Can you make a living writing short stories?

ByJohn Brown

We already know that many people break into the novel market WITHOUT writing short stories. So they’re not necessary for starting a writing career, although they might have helped some folks. See this page http://johndbrown.com/writers/writing-business-facts-figures/ for links that will show you how people break in. But some people just love short stories, so the question is can you make a living writing them?

The answer is yes, you CAN do it–you go into television and get hired to write scripts for TV series (grin).

But what about doing it in print? Well, let’s try some conservative math.

1) How much would you need to sell?

TARGET: a conservative $30,000 gross per year.

The median household income in the USA is $50,000. But you can find a place (rural Ohio or Indiana or North Dakota etc.) where housing is relatively cheap and live on $30k. I think this is a reasonable target. So let’s make some assumptions about the stories. We’ll assume each short averages around 4,000 words and that you get paid seven cents per word. To earn your target amount you’d have to sell:

  • TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 428,571
  • TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 107 (words divided by average story length)
  • TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 2 sales per week (weeks in year divided by number of stories)

At 10 cents a word:

  • TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 300,000
  • TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 75
  • TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 1.4 sales per week

No, this doesn’t count reprints, movie deals, gaming contracts, etc. But reprints usually don’t pay well and movie deals, while they pay well, can’t be counted on. Besides, we’re being conservative. 

2) Is this a feasible production rate?

Again, a little math.

TARGET: 2 stories, 8,000 words average per week

If we assume you write five days per week for six hours per day at a rate of 500 words per hour, which may be very aggressive if you try to include thinking and revising time in that, then you’ll produce 15,000 words per week.

So, yes, this is a feasible, if aggressive, production rate–on paper. But I don’t know anyone finishing this many stories per week. Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely you will sell 100% of what you send out. So you need to actually produce MORE than two stories per week. You might have to end up writing three or four. Week after week after week. That’s one story every day or two.

Theoretically, yes, that rate of production still fits in the 15,000 word capacity. But I’m going to say it’s doubtful anyone can do this because I haven’t seen anyone do it. Have you? 

But even if you were the Lizard King of writing and could pull this off every week of the year, the question is can you sell all those stories?

3) Is it feasible to sell two stories per week?

According to http://duotrope.com/index.aspx there are about 200 venues for short fiction paying pro rates, which for them is 5 cents or more. No,  anthologies are not represented there. But I’m not sure it will change the equations that much. So you have to sell 107 stories to these 200 markets. I don’t know how many slots are open in these places. Some of these venues publish one story per year, some publish twelve, some more. Some are published semi-annually, quarterly, bi-monthly. Let’s say there are 2,000 slots. Of course, we might need to count total wordage up for hire at these venues instead, but we’re just doing this on the back of a napkin. So 107 stories out of 2,000 slots means you’d have to make up 5% of the market. You sell five of every 100 stories these folks buy.

FIVE PERCENT OF THE WHOLE MARKET!

Nobody makes up 5% of the whole short fiction market. NOBODY. Okay, let’s say there are 4,000 slots. Each venue averaging twenty stories per year. So you have to make up 2.5% of the market. Nobody does that either. What about 1%? Anyone? One out of every 100 stories? No.

Is this because writers are lazy? Could it be done? You might be the first?

That’s lotto thinking. What you want is demonstrated income, i.e. people have DEMONSTRATED it can be done. Nobody has demonstrated this can be done in the current market. So it’s not reasonable to expect you’ll do something nobody else is doing.

So the answer is that even if you produce three to four short stories per week, you’ll never be able to sell enough to make a living. Now, I know of a few authors who can make a few thousand dollars per year writing short stories. I’ve heard of one guy who made $10,000 a year for a few years. But can you live on that? Even if you move to a place where housing is very, very cheap? Besides, we’re trying to avoid lotto thinking here. We’re trying to be practical and conservative. This is one guy. Do you yourself know anyone who has done this? I wouldn’t want to base my future on what one guy did.

CONCLUSION: there’s no evidence that strongly suggests it’s feasible to sell at the necessary rate to make $10,000 per year let alone $30,000.

4) Re-purpose the wordage to Novels!

Go back up and look at the annual output of words. If you can write 300,000 to 450,000 words per year, you could write four to six young adult novels (averaging 70,000 words per book) or two to three adult novels (averaging 120,000 words per) in that same time.

Why not build a career in novels?

Yes, you may start at $5,000 – $6,000 advance per book. But if you sell well, that goes up. Plus, if it does sell well, you get royalties. Plus you can sell foreign novel rights. Plus you get an advance to help with some expenses. More importantly, we have thousands and thousands of folks DEMONSTRATING they can make a living writing at that pace.

So write short stories if you love them, but don’t expect to make a living at it.

5) But what about Amazon and self-publishing?

Could you make a living selling your shorts out there?

Only if your shorts were once worn by Brittany Spears.

For more on e-book sales, let me recommend you read a few posts by J. A. Konrath. I’ll let you decide. But please note that he’s selling NOVELS. And as always, you want to be realistic about this and make sure you see many people DEMONSTRATING it can be done. Do you think Konrath presents such evidence? You tell me.

