All the lectures from Brandon’s 2012 winter semester science fiction and fantasy novel writing class at BYU. If you want to learn how to write novels, you MUST watch them. His approach and insights are excellent. Enjoy!
After a cancerous death, I appeared on Writing Excuses this week to groan and hold forth with the guys on writing second novels and second books in a series.
During the podcast I talked about my practice of debriefing after every writing project. A reader just asked what that was, and so I thought I’d explain it here.
The debrief is a simple thing. I learned it back when I worked as a business consultant. It always provides great insights. Sometimes it provides massive insights. The principle is to pull back and look at the big picture every once in a while. So here’s what I do. When I finish a project, I sit down and simply list out what I struggled with, what went well, and anything I learned. I list out things I’d do again that worked particularly well and things I’d do differently. This might be about craft or process. Sometimes I might take some time to reflect on the nature of story and read a favorite book about the craft or perform a story analysis on another movie or book. Then I write up my insights in a form that I can read later and know what the heck I’m talking about. This can take a few hours or a few days. This last debrief after draft 3 of CURSE coincided with my preparation for a day-long workshop I had agreed to give on story, and so the insights came thick and fast. I recommend the practice highly.
The recording of the session with Larry Correia at LTUE is up on YouTube. I really enjoyed this session, and it’s always fun to work with Larry. A few additonal points.
First, you might think, well, heck, they didn’t finish a story idea. No, we didn’t. The purpose wasn’t to wow the audience. It was to show them the process of generating ideas. But . . . that doesn’t mean we weren’t close.
The big thing we’re missing from the story at the end is the situation, the problem. So if you want to extend this, ask yourself a question to help you identify that story core. For example, you might say, let’s narrow this down by genre. What genres could we use? Romance, political thriller, crime, horror, humor, scifi, western, paranormal, etc. If we select paranormal thriller, we limit our options (a good thing), and can start to generate ideas around a question like, what’s going on, what’s the problem? Potential answers:
Do you see? If we had more time, we’d have delved more into the situation with creative Q&A. Sooner or later as we generated ideas around character, setting, and problem a story idea would have come to life.
And (thank you, Mike Barker) here’s a transcript.
Back when Orson Card first started his online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show, he wrote an essay in which he detailed how he developed the idea for one of the short stories he told in his Ender universe. Card’s essay is a valuable resource because he exposes his mental thought process, modeling how he approaches story development. It’s not often that an expert takes the time to expose his mental thought process while working through something, and there’s always a lot to learn when they do. Interestingly enough, it illustrates a number of the principles in the Story Development Framework.
Please read How One Story Can Give Birth to Another by Orson Scott Card.
While you are reading it, watch for:
Did you notice the elements of the story–problem, character, plot, and setting? Did you notice how his development continued while working on the text (drafting)?
One thing I don’t think you should take away from this is that you must write exactly like Orson Card. That you must not include much setting. Or that your sketches of the plot, the “plan” of the story, needs to be just like his. You may enjoy more setting than Card. You may want more or less in your sketch. That’s fine. The goal here isn’t to suggest you follow his exact procedure and have his exact same objectives. It’s to see how authors use creative Q&A to develop a story, to make it come to life.
As a final side note, I would like to quibble with one thing Card says. A lot of folks talk about showing and telling in writing. The eleventh commandment is to “Show, don’t tell.” But I would like to suggest that writers actually never show anything. They can’t. It’s all tell, tell, tell.
Showing requires the original sensory input. So a movie can show. A stage play can show. Both can also provide raw auditory input. But all an author can show are marks on a page. Those marks guide a reader into imagining events, people, and things, but it’s telling–“imagine this, imagine that, now imagine this.” The author can tell in scene or summary. Both have their place. But it’s important to realize that we’re helping the reader imagine. I don’t have time to go into the implications of this right now, but try the idea on for a while and ask yourself what type of writing helps you imagine things more vividly.
For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas
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.
Is The Guardian right?
Does it really cost $6,000 to publish a book independently?
Is that the price to become Hemmingway these days?
Lots of commenters at The Passive Voice said the numbers were rubbish. Far too high. They said this was yet another thinly-veiled bit of flimflam The Guardian cooked up to depress indies and send aspiring authors into the arms of the zombie traditionalists.
I actually thought the piece was good.
Why?
Because I like numbers. I did get a Master’s degree in accounting, after all.
But is it just that numbers are sexy?
It’s true the shape of the number 3 can be glorious. 9 is a stunner as well. But the slopes and curves of these digits is not why I like them. Numbers, even if they’re bad numbers, allow you to start thinking about costs. They allow you to question whether they could be reduced. Or whether you’re getting any bang for your buck in a certain category. Heck, numbers allow you to discover whether you’re allocating way too much in one area and far too little in another.
