexpected ways. Remember what you intended to do two years ago, at the very beginning of 2020? You had a bunch of things you wanted. And then covid hit. You had to evolve very rapidly to respond to covid. We all did. Because bad stuff happened. Bad stuff happens every year, and good stuff. You have to evolve to respond to both. 

So your Annual Plan is only a part of your life, and it all comes from your Massively Transformative Purpose. If that term isn’t familiar to you, then read my blog post, Your Massively Transformative Purpose. 

Once you know your Massively Transformative Purpose, (your MTP), you need to spell out what Steven Kotler calls your “High Hard Goals.” These are concrete achievements that may take several years. Like graduating from law school. Or launching a new business that achieves $1M in gross sales. Or creating a nonprofit. Or whatever’s in line with your MTP. 

Your High Hard Goals don’t have to be earthshaking. They just need to matter to you, and be difficult enough to challenge you for years and years. 

Once you’ve got your High Hard Goals, you can set up an Annual Plan with a few achievements that you can reasonably make in the coming year that will move you closer to your High Hard Goals. 

Your Annual Plan should include the following:

1. Achievements for this year. 
2. Achievements for the next quarter in this year. 
3. Achievements for the next month in this year. 
4. Achievements for the next week in this year. 
5. A specific time every week when you will review the whole thing and make changes to it as your life evolves.

How Do You Stick With Your Annual Plan?

The secret is in that #5 above. You need to review the whole thing every week, and make adjustments. This is a bit like driving through the fog at night. You keep a sharp eye on the road and make adjustments every few seconds as needed. Because you can’t see very much of the road. 

This is why you don’t need to map out your achievements for more than one quarter at a time. The achievements you define for the next quarter should be things that you expect will take you closer to the achievements you defined for the full year. Not the whole way. Just part of the way. Because stuff will happen this quarter, and your life will evolve in ways you can’t predict, and your plan will change.

And likewise, you don’t have to spell out all three months in the next quarter of the year. Just the first month. Because stuff will happen this month, and your life will evolve, and your plan will change.

And likewise, you don’t have to spell out all four weeks in the next month. Just the first week. You know the drill. Stuff will happen this week, and your life will evolve, and your plan will change. 

Evolving Your Annual Plan

Every week, review the whole plan. You can do this very quickly, because the plan is not complete. It only targets the next quarter, and the next month, and the next week. If you made your weekly goals for the past week, congratulate yourself. You did well. 

If you didn’t make your weekly goals, don’t jump on yourself. Ask why and adjust your plan. 

• Did you make too many goals for the last week? Lighten up your schedule for next week. 
• Did something bad happen that blocked you? Make a decision on how to deal with that going forward, and push back last week’s goals to next week, or throw them out and make new ones. 
• Did something good happen that got you moving in a new direction? Great! Run with that, if it fits in with your Massively Transformative Purpose. Adjust your Annual Plan all the way up the chain, starting with this coming week, then the current month, then the current quarter, and finally the current year. 

In a word, adapt. Every week. Your Annual Plan is not set in stone. Your Annual Plan is short and easy to adapt. 

And if you keep reviewing it and adapting it every week, it’ll take you somewhere wonderful. You can’t possibly predict exactly where it’ll take you, because you can’t predict what future stuff will come at you. All you can do is play the cards that life deals you. And keep moving forward toward your Massively Transformative Purpose. 

Your Annual Plan is your roadmap to do that efficiently. 

The post How to Make Your Annual Plan appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

A couple of months ago, I read a book by Steven Kotler that helped me see what it is that keeps a writer going. The book is titled The Art of Impossible, and it’s one of the best books I read this year.

The Art of Impossible is about tackling big projects, things that seem impossible. And achieving them. Let’s not fool ourselves that this is easy. It’s hard. But it can be done, if you take a long-term strategy. 

Part 1 of the book covers Motivation, the thing that keeps you going. Kotler breaks Motivation down into several elements, and I can’t possibly cover them all here. But one of the elements seems to be the key. Kotler calls it the Massively Transformative Purpose. MTP for short.

What is a Massively Transformative Purpose?

An MTP is that impossible thing that you want to achieve that will make the world a better place. It’s not merely something that will make you rich. Or famous. Or attractive. Those are all fine things, but they’re all self-centered and they won’t take you very far. Your MTP needs to be something that transcends yourself. It’s bigger than you, and it’ll carry you farther than some selfish desire. That’s just the way you’re wired, neurologically.

A good MTP is always a bit vague. Miss America contestants are famous for all wanting to achieve “world peace.” Plenty of jokes have been made about that. But “world peace” is actually not a bad MTP. Because it’s vague and amorphous. What does “world peace” look like? You have to think about what it means to you, and then set some clear, precise goals that will take you towards world peace. Kotler calls those “high hard goals.” 

High hard goals are things you can measure. You’ll know when you achieve them. And that’s good. None of them will get you all the way to your MTP, whatever it may be. “World peace” may never arrive. But those high hard goals CAN arrive. 

How Much is Too Much?

You might think that you are only allowed to have one MTP in your life, and you have to be focused completely on that until you die. Which sounds like a grind.

But Kotler says you can have more than one MTP. He recommends that you have no more than three Massively Transformative Purposes in your life. He has three. After I read the book and thought about it some, I realized I have three also, and mine are all related to each other. 

What Do You Do With Your MTP?

It takes a fair bit of work to figure out your Massively Transformative Purpose in life. Much of Chapter 2 of Kotler’s book is about how to figure out yours. 

So why go to all this work? There are two clear benefits of working out your MTPs:

• MTPs tell you when to say no. It’s all too easy to say yes to opportunities that come along. Until your life is so packed, you feel like you’re drowning. But your MTPs give you a way to know when to say no. If that amazing opportunity doesn’t take you closer to your MTP, then say no. Period. I wish I’d known this forty years ago. 
• MTPs keep you going when the night is dark. If you’ve never known a dark night, you won’t get this. If you have, you will. Keep living long enough, and you’ll have plenty of dark nights. And you’ll be very glad you have an MTP to light the way forward.

How to Find Your Massively Transformative Purpose

Read the first two chapters of Steven Kotler’s book, The Art of Impossible. Chapter 1 is groundwork. Chapter 2 will walk you through the process of finding your MTP. 

I won’t try to summarize the steps here. You need the groundwork before you can understand the steps. Get the book and read the first couple of chapters and make a note of every actionable task you find. 

Then do those actionable tasks, and at the end of the game, you’ll have your Massively Transformative Purpose. 

And your life will suddenly have a very clear direction. Good luck!

The post Your Massively Transformative Purpose appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Here’s the short answer: If you have a website to promote your books, then you’d like people to visit it, right? And you’d rather not pay to get people to come to your site, right? And the reason search engines like Google exist is to help people find things on the web they’re looking for, right? So Search Engine Optimization is the process of making sure they find you.

By the way, Search Engine Optimization is normally abbreviated as “SEO,” so that’s what I’ll call it for the rest of this article. 

Why Authors Need SEO

A novelist can live their whole life never thinking about SEO. After all, it’s a techie thing, and authors are creative, so why bother? The answer is simple. If you don’t bother with SEO, then your site will not work as hard for you as it should. But if you take a little time to learn SEO, your site can do amazing things for you.

What Goes Wrong When an Author has Poor SEO

And here’s the problem: Search engines don’t always get it right, if you don’t help them out a little. Twenty years ago, an author friend emailed me to ask, “why does Google hate me?” She had noticed that when she searched for her name on Google, the description Google showed in the search results was some very strange paragraph. It didn’t really explain who she was or what she wrote, and she thought that meant Google didn’t like her.

I did about three minutes of research and told her what the problem was. Whoever made her website hadn’t done anything to help Google figure out what to display in the search results. So Google’s engine came up with … something, but it wasn’t a very good something. I told her how to fix it, and ten minutes later, it was fixed. For good. (For techies: she had no meta description on any of her pages. So Google used the description it found on Alexa, and it was a very generic description.)

That’s part of what Search Engine Optimization is about—helping Google help you.

What Goes Right When an Author has Good SEO

When your website has good SEO, you get traffic to your site. Traffic to your site means more True Fans sign up for your e-mail newsletter. More True Fans on your newsletter means that the launch of your next novel goes better. This is part of the Virtuous Cycle of Marketing that I blogged about earlier this year.

As an example, when I first started this website, I put a bit of thought into how to make life easy for the search engines to find my articles. And over the years, this site has pulled in more than 10,000,000 page views. Most of those came from the search engines. That’s free traffic, coming in 24/7/365, whether I was working or at the beach or sleeping.

WordPress and the Yoast SEO Plugin

Now let’s be clear that the web has evolved a lot in twenty years. Very few people write their own code for their website anymore. Most authors use a free tool called WordPress to create their site. WordPress is great (I use it for both my websites), so in this article, I’ll focus on how to do your SEO for a WordPress site.

And the search engines have evolved a lot also. Google and Bing and all the others are vastly smarter than they used to be. I can remember all kinds of tricks people used to play to “fool” Google into sending traffic to their sites. Those tricks don’t work anymore. 

Sound SEO

Only two “tricks” actually work long-term for good sound SEO, and neither of them is a trick:

• Write clear, useful, informative content on your website. 
• Give Google and the other search engines the basic info they need to understand your site. 

A very popular tool for helping you do both of those things is a WordPress plugin called Yoast SEO. If you have a WordPress site and don’t know what a “WordPress plugin” is, then you didn’t create your website; you paid someone to do it, and they will know what a plugin is. In fact, they probably already installed the free Yoast SEO plugin on your site, because it’s good and you can’t beat the price of free.

How Yoast SEO Helps

If you have a WordPress website, you should at least know how to add new pages to your site (and also new blog posts, if your site includes a blog). And the point of the Yoast SEO plugin is that it looks over each page or post you write while you’re writing it, and it gives you helpful suggestions on those two things I mentioned above. So Yoast does these two things: 

• Yoast SEO helps you write clear, useful, informative content
• Yoast SEO helps you give Google the info it needs about your page or post

SEO has gotten very complicated over the years. Yoast handles a lot of those complications for you, by making suggestions. But you need some basic understanding of SEO to understand what Yoast is telling you. And where will you get that basic understanding?

Your One-Stop Source for Learning SEO: Yoast Academy

The best place to learn about the Yoast SEO plugin is a section of Yoast’s website called Yoast Academy. Part of Yoast Academy is free and part of it is not free. Let me explain why.

What’s in Yoast Academy

I said above that the Yoast SEO plugin is free. So how can they afford to make an amazingly great and powerful tool and give it away free to millions of website owners? They afford it by making a second plugin called Yoast SEO Premium that is not free and has even more features than Yoast SEO. (I like Yoast SEO Premium and I pay for it on both my websites, because it’s excellent.)

Yoast Academy is a set of very good online video courses that cover most of what you need to know in SEO. They have 8 excellent free courses, and 9 even more intensive paid courses. If you own Yoast SEO Premium, then you get free access to the paid courses—they’re part of the premium package. I recommend that you start with the free courses, and only take the paid ones if you need them. 

Where to Find Yoast Academy

You can find Yoast Academy here on the Yoast website, but you’ll need to create a free account first before you can log in to the Academy. 

Once you log in, you’ll be overwhelmed with choices. Yoast Academy has 17 courses! They’re all good, but which should you take first? 

I’ll answer that question in the rest of this article. For most novelists, you can learn the basics of SEO by taking just a couple of courses in Yoast Academy. Then as you get more advanced, you might decide to take more specialized courses that explain the fine points in more detail. Or you might decide that you know enough to do your job and never take another course again.

But First: How Well Do You Know WordPress?

Nobody is an expert in everything. It’s quite possible you don’t feel like you’re really up to speed on using WordPress yet. 

That’s OK. If you don’t feel comfortable yet writing your own pages or posts on WordPress, then Yoast Academy has a free course that will teach you the basics quickly. It’s called WordPress for Beginners and it will get you rolling fast. 

If you need it, start there. Don’t try to cut corners by trying to run before you can walk. You’ll be surprised how fast you learn the essentials. And after that, you’ll be off to the races.

Using the Free Yoast Plugin Effectively

I recommend that authors start by using the free Yoast SEO plugin. If that’s all you ever need, then you won’t ever pay anything, and you’ll get pretty good Search Engine Optimization on your site, and that’s a deal.

Core Courses for Yoast SEO Users

In this case, the very first course you should take in Yoast Academy is the free course SEO for Beginners. It’s quite short, but it’s packed with all the most essential info to get you using the Yoast SEO plugin quickly and well. 

Once you understand how SEO works, then choose from one of these two free courses that will teach you how to use the Yoast SEO plugin effectively:

• Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (block editor)
• Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (classic editor)

How do you decide which of these to take? That depends which WordPress editor you’re using to create your pages and posts. There are two standard editors available: 1) the new “block editor”, or 2) the older “classic editor”. I’d recommend that you use the new block editor, since the word on the street is that soon the classic editor will no longer be supported in WordPress. So you might as well start using the block editor, which is the future of WordPress. Once you decide which WordPress editor you’re using, that tells you which of the two courses above you should take.

More Advanced Courses for Yoast SEO Users

That may be all the courses you ever need. If so, that’s wonderful. However, you may also decide that you want to go deeper on some topic or another. In that case, here are a couple of other free courses you might want to take, in the most likely order that you’d want to take them:

1. Structured Data for Beginners (this teaches you how to give Google the special information it needs in order to qualify your pages for those “rich results” you often see at the top of a Google search results page.  
2. Block Editor Training (this teaches you all the ins and outs of the WordPress block editor.

There are a couple of other free offerings in Yoast Academy, and you can check them out when you’ve taken all the courses above. And if these free courses are all you ever take, you’ll be ahead of the vast majority of other novelists. 

But you might choose to go farther, in case you decide to pay for the Yoast SEO Premium plugin….

Using the Yoast SEO Premium Plugin Effectively

As I said above, the reason the Yoast SEO plugin is free is because somebody is paying the bills—the people who pay for Yoast SEO Premium. I pay for this plugin and I think it’s a bargain. In case you decide to upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll also get access to several very intensive courses that will teach you even more about SEO than the free courses. 

Core Courses for Yoast SEO Premium Users

I recommend that you start with the course All Around SEO. This will teach you quite a lot about SEO, covering the entire subject in logical order: first keyword research, then SEO copywriting, then site structure, then technical SEO, then off-page SEO, and finally the all-important user experience. This is a really good course, and you might decide it’s all you need to know about SEO. 

Once you’ve taken the above course, you’ll still want to take one of the two free courses on how to use the Yoast SEO plugin. These will teach you all the ins and outs of the plugin you’re using. I mentioned them above, but here they are again: 

• Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (block editor)
• Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress (classic editor)

More Advanced Courses for Yoast SEO Premium Users

If you really want to go deep, Yoast Academy has several other courses that go with Yoast SEO Premium plugin. Here is the logical order to take them in (because the later courses depend on the earlier ones):

1. Keyword Research (which teaches you how to decide what keywords to target in each page or post
2. SEO Copywriting (which teaches you how to write clear, useful, informative content for your website, the kind Google likes to send people to)
3. Site Structure (which teaches you how to organize your site so Google can understand which pages and posts are most important and which are less so)
4. Technical SEO (which teaches you all about “crawlability”)
5. Understanding Structured Data (which teaches you how to make your site really attractive to users, and therefore really attractive to Google)

Yoast Academy also has several other premium courses that are of less interest to novelists, so I’ll skip over those here. But if you’re interested, you can easily find them all on the Yoast Academy main page. 

Ready to Get to Work?

In conclusion, SEO has grown into a big and complicated topic. You could spend years learning it all yourself, but life is short. It’s much quicker to simply install the free Yoast SEO plugin or the payware Yoast SEO Premium plugin and then take a few courses in Yoast Academy. The people at Yoast have already done mountains of work so you won’t have to. Take advantage of their knowledge and hard work to make your website more attractive to people searching for information on the web. 

Want to learn more about marketing your novels? Check out my page on Marketing Tools for Writers where I recommend the best tools I know of for all the many aspects of marketing that an author needs to know.

The post Search Engine Optimization for Novelists appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

It’s natural for an author to ask what their core marketing machine should look like. If you reduce things to the bare essentials, what would that be?

Here’s my opinion. The core marketing machine for an author should take the form of a “Virtuous Cycle” with three basic parts:

• Your books send your fans to your website. 
• Your website invites your fans to sign up for your e-mail list.
• Your e-mail list onboarding sequence promotes all your books. 

This is called a “Virtuous Cycle” because each part of it feeds into the next, like this graphic:

But Where’s the Beginning?

You might ask, “which of these is the beginning?” That is, where do your fans get into this Virtuous Cycle?

The answer is that they might join it anywhere:

• They might happen onto one of your books in a store and discover that they like your writing. 
• Or they might chance across your website in one of the thousand ways somebody can come to a website. 
• Or they might join your e-mail list in one of many common ways.

But no matter how they enter the Virtuous Cycle, they keep going through until they’ve done it all. They’ve visited your website, they’ve joined your e-mail list, and they’ve read most or all of your books. 

Why This Matters in the Short Term

Once you’ve built your Virtuous Cycle, you can then expand on it in many different ways. Each way will inject new fans into the Virtuous Cycle at some point:

• You can advertise your books directly using Amazon ads or Facebook ads or BookBub ads or any of the major deal sites. 
• You can focus on bringing in traffic to your website using search-engine optimization or ads on Facebook or Google or interviews on blogs or podcasts or many other ways. 
• You can focus on building your e-mail list using Facebook ads or joint author giveaways or many other list-building methods.

Each of these extensions to your marketing engine may or may not be cost-effective in the short-term. That is, running paid ads to promote one book may be a money-loser for that one book. But if it brings more readers to your website and then they sign up for your e-mail list and then they buy all your other books, then it’s a win in the long-term. And if the ads don’t work, you can stop them at any time, and your Virtuous Cycle still keeps working. 

But the important thing is that you can now experiment on all those dozens of marketing methods that authors are “supposed” to do. Each of them will theoretically inject new fans into your Virtuous Cycle at some point. Each of them may or may not be cost-effective. Each of them can be turned on or off at any time, and the core marketing machine still just works. 

Why This Matters in the Long Term

In the long term, you will continue to write books on a sustainable schedule. Maybe you can write one book per year. Or three. Or ten. 

It’s up to you to find a schedule that you can keep at for the long haul. 

If you’ve built your core marketing machine as a Virtuous Cycle, then every time you launch a book, here’s what will happen:

• You’ll send several e-mails out to your True Fans, who will generate a big spike in sales during your Launch Week. 
• This will drive your book up the bestseller charts in its various categories, bringing it to the attention of readers who never heard of you before. 
• These new readers will now enter your Virtuous Cycle and grow your e-mail newsletter fan base. 
• They’ll discover all your other books, and those will all see a surge in sales. 

So over time, your set of True Fans will grow and grow. And each book launch will do a bit better than the one before. And in between launches, your growing backlist of books will attract new readers, so your fan base will grow faster and faster. 

The mathematical term for what happens when you have a working Virtuous Cycle is “exponential growth.” If that sounds awesome to you, it is. Exponential growth is how all successful products become breakout big winners. 

How to Take Action When You’re Busy

What this means for a busy, overworked author is this. If you feel overwhelmed with all the marketing you’re doing or all the marketing you could be doing, then focus on your core marketing machine. 

Create your Virtuous Cycle first. Build your website and hook it up to your e-mail newsletter signup. Get your onboarding sequence written for your e-mail newsletter, and use it to promote your books. Make sure all your books give your readers an incentive to go to your website to sign up for your e-mail newsletter. 

Once your Virtuous Cycle is in place, you can afford to try other things—various kinds of paid ads or search engine optimization or social media or whatever you want to try. 

Each of those is an experiment—an optional way to inject True Fans into your Virtuous Cycle. If they work, great! If they don’t, abandon them and try something else. 

What you never want to do is abandon your Virtuous Cycle. Like diamonds, your Virtuous Cycle is forever. 

The post A Virtuous Cycle for Marketing Your Books appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

You can! At least, you can on the e-book readers I’ve tried. 

I do most of my reading on the Kindle app on my iPhone, so I’ll show the process I use. If you use a different app or a different device, the exact steps may be somewhat different. You’ll need to experiment to figure out how to do it on your system.

But if you do a lot of research, this is a process that will save you boatloads of time, so it’s well worth figuring out. 

Step 1: Highlight the Section You Want to Capture

On the iPhone Kindle app, you can highlight anything by selecting it with your finger on the screen. 

The image below shows a screen capture of the entire first page of my novel Son of Mary, with more than four paragraphs highlighted. 

Step 2: Open the Notes Section in Your Kindle App

On the iPhone Kindle app, whenever you touch the screen in a non-highlighted area, a toolbar appears at the top of the screen, and one of the icons in that toolbar is the Notes icon.

The image below shows a screen capture of the first page of my novel after I touched a blank spot on the screen. I have drawn in a red arrow to point to the Notes icon in the top toolbar. 

When you touch that Notes icon, the Notes Section of the app appears on the screen.

Step 3: Click the Share Icon in the Toolbar

On the iPhone Kindle app, each Note you’ve highlighted shows up with a small header that tells the location the Note came from. You can scroll through the Notes Section and see every snippet that you’ve highlighted all through the book. 

Notice that the paragraphs have been all smushed together from the segment I highlighted in my book. You can undo this later, after you’ve emailed yourself the Notes.