Postscript

Read these two posts by Dean Wesley Smith where he busts some big myths about not being able to make a living writing:

Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Only 300 Writers Make a Living

Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Can’t Make Money in Fiction

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    Writing Update: 5/21/11 – visualize first, scene goals, the power of research

    ByJohn Brown

    I finished two chpaters this week. I’m quite a bit behind my stretch schedule which has me finishing the beginning of August although not too far behind my my conservative schedule which has me finishing the end of September.  A few more weeks and we’ll see if I’m giong to meet the stretch schedule.

    A lot of these first seven chapters are the same scenes as from before. Well, the same idea. But because enough has changed in the situations and because I’m writing some of the scenes from different points of view I have to rewrite them. So while I hope to catch up with some copy and paste from the last draft, I just am unable to do that here. 

    Visualize –> Report

    I thought I’d share one of my key methods for writing scenes. Here’s what I’ve found: when I can visualize the scene, it’s fairly easy to tell the reader what’s going on and to structure it in a way that achieves my purposes. When I can’t visualize it, I have nothing to tell. So for me the first thing I have to do is to see what’s going on. Then I can report as if I were there. Or if it’s from a more deep point of view penetration, I can report from my character’s eyes.

    So the sequence is to visualize (do the things that help me get that visual, feel, sound, etc.) then report in a way that will transport the reader and present the things I feel I need to present because they’re cool or because I want to generate a specific effect. 

    This is why I use the sketch/draft method. I sketch things out to get an idea of what’s going on first. Sure, I’ll discover details as I write. I’ll sometimes realize my first idea was off or wrong or won’t work. But if I don’t have an idea in the first place, I simply can’t write. It’s all a blank screen. One of the biggest causes of writer’s block is simply a lack of invention–of not having anything to write about because nothing’s in the mind of the writer.

    First have something to say. Then say it.

    Of course, you have to come up with the scenes in your mind before you have something to say. That takes some exploratory drafting, sketching, creative Q&A. You can see Orson Card doing some takes here in his writing lesson “Beginnings“, trying to help flesh it out in his mind. 

    The main tool I use to sketch is the summary–a bullet point or chapter outline like a posted about last week. However, sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes I need an actual map to block out who does what and where. This week, for example, I was writing about Sugar coming into a village. She needed to enter then encounter some dead bodies.  I spent something like 45 minutes typing hardly anything and then realized-duh!-I don’t know what’s going on, where she’s going, why. I can’t see this place at all. I needed helping visualizing it first, not in super detail, but enough so I could report.

    So I took five minutes to sketch a simple map of the village, where she was when she entered, and where she was going, what was likely in the yards, the fences, etc. Once I saw it, I could then report, just tell what I saw as plainly as I could to the reader. I know these scenes fairly well, this being the FOURTH FREAKING DRAFT of this novel. And yet I’ve had to do some drawing for two scenes so far (the other drawing was for an ambush that wasn’t in the last draft). Because again, things had changed. And I had to see it before I could report it.

    Other tools that help me visualize and hear are actual photographs of things or people. Or audio of people’s voices. I was struggling getting a character in my mind for my short story LOOSE IN THE WIRES. I was listening at the time to Susan Grafton’s O IS FOR OUTLAW and when the actor performed this one character, suddenly I HEARD it. Boom, the guy came alive in my mind. Once alive there it was relatively easy to put him down on paper. Again, I was just relaying it to the reader.

    So I believe that what a writer must do is bring the situation to life in his or her mind first. It won’t be everything in exact detail. There’s a lot to be discovered in the writing. But it will be enough that it will feel like you’re simply telling something you saw or experienced.

    Scene Goals

    While writing, of course, I have objectives for my scenes. Sometimes I’ll do exploratory drafts, not having any goal except to see what happens and invent something cool. But that’s usually in my pre-draft stage. At this point I have a rough idea of where the story is going to go. I’ve already done a lot of the inventing. Now I have to translate it to scenes. And so I find having a quick list of objectives for the scene, along with my brief summary of what I’m expecting to happen, helps me visualize as well.

    Here are two examples of what a list of scene goals might look like for me.  These were for two scenes in draft 3 of CURSE.

    Example 1:

    • This is the time for her to make her HEROIC CHOICE. I want a heroic moment.
    • Terror of Legs being lost
    • Legs seeing her for the first time the next morning—he IS going to experiment because Urban is gone. Does he give something to her, his weave, twisted—Flax helped me.
    • Some tenderness
    • Last time with Mistress until the final battle

    Example 2:

    • Skir battle coolness. Need some surprises
      • Ayten dragging off souls
        • Sees it below on the ship
      • Seafire
      • What cool skir thing could there be?
        • Whirlwind
        • What would happen if a skir dived?
        • Some missiles, stones in the wind
        • First sight of that. She ship has slingers etc.
    • Sugar having to choose to leave people, see the beginnings of harvest
    • Oh Crap moment at end—this is going to be bad
    • This is the setup for the next scene where She and  Urban are spying and after the assessment, he says, we need to go. And she’s in indecision, and he says I will wait until, and then I will leave.

