Indie Thoughts: The Kind of Competition Publishers Want

ByJohn Brown

David Gaughran puts it all into perspective.

Since the huge shift to online purchasing and e-books, a common meme is that there is some kind of “discoverability” problem in publishing.

The funny thing is readers don’t seem to have any problem finding books they love. Any readers I talk to have a time problem – reading lists a mile long and never enough hours in the day to read all the great books they are discovering.

The real discoverability problem in publishing is that readers are discovering (and enjoying) books that don’t come from the large publishers. What these publishers have is a competition problem not a discoverability problem.

They have reason to. I had a stab last year at estimating how much of the e-book market self-publishers have grabbed in the US, pegging it at around 25%. The much more rigorous Author Earnings reports have confirmed that estimate, showing that self-publishers had captured 30% of the unit sales on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

* * * *

So when large publishers say that the discoverability puzzle hasn’t been solved online, they are really expressing despair at retailers recommending books not published by them.

And when large publishers say that online retailers haven’t matched the experience of buying in physical stores, they mean that they wish there was some way to relegate all that stuff from small publishers and self-publishers to the warehouse, and have tables piled high with James Patterson and Snooki.

* * * *

The fear-mongers always forget Amazon’s core philosophy: recommend the product the customer is most likely to purchase. It’s interesting to note that this is the exact opposite of traditional co-op: recommending the book that the publisher wants purchased.

While it’s revealing to look at sites like Bookish and consider what Big Publishing would do with retail or discovery, we already know what it does with self-publishing. Exploitative vanity press Author Solutions runs self-publishing companies for HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Harlequin, is owned by Penguin Random House, and is now recommended by Publishers Weekly.

Large publishers want to decide what gets published, what gets distributed, what gets recommended, what gets discovered, and what gets sold.

Amazon – and the digital revolution it instigated – has made that impossible.

Anyone can publish. Distribution has been blown wide open. Large publishers have lost power over what books get recommended and discovered too, with the agnostic approach of sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub. And large publishers have definitely lost control of what is getting sold: self-publishers have grabbed a huge chunk of the market, and more and more writers are beginning to realize they don’t need a publisher to reach readers and make money.

This is the real reason why Big Publishing hates Amazon. Large publishers face real competition for the first time and they don’t like it one bit.

More at Let’s Get Visible.

Publishers have lost the barriers to entry that used to keep most of the competition out. Amazon set up a totally new distribution channel that has grabbed at least 41% of the book market.

Forty freaking one percent!

And of that 41% percent, it appears self-publishers have about as much of that channel as traditional publishers do.

Think about that for a second.

Almost half of book distribution is now out of publisher control. With no barriers, the hordes are running in to sell their books, pushing publisher books out of the good spots. The number of competitors is growing. And the publishers can’t get Amazon to relegate the riffraff to the back rooms. Can’t get them to feature only their books.

Worse still, it appears lots of readers don’t mind that at all.

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  • Slides for my LDStorymakers Presentations

    ByJohn Brown

    I loved attending the LDStorymakers conference this year. It was awesome, fun. I chatted with old friends and met new ones.  Got (stole) a great story idea from Donald Carey, the Conference King. Enjoyed Provo–love the weather down there this time of year! Attended some great presentations on writing. Gave some that seemed to help a number of folks. It’s a special delight to deliver a presentation that both entertains and helps. Furthermore, my family came down with me. So I got to hang out with them in the evenings. My daughters sneaked into the mass booksigning and got autographs from some of their favorite authors.  They were giddy with delight.

    It was bliss.

    I also worked with Isaac Stewart on a mock up of the new cover for SERVANT, and dude. DUDE.  If we can swing it, the covers for the Blacksword Books version are going to rock.

    Anyway, I promised many people I would post my presentation slides here. Here they are in PDF format:

    Vivid and Clear

    Story Turns

    And for those of you in the Story Turns class wanting that fine car chase clip, here it is!

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  • 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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  • Edward Bear Shares His Proofreading Secrets

    ByJohn Brown

    One of the things I enjoy about being an author are the emails I receive from readers. A few months ago I received one from Mr. Edward Bear. He’d purchased Servant and, as he was reading, found an unclosed dialogue quote.

    Mr. Bear could have simply noted it and read on. But he did not. Mr. Bear is a proofreader. And so he practiced a bit of wizardry, found that I had a handful of quote goofs, and emailed them to me.

    Many of them ended up being weird smart quote issues Word introduced into the text when I broke a line of dialogue with an action like this: “You will not”–he scratched his nose angrily–“share another pair of my panty hose with that woman!”

