There are 3 steps in the creative process. The first has to do with keeping your imagination alive. Your imagination is a beast. Feed it, and it will get up and terrorize the neighborhood on its own accord. Starve it, and it will lie there like a gigantic dust mop and gather flies.
LTUE has posted its schedule for the upcoming conference Thursday – Saturady, Feb 12-14. I’m, of course, stoked to present and participate on the panels. But I’m also looking forward to attending some of the sessions.
Look at this one: How a Military Unit Works in Real Life: Zachary Hill, Brook West, Robert J Defendi, C. R. Asay, Mike Kupari (m)
Or this one: All about armor: Zachary Hill, J. D. Raisor, Kay Mildenhall, Charles B. Stanford (m)
Or what about this one: Law Enforcement: James Ganiere, Zach Hill, Robin Ambrose (m), which conflicts with one of mine, dang it!
Or this: Making Creatures Realistic to their Environment: Keliana Tayler, Brian Hailes, Jessica Douglas, Bryan Beus (m)
This: Applied Biotechnology: Derrick William Dalton, Mikki Kells, Charlie Pulsipher, Chersti Nieveen, Ali Cross (m)
This: How to Create a Language: Maxwell Alexander Drake, Dirk Elzinga, Valerie Mechling, Samuel Stubbs, Bryce Moore (m)
And tons of others.
Oh, and what about the keynote address on Saturday by Toni Weisskopf?
It’s going to be a great conference. I’ll be giving these presentations.
I’ll also be moderating or participating on these panels:
Hope to see you there!
From Russell Blake.
This does not represent the only way to do things, but it’s my way, and is the synthesis of everything I’ve learned over the last 23 months of self-publishing:
1) Pick one genre that’s popular and with which you are extremely familiar, and then write in that genre. Stick to it. Don’t hop around. It confuses your potential readers and muddies who you are in their minds, and will hurt your sales. If you want to write different genres, use a pseudonym, and if you like, let your readers know that moniker is you. But stick to one name, one genre, because you’re building your brand, and brand building is a function of clarity – clearly communicating what you do, and what your product is.
2) Write a series. Why? Because readers like series, and you want to give readers what they like. Or you won’t sell as much. You can try stand-alone – I have – but my series outsell my stand-alone books 4 to 1. Once you have at least three books in the series, make the first one free. Earn your income from the rest, but give readers a whole novel to decide whether they like you or not.
3) Write a lot. By that I mean try to write at least 3 novels a year. Don’t bother with short stories or novellas (40K or under) if you’re writing fiction – erotica, romance and non-fiction reportedly to do better with short form, but I don’t know from personal experience. Write 60-90K installments in your series, and release them AT MINIMUM every four months. Every three months would be better. Every two, better still. Momentum breeds success, and readers have short memories. The current market is a hungry animal, and you need to feed it, or risk being forgotten by the time your next one releases. Sorry. It’s the truth. And don’t start whining about how X famous author only puts out one book every Y years. If you’re Dan Brown and you sell tens of millions of novels each whack, then do whatever the hell you like. If you aren’t, listen up, or chock your strategy up to, “Become the next Dan Brown” and stop reading this drivel.
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5) Allocate time every day to write, and be disciplined. I suggest minimum one hour per day, or 1000 words. I actually ignore that and shoot for 5000-7000 a day when writing a novel, but that’s just my approach, and it’s not for everyone. My point is that you must be disciplined about your writing and develop that muscle. If you don’t make it a habit, you won’t write enough to put out one novel every four months, and you’ll already be way behind the curve.
6) Allocate time every day to market. I recommend a 75%/25% writing to marketing mix. So spend an hour writing every day, and fifteen-twenty minutes marketing (social media, blogging, interviews, message boards like this). Two hours writing, half hour to forty minutes marketing. And so on.
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13) Price competitively and intelligently. Look at your genre. Where are most books priced? Are you undervaluing/underpricing your work? Price to sell, but don’t go cheap, no matter what Locke or Hocking did years ago. Use low prices occasionally to move product, as promotional pricing. But price your product consistently with the rest of your peers. Over time, you can increase prices, if your product warrants it and your readership is willing to pay it. My advice here is don’t price too low, or too high.