    They’re fairly simple.  Of course, I have other goals in mind that I don’t need to write down–“start and end with a hook,” or a rest, depending. “Transport the reader might be another,” meaning make sure I use what I know about presenting details. Another might be “bring the character on in an interesting way.” And because I generally know the big picture of what’s going to happen, I can focus on these other details as I write.

    Research: Monster Zing & Visualize Method

    Research is also a monster method for visualizing and for zing. I can’t tell you how much it has helped me in the past and on my current projects. In the thriller I’m working on where the main character is ex Special Forces, I could barely visualize anything. Some I’m reading books about it and talking to people who are in Special Forces and watching films about it. There’s no way I could build a story I cared about and believed in without research. I’m going to be doing a ride along with a cop, visit our state prison, and maybe talk to some ex-cons for this as well.

    Tim Powers came to the Writer’s of the Future workshop I attended many years ago. He talked about many things. But research was one of them. In fact, one of the idea generating methods discussed in the workshop, one on which Hubbard himself had written a fine article that we read called “Search for Research” (click the Next or Continued link at the bottom to continue through all the pages of the essay), was about the power of research. So Powers recently did an interview about the latest Johnny Depp Pirates release , which is inspired by his book of the same title (which I read and loved), and restated what he did so many years ago:

    Q: What inspired you to write On Stranger Tides?
    A: I was already hooked into using real historical places for settings. And so I thought, you know you loved Treasure Island…And I thought I bet you can set a nice fantasy story in among the pirates, Black Beard, that crowd. So I read a million books (that is probably fifteen books) about that particular crowd of pirates that were in the Caribbean in 1718 like Stede Bonnet, Black Beard, and Anne Bonny.

    What I always do when I’m writing a book is first I read all the history and biographies and things like that that I can find. And I look for stuff that’s too cool not to use. ‘Ooh that’s neat. Look at that. I like that.’ And I’ll write it down. And then I’ll find something else and say, ‘Oh wow this is great. You got to have a scene happening in this place. Oh you gotta use this guy.’ Eventually, I’ll have twenty or thirty things that are too cool not to use. And it’s kind of fun then because you say, ‘Well okay, here’s twenty or thirty parts of your book. You just have to connect the dots.’ And so I thought, ‘Ok, what was Black Beard really up to?’

    So to sum up.

    1. Visualize, then report.  That’s what I’ve found I have to do. It makes it so much easier to write when I have a picture in my mind.
    2. Scene goals help me visualize the scene and what needs to happen.
    3. Research is a huge tool for helping me find zing and to visualize and invent something I can visualize. 
    4. The Sketch/Draft process (I explained it in last week’s post and in the interview with Maya Lassiter) is another work horse of a tool for helping me visualize and invent by degrees.
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    Literary reading rates on the rise

    ByJohn Brown

    What great news!!!

    Washington, D.C. — For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading on the Rise documents a definitive increase in rates and numbers of American adults who read literature, with the biggest increases among young adults, ages 18-24. This new growth reverses two decades of downward trends cited previously in NEA reports such as Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read.

    Adults up 3.5%, young adults (ages 18-24) up by 9%. Full article here. Full report here (with nifty graphs and tables).

    They attribute it to reading programs. Perhaps. I’m sure JK Rowling phenomenon had something to do with it. Whatever the reason, it’s good to hear.

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  • Generating Story 3: Develop The 6 Core Parts, Start Anywhere

    ByJohn Brown

    If you’re going to build a house, you need to know what type of house you want and what you want it to do. A two-man tent is a house of sorts.  So are a suburban rambler, a New York high-rise, and a medieval fort.  Each is a bit different, even if they share elements.

    Building a story is like building a house. You need to know what you’re after. You need to know how stories work in general and how the type of story you want to write works in particular.

    For example, if you love suspense, and it’s going to factor heavily in your story, you’d better learn the principles of suspense. If you love intrigue and mystery, you’d better learn how to build that in a reader. If your current project is a crime story, you need to know how crimes work and how they’re solved. If it’s a love story, you need to know how falling in love works. All of those things you identified as your personal style—you want to know how they work.

    Except sometimes, when you’re starting from scratch, you might not know exactly what kind of story you’re going to build.

    So what do you do?

    You get a list of development objectives. And you begin to work on them. Your mind needs a direction to run.

    Despite the fact that stories are different, they share some common core things. These are the things you want to focus on developing. When I start a new project, I know my task is to develop six core story elements. This gives me a direction. All I have to do is start developing these six things, and sooner or later the story comes to life.

    So what are these core elements?

    • Genre
    • Character
    • Setting
    • Problem
    • Plot
    • Text

    You need to develop all six parts. That’s your job. There’s no particular order that you develop the elements in. You just start with what you have. As you develop all six parts, the story will come to life. Your characters will begin to breathe and speak. They’ll take on a voice and attitude. You’ll see the landscape. Scenes and plot turns will come to mind. If you’re more of an auditory thinker, you might not see anything, but will start hearing the rhythms of the prose. Visual or auditory, you’ll care about and believe in the tale. You’ll have something wonderful to write and share with readers.

    Let’s look at each element to see what you’re trying to develop.