    You’d think that would be enough for a doughty reader. But Mr. Bear didn’t just notify me of the errors. Oh, no. He also included the page from his proofreader’s grimoire that allowed him to find those quote issues in a matter of minutes in the first place.

    As soon as I had the time, I tested the spell on Bad Penny, and, voila, in a matter of a few minutes found a couple of issues in that text. I was delighted.

    But Mr. Bear wasn’t satisfied with mere delight. He then sent me another page from that grimoire to help with spelling. We luvs wizardly readers, Precious.

    Copy editing and proofreading require patience, painstaking reading, and a knowledge of what to look for. You have to know not only the mechanics of the written word (capitalization, spelling grammar, syntax, punctuation, abbreviations, usage, etc.) but also, if you’re reading for a printed edition, interior formatting (widows, orphans, word or hyphen stacks, headers, and so forth). There’s a lot to it. And anything that speeds up the process and minimizes errors is welcome.

    If you’re contracting your proofreading out, a cleaner copy can also translate into lower rates. Knowing that many of you who visit this website are writers, and because your host’s generosity knows no bounds, I asked Mr. Bear if he might be willing to share his wizardry with you. The wizard responded with a yes.

    Augmented Proofreading 1

    By Edward Bear I’m Ed Bear. I work, both professionally and otherwise, as a proofreader. I’ve gone over books for my publisher and I’ve done scan/OCR/check against paper books for republication, both electronic and back-to-treeware. When I mentioned some of the “ancillary tools” I have for aiding the work, John offered me this guest post slot in his blog. Feel free to pass this stuff around. I’ve found these techniques invaluable in getting the job done faster, and with better quality.

    First, though, I need to tell you about the tools themselves. The biggest component is the software for electronic text editing. However, I’m NOT talking Word or anything like that. I’m talking about an editing program which can a: work with plain text and b: handle Regular Expressions. (What are those, some of you ask? I’ll get to that.)

    Since I’m a windows user, I have two such programs available. My favorite is a program called TextPad (www.textpad.com).  I’ve used it for years and it’s become invaluable to my work. They currently charge $28 for a single user license, but IMO, the program’s so useful that, even though upgrades are free, I buy another license every time they bring out a new major release. The other program is free. It’s called NotePad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) I’ve tested it and it can handle the methods I use, but I haven’t used it much, since TextPad and I are long-time buddies. If anybody out there knows a program for the Macintosh which will do these jobs, please mention it in the comments.

    Regular Expressions

    You don’t have to be a wizard to use them. The tutorial over at http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html describes them elegantly:  “Basically, a regular expression is a pattern describing a certain amount of text.”  They are also called a regexp or regex, and I’ll be including the regexes I use in this post.

    I have a small library of regexes, and two of them are critical to aiding the proofreading process. One of them allows checking dialogue quotemarks, to insure that speech is properly closed off, and the other makes it possible to generate a word list of each unique word in the  book. I’ll be walking through the usage, including screenshots.

    Quote Checking

    One of the challenges of checking dialogue passages is that, with one exception, every opening quote (“) needs to have its matching closing quote (”). The exception, of course, is when the same character is speaking in the next paragraph. This can lead to a heavy false positive load if the characters are loquacious.

    The first time I tried this stunt, I found  73 paragraphs with unbalanced quotes. Only 6 of them were errors. But being able to find them quickly so they could be fixed in minutes instead of hours? That paid for the effort.

    The process itself is simple: You take the document and convert it to plain text. If it’s an RTF or Word document, you simply select ALL, hit copy, and paste it into Textpad.  The result will look something like this:

    image001

    What I normally do is turn on word wrap, so I can see the whole paragraphs as I go. So it looks like this:

    image002

    Now, we go hunting. The next step is to set up the search pattern using a regex. The one I use for this is the following: (?!^([^“”\r\n]++|“[^“”\r\n]*”)*$)^.+ Complicated little brute, isn’t it. I didn’t write it, but I knew who to ask if he could write one, and the above is the result. FYI, there’s also one for straight quotes: (?!^([^”\r\n]++|”[^”\r\n]*”)*$)^.+ You use it the same way. So go into find, and put the regex into the “Find what:” box:

    image003

    Notice that the “Regular expression” box is checked. I also “Wrap searches” just in case I miss something and want to loop around. Click “Find Next” and:

    image004

    The paragraph highlighted has two opening quotes, one at the beginning and one at the end. Word assumes that a quote preceded by a space is an opening quote, so you need to correct it in your RTF/DOC. Wash, rinse, repeat. You keep doing “find next” all the way through, checking for situations like the following:

    image005

    As I said, same speaker, next paragraph, so this one is good. This post is getting a little long for a blog entry, what with illustrations, so I’ll break off here. Stay tuned for part two: checking spelling and spelling consistency. In the meantime, here are the RegEx tool commands plus a few bonus goodies: RegExToolCommands.

