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:
Back when Orson Card first started his online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show, he wrote an essay in which he detailed how he developed the idea for one of the short stories he told in his Ender universe. Card’s essay is a valuable resource because he exposes his mental thought process, modeling how he approaches story development. It’s not often that an expert takes the time to expose his mental thought process while working through something, and there’s always a lot to learn when they do. Interestingly enough, it illustrates a number of the principles in the Story Development Framework.
How often he uses questions as he develops the story.
How story objectives influenced what he wrote. For example, why didn’t he write from Peter’s point of view, and how did he want to portray the mother?
How story principles guided his development. For example, what were the three ways to get an audience’s interest and how did that affect the story development?
What he did when his zing suggested he go another way. Did he end up writing the story he set out to at first? (Card listens to his Spidey-sense, what he cares about and believes in, quite a bit.)
What his first draft provided him. What does this say about using drafts to help you develop the story?
How he used the four-scene “plan” he sketched of the story. How did that outline help him? When he had that, was he finished developing the story?
How he uses improvising to continue the development as he drafts. What did he need in order to improvise? And what was he actually doing?
Did you notice the elements of the story–problem, character, plot, and setting? Did you notice how his development continued while working on the text (drafting)?
One thing I don’t think you should take away from this is that you must write exactly like Orson Card. That you must not include much setting. Or that your sketches of the plot, the “plan” of the story, needs to be just like his. You may enjoy more setting than Card. You may want more or less in your sketch. That’s fine. The goal here isn’t to suggest you follow his exact procedure and have his exact same objectives. It’s to see how authors use creative Q&A to develop a story, to make it come to life.
As a final side note, I would like to quibble with one thing Card says. A lot of folks talk about showing and telling in writing. The eleventh commandment is to “Show, don’t tell.” But I would like to suggest that writers actually never show anything. They can’t. It’s all tell, tell, tell.
Showing requires the original sensory input. So a movie can show. A stage play can show. Both can also provide raw auditory input. But all an author can show are marks on a page. Those marks guide a reader into imagining events, people, and things, but it’s telling–“imagine this, imagine that, now imagine this.” The author can tell in scene or summary. Both have their place. But it’s important to realize that we’re helping the reader imagine. I don’t have time to go into the implications of this right now, but try the idea on for a while and ask yourself what type of writing helps you imagine things more vividly.
How would you like to sit down and get writing tips from someone who created or co-created nearly 40 television series? Someone who wrote more than 450 episodes for those and other series and then went on to produce around 1,500 more. Oh, yeah, and then after his thirty or so years in television, he published 18 novels. Whoa–eighteen. Like I’m shaking, right?
It’s not like the guy knows much about telling stories. I mean, millions of viewers entertained–big deal. Still, do you think you might be interested in seeing if he hasn’t maybe one piece of advice that’s useful?
If so, the guy’s name is Stephen J. Cannell. He wrote about 9,000 words on developing stories and called it his Writing Seminar. I thought it was pretty good. Well, for a piker.
And still accommodate my writing schedule and commitments
The course that’s open for applications is called Create Story Ideas That Beg to Be Written. It’s purpose is to transform you into a story idea machine.
And you can be there in six weeks. Before the end of the year.
I will be working with only a small set of people. I can’t accommodate more and give you the one-on-one feedback you need. And so you need to apply to get in.
The deadline for applications is midnight, October 27th. So contact me now to get the application instructions.
A cracking good story idea requires five critical elements. Until you have all five, you’ll struggle to plot. You’ll write a few scenes and run out of gas. You’ll feel like the story just isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because it isn’t. It can’t. A story isn’t a story without all five elements.
However, once you develop these five things, your story will suddenly roar to life. There are a few other elements that are important as well, but these five things form the core of the story setup.
In this course you’re not going to merely learn about all of those story elements. You’re going to go deep and learn what can only be learned by actually doing the work and developing story idea after story idea with personal one-on-one feedback from someone who knows what they’re doing.
When you finish, you won’t just know story theory. You will be a story idea machine. And you will be that because you have put in the work. The right work.
Again, this is not a course full of lectures and videos. This is a course where you’re going to work. And develop the insights and skills that only come from doing the work.