    Genre

    The genre tells you the overall effect you’re going for. It describes the salient aspects of the tale. Those aspects often focus on the emotional mix you’re delivering to the reader (horror, humor, thriller), but can also describe the setting (western, Regency romance), as well as the type of problem your characters will be facing (love story, political thriller), and the audience your writing to (young adult, middle grade, women’s fiction).

    But why do you want to know your genre? Isn’t that just a marketing thing?

    No, it’s not just some marketing thing. If I’m telling a story about a kidnapping, knowing it’s a tale of tale of horror–instead of a romantic comedy, fantasy, western, science fiction, or political thriller—makes a huge difference.

    It gives me an objective. Parameters. Remember, creativity is problem solving. If there’s no objective, there’s no solution. The moment we have an objective, our mighty brains can kick into gear and start suggesting ideas. The more specific we make the objective, the easier it is to think up ideas.

    Now, you might not know the genre when you start. You might simply have a cool bit of dialogue, an image, or newspaper clipping. That’s okay. You don’t need to start with genre, although it often helps. But you eventually want to peg that genre, even if it’s some blend of your own making, so you know the general effect you’re going for.

    Character

    You want to develop a couple of characters, usually at least a protagnoist and antagonist. They need to be interesting to you. If you want your readers to root for someone, that person had better also be sympathetic and likeable.

    What makes a character interesting? What makes them sympathetic and likeable? You might want people to dislike your antagonist. You’ll at least want them to fear him or her. What produces that? Read what I wrote about character here: http://www.sfwa.org/2010/12/key-conditions-for-suspense/. Then start noticing what makes people and characters interesting, sympathetic, and likeable to you, as well as what makes you fear and dislike others.

    There will be other characters you’ll need to develop—a mentor, lover, friend, henchmen, etc. Maybe you start with one of them. That’s fine. Just know you need to be on the lookout for your protagonist and antagonist. Almost every story has both. For the hero, you’ll usually want to develop someone that’s interesting and likeable. For the antagonist, you’ll want to develop someone who is interesting and powerful enough to make us fear for the hero.

    Setting

    Setting may play a huge role in your story as it does in epic fantasies, Westerns, historical pieces. Furthermore, a setting doesn’t have to be faraway place to play a big role. Your story may be set in a prison, rural town, or manufacturing plant, which may factor heavily into the story. Then again, setting may play less of a role. It all depends on what interests you and the type of story you’re writing.

    They key, I’ve found, is to develop the setting with the goal of having it come alive in my mind by identifying things in the setting that are interesting or will affect the hero and plot. I need to transport the reader to a place. I can’t do it, if I myself don’t know what that place is like. And it’s nice for them to find it interesting when they get there.

    Setting is also a great source of ideas for the other elements. When you develop setting, you’ll find characters, problems, and plot ideas galore.

    Problem and Plot

    I wrote a detailed explanation of problem and plot, which you can read here:  http://www.sfwa.org/2010/12/key-conditions-for-suspense/. Read it. I’m not going to rehash it now. But I will say that problem is the engine to your story. Your story is not going to go anywhere without it.

    You want to identify the main problem your character is facing. One that is going to generate enough scenes for the size of story you’re going to write. Read what I wrote about conflicts, obstacles, etc. Ultimately, you’re aiming to develop a problem that you find compelling.

    You might not develop the key aspects of the plot in the beginning. In fact, you’ll probably discover many of them only as you write. However, at this stage it does help to start looking at plot patterns for the type of problem you’re writing about because it helps generate ideas for scenes. For example, a romance about a gal who is a Minuteman or border agent and guy who is a coyote (smuggling folks across the border) will take a different course than one about a farmer trying to find his kidnapped wife.  

    In the first story, we might start by introducing the characters: the border agent interdicting a group suspected of being drug mules; the coyote is leading that group. In the next scene they might meet, and not know what the other is. They’re attracted. They meet again, maybe have dinner or dance or go hunting. The romance deepens. Then one finds out about the other.  If she finds out, does she turn him in? Maybe he inadvertantly leads the drug cartel to her and puts her in jeopardy.

    In the second story, we might start with the husband and wife in some funny situation. He leaves. Comes back. Finds her gone. Finds evidence of her kidnapping. Gets a call or a note. Is told they want him to pay them a ransom. Or maybe turn over title to something. Or maybe he works at a weapon manufacturer, and they want some piece of tech. Or maybe it’s something else.

    The point is that they develop differently. The plot patterns of love stories are different from the patterns of heists, kidnappings, shipwrecks, bullies, etc.  because they’re all different problems and require the hero to take different types of steps to solve them. When first developing a story, I’ve found it’s helpful to think about patterns for presenting, complicating, and resolving those types of problems. I’ve found it helpful to ask, what would I do in this situation?

    For more on plot patterns, see the link above. In addition to patterns, specific plot turns that really spark your interest will present themselves to you. Maybe I don’t have a pattern yet, but as I’m developing the character or setting a cool scene comes to mind. Or maybe it’s a cool plot turn–the border agent is captured by a drug cartel and the coyote goes in to save her. You want to be on the lookout for these.