The Notes Section has a toolbar on top. There is a Share Icon in this toolbar.

The image below shows a screen capture of the Notes Section. I’ve drawn in a red arrow that points to the Share Icon. 

When you touch the Share Icon, a dialog box appears at the bottom of the screen that gives you the choice of exporting your Notes to Flashcards or Email. 

Step 4: Choose Your Export Option

Assuming you want to e-mail your Notes to yourself, choose the Email option on the dialog box. 

The image below shows a screen capture showing the dialog box at the bottom of the screen. I’ve drawn in a red arrow that points to the Email button in the dialog. 

When you select the Email option, an Export Notebook page pops up that lets you choose how you’ll format the citation of your Notes. 

Step 5: Choose your Citation Option and Export Your Notes

Choose whichever citation style you like best. The default style is None. 

Once you’ve chosen the citation style, click the Export button in the upper right corner of the Export Notebook page.

The image below shows a screen capture of the Export Notebook page. I’ve drawn in a red arrow that points to the Export button. 

You’ll notice at the bottom of the screen there’s a line of text that tells you how much of the book you have exported as Notes, including the Notes you’re about to export. The publisher of each book sets a limit on the amount of text you can export as Notes. The Kindle app won’t let you export more than that.

Once you’ve clicked the Export button, the e-mail app on your phone will pop up, ready to e-mail yourself an attachment with your Notes. All you have to do is enter the email address you want to send the Notes to, and then send the e-mail.

Step 6: Go to E-mail and Open the Attachment

Your phone has now sent you an e-mail with your notes. Go to your e-mail account on your computer and find the e-mail. There will be an attachment file in the e-mail with a name that ends in “.html”. 

On my machine, I found the best way to open this attachment was to right-click the attachment and select “Open With…” from the menu. This pops up a subment with a number of applications. I chose Microsoft Word, and this opened up the attachment nicely in Word.

Step 7: Reformat Your Notes

As we saw earlier, the paragraphs in your Notes are all smushed together. You may need to do some reformatting to make the Notes look nice. 

Do whatever reformatting you need to do.

That’s all!

Your e-book reader and your computer system may be different from mine, so the steps you take may be a bit different. But the process above should inspire you to figure out the exact set of steps to transfer notes from your e-book reader to your computer. If you run into problems, you may need to use a search engine to find exactly how to do the job on your e-reader and your computer.

Have fun!

The post Exporting Notes From an E-book to Your Computer appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Most writers are perfectionists, and that’s bad. It means we’re never done. 

The art of being a writer is to balance that good perfectionism against the bad perfectionism. 

There’s a way to do that. It’s a method that has become wildly popular in the world of entrepreneurs. 

The idea is to rapidly create something called a “Minimum Viable Product” and release it to the world. 

But you don’t stop there. Once you’ve released it, you continue to improve it. Forever. 

Let’s elaborate on all that.

What’s a Minimum Viable Product?

A Minimum Viable Product is three things:

A Minimum Viable Product is a product. It’s something useful to the world. Twitter is a product. An author website is a product. A blog post is a product. 

A Minimum Viable Product is viable. It actually works. It’s not something half-baked that you just throw out there. It does one thing and it does it pretty well. Twitter lets people communicate in little snippets to a list of followers. An author website tells the world about an author and their books. A blog post puts out one idea. 

A Minimum Viable Product is minimal. It doesn’t try to be all that it could possibly be. It’s the smallest possible version that can be released. When Twitter was first released, it didn’t have all possible features. Not yet. That came later. When you create an author website, it doesn’t have to be packed with 500 pages of content. Not yet. That might come later. When you write a blog post, it’s not a whole book. It’s one post, 500 to 1000 words. More words will come later. 

To summarize, a Minimum Viable Product is a useful product that actually works pretty well, but it’s not as perfect or complete as it will be someday.

Why Release a Minimum Viable Product?

The reason you release a Minimum Viable Product and not a maximal perfect product is because the fastest way to achieve a maximal perfect product is to release new versions of a product rapidly. 

You should of course make your Minimum Viable Product reasonably good (you want it to be viable), but you don’t have to make it as big as you can (you want it to be minimal), and you can’t possibly make it perfect on the first try.

And why release it rapidly? Because then you can start testing it. Does anyone actually want it? What do people like about it? What do people dislike? What could you do better in the next release? What’s missing that you should add next? 

When you release a Minimum Viable Product rapidly, you now have incentive to improve it, because now you’re hearing from actual users. And they may well have ideas for making it better that you never thought of. 

What Does a Minimum Viable Product Have to Do With Novelists?

Everything. 

Novelists create many different kinds of things that could be released rapidly as a Minimum Viable Product. Here are a few examples:

• A scene to show to your critique group 
• A synopsis to take to a writing conference
• A proposal to show to agents and editors
• A first draft to show to your critique buddy
• A second draft to show to your editor
• A final draft to hand off to your proofreader
• An author website
• An author newsletter
• A landing page for an email signup form
• A marketing plan
• An advertising campaign

Nobody will ever get any of these perfect on the first try. You should absolutely do your best to make it as good as you can. But you should also recognize that small is beautiful and fast is better than perfect. 

Create a Minimum Viable Product—one that works but is small. Get it out to the appropriate audience. Ask for feedback. Don’t feel hurt to learn it’s not exactly right yet. Try again and make it better next time. When you hear that it’s good, add more to it. Write another scene. Or another synopsis. Or another proposal. Or another draft. Add pages to your website. Send out your newsletter regularly. Build out your marketing plan to be more advanced. Create more ads. 

Build. Release. Get feedback. Improve. And then do it all over again. 

It may occur to you that each step in my popular Snowflake Method is a Minimum Viable Product for the next step. And you’re absolutely right, although I didn’t realize that when I created the Snowflake Method.

An Example Video Course I Loved Watching

If you’d like to see a Minimum Viable Product created in real-time, let me refer you to a short video course. It’ll show you how to create a Minimum Viable Product that most authors will need at some point in their life—a landing page to gather signups for an email newsletter. 

I thought I understood Minimum Viable Products before I watched this video. And I did, mostly. But watching the video reinforced the ideas in my brain, and it helped me see how the idea of a Minimum Viable Product applies to practically everything I do as a writer. 

The video is part of a whole set of video courses called “Thrive University.”  

As you might guess, the people at Thrive University don’t create free courses out of the goodness of their hearts. They sell an amazingly powerful set of marketing tools, which they call “Thrive Suite.” I recently bought Thrive Suite for myself and I’m incredibly excited to finally have all the tools I’ve been wanting for the last 20 years for building my website into a dynamite marketing machine. 

After I bought the tools, I decided to become an affiliate. In simple terms, that means that if I refer someone who buys Thrive Suite, I get an affiliate commission.

I’ve been using Thrive Suite for several weeks now, and I love, love, love it. But Thrive Suite is a story for another day.

For the moment, I recommend that you just watch this short video course on building a landing page as a Minimum Viable Product. The course is absolutely free, and I expect it’ll revolutionize your thinking. 

See if you agree. Click here to go to the “RAPID Landing Page Building” course on Thrive University.  (affiliate link)

And have fun!

The post Creating a Minimum Viable Product appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

But you don’t want to take random, chaotic actions. 

You want to take intentional actions toward some goal.

To do that, you need an Action Plan. 

One problem with most projects is that you don’t know all the steps required to complete the plan. 

The solution is to make an Action Plan that evolves in time. As you work through the steps in your evolving Action Plan, you’ll continually add new steps, because you’ll learn more and more about how to do your project. Eventually, you’ll run out of steps, and at that point, your project will be done.

The Theory Behind Action Plans

I wrote a very long article on the theory of Action Plans in the November 2020 issue of my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. Look for the article named “Executing Hard Projects.” (All past issues of my e-zine are archived here.)

If you want to learn the theory, you can read that article now.

It’s great to understand the theory, but theory is not enough. If you actually want to execute a hard project, you need to put the theory into practice. 

You do that by building an Action Plan. 

If you’ve never done that before, it might seem complicated.

So I’ve made a couple of templates for you to use. Most writers use either Microsoft Word or Scrivener, so I’ve made a template in each format.

I’ve also made a sample Marketing Action Plan for a hypothetical writer who wants to market their books better. I’ve written in the first few steps in the Action Plan, so you’ll see how you use the Action Plan. But I haven’t created the whole Action Plan for you, because I don’t know your exact marketing needs. You need to create an Action Plan that’s customized for you. Only you are qualified to do that. 

The template files and sample Action Plans are compressed in a zip file named “Action_Plan_Templates.zip”.

How to Get the Action Plan Templates

The Action Plan templates will cost you nothing. Just click this link and the zip file will download to the usual Downloads area for your web browser.

After you download the file, you’ll need to unzip it. Here’s how:

• On a Mac, just double-click the zip file and it’ll uncompress into a folder with the various template files. 
• If you’re using Windows, uncompress the zip file using whatever method you usually use for your version of Windows. If you’ve never done that, you’ll need to Google how to do it. 

How to Use the Scrivener Template

The Scrivener file is an all-in-one file named “Action Plan Scrivener File.scriv” that contains both the template and the sample Action Plan. I recommend that you keep all your Action Plans in this same Scrivener file. 

To create a new Action Plan within this Scrivener file, do the following:

• Right-click the folder named “My Action Plans”. 
• A menu will pop up. 
• Select “Add  >  Next Text From Template  >  Any Action Plan”.
• A new document will appear named “Any Action Plan”. 
• Rename this and edit the document. 

 The new document has directions on how to fill it in. Follow those directions to create an Action Plan that will evolve as you learn more and more about the project you’re trying to do.

How to Use the Microsoft Word Files

You’ll find two Microsoft Word files in the “Action Plan Templates” folder. 

The template file is named “Action Plan Template Word Document.docx”. 

The sample Action Plan is named “Sample Action Plan Word Document.docx”. 

To use the template file, just make a copy of it and edit that. Keep the original template file so you can use it again and again for other Action Plans in the future. 

To use the sample Action Plan, just open it and see how I filled it in. It has some directions to tell you how to keep building out your Action Plan as you learn more and more about the project you’re trying to take action on. 

Want to Learn More?

I’ll be talking more about Action Plans in the next issue of my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. 

If you’re not already subscribed to that, you can find out all about it and sign up here.

In the January 2021 issue, I’ll be talking about how to build out your Marketing Action Plan in 2021. This will probably take several months, because marketing is a large and complex topic. But we’ll take it one step at a time, and focus on the marketing tasks you should do first to build a powerful marketing machine that will work for you while you sleep.

Stay tuned!

The post How to Make an Action Plan appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

And what is “success?” I’ll define it right from the get-go as the amount of money you earn from your writing. You can define success differently, if you like, and I have no quibble with other definitions. But other definitions tend to be much harder to measure. Whereas it’s easy to measure your earnings. So if you prefer an artsier definition of success, that’s fine. But in the rest of this blog post, just substitute the words “Dollars Earned” every time you see the word “Success.”

In any event, back in early 2015, I believed that Success is the result of multiplying four critical factors.

Then about two years ago, I read Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s brilliant book titled The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success. Barabasi is a network scientist who’s compiled a massive amount of data about what makes some people successful. 

After reading the book, I amended my Success Equation to include one more factor. 

Here’s my amended Success Equation, the one I now teach on the rare occasions when I teach at conferences:

 Current Success = (Past Success) x (Target Audience Size) x Quality x Production x Discoverability 

Note that those are multiplication signs. If you fail in any one of them, then you are going to fail as a writer, because zero times anything is zero.

If you do moderately well in each one of them, then you should be pretty successful. If you are outstanding in each of them, then you will be astonishingly successful. Because the whole is not the sum of all the parts. The whole is the multiplication of the parts.

Let’s look at each of these factors:

Past Success

It’s just a fact. If you’ve already published one best-seller, then your next book is likely to be a best-seller too. Because you have a built-in crowd of people waiting for you to give them “the same thing again, only different.” Everyone expects you to succeed again, and that gives you a huge advantage.

On the other hand, if you’ve done very little so far, then your next book has a much lower bar that people expect it to jump. 

If you don’t have a great track record, this means you’re going to have to work hard on the other four factors so that your current book will do “better than expected.” Which means that next time, you’ll have raised the bar of expectations. If you do that five or ten times, you can bootstrap yourself from a low level of success to a very high level of success.

Let’s note that, very rarely, an unknown author will write a massive best-seller on their first book. But you shouldn’t count on that happening. You’re vastly more likely to succeed by working hard and smart over a long period of time. (People win the lottery, after all, but that’s a bad retirement strategy. Whereas a good retirement strategy is to save 10% of your income right off the top and invest it in something that grows faster than inflation, such as stocks or real estate.)

Target Audience Size

Your Target Audience is the set of people whom you intend to be delighted by the kind of novel you’re writing.

Don’t waste time trying to identify your Target Audience by demographics—age, gender, social status, etc. For most novels, demographic information is useless.

What matters is psychographics—the emotional hot buttons that your novel is going to push. Your Target Audience is the set of people who like having those particular hot buttons pushed.

It really is as simple as that. The purpose of fiction is to give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience. (I invented this phrase for the very first talk I ever gave on fiction writing, back in the fall of 2000. I have never changed my mind about this. The reason your reader reads is to get a Powerful Emotional Experience. So the reason you write should be to give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience.)

Now the question is how many people are in your Target Audience? You can’t know this exactly, but you know perfectly well if you are pushing the emotional hot buttons of a large group or a small group.

Quality

Everybody seems to have a different definition of Quality.

For example, if you Google around, you’ll discover that a fair number of reviewers believe that Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code, is a low-quality writer.

Various reviewers will tell you that Brown uses words poorly, has an agenda, and is a terrible researcher. And on and on.

So why is Dan Brown so successful? I say it’s because he delights his Target Audience. And the market rewards him for that.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder, after all. So here’s my opinion, and you can decide for yourself if it’s sensible: If you’re a writer who wants to succeed, your Target Audience’s definition of Quality is the one that matters.

I define “Quality” to mean “how well do you delight your Target Audience?”

It’s a simple fact that Dan Brown has a large Target Audience and his books delight them. He punches the set of emotive hot buttons that they want punched.

That is high Quality writing. Most readers don’t read mainly for beautiful writing. They don’t read mainly to avoid being exposed to an agenda (actually if they like the agenda, it can be a plus.) They don’t read mainly for great research.

Most readers read mainly for a Powerful Emotional Experience. The more powerful it is, the higher the perceived Quality of the writing.

For the record, I’m not in Dan Brown’s Target Audience. But it’s obvious that he’s making his audience happy. Dan is a high-Quality writer. Ditto for James Patterson, who knows exactly what his readers want and delivers it.

Production

Production is the number of books you write per year.

All other things being equal, the more books you write, the more Success you’ll have.

Dan Brown writes a book every few years and each one is a massive sky-rocket.

James Patterson writes a book every few weeks and each one is a pretty good rocket.

That’s why James is the #1 selling author in the world in this century. Production matters.

Beginning about ten years ago there’s been a trend among indie authors to focus on Production. It’s good to be productive, and it’s something I’m trying to improve on, but in my opinion, this should come after you’ve clearly identified your Target Audience and got your Quality up to snuff. When those are clicking, then start ramping up your Production. Set a weekly quota of time you’ll spend writing, or words you’ll produce, and then meet that quota. Every week of the year. 

Why not focus first on increasing your Discoverability before you think about boosting your Production? Because some of the most valuable tactics for raising your Discoverability require you to have several books out. So you’ll find that a steady Production schedule makes it much easier to build your Discoverability.

Discoverability

Discoverability means how easy it is for your Target Audience to discover your work.

The number of books published in the whole history of the human race is said to be more than 130 million.

Your book is one of that 130 million-plus. How easy are you to find?

There are many ways to increase your Discoverability, and I can’t possibly cover them all here.

I’ll just make one key point. The best methods of Discoverability are the ones that require the least resources from you. You have limited time, energy, and money.

If you spend all your time, energy, and money on methods that barely affect your Discoverability, then you’re going to fail.

Mapping Your Future

The order of these factors matters. When you plan out your career, first choose a decent-sized Target Audience. Then study the craft of fiction writing so that you can deliver the highest Quality possible for that Target Audience. Then set a steady Production schedule and push out books into the publishing pipeline at the best speed you can that doesn’t sacrifice Quality. Last of all, focus on a few effective methods of raising your Discoverability. 

Nobody can predict the future, and all plans are going to smash head-on into reality. Still, it’s better to plan than not plan.

In mapping out your future, remember that the main thing is to focus on the main thing. You have no control right now over your Past Success. It is what it is, and your goal is to build your Success over time by working on the things you can control. You can control them by asking yourself these four questions:

1. Can you write for a larger Target Audience?
2. Can you increase your Quality by finding a way to delight your Target Audience better?
3. Can you increase your Production?
4. Can you increase your Discoverability at minimal cost in time, energy, and money?

Those are the things I think about as I plan my own writing career.

The post The Success Equation appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Meredith posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy,

Big fan of yours over here. I love that you answer questions on your blog and thought this might be a good one for you. 

I’ve been working on a novel for about 4 years now. It keeps shifting — the characters stay roughly the same, but the genres and plots change. I keep getting about 75%-80% of the way through an outline (either through Snowflake Method or my own) and then end up with a blockage. I’ve workshopped this book in a WIP format and got pretty discouraged by feedback both at the idea and at the word level. I took a 3 month break from it to work on other things and have returned, but keep having the same problem.

Is my issue psychological? Is it work ethic? Every time I think I’ve unraveled what this particular book is, I feel stuck again. Is it because my idea isn’t any good? Is it because I’m not any good? What gives?

I’m at a point where I’ve written probably a novel’s worth of content in many different scenarios, from many character viewpoints, as many different genres. I feel very lost in the woods here. Is there any way out?

Best,

Meredith

Any advice you can offer would be appreciated. I’ve completed several shorter works in my day but never been able to crack a novella-length work. This one keeps eluding me.

Cheers,

Meredith

Randy sez: I can sympathize, Meredith. Here’s why…

I’ve Been There 

I’ve had projects that seemed to take forever. I’ve had projects that got me bogged down to a standing stop.

I was looking through my old files last weekend and came across my very first novel. Which I restarted several times, changing the title, changing the characters, changing the plot, changing a lot of things. 

That novel never got published. I think someday I’ll come back to it and publish it, but it’s not burning a hole in my brain just now, so I’m working on a project that is.

In fact, the current project I’m working on is ridiculously hard. It’s a four-book series. Each book is very long. And I’m making good progress on it. I recently published Book 1 and I’m a few scenes away from finishing the first draft of Book 2.

In every measurable way, this project is massively more difficult than that first novel I tried.

How is it that I can do this hard project now, when I couldn’t publish that (much easier) project 25 years ago?

Writing Makes You Strong

The answer is time. I’m 25 years more experienced now than I was back then.

So as I was browsing through that story over the weekend, it occurred to me that the project wasn’t a failure. 

It was a success—precisely because it taught me things I needed to learn. I wrote 5 or 6 unfinished or unpublished novels before I finally sold one. Each of those was a necessary stepping stone along the way. The value was in the doing, day in and day out, for years and years.

It wasn’t a failure to walk away from those projects. It was school, and I’m a better writer because of them. As I recall, Stephen King didn’t get published until his sixth novel. Those first five weren’t failures. They were metaphorically his kindergarten and his third grade and sixth grade and ninth grade and eleventh grade. Then he finally wrote one that worked, and he metaphorically graduated. 

Switching Gears is OK

So Meredith, here’s my thinking. I might be wrong, because I don’t know enough about you and your writing, but I think you might have chewed all the sugar out of this particular piece of gum. You might be done with it. It might be time to move on to some other project. And give yourself permission to put this one away for good.

That’s not a failure. You developed crucial skills that you couldn’t possibly have developed any other way than by working on this project. Now you have those skills, and the next project will develop other skills that you also need.

I’m of course just guessing here, but I’d say to go write another book. It’s possible you won’t finish that one either, but the very act of working on that project will build “writing muscle” in you. 

If you do that long enough, you’ll get to where you want to be as a writer.

Good luck! And please email me again in a year to let me know how things are going.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post When You Just Can’t Finish That Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Lindsey posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, 

I am a first time novel writer and I find your snowflake method very helpful. I completed steps 1 through 3 fairly confidently and was excited to move onto step 4. I wound up getting too caught up in details and writing nearly SIX PAGES of story line. The worst part? I haven’t even gotten to my story’s first disaster yet. 

I’m not sure what to do next because I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and don’t know how to pull myself back to a reasonable-sized step 4. Should I just save this content for later and head back to the drawing board to create a shorter, more cohesive step 4?

Help!

Thanks, Lindsey

The Purpose of the Snowflake Method

Randy sez: The purpose of the Snowflake Method is to help you write a solid, well-structured first draft of your novel. All we really care about is getting that first draft written, no matter what process we use to get there. The reader will never know or care how we got the words down on paper. The only thing the reader cares about is:

• How good the story is.
• How fast we get the story written.

So there are worse things in life than writing a very long outline in Step 4 of your Snowflake document for your novel. In the grand scheme of things, six pages is not too much to explain 100 pages of story.

What you have, Lindsey, is a useful tool for creating your Scene List in Step 8 of the Snowflake. Every paragraph of your outline will cover roughly one or two scenes of your novel. This is a little ahead of yourself, but that’s not a crime.

I do think there’s value in writing the shorter synopsis, though, because it will ensure that you’ve got a balanced story structure. So let’s try to put you back on track without wasting any of that hard work you’ve put in so far.