You’re actually going to:
Come up with story setup after story setup after story setup
And improve them with one-on-one feedback.
It’s going to:
Eliminate years of you wandering about in the story wilderness trying to figure things out on your own.
Put you miles ahead of other writers who have no idea what’s really at the core of story.
You are going to learn how to develop killer story ideas on purpose instead of on accident. Which means you’ll be able to do again and again. Reliably. Like clockwork.
Course details
Here are the details.
6-week course
Starts: November 2
Ends: December 19
One week off right in the middle for the US Thanksgiving holiday
The focus of the class is not on learning about story, although you will do that. The majority of your time will be spent on developing stories.
You can’t become a carpenter by watching videos and reading books about it. You have to get out on the work site, cut wood, and pound nails. You have to make the mistakes all beginning carpenters make, get feedback, and improve. The same goes for writing. And you’re going to work in this class. You develop 21 story setups. In fact, you develop more because the 21 are just the ones you turn into me. And with each one your skills, insights, and abilities grow.
In the beginning, your setups will be bare bones. By the end, they’ll be fully developed setups that beg to be written. Setups you can use to immediately write the first draft of your novel, whether that’s in outline or chapter form.
Here’s what you do each week.
Week 1. November 2-7
Uncover the secrets of what’s really at the heart of story and how to generate ideas.
Define your genre requirements
Create story setups 1-3
Week 2. November 9-14
Uncover the secrets to compelling characters
Create character sketches
Create story setups 4-7
Week 3. November 16-21
Uncover the secrets to formidable obstacles
Create story setups 8-11
Week 4. November 30-December 5
Uncover the secrets to interesting casts
Create story setups 12-15
Week 5. December 7-12
Uncover the secrets to managing multiple storylines and series
Create story setups 16-19
Week 6. December 14-19
Create story setups 20-21. These are your capstone projects where you apply everything you’ve learned and take it to the next level
As you can see, in this class you develop story idea after story idea after story idea. I didn’t detail it above, but each week you will also be lifting the hood on your favorite stories and actually seeing how they work. Story after story after story. In this class, you are marinated in the work of developing characters, THOMs, goals, obstacles, settings, casts, and more. And because of that, each week will not only bring an explosion of insights, but new skills and abilities.
Every week you get two private, one-on-one, live sessions with me where you get encouragement and feedback on what you’ve developed. And then we’ll work as a group, applying the principles and brainstorming even MORE ideas for each other’s stories.
At first you might feel a bit shy and worried about your ideas and abilities. But you’ll soon get over that. By the end of the course you’ll be one of those people that can generate terrific ideas easily. And you’ll be able to do that because you will have put in the work to become a different writer.
Apply now!
The normal cost of the course is $899. But because this is the first time I’ll be running through it, and we’re likely to run into a few kinks that need to be worked out, I’ve dropped the price to $599. I personally guarantee my course. You’ll be totally oh-my-gosh-I’m-so-happy-I-took-that-class satisfied, or I’ll give you your money back. No questions asked.
Now’s your chance to stop spinning your wheels. I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d had something like this when I’d started:
The secrets about the true core of story.
The secrets about how to come up with ideas.
Actual work with personal one-on-one feedback.
Laser focused on what actually matters, not a bunch of ridiculous writing rules.
When you finish, you will be a story idea machine.
You won’t know plotting. That’s a different course and set of skills. You won’t know how to write chapters. But you’ll know how to create the engine that powers all the rest of that. You’ll know how to create the core that makes awesome plots and chapters possible.
If you want to take this course, click the button below and contact me. I will tell you exactly how to apply.
I’m not going to be able to accept everyone who wants to take the class. I have a very strict limit on the number of students I can work with. So you need to get your application in before the deadline of midnight, October 27th.
I just started watching Life, the NBC series. I’ve enjoyed the first four episodes. In fact, episode three has one of the most brilliant sequences I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the setup. Charlie Crews is a detective who was sent to jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Being a cop in prison made him a target for many many beatings. Eleven years later they found none of the DNA at the murder site was his. So they released him, and, as settlement for damages, gave him a bunch of money, and allowed him to be a cop again. He’s been partnered up with Dani Reese. Nobody really wanted him, but she’s had problems of her own and got stuck with him. Crews had a car in the first episode, geeked out about GPS and handsoff telephone (stuff his missed in prison), but the ex-con lawyer Crews has put up in his mansion ran it over with a tractor. He’s been riding the bus. In this sequence, Crews and Reese are looking for a guy named Manny Umaga who carjacked a man and his wife then shot the wife. In this sequence they go find where he is and then go get him.