    So in the beginning, you want to focus on developing a compelling problem, a general plot pattern, and be on the lookout for some cool or fun scenes or turns.

    Text

    Text is the prose on the page. It’s how you translate the story in your head to something the reader can consume. It’s the specific scenes, the dialogue, and narration, which means you don’t stop developing the text until you write “the end.”  Sometimes, the story can come alive without drafting. Sometimes, especially with those writers who are more auditory, you need a rhythm, a voice for the narrator and character before the story clicks. Often it just takes some freewrites or a drew chapters to discover this.  What I’m after is a point of view voice.

    Sum It Up

    Take some time and think about the key elements, how they work, and the core of what you need for each. Make yourself a simple checklist. Here’s one such checklist.

    • A protagonist who is interesting, fascinating maybe, someone you yourself can get behind and want to follow. 
    • An interesting antagonist who raises your anxiety for the protagonist.
    • Asetting that’s alive in your mind as well, including parts of the setting that are interesting—the things and people that are scary, cool, lovely, dangerous, funny, etc.
    • A problem that’s compelling to you. One that’s big enough for the size of story you’re writing. One that suggests a juicy plot.
    • A plot pattern or two. Maybe some scenes or plot turns that really spark your interest.
    • A voice for the main character / narrator. 

    Here’s another I recently shared with some younger writers:  

    It doesn’t matter where you start when you invent a story, but you  need to end up with a character you think is fun, cool, or  interesting, who has a problem other people will find funny or  compelling–that’s the core of your story. The problem can be a mystery the character needs to solve (there are strange green lights in the sewer), a danger or threat to some aspect of the character’s happiness or someone they care about (holy smokes, that big alien that looks like a bug wants to eat my head), or an opportunity for something that will make them happy (I live in a cupboard and get to go to magic school!) You start there. The rest of the story is about how that character goes about trying to solve the problem, the characters who help them, and those who work against them (including tiny evil mice villains). You know you’re done when the mystery is solved, the threat removed, or the opportunity is won or lost.

    Here’s another from Lou Anders that he offered on a Writing Excuses podcast that presents another way to sum up what you’re looking for with character and problem (BTW, I find no evidence that all satisfying stories need what he calls a relationship character; however I do think it’s a fantastic technique for stating theme and clarifying the internal problem in stories that revolve around a character making a change):

    [Lou] The protagonist is usually the most obvious one. He or she is the star of the film. The protagonist is someone who wants something. It has to be something concrete [emphasis added]. It can’t be “I want to be happy” or “I want to be pretty” or “I want to be rich.” It has to be a definite, achievable goal associated with that. So I want him to fall in love with me so that I will be happy. I want to win the game show that I’m going to be on so that I will be rich. I want to rob a casino of the guy who’s dating my ex-girlfriend, that will make us happy.

    [Dan] So I can be happy and rich.

    [Lou] Yes. Exactly. So it has to be a concrete, achievable goal.

    [Lou] The antagonist is the person who places obstacles to that goal in the path of the protagonist. This does not mean the bad guy. Now, we can talk about some very interesting examples. The antagonist is the one whose goals are diametrically opposed to the protagonist, and they’re the one who is blocking the protagonist’s journey.

    These aren’t twenty page design documents. They’re simple checklists. There’s power in keeping your objectives simple. Too many details and you lose your focus.

    I suggest you take some time to write a succient sumary of what you want to develop, one that gives you clear direction. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Just cobble something together. And keep it SHORT! Remember the 80/20 rule.

    Let me suggest you not get bogged down by rules: Rules vs. Objectives. And that you include at least four of the six parts: The 4 Parts. The key is have a list of core things you know you need to develop for the current project. Knowing what you need to develop gives your mind a direction to work in so you’re not just flailing about.

    You can’t know it all up front

    It’s important to know that even though you have a development checklist, you will NOT develop the whole story up front before you begin to draft. You can’t. It’s impossible. It’s a mistake to think you must.

    Even the folks who write detailed seventy-page outlines cannot imagine the exact words and turns of every scene before they actually write them. Furthermore, they are often surprised by ideas that come as they draft and find themselves adjusting their outlines.

    Your goal is NOT to develop a super detailed set of writing instructions that a monkey could follow. Your goal is to get enough ideas in the six parts for the beginnings of the story to come alive in your mind. When the story is alive in your mind, writing is almost like transcribing.

    You might develop your ideas by creating various types of sketches for the plot, problem, character, and setting before you begin to draft. This includes things like summaries, outlines, drawings, maps, character biographies, etc. On the other hand, it may take some drafting before those things begin to breathe.

    Also, it’s rarely the case that you develop the parts sequentially. What usually happens is that you develop a little bits about each part in random order. Maybe you start with the bare bones of a problem, then develop a bit about a character, then setting, which leads you to more about the character, then you see something on TV that sparks your ideas about the problem, then you write a draft of something and get some more details, then your brother says something that sparks an idea that fits. Or maybe you start with a snippet about a character and move to the setting and back to character then to problem. Or maybe you begin with setting and discover a bit about a character.