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  • For the attendees of my killer workshop

    ByJohn Brown

    I think the workshop version 2.0 went very well. I had a wonderful time.  Click on the “Writing” menu above AND the category link on the sidebar to see the many blog entries I’ve made about writing principles.

    1. The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories Handout
    2. The Story Cycle Handout
    3. Lesson from writer’s area: Step 1 of The Creative Process: Capture the Zing
    4. Resource: Zing Hunting Methods

    Remember the 10 to 20’s. I would love to hear your experience with them.

    1. STORY EFFECTS. List 10 to 20 Stories you love. Then next to each write what you loved about it and what emotions it triggered in you. Finally, look at your answers to see the patterns. These are the effects you love, the ones YOU will probably find the most joy trying to create for others.
    2. PROBLEMS. List the main problems (threat, lack, mystery) for each of those stories. These are YOUR problem types, the one’s you’ll probably find the most joy writing about.
    3. INTERESTING CHARACTERS. List 10 to 20 characters or people you find interesting. Next to each identify what it is that makes them so interesting to you. Finally, look at your answers and identify the patterns. These are YOUR  draws. Use these when developing characters.  
    4. ROOTING FACTORS. List 10 to 20 characters your root for or against. Next to each identify what it is that makes you root for or against them. Finally, look at your answers and identify the patterns. Again, these are YOUR equity factors. Use them when developing your story.
    5. STORY PATTERNS. For the stories you identified, map out their story cycle (problem, reaction/decision, action, disaster). Your goal here is to see patterns of how the types of problems you love develop.
    6. ZING. For one week gather 10 to 20 zing each day. Try to get zing in all four areas (problem, plot, character, setting) during the week. Look at the lesson on capturing the zing and the zing hunting methods resource in the writer’s section.
    7. POWER QUESTIONS. Start a list of creative questions that are productive for you. You will want to identify power questions for all 5 parts of story. Look at the handout for some of mine. Ultimately, you’ll ask yourself hundreds of questions, but there will be 10 to 20 that you keep coming back to.  
    8. TIME. Identify how you will get 10 to 20 hours to write each week. If you can’t do 10, try to get close.
    9. WRITE. Develop and write a story. Identify the day you will start and do it.
    10. CONTACT ME. I want to hear about your progress.  Please post your findings in the comments of this blog entry 🙂
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  • |

    Writing Update: 6/13/11 – reviewing the beginning

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ve finished chapter 17 of CURSE. I’m up to 50,000 words and have moved from the presentation phase into the struggle. And I’m stopping at this point to review the what I’ve got. I’ve learned that if the foundations of the story–the presentation phase–has fundamental flaws in it, you’re only going to create a HUGE rewrite mess if you push on.

    I know this from experience. When writing the first draft of CURSE back in 2009 (oh my heck, it feels like forever ago), I ignored my Spideysenses and told myself I could fix anything that was wrong in post production.  And it IS possible to fix many things afterwards–you can change scenes, improve clarity and transport, remove continuity errors, layer in character tags and things like that.

    And it IS true that sometimes you do just have to write to the end to figure out the story.  Sometimes you have to just write to the end, and do it in a substandard way, because if you don’t you’ll never finish anything. Sort of like sketching first and then painting. But if there’s something wrong with the basic premise of a story line, and you keep writing, then that story line affects everything it touches. The fractures ripple out all the way to the end of the book. And you might end up, like I did, having to toss a huge amount of what you’d written.

    Which is not all bad. I learned a lot and invented a lot of cool stuff while writing that. But when you’re on a deadline, it can be a killer.  And I’m not doing that this time. I worked out the big issues in my chapter outline.

    So I’m pulling back and reviewing. I’m delighted with everything but the villain. He’s still not right. I love his chapters, the scenes. I love the name I’ve given him–Endless. But the structure isn’t right. I’ve inadvertantly created two main villains. And that’s not useful. Having two “main” villains doesn’t double the power of the opposition. It splits it. The villain/henchman model works well. But I don’t have that either. Over the next few days I’ll be rectifying the setup. Then moving forward.

    For those of you who are writers, I thought you’d be interested to know that there were a few times these last two weeks when I dreaded the writing. I had a large problem before me or had to invent a new chapter (as opposed to using something from the previous draft), and a dread filled me. But I sketch/drafted my way to the end, and soon found the writing a joy again. 

