How author Rachel Aaron wrote a novel in 12 days

ByJohn Brown

Well, not quite. It was 15.

First read her essay “How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day”.  Now read about her 12 day triumph in “12 Days of Glory”.

Amen on the pre-writing! I’d be lost without it. LOST. Sketching out scenes beforehand makes them SO MUCH EASIER to write. I can focus on the delivery, characters, dialogue, etc. instead of the events. It frees my creativity to focus on other things. Sketching out a novel beforehand does the same for the whole book. I have a simple sketch of the scene I’m going to write today. There’s no dithering about what to write. I KNOW what I need to write. So I do another more detailed sketch, the pre-writing for the scene before I jump into the day’s work. When I get the scene in my mind, the draft comes so much more quickly.

Amen on time! I’ve found my mind is like a furnace: it takes time to get hot, and if I only dedicatetake small chunks of time, I’m forever warming it up. When I get 3-4 hours a day, I far more productive on a per hour basis than when I only get one.

Amen on enthusiasm! There’s nothing worse than trying to write something that bores me. I can’t do it. And her little method for reviewing scenes is very similar to what I do.

Great posts, Rachel! Now I just need to get back into my dedicated time groove.

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  • “Would I be more excited about this book if I…”

    ByJohn Brown

    As new writers we want to do our best but because we haven’t yet internalized all the principles, we often want to create checklists of rules. We want to list out all the the aspects of a golden story and make sure we include them.  And these lists can help.

    Everything I’ve learned about building expertise suggests that experts have internalized guidelines, patterns, and concepts. But in the beginning we don’t have those internal constructs. And so we often are benefited by exetrnal support in the form of diagrams, lists, etc. Sooner or later we internalize. And what used to be conscious becomes automatic.

    Case in point: Dean Koontz. In his book on how to write best sellers he states in so many words that you’d be in idiot not to have an outline. That was back in the late 1970’s. In an interview almost 30 years later about his Odd Thomas books, he says he never outlines. I suspect he’s so familiar with the form outlines are redundant for him now.

    So lists can be good. But lists can also hinder us if we’re not careful.

    For example, James Maxey, a great author, likes characters with dark secrets. He states: “One of my tricks for making my characters interesting is that the primary characters are usually motivated by a dark secret. Vendevorex in Bitterwood desperately does not want Jandra to learn that he killed her parents. Rail Blade in Nobody Gets the Girl doesn’t want anyone to know that she killed her brother with her superpowers in a moment of anger when she was still young. The key revelation for me is that the thing that the world most wants to know about a person is often the thing that a person least wants anyone to know.”

    Dark secrets are kind of cool, right?

    But if we then said, okay, a great story must have a character with a dark secret, and we put that on our list, that’s when we start to work against ourselves. The “must” is the problem.

    Not because we don’t have tests and guidelines. Tests assume objectives. And I, for one, certainly do have objectives for my books as a whole an in their various parts. For example, I sure as heck want to make sure my opening chapter starts with a strong draw. I sure as heck want an ending that leaves me feeling some poignancy, cosolation, and a telescoping of possibilities. I most definitely want characters that intrigue me. I have some definite musts.

    But any one of the techniques or elements we might list (dark secrets, 3 acts, 7 acts, the players in Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey,” characters with an internal problem, etc. and ad infinitum) are nothing more than options that might or might not serve any given objective. They’re not necessary (of course, monkeys may be necessary). And I don’t mean that in an anomaly way.

    I’m not suggesting it’s counterproductive to say, well, I love characters [fill in the blank] or plots that [fill in the blank] and I want one in this novel. I’m saying if we begin to think that all (or most) good novels must have these elements, then I think we’ll end up limiting ourselves.

    So when you find something that works, when you hear about a technique, or some writerly rule, put it on your list of option prompts. Not on your list of must haves. And then ask this creative question, which I got from another great author, Luc Reid: “Would I be more excited about this book if I…”

    Another version might be: “Would I care about and believe in this story/character/scene/etc. more if I…”

    Would I care about and believe in this story more if had a character with this [insert option]? Would I care more if this plot line had [insert option]? Would I believe the story more if there were monkeys hiding in the attic?

