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!
James Dawson, YA author, feels it’s somehow wrong to hold back on cussing in his fiction. He wrote an article about this in the UK Guardian called “Why Teens in Books Can’t Swear.” He thinks it’s unrealistic. He thinks it’s about gate-keeper censorship. You know, parents wanting to steer their children towards certain experiences and away from others.
People.
Dawson’s approach to the whole problem is wrong-headed. This isn’t about the virtues and vices of fiction. Or about gatekeepers, especially in today’s ebook world. Or what experiences parents want to provide their children. And it’s not about art reflecting reality. Reality includes trips to the toilet, and yet we somehow fail to include realistic bum wiping in so many of our tales. Good heavens, have we betrayed our artistic integrity? No. We’ve just naturally chosen to include things that appeal to us and leave out others that don’t. Every book is an exercise in hundreds of such choices.
The fact is that Dawson’s forgetting that a fundamental aspect of the book trade is the trade. The buyer trades his or her money for a product (the book) that provides a service (the entertainment, thrills, chills, etc. of the reading experience) he or she values. A customer preferring one kind of experience over another isn’t censorship (the horror, the horror). It’s choice.
As an author, you make your offer. If folks like it, they buy it. If not, they don’t. Nobody owes you a purchase.
This means that in any business, and selling fiction is a business, the most sensible way forward is to offer your intended buyers something they are likely to value. Something they’re going to like. Something they want. If your buyer is thirsty and wants water, offer him a cold glass of water, not a waffle iron. And if you can’t bear to develop anything but waffle irons, then, by all means, develop waffle irons. Just make sure you offer them to the folks looking for . . . waffle irons.
This business of making offers also means that we package our products and services so that customers can easily tell what’s in the box. You don’t want someone to purchase your box thinking it contains breakfast cereal when in reality it’s a bunch of bolts.
Yeah, writing is an art. But offering it in trade to others is also a basic economic act.
No, really. It’s true. You just have to spend smartly. And in a special way.
Over the course of your life, if you make what the average American does, more than a million dollars will flow through your hands. And yet so many of us don’t feel rich. That’s because money is like the Gingerbread Man. Turn your back on it, and it’s out the door, rudely taunting everyone as it flies by. And then it gets eaten by a fox. Such a waste.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Let me share with you THE best method I’ve found for managing my money. It takes tons of anxiety out of spending and saving. And, if you’re a Dave Ramsey fan, it is the one thing upon which everything else he teaches depends. If you’re not a Ramsey fan, it doesn’t matter. After getting a job, this is the first thing you must do to get rich.
Here’s the big secret. It has three parts:
1) Decide how much you’re going to spend on various things BEFORE you spend it
2) Make what you have left in each spending category EASY to track
3) Manage the things you can’t foresee
To do the first two parts, you’re going to create a special kind of spending plan. We won’t use the term “budgeting” because “spending” is so much more fun, and because that’s what we’re going to do anyway. To understand how to do this, you need to watch three videos.
Before you do, please know I earned a Masters degree in accounting. I’ve used Quicken for more than twenty years. Neither of those things has helped me manage my money like this simple method. If you’re looking for a better way to manage your money, this is it.
First, watch this video to get an overall idea of how this method works.
Note: you can use actual envelopes and cash for everything if that makes you happy, but you really don’t need to. The idea is to think of pre-allocating your monthly income to categories of expenses AND then having an easy way to track what’s left.
Now, watch this bubba explain how he does it.
But John, didn’t he say the same thing?
Basically, but he has a fun accent. Besides, it’s good to see another example. And please note again: you don’t have to use actual envelopes and cash, although many swear by them.
Finally, watch this one. No, it’s not just another repeat. There are some additional important ideas illustrated here.
This video brings up the idea of why simply tracking an overall account balance isn’t very helpful. It also shows you WHY envelope categories are–they make it immediately apparent how much money you have to spend for a thing. If you just use Quicken to track what you spent (looking in the past), you’ll run into troubles. Let me tell you, I know this from experience. We use Quicken, and have for years, and plan use it for some time to come because it makes taxes and bank reconciliation a snap. But Quicken only tracks what you spent. Tracking, as important as it is, is not the key to success. The key is pre-allocating BEFORE you spend. And then tracking so you know what you have left in that category. And making that tracking EASY.