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19) Have realistic goals. Look at what the average person does in their first year, and their second. That’s average. It ain’t pretty. If you want to be different than average in a good way, you need to do something better/different, and you need to make your own luck. Don’t get bummed because you haven’t been an overnight sensation. I sold $300 of novels in November, 2011, after six months of 15 hour days and seven releases. In December, 2011, I released five novels I’d been working on for months, to create a massive Xmas surge. I leaped to $1450. With a dozen books out. That’s not exactly a ton for the big Xmas season. But I continued writing as though my work was in hot demand. And I kept investing in my product, losing money, until it turned the corner and I started making decent money in Jan of 2012.
20) Book selling is a retail business, and retail businesses are promotions intense. You’re only going to be as good as your last, and next, promotion. Promotions are a necessary fact of life in retail. You have to generate noise – the product won’t do it by itself. There are millions of books out there. Yours are just more books. Figure out how to get some visibility. I won’t advise you on how – there are plenty of ‘experts’ that will charge you $5 for a book on what worked two years ago. Simply put, it’s constantly changing, so you need to experiment and push the envelope, share information with others and stay ahead of the curve. But if you aren’t promoting, you’re stalling. In business you’re either shrinking, or growing. If you aren’t promoting, chances are you aren’t growing.
There are 28 tips in all at “How to Sell Loads of Books.”
In the comments to this week’s writing excuses on the 3 act structure, a writer asked if the try/fail cycle would really work with her chase story because her folks do not “fail to solve the problem” every time so much as “escape by the skin of their teeth”.
I thought this was a great question because we ARE often led to believe that the characters need to fail in each attempt. But if we look at a number of stories we’ll see that this isn’t the case. The hero is NOT always failing in his scene or sequence goal. In fact, much of the time he succeeds. So how does plot really work? Here’s my post.
[edited for clarity]
Jen, fwiw:
A few things finally opened up acts and plot to me. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you. I say this because a chase would work the same as anything else. I’ll just start at the beginning, although I’m sure you know a lot of this.
1) Story is about someone solving a problem. The problem is one of happiness (danger or lack on some level–physical, social, freedom, etc.) or mystery.
2) The reason why we tell stories about problems is because the solving of problems, if done a certain way, evokes suspense, surprise, and curiosity in the reader, and then a release of emotional tension. Why we humans like that ride, I don’t know. But we must keep this in mind when dealing with #1 because these effects are the main effects the bulk of people go to story for.
3) Plot is simply the actions the characters take, the results of their action, and what they decide to do next. Except this can’t be any old action and result. It has to be action and result that builds the anxiety of suspense, surprise, and the mystery or puzzle.
4) There are four possible answers to the question of “did the hero’s action solve the problem?”: yes, no, yes but, no furthermore.
For example. Yes, you killed the monster. No, you didn’t. Yes, you killed the monster, but it bit you and now you have the virus that’s going to turn YOU into a monster. No, you didn’t kill the monster furthermore you woke up its mumma.
Of those four possiblities, only the last two build suspense and curiosity. The first removes it totally. So it’s out. And a no answer leaves suspense unchanged. All you’re doing is delaying things with that. What you want to do is ratchet it up.
So if you want to build suspense then when a character takes an action, that action has to make things worse. They may escape by the skin of their teeth, but now the federal police know where they are (yes-but). Or not only did they not escape the police, but now the mafia, the real bad guys, know where they are (no-furthermore). These escalations and complications to the plot/problem continue until the hero’s plan is in total shambles and it appears he really is done for. That’s when they get one last shot at it.
If someone is trying to escape you don’t need a different plot structure. Their actions simply need to make it harder and harder and harder. Their plan needs to start to come apart. Things go wrong. Things they didn’t plan for make it worse. Someone double-crosses them or goes AWOL. We need to see them walking into dangers they didn’t plan for. If you go back and look at Prison Break season 1, you’ll see this all over the place in the last two episodes.
5) Acts are just a nifty way of breaking up the problem solving process into parts. In act 1 (the beginning), as stated, you introduce the problem and show that the character won’t or can’t walk away. Often a big reversal or reveal (a big yes-but or no-furthermore) marks the end of that act. But the key thing is that the hero MUST act. The stakes or too high or they simply can’t get away.
Now in act 2 (the middle) the hero says, aha, this is the real problem. Let’s try to solve it. Act 2 is a breeze to write IF you think about escalations and complications and nasty surprises–yes-buts and no-furthermores. He takes an intelligent action. BAM. It gets worse. And as these complications pile up we see that the hero comes to a point where his plans are in a shambles and the problem looks almost certain to squash him for good. In Star Wars, sure they saved the princess, but they led the empire to the secret base and the death star is going to blow them away (a grand yes-but).