    If the answer is yes, then add it. If the answer is no or maybe, then put it aside. That option can go back on the shelf for another time.

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  • A Great Post on Writing by Mette Harrison

    ByJohn Brown

    Author Mette Harrison writes a column on writing for Orson Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. I think you can read them without a subscription. This month’s column had some great insights. Here’s one fab example.

    I also recommend that if you want to write a book that readers will not be able to put down, focus on one really good story (more on this next month). I am not saying that you can’t have sub plots or minor characters. You can. But I urge you to make sure that your page count does not obscure which characters are the main ones or what their main goal is. If you have lots of different characters who are in different parts of your world, that is fine. But make sure that they are all working at different ends of the same thread, that they all end up being part of the same story. If you cannot figure out which character is the one you want your readers to care the most about, to root for most desperately, you may have too many characters.

    Good advice. There’s more.

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  • Work hard for 45 minutes, then take a break

    ByJohn Brown

    My first semester in college I earned a GPA of, ta dum, 0.68.  How do you earn such amazing grades? Well, I’ll tell you: the super secret strategy is to get an F in everything except ballroom dance. In that you get an A.

    I couldn’t squeeze any juice out of my textbooks, but I sure could fox trot.

    And I wasn’t partying. Dope and beer bongs were never for me. I wasn’t skipping class. I was lugging this huge valise around with every textbook I had. I think it weighed something like forty pounds. I was stitting in classes looking studious and taking notes. Well, except for physics which started early. 7:30 a.m. if I recall. What kind of a nut job takes a class at 7:30 a.m.? I did. I tried really hard to stay awake. I know I saw the professor shoot a gorilla with a tennis ball once. But the rest of the time I was in la la land catching z’s.

    A 0.68, and I was in the honors program.

    Obviously, I didn’t know how to go about learning. I’m glad the university didn’t give up on me. They put me on probation and told me I had to take a class on studying. A class on how to take the reponsibility for learning into my own tentacles. A class that shared techniques that actually helped.

    One of the techniques was taking breaks. You were to work hard for 30 or 45 or 50 minutes and then take a break. Why? Well, because studies had shown that someone who, for example, was going to study for two hours could learn more by taking a ten or fifteen minute break in the middle than someone who worked the whole two hours.   Spending more time on studying actually meant you learned less.

    I’ve found this method applies to more than just reading textbooks.  It also applies to writing. My practice is to set a time for 45-50 minutes. My goal is to write as hard and fast during that period as I can. To be totally focused on the task at hand. And then, when the timer dings, to literally get up out of my chair, walk about, and take a break. Then come back at the top of the next hour and start another 45 minute session.

    But I’m not the only one doing this. A lot of folks use this method. Author Annie Bellet writes about her use of it in The Quest for Productivity and shares some of the reasons why it helps her. Read what she says there. If you haven’t done a 45/15 or 48/12 session, give it a go. See if you don’t actually get more done in less time.

    Oh, btw, as for my grades, not only did I NOT drop out (or get kicked out) and become a hobo living in a trailer by the river, I ended up getting a 3.8 in my masters of accounting program. I think it’s safe to say I figured that school thing out. 🙂

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  • My working process

    ByJohn Brown

    Because I get questions about how I work, whether I outline, etc., and to satisfy the curiosity of those waiting for Curse about what I’m doing right now, I’ve decided to share my working process.

    I use five types of documents in Word to write my books.

    1. Pre-draft documents
    2. Working outline
    3. Chapter development docs
    4. Manuscript drafts
    5. Book

    I then import the book into InDesign to create the ebook and POD versions.

    THE PROCESS

    1. PRE-DRAFT

    I start developing and collecting ideas for character, setting, problem, plot, and sometimes even text. This includes brainstorms, zings, setting sketches, character sketches, scene or dialog snippets, plot sketches, photos, maps, story setup statements or problem statements, etc.  I’ll often have separate pre-draft documents for character, setting, problem, and plot. Or it might be one big document. At some point all of that electricity has built to the point where the story starts to buck and kick in my hands. When I start to see scenes rolling out in front of me, I know it’s time to create the outline.