Getting Back on Track

Here’s what I recommend:

• Save that six-page synopsis somewhere—you can call it Step 6.5, your Super Long Synopsis.
• Now try to summarize it in one page. This will be the first chunk of your Long Synopsis in Step 6. 
• Now try to summarize it in a single paragraph. This will be the first chunk of your Short Synopsis in Step 4. If you’re not clear on how you could possibly make it this short, remember that you already wrote an even shorter version of it in Step 2, the one-paragraph summary. 
• Write three more paragraphs to summarize the first half of Act 2, the second half of Act 2, and Act 3. Keep these short, focusing on just the details that lead up to the major disasters. You now have a full one-page Short Synopsis, which is what Step 4 is all about. Make sure it is an accurate expansion of your one-paragraph summary from Step 2.
• Go on to Step 5, the Character Synopses. These can be as long as you want. You might want to use some of that material from your Super Long Synopsis here, if any of it is special information about one particular character. 
• Finish Step 6, the Long Synopsis. You already made a start on it, but now finish it, trying to expand each paragraph of your Short Synopsis into a full page. If you feel the urge to write more, do your best to restrain it. You are still working out the big picture here. Details can come later. 
• Finish the other steps of the Snowflake as you like. When you get to Step 8, which is the Scene List, resist the urge to write more than one sentence about each scene. If you really have more that you want to write about each scene, save it for Step 9, where you can amplify on each scene as much as you want. There is no limit in Step 9. You can write as much or as little as you like.

Good luck on this, Lindsey! I confess that I haven’t often seen a writer go over their word count on the Short Synopsis. Usually, writers hate synopses (I’m not too fond of them myself), and they want to write less. The fact that you’ve written a lot more tells me you’re excited about your story.

And if you’re excited, your reader probably will be also. 

A Reminder

As a reminder, if you like using the Snowflake Method and want a software tool to make it fast, easy, and fun, then my program Snowflake Pro might be the thing for you. Version 1.2.1 is now available, and anyone who bought either an earlier version of Snowflake Pro or my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method is welcome to download the latest version for free. All the details are on my Download Again page here.

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post When Your Outline is Too Long appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

We’re going to get down into the details in this post. Fight scenes are really easy, if you know the rules. And what are the rules?

Some Fight Scene Rules-of-Thumb

• Show, don’t tell 
• Make it happen in real-time 
• Enforce causality 
• Show sequence, not simultaneity 
• Favor completed verbs over continuing-action verbs 
• Show the fastest stuff first 
• For every action, show a reaction 
• Use interior monologue and dialogue to set the pace

These rules of thumb all exist for the same reason. The reason is that your reader wants your fiction to show them a movie in their heads. The rules of thumb force you to do that.

A Wretchedly Bad Fight Scene

I could explain all the rules in boring detail, but that would be Telling you. Right now, I want to Show you. So here’s a wretchedly bad fight scene that violates all the rules. Read it first, mock it all you want, and then let’s analyze it to see why it’s so awful.

After taking six or eight or maybe even ten punches and kicks to all parts of his body — such as the solar plexus and shins and head — Arnie was hurting quite badly, although perhaps not as badly as when Mrs. Weevil gave him a D in spelling in third grade when he KNEW “potato” had no “e” in it.

In any event, Arnie ducked his head and spun to the right, simultaneously kicking out furiously with his foot and shouting that Bruce was an ambidextrous excuse for a moron, just after he saw Bruce throwing another punch at him. But none of this worked, because before he could do any of that, Bruce jumped high in the air and kicked Arnie in the eye, so none of the stuff Arnie tried actually worked because he was lying there on the ground wondering if he was ever going to see Cindy Lou Who again, who had grown up to be quite cute, even if she wasn’t so much back in seventh grade, and also he was screaming in agony.

“Want some more, you little lout?” Bruce said as he kicked Arnie in the kidneys about fifteen times and then grabbed his head and pounded it on the ground. All this time, Arnie was jabbing Bruce in places like the groin and stomach, but it didn’t do any good until the end when Bruce fell over in a faint, just after Arnie cried “Uncle!”

It goes without saying that this is horrible beyond words. But why? What makes it so bad? The short answer is that it violates all the rules of thumb I gave above. 

The long answer is going to take a bit of work. Let’s look at each of the rules and see how our horrible fight scene violates each one.

Show, Don’t Tell

Our example scene violates this rule almost continuously.  Look at the first sentence:

After taking six or eight or maybe even ten punches and kicks to all parts of his body — such as the solar plexus and shins and head…

The reason this is “telling” is because those punches are all lumped together into one big glop, making it impossible to say with any certainty how many punches there actually were. That’s not showing your reader a movie, it’s just bean-counting.

Nor are we sure exactly which body parts are getting all the punishment, although we get a list of a few parts that might be getting whacked. Or might not — who knows? But your reader can’t visualize a punch to “all parts of the body.” 

And furthermore, what’s Arnie doing while he’s taking all those punches? He can’t possibly be patiently accepting them. Does he throw a counterpunch? Beg for mercy? Phone E.T.? We can’t see this scene. We can’t see Arnie. We’re just being told about it.

Don’t show “six or eight punches” to an unspecified part of the body. Show one punch to the gut. And then…

Make it Happen in Real-Time

When a fight happens in real-time, you see one punch and then right away you see the response and then right away you see the next punch. In real-time, when the action is falling fast and furious, you don’t have time for musing like this:

Arnie was hurting quite badly, although perhaps not as badly as when Mrs. Weevil gave him a D in spelling in third grade when he KNEW ‘potato’ had no ‘e’ in it.

Backstory has its place in a novel. But not in a fight scene. A fight scene is now, not back in third grade. You’re trying to show your reader a movie in their head. Any backstory you put into a fight scene stops the movie cold. 

Enforce Causality

When I talk about causality, I mean that a cause should be shown first, and then the effect afterwards. If you show the effect first, and then the cause, it looks absurd. As in this paragraph:

In any event, Arnie ducked his head and spun to the right, simultaneously kicking out furiously with his foot and shouting that Bruce was an ambidextrous excuse for a moron, just after he saw Bruce throwing another punch at him.

So let’s untangle this. What happened first? Arnie saw Bruce throwing another punch at him. But that’s shown last in this sentence. The effect is shown first, and it’s a long sequence of events that I’ve drawn out ludicrously: Arnie ducks his head. Arnie spins to the right. Arnie kicks. Arnie shouts. Only after we see all that do we see the cause for it all.

That’s just dumb. If you’re showing your reader a movie in their head, don’t run the movie backwards.

Show Sequence, not Simultaneity 

It rarely makes sense to try to make two different actions simultaneous in a fight scene.

Why? Because a fight scene is chock full of all different sorts of actions, each of which takes a different amount of time. If one action takes a tenth of a second and another takes two seconds, the action will feel distorted if the author asserts that they happen simultaneously.

In our example, we’ve got this gem:

Arnie ducked his head and spun to the right, simultaneously kicking out furiously with his foot and shouting that Bruce was an ambidextrous excuse for a moron.

You can duck and spin to the right pretty quick. You can kick pretty quick. But how long does it take to shout that bit about the ambidextrous excuse for a moron? A lot longer. All this action/dialogue can’t happen simultaneously. So it’s a heinous crime to say that it does.

Even if lots of things are actually happening all at once, your reader can only read about one of them at a time, because the words are written in a linear sequence. So don’t say they’re happening all at once. It’s a direct violation of what the reader is experiencing.

Favor Completed Verbs over Continuing-Action Verbs

Use simple past tense verbs such as “kicked” or “punched” or “shouted” rather than those pesky participles such as “kicking” or “punching” or “shouting”.

The reason for this is simple. When you say “Arnie jabbed Bruce,” you imply that it happened quickly and it’s now over. Which is what the camera would show. When you say “Arnie was jabbing Bruce,” you imply that it’s going on and on and on. But a jab happens in a few tenths of a second, so your mind has no option except to see the jab happening over and over and over again. Or happening in super Slo-Mo. Either way, it’s not much like a fight any more.

In the middle paragraph, we’ve got the worst of all possible worlds, because we’re mixing completed verbs with continuing-action verbs:

…Arnie ducked his head and spun to the right, simultaneously kicking out furiously with his foot and shouting…

This kind of writing is enough to make anyone cry.

Show the Fastest Stuff First

When you sequence a group of events that are happening at roughly the same time, show those that happen fastest before you show those that happen slowest. Look at this segment:

…none of the stuff Arnie tried actually worked because he was lying there on the ground wondering if he was ever going to see Cindy Lou Who again, who had grown up to be quite cute, even if she wasn’t so much back in seventh grade, and also he was screaming in agony…

This has numerous problems, but note this: we show Arnie ruminating about Cindy Lou Who (which could take a couple seconds, given what a slow wit Arnie is) and then we see him screaming in agony (which he should be doing pretty fast, with all the kicks he’s getting.) If you’re going to show these, it’s better to show him screaming first and then show him ruminating.

For Every Action, Show a Reaction

If Bruce punches 6 times and Arnie jabs back 6 times, then you need to shuffle these actions together, rather than lumping all the punches together and then all the jabs. Look at the text:

“Want some more, you little lout?” Bruce said as he kicked Arnie in the kidneys about fifteen times and then grabbed his head and pounded it on the ground. All this time, Arnie was jabbing Bruce in places like the groin and stomach…

So Bruce is performing a whole bunch of actions all lumped together, and only then do we see any of the reactions from Arnie, which are also all lumped together. The net effect is to smooth out the fight sequence into a bland oatmeal of muffled actions. You can’t see a scene like this in your head. Oh, sure, you see something. But it’s nothing like what the author intended. It’s a muddle, not a movie.

Use Interior Monologue and Dialogue to Set the Pace

Pace is important in a fight scene. It’s utterly unrealistic to show a nonstop flurry of actions and reactions.

Real fighters will exchange a series of punches or kicks or whatever. Then they’ll back off and look each other over, catching their breath and watching for weaknesses. A real fight has ebbs and flows in the pacing. You show the faster parts of the scene by short sentences that show only the actions and reactions. You show the slower parts of the scene by longer sentences that show actions and reactions interspersed with interior monologue and dialogue.

Your goal in a fight scene is to make it take just about as long to read as it would take to happen in real time. You do that by controlling the pacing.

In the fight scene above, we have blocks of both interior monologue and dialogue tossed in at the very height of the action. Those would work much better during the lulls between the punches, while the fighters have stepped back to catch their breath and plan their next move.

Not Even Wrong

The example I’ve given above does not even deserve an F. It’s too horrible to merit a grade at all. It’s too horrible to rewrite. The most merciful thing we can do is forget it ever happened. 

As homework, you might look at a fight scene from your own novel and ask if it follows the eight rules of thumb I listed above. If it doesn’t, can you fix it? Or should you scrap it and start the scene over?

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post On Writing Fight Scenes appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Steven and I had a very wide-ranging and animated discussion on the Snowflake Method and fiction writing. If you enjoy listening to podcasts, you can listen to my episode on The Story Blender here.

You may have already read Steven’s book Story Trumps Structure, a well-known book on the craft of fiction writing.

Back in May, Steven’s publicity people invited me to read his latest book Synapse for endorsement. I read it and really enjoyed the novel. Synapse is a futuristic book about AI and the question of just how much like a human a robot might someday become. It reads fast. As I recall, the final sentence of my endorsement was, “Start sweating now.”

Then in August, I met Steven at a writing conference. We had a great time talking about a thousand different things, mostly on writing, but also on pretty much everything else.

That’s when Steven invited me to be a guest on his podcast. We did the recording in early October, and I had a fantastic time. I hope you’ll find it fun and useful in your writing journey. And I encourage you to subscribe to Steven’s podcast, The Story Blender. You can subscribe to The Story Blender here. Steven’s past guests have included James Rollins and George R.R. Martin.

The post My Recent Podcast on The Story Blender appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Jim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

What’s the best way to include background info on a character in the first few chapters so readers will care about him or her?

Randy sez: Making your readers care about your character is extremely important. If your readers care, they’ll probably keep reading. If they don’t care, they probably won’t. 

Is Backstory the Answer?

It’s easy to think that telling your reader the character’s backstory is the magic ticket. After all, if your readers know your character’s whole life story, won’t they want to know how things turn out?

Yes, probably. But the problem is that your character’s whole life story is long, and your readers are impatient. They want to see what’s happening right now. Your reader won’t care about your character’s backstory until they’ve emotionally committed to the frontstory.

If telling the backstory isn’t the answer, then what is?

The Short Answer

The short answer is that you need to make your readers relate to your characters. But that’s not a very good answer, because it doesn’t explain how you do it. 

We’ll get to the long answer in a bit, but first, let’s look at an example of a best-selling novel that highlights how hard it is to make your reader relate to your characters. Let’s look at the novel Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card.

Ender Wiggin, Boy Genius

Ender Wiggin is a six-year-old boy genius. He is scooped up by the government and sent to an orbiting battle school where he’s going to be trained to command an interplanetary fleet of starships in a desperate bid to save the human race from being destroyed by an alien race that’s already on its way to planet Earth.

Can you relate to Ender? Is your life like his in any possible way?

If you’re thinking no, then you can see why this is hard. 

So how does Orson Scott Card make you relate to Ender within the first few pages?

By putting Ender in a situation everybody can relate to.

Ender’s First Two Scenes

In the very first scene, which only lasts two pages, Ender has a painful medical procedure. Everyone can relate to that. So the reader is quickly on Ender’s side. The procedure doesn’t go well, but Ender muddles through. If all scenes were like this one, readers would relate to Ender, but they wouldn’t care that much about him. Because so far, Ender hasn’t shown how to rise above his hard situation. But the next scene is different.

In the second scene, Ender is ganged up on after school by a group of bullies. Everyone can relate to that. But this scene doesn’t end the way a bullying scene usually ends. Most people get beat up by the bullies. Ender isn’t most people. Ender fights back—and he wins. Partly by luck. Partly by being clever. Partly by bravado. And partly by pure desperation. The point is that Ender finds himself in a hard situation that most people can relate to. And he shows how to win. 

That, I think, is the secret to why so many readers care about Ender. Even readers who aren’t six years old. Even readers who aren’t geniuses. Even readers who will never go to battle school, command a starship fleet, or fight aliens. 

But all readers have faced an uphill battle against bullies. And they want to believe that there’s a way to win. Within just a few pages, the reader knows that Ender can win. And the reader is on Ender’s side. In the rest of the book, Ender goes on to face bullying that grows exponentially harsher. At each level, he grows and becomes tougher.

The reader wants to live Ender’s life. The reader wants Ender to show how to fight the bullies in the toughest situations imaginable.

The reader cares about Ender.

In Summary

If we can boil this all down to two main points, we have these:

• Put your character in a hard situation that your reader can relate to.
• Show your character responding to that hard situation in a way that gives the reader hope.

Once you’ve done that, your reader will care about your character. And the reader will even care about your character’s backstory.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post How to Make Your Reader Care About Your Characters appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

That would be bad.

That would be horrible. 

That should never happen, but it does happen to some writers every year. And once a novel is lost, it’s lost.

The only solution is to travel back in time and backup your computer before your machine crashes. 

There may well be a computer crash coming in your future. It happens to most people at some point, if they live long enough. It’s not fun, but there are two levels of not-being-fun:

• If your machine was backed up, you buy a new computer or get the old one repaired, and then you restore the machine from your backups, and you’re good to go. This will waste a day or two of your life and cause you some stress and cost you some money. But you won’t lose your novel.
• If your machine was not backed up, you buy a new computer or get the old one repaired, and then you have to rewrite your novel from scratch, because you can’t restore it.

Does your future self have a backup system in place?

If the answer is yes, then you’re good. No need to read the rest of this article.

If the answer is no, then let’s pretend your future self has traveled back in time to right now, and let’s change your future. Let’s get you set up with an automatic backup system to protect your precious novel.

You have three main options for backing up your system:

• An external hard drive that sits on your desk.
• An online backup system that lives in “the cloud”.
• An online syncing system that lives in “the cloud.”

All three of these are good options. I use all three, because they all have pluses and minuses. Your novel is important. Keep it safe every way you can.

Backing Up To An External Hard Drive

An external hard drive is a small box that sits on your desk. You connect it to your computer with a cable. Any modern computer comes installed with backup software that will constantly keep your backups up to date. Whenever you make changes on your computer, the software will save the new copy to your backup hard drive. And it will keep the old copy, so you can get back to the way it was before. 

These days, external hard drives are cheap and hold a lot of data. I recommend you get one that holds at least 1 TB (that’s a thousand gigabytes). It’s not much more money to get 2 TB or more. You can get a very good external hard drive with loads of memory in the $100 to $200 range. You can get a decent one for under $100. 

That’s not pocket change, of course. The question to ask is how much you’d be willing to pay to get back your novel if you suddenly lost it. If you’d be willing to pay more than the cost of an external hard drive, then get it. 

You can order a good external hard drive online. Once it comes, power it up and connect it to your computer. Generally, you can connect with a simple USB cable, but there are other options. Check to make sure you buy one that connects to your machine.

If you’re using a Mac, your computer will ask you if you want to use your new hard drive to backup your system using “Time Machine.” What is Time Machine? It’s Apple’s free built-in software to backup your machine. Click on Yes and your system will walk you through the setup process. Then it’ll start backing up your machine. Probably in less than an hour, it’ll be done and you’ll be all backed up.

After that, as long as your external hard drive is connected to your computer, Time Machine will backup any changes you make. So you’ll always be up to date, or very close.

If you’re running a Windows machine, you can learn exactly how to do backups by doing an online search for “how to backup to an external hard drive using windows.” Follow the instructions and you’ll soon be all backed up.

If the world were perfect, that would be all you need. The external hard drive would be always there with a backup of your entire sytem. 

But the world is not perfect. Your house could be destroyed by a fire, a tornado, a flood, an earthquake, or some other horrible disaster. That would destroy your computer and your external hard drive. A burglar could break in and steal them both.

So you need a second backup system. You want a backup that doesn’t live in your house on the same desk as your computer. 

Backing  Up to an Online Backup System

An online backup system lives somewhere else, in a secure place connected to the internet. It’s run by people who live and breathe security. Their job is to sell you a service—backing up the data on your computer to their secure computers. Using encryption and a password, so only you can read that data.

You just need to log in to their website, buy the service, and tell it what files to backup.

You’ll need to pay a monthly fee or an annual fee for this service, and that buys you some extra peace of mind. 

What online backup service should you use? That’s up to you. There are a number of good ones, but they change from time to time. I’d like this blog post to be relevant five years from now, so I recommend that you do an online search for “best online backup services.” Your search will probably show you several articles in computer magazines that compare the various services. PC Magazine usually runs an article once a year that compares the best current services. Read that article or a similar one and make your choice.

The advantage of an online backup service is that it’s very secure. It’s much less likely to be destroyed than your external hard drive.

The disadvantage of an online backup service is that it is usually much slower than an external hard drive. If you have lots of data on your system and if your internet service is typical in speed, it might take days or weeks for your system to get fully backed up. And it would probably take a few days to fully restore your system if you ever need to. 

So that’s why I recommend using both an external hard drive (Plan A) and an online storage service (Plan B). That way, you get high speed and high security.

And because I’m cautious, I also recommend Plan C, which is to sync your computer online.

Syncing Your Computer Online

Many people these days have more than one computer. They might have a machine at the office and a machine at home and maybe a light travel laptop. 

And it’s handy to have those machines all able to see the same data. An online syncing system lets you do that. Then you can work on your novel at work, at home, on the road, or wherever. As you make changes on one machine, your changes get stored online and then they get updated to your other machines. Again, this is secure, so only you can see your data.

If one of your computers has to go to the shop for repairs, you can continue working on your novel from any of your other machines. Very handy when you need it.

If you have a Mac, Apple has made it very simple to sync everything in your Documents folder and Desktop folder using their iCloud service. To learn how, do an online search for “how to use icloud for documents and desktop” and follow the directions. 

There are other online syncing services that are popular for both Windows and Macs: DropBox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc. Do an online search and choose the one you like best.

You might ask how an online syncing service is different from an online backup service.

An online syncing service is geared towards syncing the current version of your data between several machines. It may also keep older versions of your files, but that’s not the main focus.

An online backup service is geared towards backing up the data of a single machine, along with previous versions of the data on that machine, in a way that makes it easy to restore files that have been lost. (Of course, you should verify that your online backup service actually saves all the previous versions back to the beginning. If a service doesn’t do that, I wouldn’t want to use it.)

So there you have it. Plan A is an external hard drive. Plan B is an online backup service. Plan C is an online syncing service. I use all three because my data is valuable to me. You get to decide which you’ll use, based on your own needs.

Homework

• If your computer crashed today and you lost all your data, how much would you pay to get it back? (If it was possible to get it back.)
• Do you have an external hard drive for backups?
• Do you have an online backup system?
• Do you have an online syncing system?
• What actions will you take to keep your data safe?

One Last Thought

I’ve been writing a column in my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine about once a year for the last several years on the subject of setting up automated backups. I know this gets repetitive, and it’s also scary to think about.

But every single year, I hear from a few people who email me to say that they took my advice, and then a few months later their computer crashed, and then they restored everything.

And they write to thank me for saving their data.

I hope very much your machine won’t crash, but I hope even more that you’ll be prepared. It takes a little effort today, but it’ll pay off for the rest of your life. And you’ll sleep better knowing your data is secure.