I thought The Guardian did a great job breaking the costs out into categories and starting an examination. The question is: are the categories and amounts political fictions or real?
One way numbers do all the things I mentioned above is by letting you do comparisons. So I figured I’d compare The Guardian’s numbers with a set of my own. I’ve published four books independently. How do my costs stack up?
Here are the costs for the latest.
Cover: $500
Editing: $0
Formatting for POD and ebook: $120
ISBN: $0
Copyright Registration: $55
Print-on-demand fees: $0
Notice what’s NOT up there that was in The Guardian article: reviews and review copies.
Why don’t I include them?
First, I would never pay for a Kirkus review. I wouldn’t because it appears such reviews mean little to readers. They don’t seem to generate much notice or desire to sample. Here’s what readers report matter to them. Such pre-publication reviews DO matter to store and library book buyers. But, as an indie, I’m not focusing on those channels. Those channels are in the hands of the zombie traditionalists.
What about review copies?
You don’t need them to publish. All this review business is marketing. And you don’t need marketing to publish.
So what are my totals? I’ve included The Guardian numbers so you can see the differences.
| Category | My Costs | Guardian Estimates |
| Cover | $500 | $750 |
| Editing and proofing | $0 | $4,000 |
| Ebook and POD Formatting | $100 | ? |
| ISBN | $0 | $125 |
| Copyright Registration | $55 | ? |
| POD setup fees | $0 | ? |
| Reviews | – | $825 |
| Review Copies | – | $300 |
| TOTAL | $655 | $6,000 |
Whoa! The Guardian estimated a cost that’s ten times what it costs me. But I don’t think that’s a sign of some plot. If I’d paid an editor and cover designer and formatter and didn’t mooch my ISBNs, that could have added as much as $1,000-$2,000 to my total. I have friends who have paid more.
Furthermore, that’s just for the ebook and hard copy. Depending on if you publish an audio edition and how you do it, you could spend another $2,000-$3,000.
What does this tell you? It tells me that the reporter made a good start, but needed to do a bit more digging. It also tells me there’s a huge variability in the costs depending on the skills you and your friends possess. It also shows that this is a business. I doesn’t cost a gazillion dollars to publish. It’s not like the $200,000-500,000 you need to start some food franchises, but you’d better be prepared to fork over some cash and/or a lot of hard work.
In fact, when you consider that last point of sweat equity, the $655 is completely misleading because it does not capture the hours I spent, at least 20-60, doing my part of the cover, editing, and formatting. Nor the time spent by my wife or friends. There’s a huge opportunity cost there.
What’s the value of what I could have done with that time?
It’s for dang sure not reflected in the $655.
I didn’t include marketing in those costs above because marketing is its own beast. You can publish and do zero marketing. You can publish and do gobs. And just as with the publishing costs, marketing costs will vary based on what you can do in-house and what your situation is. It costs JK Rowling nothing to get covered in every news outlet in the land. She sneezes, and we get a report about her. You and I are probably going to have to work harder to get noticed.
There are all sorts of marketing costs. Whatever those costs, marketing has a job to do. It’s got to pay for itself. It’s got to help pay for the cost of publishing. And it’s got to help me meet my goal of winning new readers and compensating me for my time.
There are lots of cost categories depending on what you decide to do:
The bottom line is that I think it’s good to separate these costs from publishing so you can measure their effectiveness against sales. Marketing is about revenue generation. These costs really have nothing to do with producing a book.
I’m going to go off an a tangent here for a second. Some folks suggest that indie authors shouldn’t do much marketing. Especially if they only have one or two books out.
I find no evidence to support the idea that just writing the next book is all you need to do for readers to hear about you and beat a path to your door. It’s true you’ve got to write the next book. You must get new product out the door. Hey, I learned that when book 2 from the publisher fell into a black hole. But that doesn’t mean marketing and promotion are inappropriate, wrong-headed, or a waste of time or money.
Let me ask you a question.
Let’s say Juanito is a no-name in the lemonade business. He’s just starting from scratch with dreams of becoming a big time lemonader. Who thinks it’s a good idea for him to open a lemonade stand in his back yard? Or better yet, in a closet in his basement? And when folks suggest that the stand might get more business if he lets the neighbors know about it or puts the stand in a place with a lot of foot traffic, who says, no, that’s a waste of time and money–the key to selling more lemonade is whipping more batches up in the kitchen?
In retail, you must get folks to notice your product and then persuade them to try it. Now, maybe you’ve got something going that’s generating all the notice and sampling you can handle. Maybe you lucked out.
What percentage of indies are in that situation? Raise your hands, please.
What? We’re not all inundated with hordes of readers? We’re not all swimming in gold? Imagine that.