    2. WORKING OUTLINE

    Looking at my pre-draft material, I create a sequenced list of the events or scenes in the story. Sometimes I’ll describe an event with just one line, sometimes I’ll describe it with more. These events or scenes often match up to individual chapters, but they often change as I go because the outline changes as I work. This outline is usually 4-12 pages long.

    I usually have more detail about the first parts of the book when I start than I do the last parts. But even if some parts are sketchy, I usually have at least a line for each of the big events all the way to the end. When I start drafting (steps 3 and 4) and moving through the book, the details for those later parts begin to fill in. Again, it’s a “working” outline so things change.

    3. CHAPTER DEV DOCS

    When I finish the working outline to my satisfaction and start chomping at the bit to write, it’s time to start drafting. I open a new chapter development doc for the first event on the outline and copy/paste the event’s material from the outline into it.

    I do some sketching if necessary (see my posts on scene primers) in the new document. Then I begin to write with the outline material and scene sketch as a guide.

    If I run out of steam, or the take of the scene doesn’t work, I do another take. I just stop, create a new heading titled “Take 2” or 3 or 4 (whatever the take is), and start again. I may brainstorm as well in this document and do other pre-draft work that has finally presented itself to me to be done. There have been a couple of times that I’ve had to do 20+ takes to get a take that works. Most of the time I need 1-3 takes. Using Word navigation view I can see in the sidebar all the takes etc.

    The nice thing about these chapter development documents is that they’re working documents. I can be messy.

    4. MANUSCRIPT

    When I’ve gotten a good take of the scene, I paste that take into my manuscript document which contains all the final takes from the chapter development documents. This is “draft 1” of the manuscript. Usually each scene/event becomes a chapter, although I might split it if it goes long, or combine it with others if it’s short.

    5. REPEAT UNTIL DONE

    I repeat steps 3 and 4 until I’m done with the book. Using Word navigation I can see all the chapters in the sidebar.

    6. CHAPTER REVIEW

    Before I print the manuscript for the cold read, I will review the chapter breaks one more time based on what I feel is right for the length, the right effect, especially at the ending and beginning of the chapter, and what I think goes together.

    7. DRAFT VERSIONS

    After cold reading and marking up the printed form of draft 1, I copy the manuscript file and replace the suffix “draft 1” with “draft 2”, then make the edits for the cold read in draft 2.

    Then I send draft 2 out to my beta readers. When the manuscripts and comments come back, I copy draft 2 and change the suffix to “draft 3” and make the beta reader edits in draft 3.

    I do this for as many drafts as I go through, including those for the copy edits.

    8. BOOK

    When I’m done with drafting, I copy the final draft and replace the draft suffix with “book”. Then I add front matter and back matter (title page, copyright page, teaser, map, author’s note, table of contents, etc.) in preparation for importing into InDesign to create the ebook and POD (print-on-demand) versions.

    9. POD

    I create an InDesign document, import the Word book, then save it with the suffix “POD”. Next I finalize the interior formatting for printing. There’s quite a bit that goes into this with chapter breaks, widows, and orphans, breaks, etc. When that’s done, I upload it to CreateSpace and then print off the proof they provide.  By now the cover is finished as well.

    10. PROOF READ

    I read the POD proof to catch any last errors and make the appropriate updates to both the Word book and the InDesign POD document.

    11. EBOOK

    I copy the POD InDesign document and replace “POD” with “EBOOK”. I then add the appropriate changes (links etc.) to the front and back matter for the ebook. Next I export the InDesign document as an EPUB. I have to use Calibre Book Editor to edit a number of things in the EPUB. When that’s done I open the EPUB with the Kindle Previewer to create the MOBI version (Kindle file).

    12. PUBLISH

    The next step is the easiest–click a few buttons to upload the final version of the POD and ebooks to the various online retail venues. I go direct with Amazon, CreateSpace, NookPress, and Kobo. I use Draft2Digital for iTunes and Smashwords for all the rest. 