    It doesn’t matter where you start. The parts build by accretion, like a snowball—here a little, there a little. 

    Selective Attention

    Once you know what you’re trying to develop, ideas will literally jump out at you. It’s all part of the biology of selective attention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention).

    For example, if I tell you to develop a sexy female antagonist, I’m betting some ideas or images immediately leap to mind. If I tell you to present me with three different choices for this antagonist next week, someone who will fit into my kidnapping story, someone who’s a little surprising, and every day you think about this objective, you’ll encounter all sorts of ideas over the next seven days that you might use.

    Why? Because you’re primed to see them. You’re looking for solutions to a specific problem. You’re harnessesing your focus and working memory limitations. That’s selective attention.

    The more specific I get in my objectives, up to a point, the easier it becomes. If I tell you the kidnapping is a comedy set in rural Utah with Mormons and Peruvian sheep herders who work for 9 months and then return to Peru, that will lead you down one path. If I tell you it’s a thriller set in the deep south with Mexican drug gangs and a local police force, that starts you thinking in another.

    An Example

    Let me give you an example of all this. A few years ago, I was on a business trip, and just before checking out of my hotel, I read an interview with Deborah Vetter who used to be the editor for Cicada. She said they loved traditional fantasy stories and that many of those she liked took a common theme and gave it an unexpected twist. Cicada was open to fantasy at the time, and so I asked myself: what’s a twist on a common fantasy element?

    Boom, objective–my mind had a direction to run in.

    I got my luggage together, checked out of the hotel, and drove over to a Lowe’s around the corner to pick up something for the house. All this time I’m running various fantasy elements through my mind—witches, ghosts, dragons, etc.—asking how I might twist them. Trolls? No, boring. Witches? Meh. Vampires? Ugh. I went through a whole bunch of ideas. I got out of the car, entered the store, continued. When I was walking down the trim isle, I finally got to golems.

    Hum, that was interesting to me.

    All the golem stories I had read were about the rabbi creating the golem and what happens. Kind of like Frankenstein’s monster. So I asked: what if it wasn’t about the guy who creates the golem? What’s a twist? What if it’s about someone who finds a golem?

    I immediately saw the bank of a river, the Evanston, Wyoming river my girls and I had been playing on a few weeks earlier. I imagined the river in autumn, yellow leaves on the ground. I imagined a bald man of red clay, half exposed in the freshly shorn bank, the rune of power on his forehead and neck. The river was low, the mint growing on the exposed sand and gravel bars, the smell of leaf mold hanging low over the water.

    My cool meters went wild. Some ideas carry such a delicious energy.

    Did I have a story?

    Of course, not. I only had the first whispers of a character (the golem), setting (a river somewhere), and genre (some kind of fantasy). Maybe a bit of a problem. This was one cool idea, not anything close to a story. I knew I needed to develop character, setting, and problem. That’s what forms the premise of the story. So I got to work on those elements.

    I captured the image on a scrap of paper, and began asking questions. Who finds it? A woman, I thought. Where? I listed some options and liked the woods of North Carolina. And it was some Native American creature. What’s the problem? What’s at issue? Either the red golem has his own agenda, I thought, or it’s others forcing it on him, or he’s trapped. A trapped soul…and the woman and the golem love each other…

    Did I have a story yet?

    No. Not even close. I still didn’t have a clear problem. Or very much about the characters. No plot.

    So what could the problem be? What was the situation?

    I walked around Lowe’s, drove home, thought about it on the way, generating options. I took a few days and generated ideas about American Indians, pickups and rednecks. I researched golems. I asked myself–what would that girl do, if she found this thing?  What if she dug it out and took it home? So I had a girl who digs the golem out and transports it home in her pickup, modern day South Carolina. She takes it home, cleans it, becomes obsessed with it. Takes it into her room. One night she’s lying in the dark, the house is quiet.  And suddenly it takes in a breath. It’s trapped soul–they love one another, she has to say good-bye in the end, a bitter sweet ending.

    Whoa. Cool! Now this thing is alive. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to write a story about a woman obsessed with a golem. Golem love? So I tossed it and went back to developing more ideas.

    Here are some of my development notes so you can get a feel.

    <quote>The deep-trench men were admirable monsters. They knew the clay, the feel and pattern of it, for it had long been heavy in their minds and muscles. They were big in three dimensions and their eyes were black and barbarous…</quote>[just a scrap I ran across and put into the folder]

    Okay, this is going to be a hot writing, just letting the ideas flow to see where they take me and trying to simply let the ideas come.

    Zing: what if he leaves, she finds him, does something, and then one day she goes back and he’s gone. And what’s she going to do? He could be hiding there and malevolent. Or he could be following her.

    I like the idea of her falling in love with him.

    The red man in the bank of the river. And I’m pulled to the historical setting, a historical fantasy. Not a contemporary, but one that’s serious about the guy. One that has villagers etc.

    So she’s out there, collecting late berries (currants) or maybe mint, she’s out there and it’s a fine fall day and the water is tumbling, rushing by. And she’s in a dark blue skirt and a white blouse, and she’s got dirt on the skirt, carrying the mint, and she comes around one thicket of willow and there he is.