The final thing you have to do is manage the things you can’t foresee because things rarely go exactly to plan. Unexpected things ALWAYS come up. Your daughter will crash the car. Your husband will get appendicitis. You will forget that you had a $200 school sports expense.
Okay, fine. Things happen. But how do you manage them if you can’t foresee them?
If it’s really small, you simply adjust your plan. For example, if you need $30 more in food, you can transfer it from fuel if you have some extra there.
You manage larger things by building up an emergency fund. Ramsey suggests starting with a $1,000 emergency fund and then trying to get two to three months of living expenses—about $10,000 to $15,000 for most people. Unexpected things WILL happen and cost your money. So build up some cushion to take care of them.
Finally, you manage the really large things by getting proper insurance. This is what insurance is for. The types of insurance you need include (1) homeowner’s or renter’s, (2) auto, (3) medical, (4) long-term disability, (5) long-term care (for those 60 and older), and (6) life insurance. You may add true identity theft insurance as well.
Okay, so that’s the overview. If you want to try this, here’s how you do it. It’s fairly easy.
Resolve that you will NOT use credit for anything. You will not spend any money you don’t have. You will not put another dime on a credit card, and this despite the fact that the plastic devil companies are begging you with offers almost every day to sign up for their cards. (Hum, I wonder how they afford all that junk mail.) If your monthly bills are greater than your income, then we have to fix that first. But the new law of the land is zero new debt.
Next, always remember to allocate your money to these categories first—shelter, food, adequate clothing, and adequate transportation. This means if you have a crunch month, you would NOT pay credit card bills before food, even if you work for Visa.
Get out a piece of paper and pencil (not a pen) or open an Excel spreadsheet. Whoa, that was an easy step.
List your expected monthly income at the top from all sources.
List your spending categories. You’re going to split them into two groups.
The first group goes right below your income and includes all of your recurring monthly expense/spending categories. Not the amounts you spend. Just the categories. Things like mortgage, electricity, phone, groceries, dining, etc. Make sure you include some entertainment/fun money.
The second group goes below your recurring monthly expenses and includes all of your major annual periodic expense/spending categories. Things like Christmas, vacation, clothing, kids back to school stuff, etc. And things you want to save for—a couch, iPhone, car, etc. Your emergency fund goes here as well.
If you need help thinking up categories, use these Ramsey resources: Monthly cash flow plan forms and Monthly allocated spending plan form.
Decide how much you will spend in each category this month. You should have 0 dollars when you get to the bottom of the sheet. Spend (allocate) every dime BEFORE you start the month. You’re going to do this at the beginning of each month. And you will probably have to adjust it a couple of times during the month.
You will probably have categories that don’t get any money this month.
You will also have categories that get money, but you won’t spend any of it this month. These are your periodic expenses. Your goal is to have the cash up front to pay for them, so you have to save for them. Remember, you are NOT going to take on any new debt.
For example, if you’re saving up for Christmas, you allocate some money for that out of this month’s funds and TRANSFER it to savings. Then it will be there when you need it. You could draw the cash out and put it in an actual envelope, but you don’t have to. Just as long as you keep a record of the total amount in savings and what it’s all supposed to be for, i.e. total savings in July = $1,000: $500 for back to school, $200 for Christmas, and $300 for my trip with kids to Six Flags in 2013.
Some of the categories you need to watch closely, and some you don’t. The ones you need to watch closely will be your “envelope watch” categories.
The categories you don’t need to watch as closely are those that are automatically taken out of your account each month. And those you will write a check once a month for. These things include mortgage, car payment, electricity, etc. These are NOT categories you need to use actual envelopes for. You can track it on paper or in the spreadsheet. Not much happens with these categories.