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  • When the workshop works

    ByJohn Brown

    From a workshop participant at MountainCon:

    I’m going to give a shout out to all the goodness I experienced. So if you don’t really care what happened at the con, you can stop after this paragraph and take this message away with you: Brandon Sanderson (who does Writing Excuses, has published several novels, and is the chosen one to finish Jordan’s Wheel of Time series) and John Brown (with a must buy novel coming up next year) are incredible teachers. If you ever get a chance to attend a class or workshop by any of them, don’t let it pass.

    We loves to hear these things, Precious.

    But we loves it just as much when we can make the students shiver with excitement: more here: http://www.amichopine.com/blog/?p=318

    To those who missed this run of the 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories Workshop, know I’ll be holding it again. Check back to see when.

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  • Is Amazon’s game totalitarianism?

    ByJohn Brown

    nazi_flagAmazatzi?

    Franklin Foer and Scott Turow recently made comments which suggest Amazon is in the process of ushering in a totalitarian book economy.

    Is Bezos, as Hitler was in the 1930s, biding his time, playing a long game, one that will lull the masses into a false sense of bookish security? Are we appeasing him, letting him take over the continent bit by bit? Is the blitzkrieg less than a decade away?

    If you listened to a recent Intelligence2 debate, you would have heard Foer-Turow claim that, yes, that’s exactly where we are headed. On the other side of the debate were Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesais, arguing that Amazon is the reader’s friend.

    Konrath and Yglesais made some good points. But they left the central Foer-Turow argument standing like a citadel. It was left standing because much of what they had to say, as good as it was, frittered around the edges or went off into beer land.

    But the Foer-Turow argument is not a citadel. It’s a house of crackers.

    Here’s why: publishers, authors, readers, and entrepreneurs all have brains. And somehow, in their threat assessment, Foer-Turow forgot that.

    How could they forget something so fundamental?

    Well, their argument went like this.

    1. Amazon right now provides an amazing service that’s far and above anything any other bookseller currently provides. They have made more books more accessible to more readers than anyone else ever in history. Readers, of course, love this. But this is a bad thing.
    2. It’s bad because Amazon is becoming a monopoly–it already has 41% of all new book and 67% of all e-book sales, and in many divisions of those markets it has even more.
    3. If Amazon were an enlightened ruler like Aslan, okay. But Amazon is a business, and as a business it only cares about its profits. And the way to make profits is buy low and sell high. So when Amazon finishes consolidating its hold on the market, it will force publishers and authors to take less of the pie.
    4. In fact, Foer-Turow claim Amazon wants to not just reduce the share of the pie publishers get, it wants to kill off the publishers and take their share of the book pie completely. In addition to being very poor manners, this is bad for three other reasons.
    5. First, authors of non-fiction books that take a long time to research will never be able to get the money they need to do that research. Publishers are the only ones who can give them that money, which they do in the form of an advance.
    6. Second, few authors of fiction will be able to afford good editing, marketing, and book design, and so the many voices that could have been heard will be stifled, or never rise out of the crap to their true potential.
    7. Third, and this is the nefarious Nazi part, if Amazon is the only place you see books, they can control which books you see, which means they will exert enormous control over our culture because they will be able to suppress some books, and therefore the ideas in those books, and promote others. Foer-Turow claim Amazon has already done this.
    8. Finally, because it’s a business and has a goal of profit, when Amazon covers the land, it will probably eventually charge readers more. In fact, it may charge them a lot more. It can’t avoid it; it’s a business.

    So Amazon is taking over more and more book territory. When it’s taken over enough territory to be unassailable, it will then proceed to ruin our culture because its model of book selling will suppress quality non-fiction and fiction alike. And then it will gouge readers.

    Sounds depressing.

    Sounds like Orwell’s 1984 or global warming.

    The only problem is that there is a big honking flaw in all of that.

    Like BIG and HONKING.

    And I’m not talking about the issues like the idea that publisher advances are the only way non-fiction writers can be funded, or that publishers are the only way the vast majority of fiction writers can obtain quality book covers, marketing, and editing. Or that one internet site has the power to put a choke hold on ideas.

    No, it’s about something else.

    You need to know I’m not an Amazon groupie. Nor am I a hater of publishers. I am a businessman. I’m looking for good partners. And I recently wrote a post pointing out that it’s delusional for authors to think Amazon is their BFF with pinky rings. They are just, at the moment, a great indie partner. But their interests and mine are not perfectly aligned. Our love is definitely not written in the stars.