The post Crash-Proofing Your Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

I wrote an article on this very subject awhile back. The title was “What’s Social Media Good For?” and I published it in the November 2016 issue of my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. This blog post is a light revision of the article I wrote then. 

Let’s start by defining the problem we’re trying to solve.

The problem is to figure out whether it’s worth putting time, money, and energy into marketing on social media.

Remember that social media is widely alleged to be a powerful marketing tool for novelists. (Some even claim it’s THE most powerful marketing tool.)

But is this claim true? How would you know if social media is a powerful marketing tool? What does it mean to say that something is a powerful marketing tool?

Let’s take these questions in reverse order.

What is a Powerful Marketing Tool?

Marketing is about selling your books. If social media is a powerful marketing tool, then using social media in the right way would get you lots of sales.

This isn’t complicated. Marketing leads to sales. A powerful marketing tool leads to strong sales.

How Do You Recognize a Powerful Marketing Tool?

You know you have a powerful marketing tool when you can trace the connection from your marketing to the sales numbers it generates.

So if you can’t trace the connection, then your marketing is not very powerful. And if you can trace the connection, it is. Simple as that.

Whenever I put things this way, I quickly hear from people claiming that the world doesn’t work that way, because you can’t trace the connections between marketing and sales, because things are complicated, because … um, because.

My response is that if you step on the gas pedal and you don’t feel the car accelerate even a little, that wasn’t the gas pedal you stepped on. 

Which sounds like I’m raining on the parade. But I don’t think it’s raining on the parade to say that a parade is not a parade if nobody can detect it.

How Powerful is Social Media?

Let’s look at a case study done several years ago by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.com. Darren is one of the best bloggers in the world and he had a new product to launch. He used several different marketing tools and standard tracking methods to trace the connection between his marketing and his sales. You can read his article here.

Darren found that only 3% of his sales came from all his combined social media marketing efforts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google Plus. That is not a typo. 3%. Three percent. You may be wondering how it could only be three percent? Where did all the rest of his sales come from? Here’s where:

• 3% came from Darren’s affiliates—people who actively promoted his products in exchange for a percentage of sales.
• 7% came from Darren’s blog posts. That is shockingly low, considering that Darren is one of the most famous and successful bloggers in the world.
• 87% of Darren’s sales came from email Darren sent out. 

That’s right. Darren made the overwhelming majority of his money from email, even though email was just a small part of his marketing efforts.

In Darren’s blog post where he reported these results, he faced up to the obvious question: If social media doesn’t generate sales, then what’s it good for?

You can read his article to see what he thinks on the matter. I have an opinion which I’ll give you a bit further down in this article.

But first a little marketing theory so we have the vocabulary we need.

Basic Marketing Theory

Any working marketing strategy needs to achieve three things. If you do all three of these things well, you succeed. If you fail on any one of these three things, you fail. Here are the three phases of marketing:

1. Attract
2. Engage
3. Convert

“Attract” means that you find a way to make people learn that you exist. There are 7 billion people on the planet. Most of them have never heard of you.

“Engage” means that you provide enough information to the people you attracted so that they know you’re a person worth listening to.

“Convert” means that you motivate somebody you have attracted and engaged to finally pull out their credit card and buy your stuff.

You can’t convert people you haven’t engaged.

You can’t engage people you haven’t attracted.

Attraction, engagement, and conversion can happen very quickly. It’s possible to take somebody through all three of these phases in 5 minutes, as long as you do them in the right order and do them well.

What Social Media is For

Now let’s look at what Darren measured in his experiment. Darren was exclusively measuring conversion. He emailed, blogged, tweeted, FaceBooked, and more—all in an attempt to get people to pull out their credit cards and buy his product. He found that email worked best for conversion, by a huge margin.

And if you look at Darren’s explanation of what he thinks social media is for, it all comes down to attracting and engaging. Darren is a smart guy. I think he’s right.

So if you’re going to use social media, then focus your efforts on those two things.

1. Attract people to your website, where they can sign up for your email list.
2. Engage them so they know you’re a person worth listening to.

That’s what social media is for.

And by the way, you can measure attraction. You can measure engagement. You can measure conversion.

But the important thing to keep in mind is that these three things don’t ADD.

They multiply, because they happen in sequence:

Marketing Success = Attraction x Engagement x Conversion.

So if any of these is zero, then your marketing amounts to zero.

And if all of them are maxed out, then your marketing efforts are maxed out.

Homework

1. What’s your marketing strategy? What do you do to attract? What do you do to engage? What do you do to convert?
2. How are you measuring your attraction? How are you measuring your engagement? How are you measuring your conversions?
3. Which of these phases is working well for you and which isn’t?

The post Social Media Marketing and Your Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Bailee posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I think I have a story that I want to write. This would be my first time writing a book, and I’m at a pretty big loss for words. I find myself wrestling with multiple opening chapters and losing steam when trying to plan it out. It’s unbelievably frustrating to me. Would you say its best to dive right into a novel or should I have a solid outline before beginning?

Randy sez: There are a couple of possible reasons that I can think of for why your novel is losing steam, Bailee. I can’t tell which is the reason, so I’ll cover them both and hope that one of them rings a bell for you.

You might be losing steam because:

• You’ve gotten stuck on rewriting the first few scenes over and over again. 
• You’ve tried to plan out your whole novel, when your brain isn’t wired that way.

Let’s look at those two possibilities in more depth.

Revision Hell

Writer sometimes talk about “revision hell”—a bad place where you can get stuck forever.

Note that there is also a “revision heaven” where you put the pot on simmer for a good long time and keep doing revisions over and over while the story turns into soup. I’ve done that for a project that needed it, and I didn’t mind it a bit, because I thought it made the story better.

You can tell whether you’re in revision heaven or revision hell by asking whether the story is getting better. (And also, whether you’re enjoying it.)

Bailee, it’s possible you’re in revision hell. New writers often get caught in revision hell by writing a few scenes, then getting them critiqued, then rewriting the scenes, then getting them critiqued again, and doing that over and over forever. 

That way lies eternal torment. That road guarantees to make your novel lose steam.

If you’re in revision hell, then here’s how to escape. Write your scenes and take them in for critique, but then leave the scenes alone while you write the next scenes in your novel, applying what you just learned from the critique to the new scenes. Promise yourself not to revise any scenes until you finish the first draft of the novel.

When you do this, you make forward progress in your story, and you become a better writer, both at the same time. And your novel doesn’t lose steam.

Planning for Pantsers

Some writers just naturally write by the seat of their pants, without any kind of outline or character preparation. We call these writers “seat-of-the-pants” writers (SOTPs for short), or sometimes just “pantsers.” Their brains are wired to write without planning. Many, many great novelists write this way. If that’s the way your brain is wired, then write that way.

Other writers just naturally need to plan out the story before they write it. Knowing where they’re going gives them the feeling of security they need in order to write the next scene, and the next, and the next. Many, many great novelists write this way. If that’s the way your brain is wired, then write that way. My wildly popular Snowflake Method is one variation on this theme, but there are others.

But what happens if a pantser tries to plan their novel?

Bad things happen. I’ve seen it numerous times. 

The pantser will quickly get bored trying to plan their novel. They feel like the story isn’t fun anymore. And they’re right. Planning isn’t fun for pantsers. Planning is loads of fun for planners. 

Bailee, it’s possible you’re a pantser trying to be a planner. That will take the steam out of your novel every time.

If that’s the case, then the solution is simple. Stop planning and just type the novel. 

Here’s one indicator that can help you decide if you’re a planner or a pantser. Imagine that some authority figure tells you: “Throw away all your plans and just type the novel.” 

How do you feel when you hear those words?

• If that feels liberating to you, then you’re probably a pantser.
• If that feels terrifying to you, then you’re probably a planner.

Other Possible Causes

There are probably other possible reasons why Bailee might be losing steam. I can’t think of any right now, but I’m sure my Loyal Blog Readers can. If you’ve got some ideas on what’s causing Bailee’s problem, leave a comment here. 

Writing fiction should be fun. If it’s not fun, then something’s wrong. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post What If Your Novel is Losing Steam? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Francisca posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, thank you for helping aspiring writers. I decided to try to write short stories and I realized I had original ideas and a nice writing style, but my problem is I am not good at telling stories (never have been). So, I can imagine and describe atmosphere, dialogues, characters and all, but I do not know how to develop a plot as a sequence of events, twists, good endings and the like. My question: am I doomed or this is something that can be learned at a creative writing course?

Thank you in advance for your reply!

Best wishes!

Randy sez: I’ll keep this short. You’re not doomed, Francisca. You can learn how to plot fiction.

When I started writing fiction, I wasn’t good at any of those things you mentioned—atmosphere, dialogue, characters, or how to plot fiction. But I learned. You can too. All you need is a good book, and I can point you in the right direction. I’ll do that at the bottom of this post.

But first, a short digression.

One Book That Changed My Life

When I was in seventh grade, right near the end of spring semester, I wandered into a bookstore, planning to buy a book on how to be a better debater. But I came out with a book on chess. Don’t ask how that happened. An impulse decision. 

That book changed my life.

At the time, I knew the rules of chess, more or less. But I had no idea how to play well. 

However, the book I bought was an absolute masterpiece. The title was Winning Chess: How to See Three Moves Ahead, by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld. 

I took that book home and worked through it—21 chapters that explained each of the most common tactics in chess—the pin, the knight fork, the double attack, discovered attack, discovered check, etc. And each chapter had a number of example problems to solve.

It took me most of the summer after seventh grade to work through that book. By the time I finished it, I could beat all my friends. When I went back to school in the fall, I could beat everyone I played. Every time. 

I had no delusions of being a grandmaster. But that one book made me a much much much stronger player. 

The Power of How-To Books

That’s the power of the right book in the right hands at the right time. I still have that book. It’s in the bookcase right above my chair. I still think it’s an amazing book.

But it wasn’t just the book. I’ll bet most people who’ve read that book didn’t get the results I did. Because I put a whole summer into mastering the book. I worked really hard. And in short order, I learned a new skill. 

The right book plus some concentrated hard work can do wonders for you. That’s the larger lesson I learned. That’s why I say the book changed my life. It showed me that skill is not something you’re born with.

Skill is something you can learn. 

All you need is the right book, and the work ethic to master that book.

How I Learned How to Plot Fiction

When I started writing fiction, I knew the rules of spelling and grammar and punctuation. But I had no idea how to write fiction well.

Then I met a new friend at a writing conference, and he told me about a book he’d been studying, Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain. 

So I bought the book and spent months mastering it. 

That book changed my life.

From that book, I learned how to write action, dialogue, and interior monologue, and how to put them together. I learned about scenes and sequels. I learned about beginning, and middle, and end. I learned how to plot fiction and write a compelling story. 

There’s more to fiction than just those things. But action and dialogue and interior monologue are core. Scenes and sequels are core. Beginning, middle, and end are core. Once you know how to do those things, you have a really solid foundation. And there are other books to learn the other aspects of fiction writing. 

Why I Teach Fiction

Not long after I published my first novel, I was asked to teach at a local writing conference. I decided to teach on the core things I learned from Dwight Swain.

I’ve been teaching those core things ever since. And every time I teach, I learn something new. Or I relearn something I’d forgotten. Teaching fiction makes me a better writer. And it’s fun to teach. So that’s why I do it.

I’ve often said that most of what I teach is stuff I first learned from Dwight Swain. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I also teach stuff I learned from other writers—James Scott Bell, Larry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, and plenty of others. And I’ve certainly invented a few things along the way.

But it’s just a fact that nobody has made a bigger impact on me than Dwight Swain. Because Swain taught me the fundamentals of plotting fiction, which is essential. And that’s the very thing Francisca asked about above.

So in my recommendations of books below, Professor Swain comes first, followed by three of my own books that in various ways interpret and expand on Swain’s work.

Four Recommended Books

Here now are four books that will help you in various ways to learn how to plot your fiction:

Dwight Swain’s classic book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. Chapters 3 and 4 will teach you how to write scenes. 

Also my 2009 book, Writing Fiction for Dummies. This is a broad overview of everything I knew about fiction writing when I published the book ten years ago. 

And my 2014 book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. This covers my wildly popular Snowflake Method of designing a novel. If your issues are getting the big picture right for your story, this book will teach you how it’s done.

And my 2018 book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. This focuses on Step 9 of the Snowflake Method, in which you design the structure of your scene. If your problem is that your scenes aren’t working, this is the book for you.

There are of course many books on plotting, but these are the ones I’m most familiar with, so I’m sticking with these.

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Joe posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Dear Mr. Ingermanson,

I’m writing a novel in first person, present tense. It starts off with a bang, an exciting chapter. That chapter ends with the main character (who is in a terrible spot), hiding in a room, where memories start coming back to him of how he got there. 

For the next two and a half chapters, he recalls the events that led up to that point, but it’s written past tense. Near the end of the fourth chapter his reminiscing ends, with him coming back full circle to where chapter one ended. And the story continues from there, kicking back into present tense for rest of the story.

Can I do this? Is this acceptable? If not, what would you recommend?

It all seems pretty clear when I read through it, but I”m concerned that agents (or readers, for that matter) might have an issue with it. What do you say?

Thanks so much for your help.

Randy sez: My general rule is that you can do anything you want in your novel, as long as it works. 

So the real issue is whether this works, which is hard to answer without actually seeing Joe’s chapters.

Starting Fast Is Good

But I’m going to make a guess, based on the clues in Joe’s question. I may guess wrong, but that’s the nature of the beast when you don’t have complete information.

Joe’s novel starts out with a bang. That’s good, if he’s writing an adventure novel or thriller or something similar. That first chapter is a promise to the reader of what will come in the rest of the novel.

It sounds like the next two and a half chapters are not a bang. It appears that they’re a flashback, and a very long flashback. That can be okay, as long as the flashback is as exciting as the first chapter. 

But it can be a problem if the flashback isn’t exciting.

Why? What’s the problem?

The First Chapter is a Promise

The problem is that a slow flashback wouldn’t be delivering on the promise made in chapter one.

Chapter one of your story tells your reader that your novel is a certain kind of book. It’s a promise that all or most of your chapters are going to be “just like the first one, only different.”

It sounds like Joe’s flashback in chapter two breaks that promise. And so does chapter three and most of chapter four.

But when you break a promise to the reader that early in the book, and for that long, you’re very likely to lose a lot of readers.

Present Tense and Past Tense

Let’s be clear that there’s no real problem with switching from present tense to past tense and back again. Many readers won’t even notice. Readers that notice won’t really care, as long as the story engages them. 

The only problem is in making a radical change in the pace of the story so early in the book, before the reader has committed to the story. (Later in the book, if you want to briefly change the pace to give the reader a breather, you’re probably on safe ground.)

As for how agents will respond to this, they’ll be tuned in to how readers will like it. If agents think this kind of transition is going to lose readers, they’ll probably reject the manuscript, or at least ask the author to fix it.

Of course, if Joe’s chapter two is as exciting as his chapter one, then there’s no problem, and everything’s gravy.

Chapter Two is Crucial

I’ll repeat myself. I don’t know for sure that Joe’s manuscript makes an abrupt change of pace in chapter two. I have only partial information, and that’s what I’m going on. 

There are no rules in fiction, but there are rules of thumb. 

And one of the big rules of thumb is to make a promise in chapter one, and then deliver on that promise throughout the rest of your story.

So chapter two is crucial. And once you get chapter two right, chapter three is crucial. And once you get chapter three right … I think you see the pattern.

Consistency matters. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

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Elizabeth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy! I had a question I hoped you could help me with. I love stories, and I have many ideas that I believe I could write into books. Problem is that I tend to hop back and forth on which one to write. I start on the one I’m interested in, make some progress on character info and the story, then I get interested in another story idea and want to write that. Often I never even start writing the actual book.

Clearly you can see that isn’t very productive. I know it, and often those ideas just sit half formed. It’s not that they couldn’t be good stories. I give my characters fears, lies to believe, a dark moment in their past, and have some idea for how the story would go. I just lose interest. Do you have that problem? If so what do you do? 

I’m now trying to write a shorter story around 30 to 50 pages. I think that might help make it easier to finish something. What do you think? Thanks a million! God Bless!

Randy sez: Yes, losing focus on a story is a problem. No, it’s not one I suffer with. (I tend to go the opposite way and hang on to stories for very long times.) We all have our tendencies, and not all of them are productive. So how would I solve Elizabeth’s problem?

I can think of three directions she might go. I don’t know her exact life situation, so I can’t guess which of these might work best. Maybe none of them will work for her. But listing them out here may give her another idea. And I suspect this is an issue that a lot of my Loyal Blog Readers might have.

So for those of you who aren’t strong finishers, here are three suggestions.

Write Shorter

Elizabeth has already suggested the idea of writing shorter, and it’s one I rather like.

If it’s hard to stay focused on a long project of several hundred pages, it might be easier to stay the course on a short project of a few dozen pages.

You might take this even further and work on flash fiction of a few hundred words up to a thousand words or so. You can write a piece of flash fiction, edit it, and polish it to perfection in an hour or two. That’s really not enough time to get bored.

Juggle Your Stories

It might also work to give yourself permission to be working on several stories at once. The idea here is that you always work on the one you have energy for. Then when that starts to feel stale, switch to another for a while.

This works if the problem is boredom, rather than an unwillingness to finish. I have a co-worker who likes to have numerous tasks on his pile. He’s constantly switching from one to another. Wouldn’t work for me, but it works for him.

But if the problem is that you really don’t do well with finishing projects, this isn’t going to work. You’ll just juggle more and more and more, without ever crossing the line on any of them.

Write With a Partner

I’ve worked with a coauthor, and it worked out well for both of us. All authors have strengths and weaknesses. If you can find one with strengths and weaknesses that complement yours, then this might be the ticket.

If you’re a weak finisher, then what you’re looking for here is somebody who is a strong finisher and can drag you across the line, kicking and screaming.

Why would anyone want to team up with you if they’re such a great finisher? Maybe they’re not great at starting. In that case, you’d be good at getting them revved up, and they’d take care of getting you wrapped up.

In Summary

So those are three possible solutions to the problem. There may be more, but let’s summarize the ones we’ve discussed:

• Try writing shorter. 
• Try juggling multiple stories. 
• Try writing with a strong finisher as a partner.

And I suspect my Loyal Blog Readers can think of more ideas. What do you say, readers? Any ideas for Elizabeth? What’s worked for you?

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post What If You’re Not a Strong Finisher? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Scott posted this question on my  “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, freshman writer here. My question is around practicing craft. Do you recommend freshman looking to get started pick up a beginners guide to writing and work through the examples and practice writing prompts or start writing a novel if they have an idea? I have a beginners book that I am working through but I also have some novel ideas I am itching to get started on. Any recommendations would be helpful. Thanks Scott

Randy sez: Good question, Scott. There are any number of ways to learn the craft of fiction writing, but they all boil down to three core elements, which I’ll discuss below.

What’s a Freshman Writer?

But first, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of words. Scott refers to himself as a “freshman writer.” He doesn’t mean he’s in his first year of high school.

Scott is referring to a classic article on this website, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Author! In that article, I explain the four basic phases of getting published. Writers who are just starting out are called “freshman,” and their main goal is to develop their craft.

Why craft? Because that’s the foundation of everything else. If you write well, it’s “easy” to get traditionally published. (Meaning that it’s possible.) If you don’t write well, it’s “hard” to get traditionally published. (Meaning that you need to be a celebrity.)

Of course, you don’t have to publish traditionally. These days, anyone can publish their work independently, whether they have good craft or not. But craft still matters. If you write well, it’s “easy” to earn some money as an indie author. (Meaning that it’s possible.) If you don’t write well, it’s “hard” to earn money as an indie author. (Meaning that you will only make money if you find some way to game the system.)

So then, the big question is this: how does a freshman writer learn the craft of fiction writing?

There are three main ways:

• Write the kind of book you want to sell.
• Read books or take courses or otherwise study the craft of writing from experts.
• Get your work critiqued by someone who understands craft AND knows how to give a critique.

Which of these is most important?

I have no idea. They’re all essential. Which of the four tires on your car is most important?

Let’s look at how each of these works.

Learning Your Craft by Writing

If you want to be a good swimmer, you need to swim. A lot. Reading the theory of swimming will help, yes. Getting a coach will help, yes. But you need to get in the water and do it.

Same with writing. If you want to be a good writer, you need to write. A lot.

You need to write the kind of fiction you want to publish. Every successful writer I know agrees with this. 

Write and write and write.

By writing fiction, you develop the emotional muscles to move your reader emotively. And that’s what fiction is mostly about.

Make a writing schedule and stick to it. If you’re a beginner, this schedule might be: “Spend 10 minutes writing every day immediately after breakfast.” If you’re a professional novelist, your schedule might be: “Write 2000 words of new copy every day before lunch. No lunch until the 2000 words are written. No exceptions.”

You might think 10 minutes is too little. Actually, no, it’s fine for a beginner. The goal here is not to work yourself to exhaustion. The goal is to create a habit that will carry you through days of low motivation. Once you’ve built the habit, you can ramp up the time.

You might think professional writers can’t possibly get by on only 2000 words per day. Actually, they can. Stephen King writes about 2000 words per day, pretty much every day. That works out to over 700,000 words in a year, which is several large novels or a lot of smaller works. 

In fact, 2000 words per day is too aggressive for many writers. I know professional writers who do fine with a quota of 1000 words per day. 