But there are other categories that you’re going to be spending throughout the month, and it’s easy to over spend if you don’t track them. Groceries, dining, entertainment, gasoline, a specific vacation, etc. are all categories that you make multiple purchases with each month and are flexible/discretionary and need to be watched closely. So while everything is tracked in a category/envelope on paper or on the computer, you’ll track these with either a real envelope and cash or a virtual one using that free software you saw in the third video or a piece of paper with a running category balance in your wallet.
Now go out and spend!
Before spending, check your envelope. Do you have enough money? If you do, spend and be happy. If not, save up for it or find a way to save money in another category and adjust so that you’re still spending the same total amount. Never spend what you don’t have.
If you feel you need something not planned for, well, you have to get it later OR transfer something out of another envelope. I just make myself wait a day or three, and usually the urge to buy, Buy, BUY! goes away, and I see I don’t “need” it right now. Or maybe a more affordable option presents itself.
If the kids want something, and you feel guilty you can’t give it to them, just tell them what’s in the envelope/category, and tell them they can save for it or choose something else in that category that will fit with what you have left.
If you’re tracking envelopes virtually or using the paper balance in your wallet, you MUST update your envelope AFTER every purchase so you don’t spend more than you have. If you find you just can’t seem to remember to do this, go to the cash method.
That’s it!
Of course, that’s not quite it because even though it’s easy, if you haven’t done this before, it might take some adjustment. Give yourself a month or three to get it down. Because when you do, it WILL produce great results and peace. It’s doing that for us.
If you feel you need more info, I suggest you read Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money. Here’s the first chapter to sample: Complete Guide To Money sample chapter.
Happy spending.
EDIT: here’s another video to watch: http://www.youneedabudget.com/. Then read about the method: http://www.youneedabudget.com/method. This one highlights the idea that you need to make sure you realize that things will happen that you cannot foresee. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Maya Lassiter is an unschooling mom, a yogini, a goat keeper, a yurt dweller, and a pantsy fantasy writer. Or should I say very likely soon to be less pantsy and more of a juggernaut? We shall see. The initial results of her attempt to go from writing by the seat-of-your-pants to doing more pre-draft development seems to be paying off big time in less stress and higher word counts in each writing session. I asked Maya to share her method with us. Here’s what she had to say.
At one hundred pages in on my eighth novel, I ran aground and could not seem to move forward an inch. This was totally normal. As a pantser, I pretty much always ran aground at some point, usually many times per novel, and then had to go back and rewrite, revise, redraft, finding the point I had gone off the rails and fixing things until finally I could get the train drafting moving once again. Of course, even after all that, I would still go back to the beginning again, once I had hit then end, for revisions were where I found the book out of the mass of stuff I had gotten down by the seat of my writerly pants. It was usually for four or five more drafts. Grueling, exhausting work.
This time, however, staring at the choked up, broken manuscript before me, I had had enough. I decided I wanted to be one of those people who planned their book: to heck with this pantsing crap. I wanted to write a draft that hung together the first time through. I wanted this whole novel writing thing to be easier.
In deciding this, however, I realized I had no idea how to proceed. It’s one thing to say, “I want an entirely new way to do this,” and quite another to actually know what that new way is. So, I did what any avid reader does when trying to figure anything out: I went to the library. I checked out a giant stack of books–anything about writing fiction, or writers talking about their work, or editors talking about their writers. I read it all.
In the process, I might have figured out how those outliners do it.
Pantsing, for me anyway, involves figuring everything out in the draft. Following your nose, your characters, your muse, your whim, and learning about your story as you go, often right along with your protagonist. I had previously given up on outlining (multiple times) because, how can you outline what you don’t know, and how can you know if you haven’t written it yet?
I found one solution to this in Alan Watts’s The 90 Day Novel. In a word, free-writing. In fact, 30 days of his 90 are spent just making stuff up, fooling around, free-writing without intending to keep a word of it, all using Watt’s copious question prompts about your story, your protagonist, or your antagonist, whenever you need to, to prime the pump.