    He’s not all visible, but she sees the skull and the shoulder and thinks skeleton, perhaps a burial ground, some ancient thing.

    Goes to investigate. It’s not the bones of the dead. A statue? What is it? She digs a bit, dirt in its ear, digs and uncovers more of it. Sees the rune of power on his head. Steps back. He looks like someone struggling to get out of the rock, birthed from the rock. And now its very obvious to anyone coming by and she hides it. Struggling like a man from the womb.

    And so what’s the danger from here?

    She loses the cool thing.

      • He gets out and leaves–gone
      • The villagers or one guy, one big man, goes down to destroy it
        • Her fiancé
        • Her husband, she’s young, very young and he’s her husband?
      • Or she’s alone, very alone.
        • She takes the thing home, gives it a place, talks to it (like Wilson in Outcast)
        • And then one day it’s gone, he’s gone, this thing that’s taken her life, it’s gone and she realizes that it’s alive, the last image, last piece of information shows dirt, red clay dirt in the bottom of a bowl, the spoon laid to the side. Something that would signal that the thing was alive.
        • THIS IS A COOL STORY. Not a long one either. A cool one.
        • So she’s caring for it all the time. Cleaning, scrubbing
        • Does she at one time hear a gasp? Thinks, he’s coming alive. Has a place set for him, a plate etc. But that goes away, it goes long away, too long and she realizes she’s mad.
    • She digs it out? Digs it all out. Heavy as stone.

    It’s all freewheeling sketching.

    Now, I could have stuck with North Carolina and tried something else. But as you read, my interests were pulling me to a different setting. Where else might it be set?

    I listed some locations, and Croatia drew me. I’d just read and seen some cool stuff about Croatia. But I didn’t know much. Was it going to be modern or historical? I began to read about Croatia. And the 1100’s fascinated me. There was all sorts of stuff going on. I decided to set it there.

    Did I have a story?

    No. I still didn’t know what the problem was. So I outlined some options, did some character sketches. Did more research. Looked up old Croatian names and magic. I got out a map. I was wanting it to come to life in my mind. But it wasn’t there yet.

    I went searching for a problem. I didn’t really want that golem love story. I made the following entry in my pre-draft document. 

    What’s at stake? The woman finds this thing, so what? She’s obsessed. But what’s the big issue here?

    • Danger, if she wakens maybe it will kill
    • Maybe if people find out they will want to use
    • Maybe she will be declared a witch
    • Maybe it will eat her out of home
    • Eat her children
    • Maybe it will force her to feed it, force her to bring people to him so he can kill them
    • Is it a thing of danger?
    • Maybe it will force love upon her? Breed with her and create a race of goblins or trolls.
    • It is a great thief–bringing her presents, presents for the master. And one day it brings a child.
    • A goblin with long hair and not dumb, not brutish, by hungry, a predator, one who will eat you, who loves hunt and chase, but can dress and act civilized.
    • Maybe that’s the thing–it draws you, draws your dreams or your mind, feeds on these things until it has strength to go on and takes a part of you with it, you’re longing, longing, longing for it to return.

    I tried a few drafts, still focusing on it being a thing she wakens, but they all eventually lost energy. So I tried something new. Here’s what I wrote:

    What if it IS about him stealing things? “The golem was a thief, and this made her believe it might not have been such a holy thing after all.”

    Or

    She’s looking. Can’t destroy it because of its holiness. But didn’t the wizards of the devil turn rods into snakes in the Pharaoh’s court? And didn’t men always take God’s gifts, like Adam, and throw them away?

    This was a question.

    That last line brought in a voice. I’d recently watched Fiddler on the Roof; I loved the characters and voices in that movie, and it was that yiddish voice. I decided to try that voice on for size and freewrite again. Here’s what I wrote.

    The golem was a thief.

    [That felt exactly right; I love it and continued]

    Nothing in the village, nothing in the whole vale for that matter, was safe. The golem was forever stealing and bringing its thefts to Braslava’s door, laying them on her step like a cat lays down dead birds and mice.

    One day it’s the Butcher’s blue and white Turkish stockings, the next it’s cranky Petar’s new pitchfork.

    And then it would stand there, looking at her, and all she could say was, “You think you’re doing me favors? Take your inscrutable face and go sit.”

    I went maybe two pages before I ran out of steam. At the end of the freewrite, the story was alive and bucking in my hands. I was full of excitement. At this stage in the game, I had three characters I’d sketched, a problem (the thief golem), a setting, a bit of plot. I had a maybe two scenes I knew I wanted to write. I had a narrative voice for the piece. I knew, because I’d been researching the political situation, that a Hungarian lord was going to get wind of what was happening in the little village of Plavca and want to use the golem for war. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough to start.

    You can read the story for free on my fiction page. It’s called “From The Clay of His Heart” and was the cover story for Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Vol. 8, 2008 and reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy #9, Ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer. Here’s a thumbnail of the illustration. Nice, eh?

    The key is that I knew the things I needed to develop and kept at it until everything reached a critical mass and the story came to life.  This is how you develop on purpose instead of on accident.

    Now What?