Again, doing it every day is the thing that wins you gold medals.

Learning Your Craft From Books and Courses

I learned how to play chess when I was 8 years old. I learned it from a neighbor kid, and he had very little clue on how to play well, which meant that neither did I.

The summer I was 12, I bought a book on chess and worked through it. And that book was dynamite. I learned about a dozen rules of thumb that turned me from a terrible player into a very decent player. When I went back to school in the fall, I could beat every kid in the chess club.

So books have power.

Same thing happened when I started writing fiction. I just started writing without any instruction at all. I had some native talent, but I had no idea what I was doing. Then I bought Dwight Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer and worked through it. I applied it to my writing. That book was dynamite too.

In a few months, I began writing much, much better. 

Eventually, I started going to writing conferences and taking courses with published novelists. Every time I did, I learned new stuff. 

Not long after that, I got my first book published.

I continue to study the craft. Because books have power.

That’s one reason I write books on how to write fiction. Because nothing I do in this life will have more influence than the books I write. 

Learning Your Craft by Getting Critiqued

There is nothing harder than getting your writing critiqued. I still remember my terror the first time I went to a critique group. And I still remember how I couldn’t sleep that night after getting critiqued.

Getting critiqued is painful. 

Getting critiqued is necessary. You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t be objective about your own writing. 

I took a swim class once, many years ago. I had no delusions of grandeur. I just wanted to learn how to swim a bit better. On the first day, the teacher had each person in the class swim once across the pool. In front of a video camera.

The next class, the teacher showed us all every video and did an instant critique on each swimmer. I remember each person saying, “What? I’m doing that? No wonder I’m a lousy swimmer.” 

I couldn’t figure out how they could not know what they were doing wrong.

Then I saw the video of myself swimming, and the teacher explained what I was doing wrong. And I couldn’t believe I was doing that. No wonder I was a lousy swimmer.

An objective critique matters. An objective critique by someone who knows how to critique is pure gold.

Back to Scott’s Question

Now we can get back to Scott’s question. Should he continue working through the book? Or should he start writing one of those ideas burning a hole in his brain?

I hope the answer is now clear. 

Writing is essential, so make it a habit to write every day.

Training is essential, so study good books on craft and master them. 

But there’s one thing Scott didn’t ask about.

Critique is essential, so find someone who can look at your work and give you a little guidance.

A freshman who does those three things will soon move up to being a sophomore. 

And then a junior.

And then a senior.

And then an author.

Most of the authors I know are still doing those three things regularly. 

For extra credit, pass along what you learn to other writers. I’ve discovered that I don’t really know a subject until I’ve tried to teach it. 

Have fun!

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post How Do You Learn the Craft of Writing Fiction? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Dawn posted this question on my  “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

You’ve mentioned that few stories have more than one protagonist. Are these types of stories not well received? My first novel has two protagonist who unbeknownst to them are each others antagonist and is written in first person from each of them.

In a nutshell it follows the same timeline of two characters who are traveling separately. The chapters switch every 3-5 chapters from one to the other so the reader doesn’t fall behind on what is happening with either. I tested it with a few people as two separate books because of the length (358 pages in 5.5×8) but those who read them felt a strong attachment with the first character they read and immediately saw the second as the antagonist which is not the intent. They said the combined book allowed them to feel for each character in a stronger emotional bond. I was also told that switching characters in shorter time intervals was easier to follow than when I had Part 1 Character 1 with a longer time frame then went to Part 2 Character 2. In that format the readers felt they had to restart the story that they were already emotionally involved in and found themselves again looking for the first character.

The first person narrative as opposed to 3rd person, which I attempted, was intended to focus on the characters internal struggle and I’ve been told feels like you found an old journal and you’re reading their deepest fears, thoughts and needs.

Its been well received so far. I’m actually on my second book that my readers are asking for and looking to publish my first in a POD, but would love some feedback.

Thank you

Randy sez: My first rule of writing is that you can write your novel any way you want, as long as it works. And the novel “works” if it delivers a powerful emotional experience to your reader.

What’s a Protagonist?

I would define a protagonist as the lead character that you want your reader to emotionally bond with and root for. (Other people might define a protagonist differently, but that’s my working definition.) 

By that definition, it sounds to me that you don’t have two protagonists, Dawn, you have none. (If you’re watching the Super Bowl, and you’re rooting for both teams, then you aren’t really rooting for either. Part of the fun of watching a football game is going all in for one team. I can remember a Super Bowl in which my current hometown team played my former hometown team. That was not win-win, it was lose-lose.)

If you connect with a character, you want him or her to succeed. You want to cheer for your character’s victories and moan over their defeats. If you now connect with a second character who wants the first one to lose, then you no longer have a yardstick for what’s good and bad. What’s good for the first is bad for the second, so how are you supposed to feel?

Now I’m sure that a very skilled novelist could write a novel with multiple lead characters and could somehow move the reader to keep switching allegiance from one to the other. But that seems to me to be a lot harder than writing a novel with one clear protagonist. 

That seems to me to be a case of 1 + 1 = 1/2.

Are Multiple Protagonists Well Received?

I don’t know that anyone’s done any kind of study on how well received novels are that have “multiple protagonists” (which, by my definition, are novels without a protagonist.) 

Invariably, when this kind of question comes up, I hear from objectors who say, “But Author X wrote a novel with multiple protagonists and sold millions!” And invariably, counter-objectors respond, “Yes, but you’re not Author X.” (In some cases, Author X actually wrote a novel with multiple viewpoint characters, not multiple protagonists. Some recent blog posts on this are: Multiple Viewpoint Characters  and How Many Viewpoint Characters in Your Novel? and How Do You Decide Who Your Protagonist Is?  

I don’t think that I’m good enough to write a novel with “multiple protagonists”. I suspect there aren’t many authors who are.

And that’s why writing teachers generally advise writers to stick with one protagonist. 

But I’ll repeat myself: you can write your novel any way you want, as long as it works. Have fun!

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

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Amanda posted this question on my  “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

So, NaNoWriMo is done. I won! Yay!

I now have a fairly “complete” story of about 96,000 words that is … a big mess! Where do I start with revisions? And how do I keep from feeling overwhelmed?

Randy sez: First off, Amanda, congratulations on winning NaNoWriMo! And you won very handily. To win, you only had to write 50,000 words and you did almost twice that, 96,000. That’s a very productive month!

Your question is a common one—how to tackle revising your novel. There are several ways to do that, just as there are several ways to generate your first draft. 

First, a quick note on how to revise your novel without feeling overwhelmed. My general strategy is this:

1. Make a written document that tells what changes I’m going to make without actually making any changes. This gives me a chance to think strategically about my revisions. 
2. Once I have a written plan for my revisions, I plunge in and actually start making changes. But I do this on a copy of the first draft, so I can always get back to the original if the revisions turn out bad.

Now before we talk about how to revise your novel, let’s review some basics on how we write first drafts, because there are a number of ways to do that. The method you choose will affect how you later tackle revisions.

Quick Review of Creative Paradigms

In my book Writing Fiction for Dummies, I talked about “creative paradigms”—various methods that novelists use to write the first draft of their novel. There are many creative paradigms that work. Here are four common creative paradigms that I identified in my book:

• Seat Of The Pants—you just sit down and type your first draft without planning your story and without editing anything. You keep pressing forward until the first draft is done.
• Edit As You Go—you sit down and type your first draft without planning, but you edit each page and/or each scene many times before moving on to the next.
• The Snowflake Method—you use my wildly popular 10-step Snowflake Method of planning your story before you write it.
• Outlining—you create a long and detailed synopsis (sometimes up to 100 pages). Then you write the draft following your outline.

There’s no one best method of writing a first draft that works for everybody. I think it’s worth learning how other authors do it, because that can give you ideas on how to do it yourself. But ultimately, you get to choose the method that works best for you. If it works for you, then nobody has the right to tell you you’re “doing it wrong.”

When writing the first draft, you are mainly wearing your creative hat. But once the first draft is done, it’s time to put on your editing hat. So how do you do that?

You Have Options

Just as there’s no one best method of creating your first draft that works for everybody, I suspect there’s no one best method of revising your novel that works for everyone. 

I would bet there are a number of editing paradigms that writers use. I can think of at least two, and I’m sure there are many others.

The two editing paradigms I can think of are closely related to my Snowflake Method creative paradigm:

• Work through the Snowflake Method in light of everything you learned by writing the first draft. Make a list of revisions you’ll make. I’d use this method to revise a first draft that is “not too messy”—that is, the story structure is pretty clear and the characters are reasonably consistent.
• Work backwards through the first nine steps of the Snowflake Method, again making a list of revisions you plan to make. I’d use this method to revise a first draft that is “very messy”—this is, the story structure is very unclear and the characters are not yet well fleshed-out.

I’ll say a few words about each of these in the next two sections. 

Revising Your Novel Using the Snowflake Method

If the large-scale structure of your story is pretty clear, then I suspect you’d do well by working through the Snowflake Method, making a list as you go of things you want to change. (If you already used the Snowflake Method earlier to write your first draft, then this should be quick. Just make a copy of the original Snowflake document and keep a running list of the changes you want to make to the story.) I’ve done this myself, and it’s worked well for me. Here’s what I do:

I start with my One-Sentence Summary that I came up with before I wrote the first draft. Can I improve it, now that I’ve written the story? And does my revised One-Sentence Summary suggest ways to improve the story on the next draft? 

Then I look at the One-Paragram Summary. This breaks down into a Three-Act Structure, with three major disasters as turning points. Can I refine my One-Paragraph Summary in light of the actual story I wrote? And after refining my One-Paragraph Sumary, can I see things in my first draft that need to change in the next?

I continue on like this through the first nine steps of the Snowflake Method. At each step, I try to tweak my original Snowflake document in light of the actual first draft that I wrote. And after tweaking the document, I ask if the tweaks I just made suggest any changes that I need to make in the next draft. 

Revising Your Novel Using the Reverse Snowflake Method

If the large-scale structure of your story is not clear at all, then you might do better by figuring out your story structure, working backwards through the steps of the Snowflake. 

Start with the actual manuscript you wrote for your first draft. Analyze each scene using the tools in my book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. Is the scene Proactive or Reactive? What are the main parts of the scene? Does the scene work emotively? Can you summarize this scene in a single sentence? If you do this for every scene of your novel, you will have completed Steps 9 and then 8 of the Snowflake Method. 

Read through the manuscript, taking notes on all your characters. What’s their physical description? What is their age? What do you know about them, their family, their friends, etc? What drives them? You can create a separate dossier for each character in your novel. By the time you finish this read-through, you’ll have a complete “character bible” for all your main characters. This is Step 7 of the Snowflake Method. 

Go back to your list of scenes and construct a long synopsis (4 or 5 pages) in which you cover the high points of all the scenes. When you complete this, you’ll have finished Step 6 of the Snowflake Method. 

Think about each of your characters, focusing on their backstory and how that affects them in your story. Write half a page up to a full page on each of your main characters. Or do an imaginary interview with each main character. When you’ve done all this, you’ll have finished Step 5 of the Snowflake Method. 

Try to trim down your long synopsis into a 1-page synopsis that just covers the high points. It’s OK to not cover every single scene. Try to capture what’s going on in the main groups of scenes. This is Step 4 of the Snowflake Method. 

Write a short summary of each of your characters, focusing on their role in the story and their story goal, their ambition, and their values. This is a caricature of your characters where you capture only the high points. When you finish, you’ll have done Step 3 of the Snowflake Method. 

Summarize your story in one paragraph. Write a sentence that sets up the background of the story. Then one sentence for each of three main acts in your story. Then one sentence explaining how it ends. This is Step 2 of the Snowflake Method. 

Write a One-Sentence Summary of your story that you can use as your “elevator pitch”—in case you ever find yourself on an elevator with an editor or agent. (This does actually happen sometimes.) When you’ve got a good One-Sentence Summary, you’ve completed Step 1 of the Snowflake Method.

Now that you’ve worked through all the steps backwards, zip through them all again from Step 1 to Step 9, making notes on what changes to make. What should you add to your story? What should you remove? What other revisions should you make?

I’ve never used this Reverse Snowflake Method to revise a novel. But I’ve used essentially this method to take a huge set of research notes and turn it into the storyline for a historical novel. (The problem in writing a historical novel is that history is not structured like a story, so you have to find your plot and your character motivations from a mishmash of dull historical texts. This is extremely hard.)

Actually Editing Your Manuscript

When you’ve made a list of the changes you want to make in revising your novel, make a copy of your first draft and rename it as your second draft. That way you aren’t editing the original, and if you don’t like your edits, you can always get back to the original.

Then get to work putting in the changes you listed. Start with the first scene in your new scene list. If it’s a brand new scene, then write it from scratch. If it’s an old scene that you’ve marked to delete, then delete it. Otherwise, make the changes that you decided to make. 

Keep going from the first scene to the last, following your revision plan. When you finish, you should now have a second draft that’s way better than your first. It may not be perfect, but it’s better. Repeat the process as many times as you need.

Every writer is different, and it may be that the methods I’ve described above don’t click with you. That’s okay. But I hope they give you some ideas so you can invent your own action plan for revising your novel. Good luck, and have fun!

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Moriah posted this question on my  “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m writing a novel with 6 main characters. I’m having trouble with head hopping and what POV and how many POV’s I should use for the story to work and flow properly. It’s a fantasy book. 3 of the characters are friends in the beginning and are in most science together and it mainly follows them, but the other 3 characters don’t appear till later and aren’t there for every scene but they are still hugely important to the story. There’s one character I could write from first person and make the protagonist but the other characters input are to important. How do you think I should write this without messing it up.

Randy sez: It sounds like you have a choice of anywhere from 1 to 6 viewpoint characters in your novel. I don’t think 1 is too few. I don’t think 6 is too many. I typically have 3 or 4 viewpoint characters in my novels, but I’ve gone up to 5, and my current work in progress has more. 

Review of Viewpoint Characters

It won’t hurt to do a little review here, to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing. Typically, a novel has one primary character (the protagonist) that the main story is about. (Yes, you can have more than one protagonist, but most novels don’t.)

But your novel is made up of many scenes, and each scene should work as a story in its own right. Therefore, each scene will typically have one main character that the scene is about. And that main character isn’t necessarily the protagonist of the novel. The main character for each scene is usually called the “viewpoint character” (or the “point-of-view character” or the “POV character”).

For more on viewpoint characters and why you need them, see chapter 4 of my book How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. 

Choosing the Viewpoint Character

So how do you choose the viewpoint character for each scene?

That depends. You may decide that your novel is only going to have one viewpoint character. In that case, there’s no decision to make for the scenes. You’ll use the same one every time. This has some advantages in giving your reader a consistent experience. But the disadvantage is that every scene has to have that viewpoint character, which means he or she really has to get around.

Most novels have multiple viewpoint characters. These will typically include the protagonist, friends of the protagonist, enemies of the protagonist, and possibly others. 

A good rule of thumb for each scene is to choose the viewpoint character to be the person with the most to lose in the scene. This is a rule of thumb. It’s not always the best choice, but it’s often a very good choice. So consider that character first. Then ask if there’s a better choice.

My guiding principle is to try to give the reader a powerful emotional experience in every scene. So the critical issue is which viewpoint character will do that best.

But How Many Viewpoint Characters?

Now we can circle back to Moriah’s question. How many viewpoint characters should you have in your novel?

That’s really up to you. It’s almost inevitable that you’ll give one of your viewpoint characters more air-time than anyone else. (Usually, this is the protagonist, but sometimes the protagonist of a novel isn’t a viewpoint character. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, the protagonist is Holmes and the viewpoint character is usually Watson.) Whoever you choose to get the most air-time, they need to have a strong voice.

Usually there will be a couple of other characters who also get a lot of air-time, but less than the leader. If you have three viewpoint characters, for example, you might give one 40% of the scenes and the other two 30%. That’s a nice, balanced split, but there’s nothing magical about it. 

If you have a largish number of viewpoint characters (5 or more), then some of them are not going to get many scenes. At least one of them will get no more than 20% of the scenes. 

And if you have a LOT of viewpoint characters (15 or more), then some of them might be walk-on characters who only star in one scene. That’s okay. That can work. If you need that many to make the novel work, then do it.

My opinion is that the number of viewpoint characters you choose is probably not going to mess up your novel. What makes or breaks your novel is the quality of the viewpoint characters—how well each scene works. If you make sure that every scene has a really solid viewpoint character, and if your main story has a solid protagonist, then the count of viewpoint characters is not a major issue.

Don’t get carried away, of course. If your novel has 100 scenes and 100 viewpoint characters, that’s going to take some extra skill to make sure that the main story hangs together as a story.

But for practical purposes, 1 viewpoint character is as good as 3, which is as good as 6. 

It’s not something to sweat too much over.

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I’m not sure why that is. I know that branding is hard work. But it’s also rewarding work. If you look at the top novelists working today, all of them are well-branded. 

What Does It Mean to be Well-Branded?

Being well-branded means that your fans have a very good idea what they’re going to get when they buy your next book. So there’s no decision to be made. When they see you have a new book out, they open their wallets and buy.

Being well-branded also means that people who’ve heard of you have a clear idea of what they would get if they bought your next book. If they’re in your target audience, they might well buy one of your books eventually. And if they’re far outside your target audience, they probably won’t ever buy one of your books. (That’s good. You don’t want people way outside your target audience buying one of your books, because they won’t like it and they’ll write bad reviews and cause bad word-of-mouth for you.)

Being well-branded also means that people who’ve never heard of you can quickly get a clear idea of what you write when they do hear about you. Maybe they’ll hear about you from one of your fans. If  you’re well-branded, your fans know how to explain what kind of book you write. Maybe they’ll hear about you from somebody who isn’t your fan. If you’re well-branded, people outside your target audience can still explain what kind of book you write. Maybe they’ll just come across you at random on the web or in a store. If you’re well-branded, even that will be enough for them to figure out if they’re in your target audience. 

An Example of a Great Brand

These days, one of the best-branded writers I know of is Lee Child, who’s been writing the Jack Reacher series for a couple of decades now. Jack Reacher is an ex-military cop. He left the Army with the rank of major and has been drifting around the US ever since. He hitchhikes wherever he feels like going, carrying no luggage except a toothbrush. He works odd jobs for cash and wears the same clothes for days at a time, until they get dirty or worn out and then he throws them away and buys more. He’s a big guy, a lethal street fighter, and extremely smart. He absolutely cannot be corrupted. But he will always bend the rules if the rules get in the way of real justice. Wherever Reacher goes, he finds trouble or trouble finds him, and he gets caught up in a mystery of some sort, and he solves the case and moves on. 

Some people will say that if you’ve read one Jack Reacher book, you’ve read them all. That’s true and it’s not. If you’ve read one Jack Reacher book, you know Jack Reacher. The point of reading the next book is to hang out with Reacher. The plot will zip along at light-speed. Reacher will be up against powerful unseen enemies bent on evil. He’ll get into several vicious fights, always at a major disadvantage, but he’ll outsmart and out-fight the bad guys. There will often be a beautiful woman and a bit of snuggling, but in the end she’ll part ways with Reacher. The story will sometimes seem wildly implausible, and yet you’ll find yourself believing it could happen anyway, because actually it could. When you get to the end of the book, you won’t be able to remember all the twists and turns the storyline took, but you won’t care. Because you had a good ride on the roller coaster with Reacher. And you like Reacher.

That’s a great brand. Why? Because you know what you’re getting in every book. You’re getting what I described in the previous paragraph. You’re always getting a crazy adventure with Reacher. And yet every book is different. Different location, different problem, and mostly different major characters. 

The same, and yet different, in every book. 

So How Do You Brand Yourself?

Branding yourself is a process that will take some time. Your end goal is that you want to be able to answer some or all of the following hard questions (or hard questions like these—you may want to choose your own questions):

• I want to be the best writer in the world for __________________________. 
• When people hear my name, I want them to think ______________________. 
• When people hear my name, I want them to feel ______________________. 
• When people read my books, I want them to have this kind of an emotional experience:  ____________________.
• The things that are common to all my books are these: ________________________.
• The things that can be different in each of my books are these: _______________________. 

You may be wondering where a tagline fits into this. My view is that taglines are overrated. I don’t think Stephen King has a tagline. Or J.K. Rowling. Or Lee Child. And yet they’re all well-branded. 

You won’t work out your brand in one day. You probably won’t get it all done in a year. 

But it won’t hurt to start thinking about your brand now. And you’ll probably want to rethink it after every book. A brand is something you evolve into. And a brand will also evolve right along with you.

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Amanda posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo next month! Any advice?

Randy sez: First, let’s make sure everyone’s on the same page. 

What’s NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is an annual event in which tens of thousands of writers try to write a novel in a month. It costs nothing to enter, and the main value is that by the end of the month, you should have at least 50,000 words written on your novel. That’s hard, but doable, and it’s worth doing. So it makes a great goal.

You can learn all about NaNoWriMo on the official NaNoWriMo website.  

Now to Amanda’s question—what advice can I offer to writers planning to enter? I’ve never entered NaNoWriMo myself, but I think it’s a great idea, and a number of my author friends enter it every year because it’s a great motivator to get some words written.

So here are my thoughts on NaNoWriMo:

• Know why you’re entering. What do you hope to get out of this exercise? 
• Work out your schedule now.
• If you’re a planner, then plan your story in advance. 
• Know what you’ll do after NaNoWriMo is over.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

What Will You Get Out of NaNoWriMo?