So I tried it. And after 30 days, I knew a ton about my story I hadn’t already figured out—even though I had already written 100 pages of a draft. (A draft that was riddled with problems, and now I could see what the pieces were.) Basically, inquiring into the story and characters, and fooling around in longhand to find answers, brought many insights, including flashes of scenes, scraps of dialogue, the voices of the characters coming to life, new ideas….
At some point I started listing these flashes out. That is, any time I actually saw a scene-let from my novel spring to life in my head, I wrote it down. I got an out-of-order laundry list this way of bits and pieces of the book-to-be, and I kept adding to it as the 30 days progressed. Until one day I realized that two or three of those scene-lets could come together and become a true scene. And that this bit ought to go in front of that bit–the beginnings of a plot! Basically, the list started organizing itself as I figured out more about the story through those free-writes. Magic.
Watts also makes use of a three-act structure and slotting my proto-scenes and full scenes (as I found them) into his structure helped me see where there were holes…which brought more questions and more inquiry, which brought more free-writing, free-wheeling, answers. I think any structure could work for this step: a romance structure, a puzzle structure, a plot-coupon epic, a coming of age story, whatever you know and love and want to use.
So, the laundry list, the scene list sequence, and then playing with that scene list within a structure template, these were the three steps that took me from a mass of free-written, stream of consciousness stuff, to a pretty clear idea of the arc of the story, beginning, middle, and end. With lots of information along the way.
At this point, I was at the end of Watts’s 30 days, the point at which he starts to draft in earnest….but I still wanted more than a laundry list of scenes, even an organized one. I wanted a tighter sense of the thing. I wanted less WORK and flailing about as I wrote. So I took a page from Holly Lisle’s technique–a very similar one, I have learned, to a technique in Victoria Schmidt’s book, Book in a Month, that she supposedly got from Nora Roberts, and on it goes. What you do is you take an index card for each scene and write a single sentence on it that sums up that scene. The sentence includes five parts: [A protagonist with a need][in conflict with][an antagonist with a need][in an interesting setting][with a twist]. If you’ve got all five of those parts for each and every scene, you’re going to have tight scenes that move the story along, with no dangling bits or wandering (re: getting lost).
I took the “twist” part of that formula and read it to be similar to a central idea in Robert McKee’s book, Story, something he calls the Turn. Basically, your character walks into a scene expecting X and the general energy charge of the scene is either postive + ish, or negative – ish. Then something happens, or something is revealed, that changes all that, turns those expectations upside down. That’s the Turn. Whatever the charge was to begin with, it is now very different, either much further than it was (really + or really -) or the opposite charge altogether. If a scene doesn’t have a Turn, it isn’t a scene. If the charge doesn’t change, you get a monotony in your manuscript.
All right. I took my scene list and converted it into Sentence-per-Scenes on index cards, making sure each sentence had all 5 components, more or less, especially including the Turn. Surprise, there were 28 scenes in this novel. How about that?
If I wrote 28 cards-worth of material, I’d have a complete novel draft. It seems so doable, when it’s put like that.
But I wasn’t done yet. I remembered a blog post I had read a while back about increase productivity–and remember, this whole experiment was to see if I could make novel writing an easier, more streamlined process. Maybe I would fail, maybe writing novels for me was always going to be guts and angst, but I wanted to see what was possible. I mean, why not, right? So I went and found that post, a post on Rachel Aaron’s blog, called How I Went from Writing 2000 Words a Day to 10000 Words a Day. (http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.ca/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html ) One of her primary tricks was to figure out what you were going to write for five or ten minutes–just fool around long hand on a page or two, before you start drafting until the scene is clear in your mind before you start drafting. It was sort of like Alan Watts’s 30 days of free-writing, in miniature.
I also remembered another writer, Laurel Amberdine, talking about her trick of priming the pump for a scene with a sort of cheat sheet she had invented, a list of things she wanted to be sure to hit in each scene–not as a checklist, but as more writing prompts to help her find the details of the scene before drafting. I went looking for that in our writer’s group threads, merged it with John Brown’s take on that same list, and then added on some questions from McKee’s Story, and I came up with my own prompt-sheet, designed for 10-15 minutes of pre-writing before starting each of my 28 scene cards. Here it is:
One Sentence Description:
Problem: What does the main character want in this scene?