The fact is that it’s tough to get notice. It’s tough to get people to try. But there are some things we can do to increase our odds. Selling books is a retail business. Retail lives and dies by visibility. Yeah, you need word of mouth. But you need to be noticed and sampled in large enough amounts to keep that word of mouth going.
What would you rather have? 100,000 people all over the country in many social networks (I’m not talking about Facebook) noticing and sampling and talking about your product, or would you rather have five?
In the brick and mortar world, there are lots of ways to get visibility without doing much TV or internet advertising. Ways to get notice include things as simple as signage and a store’s location. For example, you get a ton of eyeballs just situating your restaurant in the parking lot of a big destination shopping mall. You get eyeballs putting a sign on top of a 100 foot pole next to the freeway exit saying “Gas & Eats.” Online retailers get noticed in other ways.
Without blathering on about that (this was a post on publishing costs), let me just say that until customers begin to line up and start throwing hundred dollar bills at me, it appears I’m going to have to do what every other retail business has done for hundreds of years–get my lemonade stand out of the basement and into the park with lots of thirsty kids and moms.
EDIT 8/30/2014
While a number of folks are assuming the article was written as part of some vast conspiracy to undermine indie authors, David Gaughran posted some criticism in the article’s comment section that actually make sense.
DavidGaughran
The reason I’m so annoyed by the inaccuracies in this article is that this kind of misinformation is creates an information gap which allows shady operators to flourish.
Vanity press operators thrive because inexperienced authors think that self-publishing is either difficult or expensive. It’s neither of those things, and articles like this only serve to reinforce this false notion. That’s why I think this piece is irresponsible as well as inaccurate.
Companies like Author Solutions specifically target the most inexperience authors, the ones who know least about self-publishing and the industry in general, the ones who have fallen under the spell of various myths (like that self-publishing costs $6,000).
As a commenter said below, saying self-publishing costs $6,000 is like saying houses cost $10m. You can spend that much, but you don’t need to.
It costs me less than a third of that to publish a book, and I use a Big 5 cover designer as well as an editor with over ten years experience working for traditional publishers. Anyone can look at my books and immediately see that they are produced to professional standards.
You don’t even have to spend as much as I do to get a quality product. If authors are on a tighter budget, they can purchase a pre-made cover design. There are some wonderful pre-mades out there for as little as $40. You will have to invest a fair bit of time combing through the sites to find something suitable, but if you are on a shoestring budget it’s an option.
Same goes for content editing/developmental editing. All manuscripts will need a thorough copy edit, but you can get by without a specific content edit with successive round of beta readers. Again, this will require a time investment – writers usually trade beta reads of each other’s work. But if you’re on a tighter budget, it’s another way you can save money.
This is why this piece is so off. Even going the “deluxe” route shouldn’t cost more than $2,000. And if you don’t have $2,000, there are plenty of options where you can achieve a quality product, spending far less, if you are willing to put in a little time.
There are ways you can save money in other areas too. It’s a waste of money for an author (especially a new author) to buy a NetGalley membership for themselves. Authors can (and do) form collectives to buy a membership between them – often spending just $20 per person. I got a NetGalley spot for a month, for free, by bartering with another author. (I didn’t think it was quite worth $20, by the way, let alone $400).
If you need reviews, there are much better and cheaper ways. Submitting to book bloggers costs nothing (we usually send e-book copies or PDFs, rather than hard copies). Doing an e-book giveaway on LibraryThing costs nothing. Giving out electronic ARCs in advance of your release costs nothing. And all of these are much more effective than giving any kind of money to Kirkus, let alone $425.
But I guess it doesn’t matter how many experienced self-publishers (and editors who work with same) tell you that your figures are off, or that you don’t need ISBNs to self-publish, you are going to stick to your guns.
Here are some thoughts from the man who brought you Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and Serenity about the future of movies. I’m suspecting a lot of time-lengths and form that weren’t possible given the constraints of TV and theaters will start to rise.
Comments are closed.
I’ve been watching and taking notes as time permits this summer. I love how the class is broken down into 20 minute segments. It makes fitting it in so much easier. I wish it were in podcast form–then I’d be able to finish the series faster.
Question is: are you producing? 🙂
Not this summer. I have a book coming out in September and edits have been taking up all my time. Having all six children home for the summer makes finding any additional writing time impossible. But I do love having them all home for a little while.:) I usually watch one of the segments while I fold laundry.
Aha, I went out to your website and saw. It’s a romance, right?
It’s a romantic suspense. My publisher has promised that the cover will bring in the suspense element. I hope so.
What an invaluable resource. I will be cramming in what I can while summer lasts. I hope the website stays up through out the year in case I want to go back an review the information. Thank you for this amazing opportunity.
Cool.