One of my guiding principles in life is this: “Never do anything without a reason.”

What’s your reason for wanting to enter NaNoWriMo? I can think of a number of good reasons a writer might enter. Here are a few of many possible answers:

• “I think it’ll be fun.”

• “It’s a challenge. I want to see if I can write a novel.”
• “I’ve been meaning to write a novel for a long time and I need some accountability. This will motivate me to keep putting words on the page.”
• “I was about to write a novel anyway, and entering NaNoWriMo will keep me disciplined through the holidays.”
• “All of the above.”

So what’s your reason? Write it down on a piece of paper and tape it to your monitor or the wall or wherever you’ll see it every day. It’ll help you keep on track after the glow of the first few days wears off. Try to come up with a good strong reason why you’re entering. The stronger the reason, the more likely you are to succeed. 

Planning Your Schedule

If the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, then you need to average 1667 words per day. 

If you know you can write 1000 words per hour, then that works out to an hour and forty minutes every day for 30 days.

So the first step is to schedule that time. It’s not going to schedule itself. Look at your calendar and figure out when you’re going to put in the time. 

You might decide to take weekends off. If you do that, there are only 22 weekdays in the month, which means you’ll need to average 2272 words per day, so you’ll need a bit more time each day. 

You might also decide to take off Thanksgiving and the day after. That leaves 20 working days, which bumps up your required daily word count to 2500 words.

My guess is that there’ll be 2 days in the month where something utterly unexpected will come up and cut into your schedule. So if you want to be safe, you might want to plan for only 18 working days, which means you now need 2778 words per day.

Don’t be daunted by these numbers. Those are doable word counts. But it’s going to take some serious commitment to write them. You’ll need to be tough. You’ll need to stay on course. 

You can do it, but you need to really want to do it.

I’ve written 90,000 words in a month, once. It wasn’t easy. It was brutal, in fact. I worked every single day of the month. But it was fun and I wrote some good words.

You can do this. 

Optional: Planning Your Story

Some writers like to plan their stories in advance. Maybe they’re outliners, like the late great Robert Ludlum. Maybe they’re Snowflakers. Maybe they use the Story Equation. Maybe they use some other system. 

If that’s the way your brain is wired, then October is a fine month to plan out your story, so you’ll be ready to roar on November 1, when NaNoWriMo officially opens.

And if your brain isn’t wired for planning, that’s okay too. If you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer, you can spend your remaining time before NaNoWriMo clearing your plate of things that might distract you.

After NaNoWriMo, Then What?

I think it’s important to know what you plan to do after NaNoWriMo is over. On December 1, you can expect to have 50,000 words written. Maybe more. That may be all or most of a novel. 

Then what are you going to do with it? Put it on a shelf? I hope not! I hope you’ll try to get it published. I hope you’ll actually get it published. 

You don’t have to know exactly how you’ll get your novel published now. That can wait until you have something to be published. 

But it won’t hurt now to be thinking past NaNoWriMo. Because writing a novel is a real achievement, something to be proud of. And writing a novel that people read and enjoy and talk about is an even bigger achievement.

As you probably know, there are two main ways that authors use these days to get published. 

• Sell the rights to your novel to a publishing company. (This is called “traditional publishing” and it’s been used for well over a hundred years by authors.)
• Act as your own publisher and put your book up for sale independently on Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, B&N, and any other online retailers. (This is called “self-publishing” or “indie-authoring” and it’s exploded in popularity in the last decade.)

Either of these approaches will work. They each have pluses and minuses. You get to decide which approach is best for you. My view is that it’s wonderful to have more than one option. If you subscribe to my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, you’ve seen my 5-day series of email on how to get published, which now covers both options in more detail. 

Got a Question for My Blog?

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The post NaNoWriMo is Coming Soon! appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Don posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I am attempting to write my first novel. I know that you advocate the idea of three disasters in a story. The first one should go after the first 1/4 part of the book I believe I read. My idea for my book involves opening with a huge disaster,at least within the first chapter or two, that throws the protagonist into the storyline. My questions are these “Are there any apparant downfalls or pits to be aware of when doing this?” , “Is it so bad of a thing to do that it should be completely avoided or is it possible to pull off?”

Randy sez: I don’t see any problem with starting a novel with trouble. I’m not sure what you have in mind here for your huge disaster, but I recall that The DaVinci Code had a museum curator being shot and killed in the first scene, and that book did all right. Getting killed is a disaster, especially if you’re the person catching the bullet.

But let’s review the notion of “three disasters” first to make sure we’re all on the same page.

The Three-Disaster Structure

Many novelists work from a Three-Act Structure. Act 1 covers roughly 25% of the book, and ends on a disaster that commits the lead character to the story. Act 2 covers roughly 50% of the book. Right about the midpoint of Act 2, there’s a second disaster that causes the lead character to reevaluate his approach to the story. At the end of Act 2, there’s a third disaster that causes the lead character to commit to some final confrontation. Act 3 then works up to that final confrontation, which ends in either victory or defeat for the lead character (or possible a bittersweet ending where the lead character has both victory and defeat mixed together).

There is a lot more to be said about the Three-Act Structure, and I say quite a lot of it in my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. I won’t try to cram in a whole book’s worth of thoughts in this blog post.

I’ll just make two points here about the Three-Act Structure:

• It’s punctuated with three disasters, placed roughly at the 25%, 50%, and 75% marks in the story.
• The reason for the placement of these disasters is that readers are expecting major psychological turning points at roughly these locations. So there’s not a lot wiggle room on these. If you tried to move these to (for example), the 1%, 5%, and 95% marks, the story would feel out of whack to your readers. 

There’s Nothing Sacred About Three

There is no rule that you can have only three bad things happen in a novel. Most novels have dozens or even hundreds of bad things happen to their characters (depending on how you count).

As far as I’m concerned, the more bad things that happen, the better. 

But the three disasters I mentioned earlier are special, because each of them marks a psychological turning point for the lead character—getting into the game, changing your approach to the game, and getting out of the game. So those are fundamental.

Of course, there are other turning points in the story. One of those is the point at which the lead character actually steps into the story.

Don’s question is whether he can introduce his lead character with a disaster.

I’d say yes, you can do that. It’s fairly common to introduce the lead character of a story with trouble. But it’s also fairly common to introduce the lead character without trouble. Either way works.

What Can Go Wrong With An Initial Disaster

Don asked if there are any potential pitfalls in introducing his protagonist with a huge disaster.

Yes, sort of. You’ll face the same pitfall that you face whenever you introduce any new character—the terrible possibility that your reader won’t care. 

The solution is just to make sure that you introduce every character in a way that makes your reader care. Do that, and it really doesn’t matter whether you’re leading with a massive disaster or a massive victory or anything in between.

Now, if your initial disaster is really huge, there’s some possibility that, by comparison, your lead character will look small. But that’s the same issue you face when you write any disaster, so I wouldn’t call that an extraordinary problem. 

And how do you make your reader care? The short answer is that you put your reader inside your character’s skin and show your reader what your character desperately wants. The long answer turns out to be very long. All of my books on fiction writing try to provide that long answer. Every book ever published on fiction writing also tries to provide that long answer. 

But even though the long answer is very long, it’s well worth learning because making your reader care is what fiction writing is all about.

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The post Can You Start With a Disaster? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Nancy asked: 

How can I make readers keep reading? 

One thing that I’ve really struggled with is understanding what my teachers mean when they tell me that I have to keep my readers reading. They always tell me to try and have some sort of cliffhanger so that the readers don’t put the book down.

First of all, what exactly does that mean? Second, how can I achieve that?

I really do want to keep my readers interested, but I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to do that, or what I’m supposed to do to not make my readers expect the next cliffhanger.

Randy sez: If you’re writing an over-the-top action-adventure novel, then typically most scenes end with a cliffhanger—your protagonist is figuratively hanging from a cliff by his fingertips. The key word here is “figuratively.” Most novels don’t have cliffs. If you want to get more literal, the scene ends with the protatonist in some sort of life-or-death situation with no obvious way out. That’s what we mean by a cliffhanger.

And that’s fine, if you’re writing an over-the-top action-adventure novel. That’s what your target audience wants. 

But not every novel is over the top, because there are all different kinds of target audiences.

And it’s not true, even in an action-adventure novel, that every single scene needs to end with a cliffhanger.

The Two Ways to End a Scene

Yes, you want to end every scene in a way that gives your reader a reason to turn the page and read the next scene. But you’ve actually got two options here:

• End your scene with your point-of-view character in trouble. 
• End your scene with your point-of-view character making a risky decision.

I discuss these two options in my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. If you want all the details, with examples from several best-selling novels, you can check that out. 

In this post, we’ll consider only the case where the scene ends with trouble.

The Right Kind of Trouble

Ending a scene with your POV character in trouble is good, but it needs to be the right kind of trouble. The right kind of trouble will make your reader worry about your character.

If your POV character is a sleazy, vicious gangster trying to rob a bank, and the robbery goes wrong, and the cops arrive and arrest him at the end of the scene, that’s certainly trouble. But your reader probably won’t worry about that character, because the creep is going to get what’s coming to him. Your reader might keep reading to see justice served. But then again, maybe not. 

But suppose your POV character is a decent guy who was coming to the bank to ask for a loan to send his daughter to college. On the way in the door, he’s grabbed by gangsters who put a gun to his head and use him as a human shield. They force him to hand over the note to the teller. Then the SWAT team busts in, there’s a shootout, and the gangsters are all killed. By some miracle, your POV character is left alive, but the cops don’t know he’s a good guy, so they arrest him. Now your reader has to turn the page.  

What’s the difference? 

In the first case, the gangster deserves trouble, and gets it. That’s justice, and it’s no cause for worry.

In the second case, your character doesn’t deserve trouble, but gets it anyway. That’s injustice, and it’s great cause for worry.

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it the right kind of trouble.

Who’s in Trouble?

Every scene has a POV character, but that character might not be the protagonist of your novel. The POV character might be the novel’s villain Or your protagonist’s love interest. Or the village goofball. 

If your POV character is the villain of the story, then as we saw above, it’s not all that interesting to get him in trouble. That’s not going to force your reader to turn the page.

But what if your villain ends the scene with a success? Suppose your POV character is a vicious gangster who robs a bank and runs out the door with a big bag of cash, intent on jumping in his getaway car. Then he sees the cops coming, so he grabs an innocent bystander and drags her into the car with him to prevent the cops shooting.

That’s not trouble for your POV character. But it’s trouble for the woman they hauled into the car. And it’s trouble for the cops. Once again, that’s an injustice. And your reader’s going to worry. Your reader will turn the page.

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it trouble for the right person.

But How Much Trouble?

One issue here is that most novels are not over-the-top. Not all readers are looking for a bank robbery in every scene. If you’re writing a novel at a lower level of tension, that’s fine.

But you still need to end your scenes with trouble. Scale the trouble down to the level of tension your target audience is looking for. 

And this is where I have a problem with the term “cliffhanger.” That word implies a high level of tension. High tension may not be appropriate for your novel.

But trouble is always appropriate. Seeing your characters in trouble is one of the reasons your readers read. 

If you’re going to end your scene with trouble, make it the right level of trouble for your book.

Got a Question for My Blog?

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The post About Cliffhangers appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Steve posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Thank-you for the serious time and effort you’ve devoted to helping aspiring writers! Your site is a treasure trove and your snowflake method gave me a significant boost.

I’ve been searching & reading through your older blog posts related to writing multiple POVs and this one hit home:

https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/12/02/having-multiple-protagonists-in-your-novel/

Based on the cranky responses from other readers, I’m guessing it highlights a common trap… Specifically, I was drifting into multiple protagonists and hit the exact obstacle you called out: Emotional impact turns into 1 + 1 = 1/2. (I ended up with a protagonist even I didn’t care about.)

The proto-protagonists were conceived to independently uncover and feed puzzle pieces to my hero. I was hoping you’d provide some thoughts on a good balance.

For example, if two POV characters each get 50% of your novel, the emotional diffusion is obvious. Would you always try and give your hero 70%+ of the novel and let the others fight it out for the rest?

Thanks again!

Steve

Randy sez: I’ll first answer Steve’s question, then talk a little about the question of “multiple protagonists,” since this seems to have confused some people over the years.

It’s not easy to decide who should be the point-of-view character in each scene. I discussed this in my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method. One of the core questions I ask for each scene is: who has the most to lose in this scene? Often, that person will make a good viewpoint character. But there are other questions, and it’s sometimes just a judgment call when picking the viewpoint character.

So I don’t decide in advance what percentage of scenes my protagonist gets to be the viewpoint character. He or she gets as many scenes as they deserve to make the story work. Normally, I work with 3, 4, or 5 viewpoint characters, and each gets somewhere between 10% and 40% of the total air-time. I don’t think I’ve ever had any viewpoint character who had more than 50% of the scenes.

As Steve mentioned, I wrote a blog post back in 2010 that has gotten a fair number of responses over the years. I suppose my original post could have been longer. At the time, I didn’t think it required a long response. Part of the problem was a confusion in terminology. Not everyone was clear on the difference between a “protagonist” and a “viewpoint character.” 

So let’s talk about that.

About Protagonists

The word “protagonist” comes from a Greek word meaning “player of the first part.” 

So the protagonist is effectively the #1 character in terms of emotional interest—the so-called “good guy”—the character the reader is rooting for.

You might think that there can be only one character in a novel who is #1. Because that’s what it means to be #1—it means that you’re the one at the top of the heap.

In most cases, you’d be right, but it’s possible to think of exceptions. Here are a few:

• The story might start out with one character who is #1, but then he or she dies and another character becomes #1. In this case, there are two protagonists in the novel, but they are protagonists at different times. At any given time, there is really only one. (I’m thinking of Ken Follett’s book The Pillars of the Earth here, and also The Godfather, by Mario Puzo.)
• The story might not really focus on any single character as #1. In this case, it’s not sensible to talk about the novel having a protagonist at all. (Who is the protagonist of Downton Abbey, for example? Or Lost? Or Friends?)
• The leading character in the story might actually be the villain, and it’s possible that there is no single “good guy” character who could be called the protagonist. The reader is not rooting for the villain; the reader is rooting against the villain. In this case, again there is no protagonist.

Can these work? Yes, of course they can work if the author is good enough. The goal of a novel is to give the reader a powerful emotional experience. You can do that with two or more protagonists. You can do it without having any protagonist. It’s just harder than if you have one protagonist. But a really skilled writer can do it. Beginning writers generally can’t.

But that raises another issue.

About Viewpoint Characters

We need to be clear that a “protagonist” is not the same thing as a “viewpoint character.”

As I said above, the protagonist, if he exists, is the #1 character in the story, the one the reader is rooting for.

A viewpoint character is the person through whose eyes we’re living a particular scene. (So the viewpoint character can change from scene to scene.)

You can have a protagonist who is not a viewpoint character, and vice versa. (Example: Sherlock Holmes is the protagonist in the Holmes stories, but Watson is almost always the viewpoint character.)

You can let the villain of your story be the viewpoint character in some scenes. Any character in your story can be a viewpoint character. Even walk-on characters who only have one scene.

Most novels have multiple viewpoint characters, and that’s a good thing. I’ve never discouraged anyone from writing a story with multiple viewpoint characters. Beginning novelists can easily write a multi-viewpoint novel. All of my own novels have used several viewpoint characters.

As an example, The Lord of the Rings has numerous viewpoint characters. But it only has one protagonist, and that’s Frodo. (Gandalf and Aragorn might have worked well as protagonists, but they weren’t chosen. Tolkien chose Frodo to be the protagonist.)

Most Novels Have One Protagonist 

The reason most novels have one protagonist, and only one protagonist, is that it’s easier that way. It’s easier on the author. It’s easier on the reader. 

Authors who have the skills to write a novel with multiple protagonists (or none) should feel free to do so. But they’ll have to work harder to make it work.

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Will posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m working on the first of what I plan to be a series of fiction novels. I’ve used the Snowflake method to craft outlines for three novels so far. My question is: what to do if I think the most exciting story is in the third book? It’s kind of like George Lucas debuting the Star Wars series with Episode 4, because he wanted audiences to meet Darth Vader as a fully formed villain, rather than the conflicted boy he was in Episodes 1-3. Should I skip ahead to write book 3, which will probably change parts of books 1 & 2, or stay patient and keep building?

Randy sez: Just to make sure everybody’s on the same page, Will is referring to my wildly popular Snowflake Method of writing a novel. He’s used it to plan out a whole series, which shows some serious dedication to planning.

Kudos, Will, for mapping out three whole novels in advance! That’s hard work, and it’ll pay off for you as soon as you start writing.

It’s hard to give advice when I haven’t seen your Snowflake documents and don’t know all the details of your story. 

My view is that a lot depends on the answer to this question: “How good is Book 1 in your series?”

There are a lot of ways you could answer that, but let’s look at two possible extreme cases. You might respond:

• “Book 1 is wretched. My target audience isn’t going to like it.”
• “Book 1 is pretty good. If it was a standalone book, it would still make my target audience happy. But it just isn’t as good as Book 3.”

Now let’s look at those two cases.

What if Book 1 is Bad?

If Book 1 in your series is bad, then nobody is going to read Book 2 except your mother, and even she won’t read Book 3.

If that’s the case, then you need to rethink your series and figure out how to make Books 1 and 2 better. 

It sounds like you’re still in the planning stage and you haven’t written any of them yet, so there’s no high cost to revising your plans. It’s much quicker and easier to revise a Snowflake document than a four-hundred-page manuscript!

What if Book 1 is Solid?

If Book 1 in your series is in good shape, and the only problem is that it’s not as good as Book 3, then that’s a wonderful problem to have.

Remember the Harry Potter series? Book 1 was very good. Book 2 was even better. Book 3 was way better. Book 4 was massively better. And Book 7 was the best of all. That makes for a wonderful reader experience. Every book is better than the one before. 

I can’t see a downside in this case. By all means, think about how you might make Books 1 and 2 stronger. I’m a big fan of always writing the absolute best work you can write today. But once you’re done with today’s work, let it go. Then try to do better tomorrow. 

I’ve tried to do that in my own novels. (And in my blog posts. And in my e-zine.) I may not succeed in always doing better with every effort. That’s not under my control. The only thing under my control is whether I do my best work on any given day.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to start with Book 3 and then go back and do Books 1 and 2. Since Will mentioned the Star Wars series, I’ll just say that I liked Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and I thought they made a complete series. Having seen those first, I found that Episodes 1, 2, and 3 didn’t work for me, because I was comparing them to 4, 5, and 6. 

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Emily posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

How can you tell who your protagonist is?

I began writing my novel a couple years ago and I am still incredibly new at writing fiction. I have been kind of all over the place with it and haven’t really had a good method until I found the snowflake method and so far it seems to be the method for me. But I have now come to a new problem and that is that I am wondering if my Protagonist may be misplaced. The story is in the time a bit before the Protestant Reformation and the first disaster is that my “protagonists” wife becomes a Protestant and my protagonist feels obligated because of his values to send her away despite the fact that he loves her to death. Eventually some time later she discovers that she is pregnant with his child and to her her husband gets really upset. For some reasons he doesn’t seem to be very likeable and I am wondering if maybe it sounds like his wife should be the protagonist. Or does he have hope of being likeable if I write it right?

Randy sez: Glad to hear you’re finding the Snowflake Method useful, Emily! I don’t know much about your protagonist, but already I don’t like him. And I suspect most readers won’t like him either. Of course I might change my mind after seeing some of your novel, but as it stands, this guy is a jerk. 

So what are you going to do?

As I see it, you’ve got three options:

• Change your protagonist’s behavior to be more likeable. 
• Change your story so the wife is the protagonist/lead character.
• Change the story so that your current protagonist remains the lead character but now becomes the antagonist.

In a minute, we’ll look at those three options, but let’s talk first about what a lead character is.

Your Lead Character

Your lead character is the person the story is focused on. Your lead character generally gets the biggest share of the air-time in the story. Your lead character is the person your reader is watching.

Your lead character is usually the protagonist of your story. Usually, but not always. 

As an example, in Frederick Forsyth’s novel, The Day of the Jackal, the lead character is a ruthless assassin code-named “the Jackal.” Nobody knows his real name, but a French terrorist organization hires him to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.

The novel tells the story of how the Jackal buys fake ID, gets a brilliantly disguised sniper rifle, crosses the border into France, makes his way to Paris, chooses his killing ground, and …

You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next. The novel is brilliant and was a major best-seller in its day. I can’t justify calling the Jackal the protatonist of the story. That honor would go to Claude Lebel, the French detective leading the effort to catch the Jackal before he strikes. 

But Lebel gets comparatively little air-time. The Jackal gets more of the action than any other player. 

So in my view, the Jackal is the lead character and Lebel is the protagonist.

Let’s be clear that usually the lead character is the protagonist. It’s just not an absolute requirement.

That’s why I think you have three options, and not just two.

Now let’s look at those options in a little more detail.

Option 1: Make Your Protagonist More Likeable

Why would you choose this option?

Maybe because when you started writing the story, you liked your protagonist. You thought he had some good qualities that more than balanced out his flaws, and you hoped to write a story with a good redemption theme. That’s very reasonable. We can all think of any number of flawed people who, like Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, turn out good in the end. 

If that’s what you intended, then it sounds like you’ve let your protagonist drift a bit. He’s done things you didn’t intend, or else you intended to show a better justification for those actions.