What persons or forces stand in the way? What do they want?
Value: What is the value at stake?
Describe the charge, positive or negative, for the main character as the scene opens.
Described the value charge as the scene closes.Turning Point: When does a gap open between expectation and result? Describe it.
Beat Pattern: Comment on any of the action/reaction exchanges that may occur.
WHERE ARE WE?
– Fun, cool, weird, odd, particular details, surprises for reader
– Time, weather, etc.
– Background or world building details?WHO IS HERE?
– What’s the situation for each character?
– Who is driving this scene?
– What is his/her concrete objective?
– What does each of the others want (motive)?
– Fun & cool stuff? Surprises for reader?WHAT STORY LINES WILL HAVE BEATS HERE?
– Progress or trouble?
– Points of conflict?
– Obstacles?
-TURNOpening/transition:
Current Situation:
Setting, and significant details:
Next big crisis:
Turn:
Background/worldbuilding details:
Desired effect in reader:
Events:
Emotions:
Character’s unique reactions:
Ending hook:
Print one of these out, read my scene card, and start fooling around with the prompts. By the time the page was filled up, the scene was clear in my mind, often with dialogue written, emotional beats I wanted to hit, and most importantly, the Point of it all, that Turn. Not to mention foreshadowing, setting goodies, backstory bits I needed to get in, all of it on a single, handy page.
Of course, at this point I had about a half-dozen different writer’s processes rolled together into a giant mash-up that was sure to do me in with sheer weight and complexity. But so what–this was in the name of Science! Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks!
With card #1, built off the bones of my 30 days of free-writing, and my filled up, front and back, worksheet (took about fifteen minutes), I banged out the first scene chapter, 6000 words, in about 3 hours. That’s double my usual top speed of 1000 words an hour, but who’s counting? The main thing: it was perfectly painless.
My scene card #2 was written similarly in record time, the words flowing easily, no staring into space or getting lost, just smooth, lovely writing.
Plus, I wasn’t at all having the feared, “why write it if you know what’s going to happen?” thing that so many pantsers cite as their reason for not outlining. On the contrary, I was very excited about each scene because I knew just what was so cool about it, where the juice was coming and why, and I was psyched to get in there and make it as awesome as I knew it could be.
In other words, I could focus on the HOW because the WHAT had already been determined.
I won’t know, of course, until I finish card #28 whether the process will really work. And I REALLY won’t know until I do a revision pass on the complete draft to see if what I’ve got is any good. So think of this post as a progress report from the trenches. I’m up to scene card 6 so far, 16,000 words in, and its still going well, easy writing sessions at double my usual speed and no flailing.
Too soon to tell, but tentative conclusion…maybe a pantser really can become a plotter?
Isn’t that absolutely fantastic?
By simply taking some time to freewrite, which is just another term for sketching, she has been able (so far) to take out a ton of pain AND increase her word count. And increase it dramatically. So let’s see again how she does it.
Step 1: Sketch the story using questions as prompts
Step 2: Create a working outline
Step 3: Sketch the scenes
Step 4: Draft
Note all of the sketching. Note the creative Q&A. Note the developing in iterations. Did you also see her comments on the helpfulness of using a plot pattern?
I remember when I first started doing this and feeling the same way–I can focus on the how! It’s so liberating! The writing became more of a pleasure. And I never stopped inventing. Because even though I’ve sketched a lot out, things change when you do the next take. It always does.
I cannot wait to see how this experiment of hers turns out. I think she’ll run into a few snags but find it’s a much more productive method. We shall see.
We shall also see if I can’t improve my productivity and pleasure because while this is generally how I work, I haven’t used the Lisle card prompts. Nor have I read Watt’s book. Which means it looks like I’m going to be performing an expirement of my own. And it couldn’t come at a better time. I’ll be done with BAD PENNY here in just a few weeks. And it will be time to start another novel. I can’t wait to try these new tools.
For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas
P.S. Look at the cover of Maya’s latest novel. I think it’s gorgeous.
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