    I can’t say enough about the sketch/draft method. I’ve found it works in creative activities OUTSIDE writing as well. When working up a lesson plan for my day job, designing landscaping for our house, developing a talking script for a sales call, writing a technical manual, or a hundred other things I’ve had to do–it’s always easier to work from something than create everything all from scratch.

    Sketching allows me to create that first draft. And it allows me to do this without having to worry about quality. Sketches can be silly. Weird. Full of crap. They can be all this because I can throw them away. They’re not meant to be permanent. And so there’s no pressure to perform. There’s no staring at a blank screen or page. Sketching is a free-wheeling joy. It fills me up with ideas. And then, when I’ve got the general idea of what I want to do, I can start in on the “real” draft knowing WHAT I want to accomplish which leaves me free to think about the HOW. And if I run into problems and realize the draft isn’t going to work, or I run into something better, I just call the current draft a sketch (or “take” as used in the movie business) and move on to the real one.

    Sometimes a chapter or section requires 1 sketch or take, sometimes I’ve run up into the 20’s. Sometimes I haven’t needed any at all. It’s not the number that’s important, it’s the process that has really freed me.

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  • Generating Story 13: The Scene Primer with Author Laurel Amberdine

    ByJohn Brown

    Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys.  Having escaped the terrible weather of Chicago, she is now delighted to call San Francisco home. For many years she read a novel every day, until she got married and realized that her new husband didn’t enjoy being completely ignored in favor of fictional people. She’s working on writing science fiction and young adult novels herself now, and hopes you get to read them soon.

    I hope you get to read them soon as well. Until that glorious moment, Laurel has a fabulous tool to share with you writers. And I know it’s fab because I use it.  If you look at the text tools section on the my Story Development Framework, you’ll see that The Scene Primer is one of the tools I’ve found useful in helping me bring enough of the scene to life in my mind that I can draft it. I’ve used various bare bones versions of this for a few years now, but then I was on a forum where Laurel explained her “Template.”  And I immediately knew it would be a useful tool for me. Here’s what she had to say.

    Laurel

    While working on a complicated science fiction novel a few years ago, I found myself stuck looking the blank page with each new scene. I had already outlined the story and knew generally what was supposed to happen, but the setting was alien and the characters were strange. There was so much specific detail to figure out simultaneously, I was paralyzed. I couldn’t start.

    But I realized I did know some things, just not enough to write a new scene from the beginning. So I created a template, where I could fill in the bits I knew, and think about the bits I didn’t yet know in a simple, no-pressure way. After all, I wasn’t really writing yet, just making notes.

    The template asks enough questions that if I fill it all in, I know exactly how to write the scene. But most of the time I don’t have to fill out the whole thing. I just work at it until I know what I want to write. It’s not a worksheet; it’s a tool to get started. Once I am ready to begin, I cut and paste the template and answers over to a notes section, and get writing. Most of the time I don’t even look back at it.

    The template got me through that novel, and I continue to use it. I’ve refined the categories I use, and even discovered that I can improve my writing by adding template entries to cover aspects where I’d naturally slack off. Like, I often focus so tightly on plot that I skimp on showing a character’s emotions or unique behavors. Well, now I just put it in the template and make sure to figure that out too! Works great.

    Here is the current version:

    Summary:

    Opening/transition:

    Current Situation:

    Theme song:

    Setting, and significant details:

    Time span/transitions:

    Next big crisis or turning point:

    Foreshadowing:

    Background/worldbuilding details:

    Desired effect in reader:

    Events:

    Sequence:

    Emotions:

    Character’s unique reactions:

    Ending hook:

    Other notes:

    The colors encourage me to fill it out, because it’s pretty once it’s done. The “Summary” is what would go on a note card. In Scrivener, I just paste that onto the note card once I have it (or from the note card if it’s already filled out).

    “Events” and “Sequence” almost always wind up being the same thing, but sometimes I don’t know what order things happen in, so I fill in “Events” first.

    I listen to music while I write, and often a certain song seems to fit the scene. If I find one that does, I list it under “Theme Song.” This can be helpful when revising, because I can put the song on and get right back into the feel of the scene.

    The hardest part for me is almost always the opening line.

    John Sez

    After reading Laurel’s post on that forum, I immediately tried applying the idea to the current novel I was drafting.  I’d done sketches of the scene in my own way, but never with a list of questions to prime my thinking. That day I started a new chapter, but before I began to do my initial sketching, I took Laurel’s idea and tweaked it to my taste, coming up with my own “Template” that I call a “Scene Primer” or “Sketch Primer,” then let it direct my sketching.  It worked like a charm.  After answering five or six of the questions, I could see enough of the scene detail to begin to write.  Here’s my current version.  I’ve used it a number of times since that first day, and it’s always proved helpful.