And if that’s what’s happened to your novel, then the solution is to work through the novel, find the bad things he does, and either soften them, or show his moral dilemma more starkly and give him a stronger reason for making the bad decisions he makes. And then show us the guilt he feels and the efforts he makes to turn things right again.

That could work.

Option 2: Make the Wife Your Protagonist

This could be a lot of work, so why would you want to choose this option?

Maybe because you were actually more in tune with the wife from the beginning, even though you didn’t realize it. 

It may be that, all along, your theme has been about repression of women by male authority figures and patriarchal power systems. In a year like this one, that could play extremely well. 

It may be that you didn’t realize this was your theme. It may be that the theme developed organically and now you’re seeing that it’s at odds with the story you started telling. 

If that’s what’s happened, then it completely makes sense to make the wife the protagonist. You may need to give her more air-time. You may need to rewrite a lot of scenes. 

Or it may turn out that you don’t actually have to change very much, if that’s the story you’ve subconsciously been writing all along. Writing a novel has a way of bringing out things from your core that you didn’t know were there.

In any event, this approach could work quite well.

Option 3: Leave Your Lead Character the Same, but Change the Protagonist

This is a lot like option 2. The wife (or some other character) would now be the protagonist, while the lead character remains this cruel man.

Why would you want to choose this option? 

Maybe because your novel is about the hidden cruelty in all humans, and you want to take a deep look into evil, using a person who thinks he’s a paragon of virtue. Could play well or play poorly, depending on who your target audience is.

This option might not take that much work. Your lead character has been getting most of the air-time and he gets to keep that. But now you just need to adjust the tone so that your reader empathizes with the wife and watches in increasing horror as the lead character turns more and more to the wrong. 

If you take this tack, I’d advise you to write the first scene in the point of view of the actual protagonist. I’d recommend you give the reader a strong emotional attachment to the true protagonist early on. And you’d need to find some compelling reason why your villainish lead character gets most of the air-time. If you can’t find that compelling reason, then this probably isn’t your strongest option. (In The Day of the Jackal, the compelling reason to give the Jackal so many scenes is because he’s really quite a fascinating person, meticulous in his preparations, making it look like a dead certainty that he’s going to succeed. And that makes for a great suspense novel.)

In any event, if you go this route, you’d have a strong novel about the nature of evil.

That could work.

You Have Options; Take Your Pick

So you have several good options, Emily. They all require a bit of work, but any one of them could make a good novel.

You get to decide how you’ll play it. 

Make your decision based on who you are, what you value, and what you want to say about life.

Good luck, and have fun!

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Bruce posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

i began writing a novel whose first chapter is from the POV of an unimportant character but writing so is important for the plot. the rest of the novel is in third person narrated by the author, i feel that this is complicating things. what should i do?

Randy sez: I don’t see a problem with it. 

There are any number of reasons why you might want to start a novel using some minor character.

If there’s a good reason, then do it. If there isn’t, then don’t.

Usually my blog posts are much longer than this. Usually, there’s a good reason to write a longer post. Today, there isn’t.

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The post Can You Start Your Novel With a Minor Character? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Is it possible to change the genre of a novel you’ve already written? If so, how would you go about it? 

Ann posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Dear Randy,

Re: shifting genre of story from romance to crime – advice needed please!

Your Snowflake Method helped me to plan and write my first book(working title:”A Darker Burgundy”) and I submitted the early chapters for a First Novel competition in a UK women’s magazine and it was listed as a runner-up. The story is a romance where love turns to hate in Nazi-Occupied France. I have edited and re-drafted the work many times and I’m now thinking of switching genre from romance to crime, hoping this way to lend the story more pace and momentum in the hope that this may make it more appealing to readers/agents.

Please can you kindly advise me how to go about this daunting task?

Many thanks

Randy sez: this sounds tricky, at least on the surface. A romance novel is written for one target audience. A suspense novel (I think that’s what you’re really asking about, although I can’t be sure) is written for an entirely different target audience. 

A Tale of Two Genres

Let’s talk about these two genres first.

In a romance, the protagonist is the relationship between the two main characters. This relationship is in great danger of being killed. Usually, the reason the relationship might die is that one or both of the characters might pull out of it. Typically every scene (or almost every scene) includes one or both of the main characters. The story usually ends with the relationship blooming into a lifelong commitment.

In a suspense novel, you typically have one character as the protagonist. That character wants to do something or prevent something that would put some person or some group of people at high risk (possibly a nation or even the entire world). A suspense novel can have a large cast of characters and a large stage and you aren’t required to show the protagonist in every scene. 

So the problem here is that there’s not a lot of overlap between these two kinds of stories. It’s possible that you’d need to rewrite the entire story to make it conform to the suspense pattern.

But there is some overlap. The romantic suspense subgenre works as both a romance novel and a suspense novel. As in any romance novel, the protagonist is the relationship between the two main characters. And as in any romance novel, the relationship is in danger of being killed. But the reason the relationship is in danger of being killed is because one or both of the two main characters are in danger of being killed. That’s what makes it also a suspense novel.

So How To Make the Transition?

How would you transition your story to a new genre?

The first thing to do is to decide exactly what genre you want to write. Nobody can tell you what genre to write. You get to decide. What do you want the book to be? Romance? Suspense? Romantic suspense? Something else? Pick one. Amazon has hundreds of subcategories. Browse around until you find exactly the one that you can envision for your book.

The second thing to do is to make sure you know the “rules of the genre.” There aren’t any written rules, of course. You learn the rules by reading current books in your genre and learning what’s done and what’s not done. The rules will tell you what kind of story structure you can have and what the tone of each scene should be. And lots of other things.

If you’re very lucky, the manuscript you’ve reworked many times will be pretty close in structure to the new genre you’ve chosen. In that case, just tweak what you’ve got to fit the genre.

If you’re not lucky, you’re going to have to make structural changes to your novel to fit the “rules” of your new genre. Since you’re a Snowflaker, you can just make a copy of your existing Snowflake document and tweak that document. Then use that new Snowflake document to guide you in adding, deleting, and moving scenes around in your manuscript.

Finally, you will probably also have to adjust the tone of your writing. (Or maybe not. It sounds like you’ve already got a suspense-like tone, which is the reason it’s not having success as a romance. So if you’re lucky, the current tone of your novel is already appropriate for your category.) But the point here is that you should work on the tone of each scene after you’ve already fixed the structure of the novel. It would make no sense to change the tone of scenes before fixing the structure, because you’d be reworking scenes that you might eventually end up deleting.

Ouch, That’s a Lot of Work

Of course, this might end up being a lot of work. That’s not fun, but it’s your reality. If you’re stuck in a swamp, the only way out is to press ahead and get out. So grit your teeth and do it. 

And the lesson to take away from this for your next book is to define the category of your novel very early in the process of Snowflaking it. That’s a lesson that will pay big dividends for the rest of your writing life.

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Not sure what an MRU is? No worries, I’ll explain that before I answer these burning questions.

Kimbra posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

HI Randy, great site. I’m enjoying reading your blog.

My question is: How do you approach the MRU pattern rule when building in back story and providing character introductions? I understand the need for a constant driver pushing the story forward, and I try to integrate backstory into motivations and reactions, but sometimes I have a hard time forcing an MRU onto a brief exchange that conveys needed information–especially in the early chapters. There are other times that seem to require “quiter” moments, breathers almost in the rhythm of the story. I believe these can still be broken into MRUs, but they stretch. Can you give me an example of an MRU from a more mundane part of a novel than the moment a tiger attacks?

Randy sez: First a quick note to explain what MRUs are, since not everybody knows. (And if you want a more detailed explanation, I’ll point you to my long article on this site, “Writing the Perfect Scene,” which covers MRUs in much more detail than I can cover in a single blog post.)

What’s an MRU?

MRUs are Dwight Swain’s abbreviation for “Motivation-Reaction Units.” And what’s a Motivation-Reaction Unit? That’s the finest-grained level of storytelling that novelists use. You might guess that it’s a “motivation” followed by a “reaction” and you’d be right. But what are “motivations” and what are “reactions?” 

A “motivation” is the term Dwight Swain uses to refer to anything that happens external to your Point-of-View character. 

A “reaction” is the term Dwight Swain uses to refer to anything that the POV character does.

You might say that this is confusing terminology, and I whole-heartedly agree with you. But Dwight Swain was the master, and he created the language, so we’ll use his terms because his ideas are really, really good. 

Here’s an example of a “motivation,” taken from my perfect-scene article:

The tiger dropped out of the tree and sprang toward Jack.

This short paragraph is all about what the tiger is doing. Jack is mentioned in the paragraph, but he’s not the one doing the action. 

Here’s an example of a “reaction,” taken from the same article:

A bolt of raw adrenaline shot through Jack’s veins. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder, sighted on the tiger’s heart, and squeezed the trigger. “Die, you bastard!”

This short paragraph is all about what our POV character Jack is doing. He’s feeling emotions. He’s acting. He’s speaking. He could also be thinking, but in this particular MRU, we don’t show his thoughts. 

Why Should You Care About MRUs?

The reason you should care about MRUs is simple. In modern fiction, authors spend most of the story “showing” the story rather than “telling” the story. If you’ve ever gotten a critique from a professional editor with the words “Show, Don’t Tell” in big bold letters on your manuscript, and you  wondered how to know when you’re showing and when you’re telling, here’s your answer:

• “Showing” means you’re writing in MRUs. 
• “Telling” means you’re not.

Showing is usually a good strategy. Telling is usually a bad strategy.

But be careful.

“Usually” Isn’t the Same as “Always”

The problem is that “showing” is not always the best strategy. Sometimes you need to “tell” part of your story. Here’s why:

• “Showing” is more fun for your reader, but it’s inefficient. It gobbles up page count like crazy.
• “Telling” is less fun for your reader, but it’s efficient. You can “tell” something in a few paragraphs that would take many chapters to “show.”

As Kimbra noted, sometimes you might want to bring in part of the character’s backstory by “telling” it, rather than by “showing” it. (The way you “show” backstory is by using a flashback. The way you “tell” backstory is by using either narrative summary or exposition.)

How Do You Decide When to Show and When to Tell?

Here’s my almost-infallible rule for deciding when to show and when to tell:

• Show the exciting parts.
• Tell the boring parts.

The reason you show the exciting parts is because you want to spend as long as possible on the fun parts of your story. 

The reason you tell the boring parts is because you want to get through the boring parts as fast as possible.

Not exactly rocket science, is it? That’s fine. Not everything we do in writing fiction is deep. Sometimes it’s okay to be simple. 

The above rule is not an ironclad rule, but it’s a very good rule of thumb that will be right most of the time. There will be times when you violate this rule. Use your writerly instincts to guide you.

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James posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have placed my inciting incident real close to the beginning, like 2 pages or so. In order for the reader to care about what happens to the protagonist in the inciting incident, my first scene has no conflict. It’s just some emotional stuff as he thinks about his girlfriend and proposing to her that night after work. I just didn’t know if I should have anything to overpower the inciting incident. Is this kosher. Given this, do ALL scenes have to have the three aspects: goal, conflict, and setback? If so, I’ll have to come up with something. I wanna do this right. Thanks for any help. If you happen to have time to answer this, will you answer Online or email to me?

Randy sez: First, let’s define our terms. The inciting incident is some “new thing” in your protagonist’s world. It marks the change that is ultimately going to pull your protagonist into your story. Usually, this is something external to your protagonist, but it’s possible it could be an internal change.

I don’t see a problem with starting the inciting incident in the first two pages of the novel. You can put it pretty much anywhere you want, so long as it’s reasonably early in the story and as long as it works. Some stories start fast out of the gate, and some take longer to get rolling. 

I do see a problem with a scene that has no conflict of any kind. Conflict doesn’t get in the way of your reader caring about your protagonist. Conflict is often the reason your reader does care, at least early on. When we see somebody in trouble, we instinctively care about them. We might later stop caring about them if we decide they aren’t worth caring about.

But let’s face it—when somebody’s in trouble, we care. The news this last week has been about twelve young soccer players and their coach in Thailand, trapped by rising floodwaters two and a half miles into a cave. The minute we heard about them, we cared. Because that’s what humans do.

I don’t know anything about your story, James, but I would think that “some emotional stuff” about a girlfriend your protagonist is about to propose to sounds reasonably interesting already. Fiction is about giving your reader a powerful emotional experience. I would also guess there’s some conflict here, even though only your protagonist is in the scene. Internal conflict is conflict.

James, you asked if all scenes must have a Goal, Conflict, and Setback. The answer is no. That’s one strategy, and we call that strategy a Proactive Scene. But another strategy is the Reactive Scene, where you have a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision. (For much more on both of those, see my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.)

I strongly recommend that all scenes be either Proactive or Reactive. These are solid design patterns that work well and that your readers are already primed to understand. If you have a scene that’s neither Proactive nor Reactive, you should be able to explain to yourself what makes the scene work—why is it giving your reader a powerful emotional experience? And then you should ask whether you can make the scene better by turning it into either a Proactive or Reactive scene. Because usually, you can.

Let’s circle back to the inciting incident. I don’t sweat the exact location of the inciting incident, as long as it’s in the first several chapters. Remember that the inciting incident is not what makes your reader start caring about your story. The inciting incident usually comes much too late for that. Long before your reader reaches the inciting incident, she should already care about your story.

My thinking is that you want to start pulling your reader into your story with a strong first sentence.

Followed by a strong first paragraph. 

Followed by a strong first page.

Followed by a strong first scene. 

If you do all that, then it really doesn’t matter when the inciting incident happens, because your reader already committed to the story from the very beginning. The inciting incident just gives your reader words to explain why she’s committed. 

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The post Where Do You Place Your Inciting Incident?  appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, with nothing that’s yet publishable, then you don’t need an agent. At least for the moment. 

The main role of an agent is to help you sell your book to a traditional publisher and then to negotiate the contract and manage your relationship with the publisher. So if you have nothing to sell yet, then you don’t need an agent to help sell it.

An agent may also give you some help on editing your manuscript, planning your career, or washing your cat. But none of these are the main job of an agent. If you need help editing your manuscript, but you don’t intend to sell it to a traditional publisher, then you should hire a freelance editor, not an agent. If you need help managing your career, but you don’t plan on working with traditional publishers, then hire a life coach, not an agent. If you ask your agent to wash your cat, you’re going to have one angry cat and one very unhappy agent. 

Most traditionally published authors have agents. The reason is that most traditional publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts from authors, so the only way to get your manuscript in front of an acquisition editor is through an agent. (If you happen to know an acquisition editor at a traditional publisher, you may be able to send your manuscript directly to that editor. If you decide to take this route, you should ask yourself how many acquisition editors you know. I know a few trad-pubbed authors with enough connections that they prefer not to work with an agent. But not many.)

Most indie authors don’t have agents. The reason is because most indie authors have nothing for an agent to do. 

Hybrid authors (authors who publish both traditionally and independently) typically have agents because they typically need an agent for their work with traditional publishers. But hybrid authors need to have an agreement with their agent about their indie work, just to avoid misunderstandings.

I started life as a traditionally published author and worked my way through three agents. My third agent died (and I miss him greatly), but before his death, I had shifted most of my efforts to the indie way. So after his death, I terminated my contract with his agency because I thought I no longer needed an agent.

But if you’re successful enough as an indie author, you may find that you need an agent after all. And that’s where I now find myself. After the release of my last book, I suddenly started receiving e-mails from foreign publishers and agents, inquiring about foreign rights to my books. 

I’m a very busy guy right now. In principle, I could figure out how to vet these kind of requests, filter out the riffraff, and negotiate deals. But I don’t have the time.

So I e-mailed an agent, (Steve Laube, a long-time friend of mine who acquired several of my novels years ago when he was an editor,) and asked if he’d be willing to handle this part of my business for me. He agreed, so we worked out a flexible agreement that makes sense to both of us, and he’s now on it.

Indie authors need to build a team of go-to people who can handle tasks as needed. A typical indie may have any or all of the following kinds of people on their team:

• A freelance editor for macro editing, copyediting, and/or line editing.
• A freelance proofreader. 
• A freelance formatter to handle e-book and paper book formatting. 
• A freelance audiobook narrator. 
• A freelance graphic designer for book covers and other needs.
• A web developer.
• An accountant.
• An agent. 
• A mastermind group of entrepreneur-minded authors who help each other work through the chaos of life.

In my case, I work with almost all of the above, with just a couple of exceptions. I do my own copyediting and line editing, and I do my formatting for e-books and paper books. But I also know people I could hire for each of these jobs, in case I ever need them.

Do you have a team yet? What roles do you need for your team. Who’s on your team? 

The post Do You Need an Agent? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The e-mail was from Geoff Dresser, a Canadian writer who started writing just two years ago. He did an online search for “how to write a novel” and came to the wildly popular Snowflake Method article here on my website. 

Geoff read the article, bought my book on the Snowflake Method, and worked through the steps. Pretty quickly, he wrote the first draft of his novel, did some revisions, and submitted it to the annual writing contest sponsored by The Word Guild, the premier writing organization for Canadian writers who are Christian.

And his book was shortlisted for “Best New Canadian Manuscript,” which is the category for unpublished works, both fiction and non-fiction. 

I thought that was pretty cool, so I asked Geoff if we could do an interview on this blog. Geoff agreed, and so here we are:

Randy: Let’s talk about your writing process. When you emailed me recently, you said that you Googled the phrase “how to write a novel” and came to my website and wound up buying my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. Then what happened? What was your actual process for writing your book?

Geoff: As a musician and songwriter, I understood the importance of form and structure in art. So when I came across the snowflake method, I knew this would give my book a firm foundation.  I already had the basic story and main characters sketched out, but I went to work on the 10 steps in the snowflake method.  Each step helped to strengthen the story and refine my focus.  I created spreadsheets for my character bible and scene plans.  Then I started writing.  As a full time pastor, husband and father of three active teenage boys, I wasn’t able to block off large amounts of time to write, so I’d be lucky to get a an hour or two, here and there, three or four times a week.  Here’s where my scene list was so important.  I always knew the next scene that I’d be writing so I’d be thinking about it through the day, as I was driving or doing the dishes. So when I got around to actually writing, the words would start flowing very quickly.  I would easily produce 1000 words in a one or two hours.  My most productive times were in the evening after I dropped one of my boys off at a volleyball practice.  I’d head to my favorite coffee shop, put on my headphones and crank out the next scene.  Writing that first draft was exhilarating.

Randy: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your novel, and were you surprised at how long it took (or how fast it went)?

Geoff: I began the first draft during the summer of 2016, mostly writing in the early morning.  It was slow going.  During the fall as my work schedule got busier I just couldn’t sustain the early mornings so the first draft stalled and I wrote very little until January of 2017 when I hit my stride.  I found a rhythm that worked for me, writing mostly in the evenings.  By May 2018 I  finished the 80,000 word manuscript.  I was surprised at how quickly it went once I found my rhythm.  I was also surprised about how much fun it was to write that first “no-looking-back” draft.

[Note by Randy: As I was posting this to my blog, I spotted what I think is a typo in Geoff’s answer above. I’m almost certain he finished his manuscript in May of 2017, not 2018, since the deadline for submitting the manuscript was several months ago. So Geoff actually wrote most of his first draft in just a few months. That’s a pretty good pace for a first novel.]

Randy: The hard part of writing is always rewriting. How did things go on the rewrite? Which parts did you find easy and which parts did you find hard?

Geoff: Oh, the rewrite!  I hit a serious block here.  One of my problems was that I read so much about the dreaded rewrite that I was expecting it to be a major ordeal.  But as I read over my first draft, there weren’t a lot of major issues.  I realized I had to make my protagonist more active (a typical issue for first-time novelists) but there were no major structural issues in the story – thanks to all the planning I’d done and thanks to snowflake.  Eventually I made the minor changes and surface-level fixes and then gave the manuscript to an uncle who is a retired journalist and editor.  I had the first inkling that the book might be good when he told me that his plan had been to read it slowly and edit as he went, but that after a few chapters he abandoned that approach and read it quickly because he just had to know what would happen next!

Randy: If you could give any advice to your younger self from two years ago, what would that advice be, and do you think your younger self would be smart enough to take it?

Geoff: My advice to my younger self would be to seek out a critique group or some fellow writers who would help me along the way.  I think it may have prevented me from stalling out during my rewrite phase.  Would I be smart enough to take the advice?  Considering the fact that I’d already ignored the advice from seasoned writers… probably not!

Randy: What’s the one-sentence summary for your novel? 

Geoff: A young man hopes to find fulfillment as a music minister, but encounters the megalomaniacal leader of a failing church.

Randy: Is your novel published yet, and if not, what are your plans for publishing it?

Geoff: The book was recently shortlisted for the “Best New Canadian Manuscript” contest run by The Word Guild – Canada’s association of Christian writers and publishers.  If the book wins then it will be published by the sponsor of the contest, Castle Quay books. If not, I intend to self-publish. 

Postscript by Randy: We did this interview about a week and a half ago, but I’ve held off posting it here on the blog because the awards gala was scheduled for June 15, 2018, and we wanted to include the results here. There were four manuscripts shortlisted in Geoff’s category. The winner was Kevin John White, who submitted a collection of short stories about his life as an alcoholic homeless man. I know how tough the competition can be in one of these national writing contests, and I say CONGRATULATIONS to both Geoff and Kevin. And I wish them great success in their writing careers. Writing is hard work. Completing a manuscript is an achievement to be proud of. Finaling in a major competition is an achievement to be very proud of. 