    So I’m not here to stand up for Amazon. I’m here to say that the scenario Foer-Turow paint is fantasy.

    Why?

    Because they’ve set up a chess board and assumed that Amazon is the only player.

    Monopoly

    How does a monopoly stay a monopoly?

    The government either legislates it. Or the company maintains their position by force. Or they own something that nobody else can get. Or the barriers to entering that market are so high nobody can get in to play. In all these scenarios, if people want the goods, they are forced to interact with the monopolies.

    But has the government given Amazon a legal monopoly?

    Um, nope. No charters here to be the only fur trappers in the West.

    Does Amazon have an army of thugs who are going to beat people up and make them join Amazon Prime?

    No. Well, maybe that’s what the drones are for, but they haven’t rolled them out yet.

    Do they own something nobody else can get, like a piece of land? Are they sitting on the world’s largest reserves of cheap book oil?

    Nope. They’ve got a great website and excellent logistics. But websites really aren’t that hard. And if we’re talking ebooks, you don’t need logistics.

    What about the barriers to entry?

    The big advantage Amazon has is that they usually have the lowest book prices around, the biggest selection (you can find almost any book you want there in any format it’s available in), and are incredibly convenient, providing samples, reviews, recommendations, and easy checkout. And they have the crowds.

    It’s hard to get crowds. It’s hard to get all that content. It’s hard to beat their prices. Those are some dang good barriers that keep new guys out.

    And Foer-Turow figured that’s all set. In stone.

    Human Beings

    But what happens if publishers have brains and are actually headed up by, like, real humans who aren’t just going to roll over and play dead? What would such folks do should Amazon keep killing off more and more of them and stealing their pie?

    Amazon doesn’t own the rights to their books. As soon as any contract ends, publishers could simply say, we’re done. Our books will no longer appear in your store. If you’re faced with extinction or something else, what do humans normally do?

    Amazon’s advantage is being the everything store. You can find every book imaginable there. So what happens when shoppers go there and can’t find the most popular books of our time? How long do they stick with Amazon when the shelves are empty? Anyone think about why Amazon kept selling Hachette books even when they were having contract disputes?

    What happens if indie authors have brains and are real humans who aren’t going to roll over and play dead either? What would such folks do should Amazon keep squeezing more and more profits out of them? Could such folks pull their books (like many bestselling indies have from Kindle Unlimited), form a co-op, and create their own site?

    What if everyone was talking about this awesome book that was all the rage, but it wasn’t stocked by Amazon? It was stocked on the indie site, and Apple, and all the others. How would that affect shoppers?

    What happens if there are real human entrepreneurs out there or real humans leading other businesses, and they were all wanting to make a buck, and they see Amazon charging readers a ton and swimming in easy dollars? What happens when they see those tempting profits?

    Do you think they might offer disgruntled publishers and authors better terms? Do you think they might give better deals to price-gouged readers?

    So is Amazon going to kill publishers? Only if the humans have left the building.

    Will they kill authors? Only if authors let them.

    Will they gouge readers? Not when other folks see there’s money to be made by undercutting them.

    Amazon is playing in a global market with the likes of Alibaba, Google, Apple, Walmart, etc. Amazon is playing in an internet economy where college students can come up with an idea and become billionaires. Equally important, Amazon owns nothing that somebody else can’t recreate. They have no legal monopoly. They have no army of thugs. What they have is a lot of content, a well-known URL, logistics for the hard copies, and good prices.

    But what they do not have is a marketplace where everyone else involved is absent a brain.

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4 Comments

  1. John, thanks for sharing this. I love her analytical approach to addressing the problem of productivity. This takes the whole BICHOK thing to the next level.

    As always, I’m left wondering: where do you get all these great links? Thanks again for sharing!

  4. I don’t know what led me there, actually. But I read Kris Rusch’s and Konrath’s blog regularly. Then I get mediabistro, publishers weekly, and publishers marketplace emailed to me. I review the USA Today weekly best seller list each week. And I’ll drop in on other various spots.

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