    When starting to write a new sequence or scene, start filling these out UNTIL it comes alive and you can write. (That is my note to self.)

    WHERE ARE WE?

    • Transport: general, dominant impression then specific
    • Setting tags
    • Sights, sounds, smells, textures, tastes? 3s2t
    • Fun, cool, weird, odd, particular details
    • Time, sun, weather, etc.
    • Background or world building details?
    • Fun & cool stuff?
    • Surprises, different, twists?

    WHO IS HERE?

    • What’s the situation for each character?
    • Goals
    • Who is driving this scene?
    • What is the concrete objective for him/her?
    • What the concrete objective of other characters?
    • Motives?
    • Character transport: general, dominant impression then specific
    • Thoughts?
    • Tags?
    • Fun & cool stuff?
    • Surprises, different, twists?

    WHAT STORY LINES WILL HAVE BEATS HERE?

    • Progress or trouble?
    • Points of conflict?
    • Obstacles?
    • Fun & cool stuff?
    • Surprises, different, twists?

    OTHER OBJECTIVES AND THOUGHTS?

    A few things to note. First, like Laurel, my goal isn’t to fill in all the blanks.  My goal is to bring the scene to life in my mind in enough detail that I can write.  So I don’t fill out every blank. I use the tool to stimulate my imagination. It’s like using a match to light a candle on a birthday cake–you only use it until the candles are all burning, then you wave it out and set it aside because it has done its job. The goal isn’t to burn a match, but to light the candles.

    Second, there’s no one right version of this. My version is different from Laurel’s because she and I have different work habits and think about stories in slightly different ways. For example, sometimes I listen to music when writing, but most of the time I don’t. Maybe some day I’ll start using theme songs. But I know a lot of other authors who DO find music helpful.

    So who’s right?

    No, stop asking that question. That’s the wrong question. Music is a tool.  A tool can’t be write or wrong.  It can only be helpful or not helpful. If you find theme songs helpful, then use them. If you don’t, then don’t.

    Third, this is yet another example of the general creative principle of developing in iterations. Think of painters.  They will usually start by sketching.  The sketches are, by nature, rough and incomplete.  They’ll sometimes create a number of sketches. Some of what they sketch might make it into the final painting. Some of it may not.  At some point in time, they feel they have enough of the image (feel, composition, subject, etc.) in their minds to start applying paint to canvas.  So they’ll rough in the subject on the canvas and then began to paint in the details.

    It’s the same with writing. You start with a rough, incomplete idea. You sketch it out, inventing as you go.  Maybe you sketch the whole thing or just parts.  Then you go back and build up more detail, adding by degrees until you have enough character, setting, problem, and plot in your mind that you can form the story.

    For example, I recently sat down to write chapter 22 of my current novel. Here’s what I had on the outline (which is simply one type of sketch) :

    Recon

    1. Summarize wal-mart purchases etc.
    2. Recon their security, paint it all. It’s stiff security.
    3. Carmen or Pinto calls in—someone’s coming
    4. They’re dressed up as utility guys
    5. See her coming in the field. Not at the house. They wave her down or something

    Can you see that scene well enough to write it?

    No. Neither could I.  I knew roughly what would happen, but I couldn’t write anything because I couldn’t see anything.  Where was the house they were going to recon? What did it look like? What kind of security did they have?  Was it in a neighborhood or out in the country?  I only had the most general idea of character, setting, and plot. So I turned to my Scene Primer and started answering the questions.

    800 words later, I’d sketched out the scene and had enough detail in my mind that it had come to life. I used a lot of what I developed in that sketch. But there was some, by the time I finished my draft, that I didn’t use.  Why? The draft was another iteration of the story. And in that take, things changed and I didn’t need it. But it wasn’t wasted effort because it helped me get to the point where I could draft.

    The Scene Primer is an excellent tool to help you build up the detail when you’re starting to draft.  Give it a try to see if it’s useful to you.

    BTW, Laurel and I aren’t the only ones using the primer. Author Maya  Lassiter is also using it to good effect in her new writing experiment.  See, Maya is a pantser who is “sick of the wretched groping around in the dark” that comes with a seat-of-the-pants writing method. She decided to try to see if she could learn to use some tools to help her invent some of her story before she begins to draft. You can read about her decision in “Can a Pantser Become a Plotter?” Then come back because Maya is going to share a post here in which she describes her new method and some very promising results.

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

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