In the last act, the hero straps on his guns and trys one more thing. Sometimes it helps to think of acts 1 and 2 as the hero reacting and act 3 as the hero finally getting the inititative, although it appears to be almost too late, and strapping on his guns. In Star Wars they do this. They’re running, running, running, and then they attack the death star. But the odds are slim. And they only have one little chance.
Remember: the odds are slim at this point and things get worse not because this is how problems are solved. Many get solved on the first try in real life. But because solving a problem in this way produces maximum suspense, surprise, and curiosity–the chief effects readers go to stories for. Any time you see a new plot structure or theory, you need to ask yourself what effect it has on the reader. If you can’t see any, junk it.
So you might have three acts, four, five, seven (all variations I’ve seen). It doesn’t matter. An act usually ends with a huge change in the nature of the problem. See Robert McKee’s STORY. But the number of acts isn’t the issue. It’s the effect on the reader. The acts are just means to an end. If we don’t keep the end in mind we’re likely to misuse the techniques.
6) The key for moving through the acts is to ask myself about actions, obstacles, and results. Here are some questions I’ve found productive.
Action. What are some intelligent actions the hero might take in this situation? What would I do? What are some logical steps that the reader might not think of?
Obstacles. What happens? What are some compelling obstacles the hero will face in this attempt? Are there points of conflict with himself, someone else on his side, the antagonist or his henchmen, someone in the background, with the setting? What does the antagonist do to foil the hero? What is a logical but maybe an unexpected and surprising obstacle to both the reader and hero? How does the hero’s plan begin to come apart?
Results. What happens? What are some possible results that pose a yes-but or no-furthermore? What would be unexpected, surprising to both the hero and the reader? How does the character’s action make it worse? How does the result reveal the problem is much worse than the hero and reader first thought? I’m thinking of complications and escalations–things that make the problem harder to solve or more important because more’s at stake.
In all of these, I choose the options that gives me the most zing and run with them. If they peter out, I try another (take 2, take 3, take 4), until I have one that works. Then I repeat it all over again and again until the hero is looking the gun in the face.
7) The “hero’s journey” is nothing more than a bunch of mystical names for common elements in this specific type of problem solving structure. Why does the hero have to leave home? Not because of some mystical archetype mumbo jumbo. No, because this forces them out into unfamiliar territory–adventure, risk. Things go wrong. The hero has to face the problem.
Why does the hero go to “the cave”? Again, not because of some mystical archetype mumbo jumbo. No, because turning and facing the monster, going onto ITS turf, poses the MOST RISK and hence most danger and hence most suspense for the reader.
Always keep the purpose of the story in mind. Suspense and curiosity DRIVE the structure of most stories. Yes, there are other effects we go to story for. But the reason stories are structured the way they are is because of those two reader effects. And all the rest of those Joseph Campbell terms are useless to writers unless they make the connection and see how they play into suspense and curiosity.
And even then I’ve found it’s wrong-headed to bind yourself to to a form just because. Or to think you need to slavishly follow it. The decision has to feel right for the story. It has to build anxiety and curiosity. And whatever does that well is right, regardless of whether it follows some formula. Although, I will say that certain story structures are used again and again because they deliver the goods to the reader better than other structures. Like biological evolution, they survive because of natural selection by readers.
So that ended up longer than I intended. Hopefully the ideas were as helpful to you as they were to me.
This writer’s question arises because of the common way of explaining the try/fail cycle sets us up to think there is only a no or no-furthermore option to each attempt by the hero. However, if we just look at a handful of stories, we’ll see the yes-but option is used all the time. What we want to avoid is the yes option, because that just stops the story. It stops the story because story is about solving a problem. And once the problem is solved, the story is over.
Other writers talk of formulas, however “pattern” has always been a more helpful way of looking at it than “formula.” I know, that’s semantic quibbling. But “formula” suggests to me THE way while “pattern” suggests to me something not so strict, something with some give to it and perhaps a great number of variations. Either way, pattern or formula, I found that unless I can understand the why of a part of the pattern, the effect it has on the reader’s experience, it’s not much use to me. It all comes down to plunging our hero into trouble or mystery, and then making the trouble or mystery worse SO THAT the reader feels increasing anxiety, curiosity, and surprise.