Watch it and then read my comments below. It runs from minute 15:49 to 21:15.
1. Surprise. You walk into a dangerous car shop. What are you expecting? You know you’re going to meet hard characters. They’re not going to want to talk to you. There’s some danger and so a bit of suspense. So we meet some hard characters. I was still surprised by the particulars of Buscando Maldito–his neck tattoos and hat. Wonderful and new (at least to me). But before we can have a confrontation–surprise–Crews sees the car of his dreams. Then we get that wonderful exchange between him and Maldito and El Repitito. Total humor. Totally unexpected. Then Maldito suggests a posse? Not only is he willing to talk, but he suggests he goes with them? When going to get Umaga, more surprises. Flash bangs? Big honking Samoan running? Busts down the door? Takes Crews by the neck? Crews pulls his own knife? Surprise after surprise after surprise.
2. Characters. Loads of interest factors (see my post on character). Maldito and Repitito have fabulous eccentricities. Crews displays his own interesting reaction to the car. Surprising, but logical (BTW, in a later scene you see him driving the car!) Then we see his prison background coming up with the knife. Love his backstory. And did you notice how strong Reese is, taking none of Maldito’s crap?
3. Dialogue. Did you notice how the first few times Reese says anything to Maldito he doesn’t respond to her question? Total avoidance of on-the-nose dialogue, talking cross-purpose.
4. Soundtrack. The way they bridged the two scenes with that music was fabulous. And the music itself. Wow. BTW, that’s “No Nadie” by Edgard Jaude, Rafael Torres, & Andres Ayrado.
5. Conflict. Between the Maldito and Crews about the car, between Maldito and Reese, between Umaga and Crews. Then Crews and Reese (with the knife).
At CONduit I spoke with an author friend who thought that marketing was indeed a bad thing, especially marketing for YA, because said author felt it didn’t build an audience based on the merits of the book. It built one based on hype and buzz. Instead of buying a book because it delivered a wonderful experience, readers would be buying only because it was what everyone else was doing. Furthermore, publishers only have so much money, and by choosing to put the dollars behind some books, they choose to let other books, which might deliver a better experience, languish.
I understand wanting to build a readership that’s based on love, not hype. But what I think my friend is overlooking is that you can’t love something if you don’t try it. And you won’t try it if you don’t know it’s there. Marketing and PR help make sure people know the book is there.
Yes, some readers might try it the first time because it’s what everyone is doing. But if the book is really that good, i.e. it actually delivers a wonderful experience for the target audience, then those readers will come back for another serving. They might look initially because everyone else is, but they’ll stay for love.
One of my editors just forwarded a link to “Not Quite a PR Campaign” by Sherry Thomas. Lots of interesting details there about what she does for PR, but probably one of the most important ideas she shares is the fact that marketing & PR don’t build an audience. A great story experience does that. However, marketing & PR can get the book in the audience’s hands.
What we all want to happen is word-of-mouth. PR doesn’t really create word-of-mouth, love does. But readers won’t read a book until they know it exists. So then the point of a PR campaign, if a PR campaign has any point at all, is to create awareness and hope that awareness will translate into love, once a critical mass of readers have read and enjoyed your book.
Readers may miss many high quality (i.e. they deliver a great experience to the intended audience) books because the lion’s share of the publisher’s marketing budget is being spent on a small group of books, and the author who gets the leftovers just doesn’t have the cash or know-how to do it themselves. But that doesn’t mean marketing is bad. It means that getting a big marketing push is like any other lucky break or opportunity.
I just started reading Guide to Writing Fiction by Phillys A. Whitney (a huge seller in the 1970’s and 1980’s). It’s a wonderful, slim, down-to-earth volume. She opens the book with a chapter called “Opportunity is Like a Train.” She maintains that her success did not come from starting with loads of talent. In fact, she says her ability was “modest.” She certainly wasn’t as gifted as many other authors she’d worked with in the writing groups of her youth. Nor did it come from immediate initial success. It came from being ready when opportunity knocked.