    Take some time to think about the six parts of your current project as well as some general principles about how those parts work. Write out a couple of things you want to develop in those parts. Over the next few days notice how much more productive you become.

    Of course, it helps to know how to go about developing the ideas. It helps to know some specific techniques. Because we can’t just wait for ideas to come along. Again, we want to create on purpose, not by chance.

    And that will be the topic of the next few posts.

    For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas

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  • What Robinson Wells Learned Last Year

    ByJohn Brown

    Look, this is just an excellent post by Robinson Wells: Five Things I’ve Learned In The Last Year About Writing.

    I kept finding myself saying yes, yes, yes!

    Yes! I hate “networking” too. Icky, icky, icky. Like squishy underwear. Like buddying up to someone to get them into your network marketing downline. Like flies in soup. I love how Robinson replaces that with the real deal. I think I’m going to summarize him every time anyone asks me about networking. 

    One point. I do think he might be overstating the you-need-to-know someone deal. It’s easier, sure. But Larry Correia didn’t know anybody. He just wrote a book a lot of people in a certain demographic loved. I didn’t know my agent from Adam. Didn’t know my editor, but did have an endorsement from one of his authors. But that didn’t get me any deal. It probably got me, at most, a fair consideration. I can name others who didn’t know a soul. In fact, go to the facts and figures page in the On Writing section. Look at the author polls there. A lot of authors didn’t know a soul. Of course, knowing someone can help.

    Yes! Be cheerfully flexible. Oh, my gosh. This is such a good approach. And I’m living it right now, although there have been a few moments when I’ve had to regroup for a moment to capture the cheerful.

    Yes! Sometimes the thing you love doesn’t work for the project. Sometimes it does. I would advocate making sure you get to the root of the issue. But we’re artists. If the thing we don’t love doesn’t work, we can create a new thing to love. That’s what it means to be creative.

    Work! Yes! It’s amazing what happens when you work.

    Good stuff.  

    I’m so bullish on this, I say Robinson for President.

    Of what, I don’t know. But he should be President, of something.

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  • How long should my novel be?

    ByJohn Brown

    There are two answers to this question.

    1. The story answer by Orson Scott Card, best-selling author

    As long as the story needs, but 75k-100k is when it starts to “feel” like a novel.

    2. The selling it to editors answer by Jenny Rappaport, literary agent

    “Aim for 80k minimum and 120k maximum. Try to hit as close to 100k as possible, but not go over. There are exceptions made for fat fantasies and longer novels.”

    “For YA: 50k minimum. Try not to go over 75k. You can nudge it to 90k if it’s a fantasy. YA is a little more flexible.”

    3. What happened to one author, Brandon Sanderson, when he tried to write to “the market”

    As in stories less than 200,000 words…

    BTW, Brandon is now New York Times best-selling author.

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  • Writing a tie-in

    ByJohn Brown

    I read this article today, laughed, and then thought a while. Don’t know if tie-ins will ever be in my future. I would hope to do it just once for a series or film I love. In the meantime, it’s great fun reading about someone else’s experience.

    ‘Burn Notice’: The Novel
    Does a real writer accept a gig doing books spun off from films or TV shows? A real writer found the answer to his own question.
    By Tod Goldberg, Special to The Times
    August 24, 2008

    http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-tie-ins24-2008aug24,0,1463672.story 

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7 Comments

  1. Really informative post, John. I’ve made an effort to write a number of short stories each year when I need a change of pace from novel-writing, but (for me) it’s a tough market to break into. I think I’ll keep writing more shorts from time to time, but it’ll probably stay second-priority after my novels.
    I’ll have to take a closer look at J.A. Konrath’s posts there though–they look interesting.

  2. Konrath’s stuff IS interesting, although I approach it with caution. I’ve seen too many multi-level marketing, real estate, sales situations with a lot of hype and very low success rate. People ARE doing it, but very few out of the many, many, many who try. But, hey, that sounds like normal publishing 🙂

  3. How did you get Duotrope to list 200 pro-rate venues? I pick:
    * Payscale=Pro payment
    * Sort By=Pay (high-low)
    & the site complains “You have not entered enough search criteria!”

    If I specify Genre=General, then I get 89 markets.

    What’s your secret, pls?

  4. Glenn, it appears Duotrope has changed its search method since I wrote this (which was about a month or two before I published it here). At the time, I just did a wide open search on pay rate. To get the full list now it appears you’d now need to select Pro-payment, then do a search by each story length, copy each results list to Excel, and then sort and remove duplicates. For example, I just did one on pro-payment, any genre, short story length and got a result of 112 venues. I’d need to do it for flash, novella, etc.

  5. John, thanks for the answer. Thus I will proceed, but I use a real database (MS-Access does qualify) rather than Excel (which gets clumsy quickly) for tracking submissions; I even wrote an application to handle matching my stories to markets, which I prefer to Duotrope’s support there (tho it beats most of what’s available, especially for free), partly because I dislike having to ignore the same markets over & over. I also sift thru Duotrope’s RSS feed every weekend (with another custom application), a good way to catch changes, posting my progress on Twitter with hashtag #writingmarket.

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