BTW, here’s a good explanation of the 3 act structure with some tips from Stephen J. Cannell, an old pro. I really like his tips on act 2 issues and complications. Because if we make the antagonist an active force, he or she will provide many wonderful yes-but and no-furthermore options.
You’ll find other excellent explanations of plot in TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER by Dwight V. Swain, HOW TO WRITE BEST SELLING FICTION by Dean Koontz, and THE SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING by William C. Martell.
I finished the next chapter of my outline, which turned into three chapters. Hurray for making progress. However, I’m going to need to make more time on a weekly basis if I’m going to meet my goal.
I’ve kept stats over the last four novels. My average is 500 words per hour during the drafting stage. That includes revising and doing quick researches etc. So sometimes I will write a smoking (for me) 800 or 900 words per hour. Sometimes I won’t finish a thing. When I’m all done it averages out to 500 words. I’m going to see if I can’t get 20 hours this next week and finish 10,000 words.
Do you remember last week’s post about the process of making it come alive in my mind first? Orson Card illustrates this as he describes how he prepared to write a story in his essay “How One Story Can Give Birth to Another“.
Last week when writing chapter 7, I finished, but felt something was off. Years ago I would have freaked about writer’s block. I would have told myself I sucked because the chapter was glucky. But not now. It’s a gift. So I stopped and talked to myself in a freewrite. I had farmers faith that if I just kept working on it, something good would result.
Here’s what I wrote in that freewrite. It’s an awful read for you, but it shows you just how sloppy and cryptic and freewheeling my freewrites are.
Okay, so I’ve written the stuff below and I could tweak it, I guess. But I keep having this nagging feeling that it’s not good. It’s not a compelling villain. I think he’s creepy and evil. And, truth be told, I don’t want to make him into something other than what he is—a total thrall to the Glory and the mother. So as the “pet” of the mother, what else could he be called? I don’t know.
I shall call you endless because you will be spared, you shall continue, whereas the rest will not. Blessing. Blessed. Grateful. What would you call a thing that did you bidding reliably? But enthralled. I am part of you, you are part of me, and so you may take my name.
He WOULD think—I am not like them. I am GRACED by the Mother’s touch. I have taken her into myself. Or she has graced me and so I have become more than I would be otherwise. I am obedient.
What else do you call pets or tools. Maybe that’s what she calls him. My skir master. The skir lord. My trowel. Harvester.
He’s over the harvest. Reaper. Or he’s the one that supplies food. Supplier. Gatherer. Cook. Chef. Hunter. Provider. Butcher. Slaughter.
So I like Endless with the whole part of him being part of her. But he could use that—”you’re just like us” “no, we are part of the XXX (what was the name I had for them?) endless. You are meat”
Devourers, Mothers, Sublimes
Okay, so do I go with Endless or Harvest Hope. Endless it odd, neat. What could I add to Harvest to do the same. Harvest Lord, King, Overseer, Meatman, Food provider, Feeder, Harvester, Harvest, Rancher, Collector, The Harvester. Harvest.
I think when you’re raised, you get a new name.
Rebellion.
Soul collector.
The Shepherd.
Harvest Prime
Bald Head
Laughter
Everlast
DIVINES
ID HIM AS THE MAIN HARVESTER
RIGHTEOUS ANGER
The issue was that his motive wasn’t working. I had a feel for what I wanted him to be, and my Spideysense was telling me it wasn’t working, wasn’t interesting. Thomas McCormack in his book calls this feeling for what you want in your story a “prelibation”. What an odd term. But it’s real.
“Prelibation. The desire for a certain effect on the reader. It may or may not be followed instantly by an intuition of what item of narrative will cause that effect, and it’s important to see that intuition and the prelibation it is trying to serve are not the same thing. The intuiting of the narrative that will produce the effect-wanted is the work of the imagination” (p153 The Fiction Editor, The Novel, and the Novelist)
There’s more in his book. I recommend it highly. So, after that freewrite, I didn’t have a solution, but I’d pinpointed the issue, the prelibation. I took a break with kids into the big city. Came back and had my solution for a narrative that would do the trick. Luckily, it was something I’d cut out of the outline. Back it went with some significant tweaks and was better than before.
For those who have read my series on suspense, at this point, the presentation of the problem for the main story and many of my sub-stories is complete. Depending on how you categorize them, I have nine to eleven story lines (which makes it impossible to write this book in 100k words). There’s one main story line that touches everyone—the Mokaddian threat. Then there are other questions and issues I raise that set the reader up with the expectation for a resolution.