Of course, I have been lucky. I’ve had extraordinary breaks come my way–along with some pretty bad blows and disappointments. There’s been bad luck too, but that doesn’t always show. Good fortune and unexpected opportunities are always coming along. Perhaps opportunity is like a train on an endless track. Now and then it makes a stop at your station, often without fanfare, and without warning.
…What is important is not the lucky break, the stopping of the train–that’s only part of it. Life is full of trains that stop. What counts is what we are doing with our lives when there is no opportunity and not a train in sight.
James Dashner is someone who is getting a big promo budget from Random House this year for Maze Runner. A very big one. But if you read his story about how he got published (links to all nine parts of the story are in his sidebar) and what got him to this point, you’ll see this promo train was a long time coming.
Meanwhile, if the big promo budget ever stops at my station, I’m going to hop on. Until then, I will keep writing the best stories I can and make my current marketing budget (part publisher, part mine) go as far as possible. I’ll do the one for the love, the other because I can’t share the love if nobody even knows it’s out there.
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.
. . . .
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.
Thanks for posting these, John. As always, a terrific resource.
Glad to be of help 🙂
Story Turns was one of the best presentations I’ve attended over the years and definitely my favorite this year at the conference. Thank you!! I’ve posted a link from my FB page so others can see your presentation.
I wish I’d attended your Vivid and Clear presentation. I can see the PDF but I don’t understand all of it. Any chance you’ll do some posts about it? Present it again some time?
Rebecca,
So glad to hear the presentation helped! That was a fun one.
The Vivid and Clear one was a blast as well. I think it might have gone even better. The problem is I’m so booked right now I can’t tell when or if I might post about it. And posting my notes won’t make it more clear either.
I’ve been invited to the League of Utah Writers conference in the fall, but I think they wanted Story Turns. If I have time in Feb, I might offer to do it for LTUE. I know that’s not the answer you were looking for, dang it.
There’s got to be some way to find someone who attended to get their notes. Let’s see if someone drops in here and fills in the blanks.
If not, I might have to do a post. I’d much rather record it. But again–time!
I’ll keep checking back. I hate it when I go to a conference and find out that I missed an awesome class I really needed. I do have the notes from the syllabus. I’m loving your blog. I just finished the Developing Story posts. Great stuff! Your posts just make so much sense to me. Thanks!
John,
Thank you for all of the wonderful information at LDS Storymakers! I learned a lot and then I went home and shared it with my kids and now every movie I watch and every book I read I find myself saying there’s a story turn…out loud. They laugh. Good times, very good times!
Thanks for posting these, John. As always, a terrific resource.
Glad to be of help 🙂
Story Turns was one of the best presentations I’ve attended over the years and definitely my favorite this year at the conference. Thank you!! I’ve posted a link from my FB page so others can see your presentation.
I wish I’d attended your Vivid and Clear presentation. I can see the PDF but I don’t understand all of it. Any chance you’ll do some posts about it? Present it again some time?
Rebecca,
So glad to hear the presentation helped! That was a fun one.
The Vivid and Clear one was a blast as well. I think it might have gone even better. The problem is I’m so booked right now I can’t tell when or if I might post about it. And posting my notes won’t make it more clear either.
I’ve been invited to the League of Utah Writers conference in the fall, but I think they wanted Story Turns. If I have time in Feb, I might offer to do it for LTUE. I know that’s not the answer you were looking for, dang it.
There’s got to be some way to find someone who attended to get their notes. Let’s see if someone drops in here and fills in the blanks.
If not, I might have to do a post. I’d much rather record it. But again–time!
I’ll keep checking back. I hate it when I go to a conference and find out that I missed an awesome class I really needed. I do have the notes from the syllabus. I’m loving your blog. I just finished the Developing Story posts. Great stuff! Your posts just make so much sense to me. Thanks!
John,
Thank you for all of the wonderful information at LDS Storymakers! I learned a lot and then I went home and shared it with my kids and now every movie I watch and every book I read I find myself saying there’s a story turn…out loud. They laugh. Good times, very good times!
🙂