Closing thoughts. In his first e-mail to me, Geoff thanked me for the help that the Snowflake Method gave him in writing his manuscript. I’m delighted that I could help get him rolling in the right direction. My thinking is that the Snowflake Method doesn’t make people more creative—it just channels their creativity so that they know what to be creative on next. In my view, there is no substitute for talent and hard work. So get to work—and have fun!

The post Interview With a Snowflaker  appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Willian posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hello Randy,

As someone who deal with and help writers, you probably have a tip or two to overcome what I’m current facing.

I have been writing my whole life, since I was a little and learned to do it. Now, I find myself unable to do so. 

For the past two three years, I have started books just throw them later on, I have thought about a hundreds stories that I would love to write, only to find I dislike them later on. I don’t know the reason for this, but right now I can’t feel the joy of writing that I felt years ago. 

I thought it may be the genre or style and changed it, but it didn’t help. I thought it was because I was a pantser but outline didn’t help it.

Right now I’m at a loss, and don’t know how to overcome this. Any thoughts?

Thank you in advance and I loved your snowflake book =)

Randy sez: Wow, that’s a tough question. I suspect different writers write for different reasons, and so the joy of writing is different for different writers. I don’t know why you write or what motivates you.

What Works for Me

But I can tell you what I do when I feel the joy of writing fading. 

When I start feeling that writing isn’t fun anymore, I go find a novel and read it. A good novel. One that’s fun to read. One that makes me believe I’m the protagonist of the story. One that takes me on an adventure.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, the author will make a decision I don’t like. And I’ll think, “I could have done that better.” 

Maybe I really could have written it better. Maybe I’m just delusional. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is that I’m reading a good story and feeling the desire to do it better myself. That’s what got me started writing fiction in the first place. That’s what gets me rolling again when I’m in a rut. 

I can’t promise this will help you, Willian. All I can say is that it works for me.

What Do My Loyal Blog Readers Think?

Now I’ll throw this question out to my Loyal Blog Readers. How do you recover the joy of writing when you’ve lost it?

Got a Question for My Blog?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

Postscript

As a postscript, it’s worth noting that the audiobook version of my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, is available on all the usual places–Audible, Amazon, and Apple’s iTunes Store. In all the fuss over the new GDPR a few weeks ago, I got a bit off track in my blogging, and so I haven’t taken note of it here on my blog yet. So now I am.

Here are links to all the places you can now buy the book, whether in e-book, paper, or audiobook format:

The post Recovering the Joy of Writing appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Today, I’ll talk about a step that most authors care about deeply—their e-mail list.

Once again, the standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be considered legal advice. I’m blogging about my own journey to get my websites GDPR-compliant. If that helps you on your own journey, very good, but you should consult a lawyer versed in GDPR if you want legal advice. 

Why E-mail Lists Matter

I’ve talked many times in my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine and a few times here on this blog about the importance of managing an e-mail list. The reason is simple—nothing converts like e-mail. 

I won’t try to prove that here. Most authors know it’s true, and in the last few years, we’ve all seen numerous authors build large e-mail lists. (My latest book is currently a best-seller in a couple of categories, largely because of the strength of my e-mail list.)

But now it’s important to make sure that your e-mail list-building is done in a GDPR-compliant way.

The exact process for doing this will depend on who manages your e-mail list. I can’t possibly cover all the e-mail service providers, so I’ll focus on the one I use and that many authors use—MailChimp.

MailChimp is free if you have fewer than 2000 subscribers, so that’s a nice reason to start out with them. I’ve been a MailChimp user for several years now. This blog feeds to a MailChimp e-mail list that sends out an e-mail containing every new blog post. That’s how most of my Loyal Blog Readers receive this blog.

How To Update Your MailChimp List

As I noted in my last blog post, MailChimp has a very nice article on their site with detailed instructions on how to update each of your MailChimp lists to be GDPR-compliant. (If you’re not using MailChimp, your own e-mail service provider probably has a similar article on their website.)

There’s no point in me trying to write MailChimp’s article all over again. They put a huge amount of work into it, and it’s very good.

But let me point out one issue that might make their article confusing to some: They essentially explain the process twice. The first time, they explain it in words. Then they have a couple of long sections that explain what some of the words mean that they just used. Then they explain it all again with more details and some pictures. 

The overall process has four steps, and I’ll use exactly their headings so you can look for them in their article. These are the key tasks you need to do:

1. Enable GDPR Fields
2. Edit GDPR Fields
3. Segment Your List by Marketing Permissions
4. Collect Consent

What Do Those Four Tasks Do and Why Are You Doing Them?

It’s worth taking a moment to say in simple language why you do each of those four tasks (at least as I understand things):

1. The reason you Enable GDPR Fields is so that your mailing list now contains more information about each user. It has always contained at least an e-mail address, and probably also a name and other info. But now there will be information on exactly what “marketing permissions” each user granted you. There are a number of different “marketing permissions” but the essential one for you is “Email.” Your users now will explicitly grant you the “marketing permission” to send you e-mail. Or they can take away that “marketing permission” at any time. 
2. The reason you Edit GDPR Fields is because you need to decide exactly what your signup form will say. It will have some legal language. MailChimp provides you with suggested legal language. You can tweak it if you want. Or you can just use what MailChimp provides you.
3. The reason you Segment Your List by Marketing Permissions is to make sure that after May 25, you only send e-mail to people who gave you a “marketing permission” to send Email. And what is a “segment?” It’s just a subset of your subscribers. MailChimp lets you choose a “segment” in many ways. One of those ways is to choose the set of all subscribers who granted you a particular “marketing permission.” Then when you send e-mail after May 25, you send it only to that “segment.”
4. The reason you Collect Consent is because you’ve just changed your e-mail list to contain more information about the “marketing permissions” that your list members have given you. But as yet, none of them have specifically opted in to the precise GDPR language (using the words “marketing permissions” and all the legal lingo) that you just set up in your signup forms. So before May 25, you need to send out an e-mail to your current subscribers asking them to confirm their “marketing permissions” using this new language. Very likely, the reason they joined your list in the first place was because they wanted e-mail from you. But you may or may not have proof of exactly what they agreed to when they signed up long ago. Now if they update their settings on your new signup form, MailChimp will have proof of exactly what “marketing permissions” each subscriber agreed to and when they agreed to it.

MailChimp recommends that after May 25, you should not send e-mail to anyone who didn’t check the Email checkbox in your “marketing permissions.” 

What I Did

I worked through the above four steps for each of my main lists—my fiction reader list, my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, and the list for this Advanced Fiction Writing Blog. 

The first time, I had to read the MailChimp article very carefully to make sure I understood everything. And I took the time to figure out why they wanted me to do each step.

The second and third times, it was quicker and easier.

Yesterday, I sent out e-mails to each of my three lists, asking my subscribers to update their subscription settings. Many subscribers have already done so, but of course a lot haven’t. So my lists will be smaller. I’m not thrilled with that, but it’s not going to kill me.

MailChimp suggests later sending out a followup e-mail to remind people to update their settings.

If you’re receiving this blog post via e-mail, please consider this your reminder, if you haven’t updated your subscription settings yet. At the very bottom of this email on the right side, there’s a link that says “update subscription preferences”. If you click that link, it’ll take you to a form you can fill out. To continue receiving this blog via e-mail after May 25, you’ll need to click the “Email” checkbox on that form and then click the button at the bottom that says “Update Profile.”

And That’s the Core of GDPR

There are more things to do for GDPR-compliance if you have a more complicated website. But I think I’ve covered most of the basics that apply to most authors. So this may be my last blog post on GDPR—I’m still thinking about if there’s anything left to say.

One final note: I discussed Contact forms last week, but now I have an update. If you have a Contact form on a WordPress blog and you’re using Gravity Forms (a popular plugin to create Contact forms), you should be aware that everytime somebody sends you an e-mail from your site, a copy of their message is stored in your WordPress database. That copy will contain the sender’s name and e-mail address, which is personal information. You probably don’t need that in your database, as long as those e-mails are actually being delivered to you. If you decide you don’t want all that personal information in your WordPress database, it’s possible to delete it by going to the Entries page for Gravity Forms in WordPress and trashing all the entries. (This is a little tedious.)

The problem is that as soon as somebody uses your Contact form again, another entry will go into your WordPress database, and you can’t prevent it. (Gravity Forms doesn’t give you the option of not saving those entries.)

However, there’s a nice plugin that will delete new Contact form entries from your WordPress database automatically, almost as soon as they get added. The plugin is called Wider Gravity Forms Stop Entries. It’s free and you can find it on this page on the official WordPress plugin site. I installed it today on my site and it seems to work well.

The post GDPR for Authors, Part 4 appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Today, I’ll talk about another step in the process—updating your blog comment form.

Once again, the standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be considered legal advice. I’m blogging about my own journey to get my websites GDPR-compliant. If that helps you on your own journey, very good, but you should consult a lawyer versed in GDPR if you want legal advice. 

Blog Comments and GDPR

If you have a blog on your website and allow comments, then you typically require people to give some sort of personal information in order to make a comment. For example, you might require them to give a name and an e-mail address and optionally a website. 

You ask for their name because that creates some accountability. Anonymous comments can be vicious comments, and that’s not what you want on your blog.

You ask for their e-mail address, even though that doesn’t get displayed, because you might want to contact them privately. And you may also have things set up so commenters can be notified by e-mail if somebody responds to their comment.

You ask for their website (if they have one) so that people can click on their names and go learn more about them.

You might also have a cookie that can fill in their info next time they want to comment.

This is all pretty innocuous stuff, but it is personal information, and therefore GDPR applies. 

So you need to get permission to collect and process this personal information.

What I Did To Make this Work

A new version of WordPress (version 4.9.6) was released last Thursday, May 17. It had a number of new features that make GDPR-compliance easier. There’s a very nice and detailed review of the new features on MaAnna Stephenson’s blog here. This may be the best summary of GDPR I’ve seen yet.

One of the new features in WordPress is that the form for blog-commenters to fill out now includes a checkbox that says: “Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.”

That clearly tells people that their info will be stored in a cookie. Then the cookie will fill in that info next time.

So to get this working on my site, I updated WordPress to version 4.9.6. (Actually, my web developer updated it.) My understanding is that the new checkbox now automatically appears in the comment form. (You should check me on this to be sure, since I didn’t do this myself. But I don’t see any way to eliminate this checkbox from your form.)

My understanding is that there should also be a checkbox that people have to check to accept the website’s Privacy Policy. That feature is not built into WordPress, but there’s a new plugin that does the trick. 

The plugin is called “WP Comment Policy Checkbox.” It inserts into the Comment form a checkbox that says: “I have read and accept the Privacy Policy.” And it adds a link to the website Privacy Policy.

If you look at the Comments page of this blog entry, you’ll see the two new checkboxes. They weren’t there a week ago. This is progress, right?

There’s Still More to GDPR

One of the major GDPR requirements is that you inform people of exactly what they’re getting into when they subscribe to your e-mail newsletter (or your blog, if they’re subscribing to your blog by e-mail). 

That takes some work, but I’ll defer that to another post. I’ve spent some time today learning how to do this, and I’ve almost completed it on one of my websites. I’m not a MailChimp guru, and it’s been awhile since I spent much time looking at all its many powerful features. So I got kind of side-tracked looking at all the whiz-bang goodies. But I’m now pretty clear on how GDPR-compliance works in MailChimp. It’s not that hard.

If you want to get a running start on it, check out MailChimp’s article Collect Consent With GDPR Forms. Even if you don’t use MailChimp, this will give you a reasonably clear idea of what sort of work you need to do to get your e-mail lists up to snuff for GDPR. 

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The post GDPR for Authors, Part 3 appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

My new book will release in e-book format on May 18. The regular, everyday e-book price will be $4.99, but I’ve currently got it set up for preorder at a special reduced price of only $2.99.

The reason I’ve reduced the e-book price during the preorder period is so all my fans can get a price break. That’s good for you and it’s good for me, because it moves a lot of copies during the crucial launch period. And it’s working.

As I write this post, the e-book is #1 in three categories on Amazon:

• Fiction Writing
• Writing Skills
• Screenwriting 

A paper edition and an audiobook version will be released very soon. I’m not able to time their release exactly, the way I can time the release of the e-book, but I’ve set the wheels in motion and both versions are grinding their way through the machine at Amazon. I’ll try to write a brief blog post when they go live, which should be within the next few days.

Here’s an excerpt from the very beginning of the book, slightly edited for this blog post:

Want to Write a Dynamite Novel?

Do you want to write a dynamite novel? 

I bet you do.

And I bet you can.

I’m here to teach you how.

Why do I think I can do that?

Because I’ve been teaching people how to write fiction for a long time. 

Tens of thousands of writers around the world are using my Snowflake Method right now to write their novels.

What Is the Snowflake Method?

The Snowflake Method is just a series of ten steps you can use to design your novel so you can get the first draft down on paper. People e-mail me all the time to say these steps work like magic to unlock their creativity. 

Please note: the Snowflake Method doesn’t make you more creative. 

Because you already are creative. 

The Snowflake Method just tells you what task to be creative on next.

You don’t have to use all ten steps of the Snowflake Method.

You can use any steps you like. 

You can ignore any steps you don’t like.

The ninth step in the Snowflake Method is to design each scene before you write it.

The Importance of Writing Dynamite Scenes

Why do scenes matter? Because the key to writing a dynamite novel is to write a dynamite scene. 

When I first started writing fiction, my scenes just weren’t working. Then I discovered Dwight Swain’s classic book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. That book had a couple of chapters that changed my life. They taught me how to write a powerful scene.

If you can write one powerful scene, you can write a hundred. And that’s a novel.

I’ve been teaching at writing conferences for many years, and I’ve critiqued manuscripts for hundreds of writers.

The #1 weakness I’ve found in beginning and intermediate writers is that they don’t write strong scenes. 

The absolute fastest way for most writers to take a quantum leap forward is to learn how to design strong scenes. 

Dynamite scenes.

In this book, I’ll teach you how. This is a short book, focused on just that one topic. You can blitz through it quickly and master scene design. You can.

As I said, I first learned how to design scenes from Dwight Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. I’ve now spent decades mulling his methods, rethinking everything, trying to simplify, and adding new ideas. This book is one result of those decades of work. 

My one goal in writing this book is to teach you how to become an expert in designing powerful, amazing scenes that will move your readers’ emotions. 

Once you master scenes, you’ll be one giant step closer to writing powerful, amazing novels that will move readers’ emotions.

Let’s do this, shall we?

Turn the page to get started.

The post Coming, May 18—How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Today, I’ll talk about what I consider the next step on the road to GDPR-compliance—revising your Contact forms.

Once again, the standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be considered legal advice. I’m blogging about my own journey to get my websites GDPR-compliant. If that helps you on your own journey, very good, but you should consult a lawyer versed in GDPR if you want legal advice. 

Contact Forms

You probably have a Contact page on your website that lets people send you an email using a Contact form. A Contact form has fields for a site visitor to type in their name and email address and their message. It’s a lot more primitive than a regular email program. Why do most websites have such primitive Contact forms? That calls for a little history…

In the old days, a Contact page usually had a simple email link in a format called “mailto,” which contained the email address of the website owner. When a website visitor clicked on a mailto link, their email program popped up, loaded with the email address of the website owner and ready to type in the email message. That was very convenient.

But the problem was that spammers could send out bots looking at Contact pages to read those mailto links. Then the spammers had the email address of the website owner, and they sent him tons of spam.

That’s why most websites these days have a Contact form instead of a bare mailto link. It’s protection for website owners from the spammers.

But here’s the problem for GDPR compliance: A Contact form usually puts the website visitor’s name and email address into the website database. There are good, sensible reasons for this. But now the website is storing personal information of any site visitor who uses the Contact form. And GDPR is all about letting website visitors control their personal data.

Please note that it’s possible to use a Contact form that saves no personal information to the website database. In that case, you don’t have to worry about letting your website visitors control this particular information, because there’s nothing to control.

On my website, I have Contact forms created using a WordPress plugin called Gravity Forms. I checked and found that Gravity Forms does save information to the site database. It saves the site visitor’s name, email address, and the message they sent. 

While this might seem pretty innocuous, it is personal data. And therefore GDPR covers it. GDPR says that this personal data can’t be collected without consent.

So our next step is to get the website visitor to give consent before the Contact form collects that personal data.

Getting Informed Consent

As I understand it, the website visitor must voluntarily give informed consent. That means you need to tell them what you’re doing, and then they need to freely take some positive action to consent to it, and then you need to keep evidence that they gave consent. And they must have the option later on to revoke consent.

That all sounds complicated, no? How is this supposed to work out in practice?

First of all, you should already have your Privacy Policy available in the standard location on every page of your website. That Privacy Policy spells out in fair detail what you’re doing with their personal data. So there’ll be a section in your Privacy Policy that says what information you collect on your Contact form and what you do with it. (Presumably you at least store it, but your site may do other things with it than simply storing it.)

If your Privacy Policy is well-written, then your website visitor has been informed (or at least has the option to have been informed).

Now how do they give consent? 

They give consent in the Contact form itself. There needs to be a checkbox in the Contact form that makes clear they are giving consent to have their personal information used. The checkbox should start out unchecked. The site visitor then checks that box. If they don’t check the box, then the Contact form refuses to send their email to you.

What I Did To Make This Work

Today I went to all the Contact pages on my site. In each form, I added a checkbox with wording something like this: “You consent for your name and email to be stored electronically.” 

The checkbox is a “required field” which means that the user can’t send the email unless the checkbox has been clicked. 

And the checkbox starts out unchecked, which ensures that the user has to take positive action to give consent. 

As I understand it, this takes care of the requirement that I get informed consent.

Yes, this is a bit of a hassle. Yes, it seems like bureaucratic rigamarole. But it only needs to be done once, and it’s done.

If you’re not techie, this may seem like a lot of work. But if you’re not techie, you probably had a webmaster create your Contact form to begin with, and I expect they could revise it pretty quickly, if you tell them what to do. 

You should of course do your own legal homework to choose wording that you believe meets the GDPR requirements. You shouldn’t assume that I got the wording right. Remember, I’m not a lawyer. I’ve done my best, but I can only be responsible for my own site. 

There’s More, But We’ll Leave That For Later

GDPR also requires that your users should later be able to find out what personal information you’ve stored that originally came from your Contact form. They should be able to get the information in electronic format. They should be able to make you delete it from your system. 

How do you make that happen?

I’m going to leave that for another day. WordPress will be releasing the new version of WordPress (version 4.9.6) on Thursday, May 17. As I understand it, the new release will have tools needed to handle these particular GDPR requirements. So I’m going to hold off talking about that until I’ve seen the new release. If the new release doesn’t do the trick, there are some plugins that might handle it. More on that in a few days.

The post GDPR for Authors, Part 2 appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

First, the standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this blog post is not legal advice. This blog post is an attempt to explain in simple language what I’ve been learning. This post may not be completely accurate, but it’s my best shot.

What is GDPR and Why Should You Care?

The GDPR is a regulation created by the European Union to protect the personal data of European citizens. It applies to anyone who is offering goods and services (free or paid) to people in the European Union. That means if you have a website or blog that could ever be visited by someone from the EU, the GDPR applies to you.

You may be thinking that you don’t collect any personal data, so how could the GDPR apply to you? If you really don’t collect any private data at all, then you still need a privacy statement that says so. And that privacy statement needs to be clearly posted on your website or blog. 

But don’t be so sure you’re not collecting any private data at all. Websites are complicated beasts with a lot of moving parts under the hood. Here are some ways you may be collecting private data on your website or blog that you may not have thought of:

• Do you have a contact form that lets people email you?
• Do you have an email newsletter list?
• Do you allow people to post comments on your blog or your website? 
• Are you an affiliate of Amazon or Apple iBooks or any other online store?
• Do you have Facebook Like buttons? Or Twitter Tweet buttons? Or any other social media buttons?
• Do you track visitors to your site with Google Analytics or some other tracking tool?
• Do you have any sort of cookies on your site?
• Do you have a Facebook “pixel” on your site?
• Do you use Feedburner for your blog?
• Do you use a spam protection service, such as Akismet?

And there are hundreds of other ways your blog or website might conceivably be collecting personal information.

Now, it’s not wrong to collect and use personal information. That’s what allows you to serve people. But when you collect people’s personal information, such as names or email addresses, the GDPR says that you need to provide people with basic information: Who you are, what data you’re collecting and why, how long you hold on to that data, who you share that data with, how people can find out what data you’ve collected about them, how people can tell you to delete their data, and who they can contact in case they have questions.

You may be thinking this is getting complicated. Yes, it is a bit, but remember, this is for a good cause. This will benefit you. You will now be able to find out who has your personal data and what data they have. You will now be able to make them delete your personal data if you ask. Here’s why you will get this benefit: The GDPR gives European citizens the right to control their personal data. Therefore, virtually all websites and blogs will provide that right to Europeans—and at the same time, they’ll provide the same right to everyone else in the world, including you. (There may be a few sites that will find the GDPR too onerous and will refuse to serve European citizens. But the vast majority of sites are going to follow the GDPR.)

If you have a blog or a website, there are several things you need to do to get ready for GDPR. And the deadline is May 25, so now is a good time to begin.

So what do you need to do in order to make sure your website or blog is GDPR-compliant? What actions do you need to take?

That depends on what your site does. Most authors have simple “brochure websites” that will probably not take too much tweaking to get compliant.