So most of these story lines have been presented, although not all. It took about 30,000 words to finish the presentation phase. I’m estimating 170,000 words, so that a presentation phase of roughly 18%.
There are a lot of story lines and characters to juggle. Sometimes I kick myself for having so many. Of course, I love them, despite the challenge they present. Nevertheless, I AM looking forward to writing that thriller with a limited cast.
This is the first “mystery.” It is the grand unifying theory that unlocks everything that follows.
The key to this mystery can be discovered in the answer to this question: which of the two pictures below most accurately defines lipstick?
Picture A
Picture B
Learn more in the writer’s section (okay, so the page is there, but where in the fricken ricken frack can you find it? I’m still learning this dang WordPress thing, so just go here)
The Pew Research Center has just published their findings on reading in America. It’s called “The Rise of E-reading“. There’s a LOT of fascinating information in the report. Here’s a taste:
I also want to recommend this week’s post by Kris Rusch on Audience. She has a number of interesting things to say about the dream of being a best seller and building an audience. The money quote comes as she refers to a post by Tracy Hickman:
“The point here is that you do not have to feel as though you are in competition with the entire world. You don’t NEED the entire world to be a successful writer. What you need is an audience—just enough of an audience, mind you—who reads your words, is changed by them and wants to come back for more.”
An audience. More importantly, an audience that reads and “is changed by” your words. Not an audience who loves them, not even an audience who likes them. An audience who is changed by them, and because of that experience, “wants to come back for more.”
Simple. Important. Usually forgotten.
She talks about lots more. Read the whole thing.
First, there’s no need for authors or readers to worry about wading through “crap.”
According to Pew, readers only read 15 or 24 books a year on average. That’s not a lot of books.
More importantly, it takes about 3 seconds to get a lead for a good book. You hear something from a friend or family member, you look at the USA Today best sellers list, you browse a few books at a store or online, you read a blog and suddenly you’ve found a book.
Readers fill up their book reading slots much more quickly than they can ever empty them. That’s why we all have years of reading in our queues.
It doesn’t matter that there are millions of other books out there, a good majority of which might have been written by monkeys. There’s no need for authors to worry that readers will have to wade through a mountain of crap to find a good book. They don’t need to because they have leads for good books coming out their ears.
Second, people purchase books that friends, family, and co-workers love.
Which means that when you deliver a great experience to one person, it’s going to ripple out. It’s probably not going to be linear. It’s probably going to ripple out like viruses do into different population pockets. Or seeds do into different environments. It will run through one pocket, make a jump to one or more others, or it may not jump at all. Some pockets are big, some are small.
The way to keep a virus going is to release it in a lot of places where it’s likely to thrive or in places that a lot of people travel through. And as Kris points out, writing is all about repeat business–making sure you have a stream of good product (something I hope to rectify with my own writing this year).
Bottom line: the best way to build your writing business is to simply write the best book you can, and keep them coming.
Third, the market is BIG.
If you read Rusch’s and Hickman’s articles, you’ll see that even the mega sellers only reach a fraction of those who read. This is reinforced by the statement made by Thomas McCormack, former CEO of St. Martin’s that you can read here. So just because 100,000 people read one book doesn’t mean 100,000 others won’t read mine.
Moreover, e-books and online shopping are broadening distribution. Brick and mortar stores only have so many slots for books. Every 8-12 weeks they rotate the old books out (like 12 weeks is old) and replace them with the new ones, unless, of course, your book is selling very well and gets “modeled” at the store. The point is: when you only display a few books at a time, those books will get bigger sales numbers. This happens because there isn’t anything else to purchase.
But you don’t have that limitation with e-books and online shopping. Nothing rotates out of the store. Sure, things rotate on and off the best seller lists. But the books are always there. With an ever growing selection, there won’t be as many mega sellers. Publishers Weekly discusses this trend in their 2011 Facts & Figures articles, which list best-seller numbers (make sure you click through to the Trade Paperback article as well). The same thing has happened with TV station viewership with the explosion of channels, DVDs, and online streaming. Same thing happened with music.
What this means is each author has a better chance of getting his or her books to those who will love them. We’ll still have best-sellers. But we’ll also have a lot more medium sellers as well. And that’s great for authors everywhere.
