Stronger Goals

I was going to do a writing post about CPR for stories that need life, but most of the tips boiled down to goals, so instead I’ll talk about the importance of character goals. If your story seems limp and like it’s not really going anywhere, or if your plot is getting derailed, there’s a good chance that the problem comes down to your characters’ goals. Here are some common problems:

1) The protagonist doesn’t have a specific, concrete goal
By that, I mean that you could write a scene in which the character obtains that goal. It might not be a scene that ends up in the story, since goals often change during the course of a story as characters learn the difference between what they want and what they need, but you should be able to write a hypothetical scene of the protagonist achieving his goal. That’s why vague goals like “stop evil” or “find love” aren’t specific and concrete enough to drive a story. What would the scene look like when that’s achieved? It’s better if the goal is something more like “Destroy evil Lord Whatever’s doomsday device before he can use it” or “get married to a man I love.” Those are scenes you can visualize and dramatize.

You may need two of these goals for the protagonist. There’s what she wants at the start of the story before the initiating incident. A character should have something they want out of life even before things get crazy — a job, a promotion, a vacation, a peaceful retirement, to bring in the harvest. Then there’s the story goal that arises when the situation becomes known or begins. That’s where you get things like “stop evil Lord Whatever’s evil scheme,” “destroy the One Ring,” or “solve the murder.”

2) The protagonist’s goal isn’t what’s driving the story
This is what often happens when the protagonist’s goal is too vague because it’s so big — defeat evil. Meanwhile, the sidekicks have smaller goals, so they may be more specific and concrete, and that makes them stronger and more interesting. Or the villain may be driving the story, so the villain has a very clear goal for the outcome of his evil scheme, and the hero’s goal is only to stop the villain. When this happens, you have a weak protagonist, and the story isn’t very interesting.

To fix this, take a good look at the protagonist’s goal and see if you can come up with something better. You might also consider that the character you’ve picked to be your protagonist isn’t actually the most interesting character in the story. Maybe you should switch. Or you could combine characters.

It’s a little trickier when the villain is the one with the strong goal and the hero wouldn’t have to do anything if the villain weren’t up to no good. This is where having a goal to begin with helps — there’s something else the hero wants, and having to stop the villain is getting in the way of that goal. You can also give the hero a plan in relation to his goal that’s very specific. Frodo’s story goal isn’t to stop Sauron. His goal is to destroy the ring. He’s not really reacting to Sauron. He’s going about his mission.

3) There’s no conflict associated with the goal
If there’s no opposing force keeping your hero from achieving his goal, you don’t have a story. That force can be inside himself, can be society itself, can be nature, or can be another character. You get a stronger story if the protagonist and antagonists’ goals are in direct opposition — if one achieves his goal, that will keep the other from achieving his goal. If there’s no opposing force, then rethink your goal.

4) You forget about the goal as you write
It’s easy to come up with character goals when you’re developing and planning a story. But then you start writing and things happen, and you might lose track along the way. Maybe not the really big things that are driving the plot, like the villain’s evil scheme and the fact that the hero wants to stop the evil scheme, but you might not sustain the more specific goals or the internal goals that aren’t about the main plot. Or, you might forget the story goal when writing individual scenes instead of making each scene be a step toward the story goal. When you get stuck or bored in the middle of a story, this is often the reason. Go back to the core goals and it might give the story more drive and energy.

Nebula Conference Thoughts

Now that I’ve been home long enough to process everything, I thought I’d share some thoughts on my trip last week. I will admit that I found last year’s Nebula conference rather discouraging. I had a good time largely because I had local friends who were on the staff, and it was fun hanging out with them, but the conference part was difficult for me. I learned a lot and got some good business things out of it (that’s how I found my web designer), but I felt very alone and invisible in the crowd, and it was disappointing seeing that I was totally unknown in spite of having been published in fantasy and a member of the organization for more than a decade. There was very much an “in” crowd, and you could see the cliques.

This year was better for me. It helped that I’d met some people the year before. It also helped that I got there a day early and went on the pre-conference walk to the farmer’s market for lunch, so I met some people there. I was on a programming item the first day, so people talked to me at the opening reception and I didn’t feel quite so lost and alone there. I still feel like a nonentity in that world, but that means I have a huge opportunity of people who haven’t discovered me yet. And, at the same time, I learned from some of the panel discussions that I’m a lot more successful than I realized. There were some things I took for granted that I thought would surely apply to others who have a lot more recognition than I do if they applied to me, but it turns out that financial success and recognition don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. I’m making decent money, enough to live on without needing another job. My books from more than a decade ago are still in print and earning royalties. I’ve had a book optioned for film. My books do really well in audio. Sometimes it’s frustrating chugging along in obscurity while watching other people get the recognition, but I’d rather have the financial success than the fame any day. So, I came away feeling better about myself and about my career and able to see my lack of recognition so far as a huge opportunity of an untapped market rather than as any kind of slap in the face.

Meanwhile, I learned a lot — about social media, Facebook advertising, conflict resolution (both for career matters and using it for characters), what actual teens look for in YA fiction, fairy tales as a storytelling medium, audiobooks, finances for freelancers, dealing with discouragement, and the list goes on. Even when I was on a panel, I usually learned something new from it. I believe I attended a session during every time slot, except for the slot during which I was getting trained on using my new web site architecture.

Treating this weekend as a professional conference is relatively new. It used to be just about the awards ceremony, but has come to be a lot more like the RWA national conference, in being a professional conference that contains an awards ceremony. Membership in SFWA is still limited to those who have met certain publishing standards, but the conference is open to everyone who’s interested in writing science fiction and fantasy. I’d say it’s very worthwhile to attend if you have writing ambitions. There’s not a lot of “how to write 101” stuff, but there is a lot of good information on the business of publishing and managing a writing career. I will very likely go back next year because I think there’s a lot more bang for the writer’s buck than, say, a WorldCon. Plus, they give you a big bag of books. I was pretty ruthless about winnowing it down to the books I was sure I would read, and I even read a couple during the weekend so I could put them back on the swap table instead of hauling them home. And then I got to the airport and my bag was only 33 pounds, so I could have brought more home with me.

Surprise!

I was out of town last week when I had a writing post scheduled, so I’m catching up this week.

I’ve written in the past about the difference between surprise and suspense in writing — the times you want to shock your audience and the times you want your audience to know what’s coming so they have time to dread it. But although we worry about spoilers and ruining the surprise, there are times when it may be bad to surprise your readers.

One case is when there are genre expectations. It would be a big surprise if a romance novel didn’t end with a couple getting together or a mystery novel didn’t reveal the identity of the killer, but most readers wouldn’t be pleasantly surprised. You might be able to get away with that in literary fiction, where you can use those genre expectations to create something different, but if your book is shelved in those genres, that kind of surprise would be a bad thing. Romance readers want the couple to get together. Mystery readers want the mystery to be solved. The big question in romance is how they get together and the emotional journey the characters take. The big question in mystery is who the killer is, and readers don’t even always mind if they figure it out before it’s revealed, as long as it’s still a bit of an intellectual challenge.

Another case of a bad surprise is when the surprise isn’t properly set up. It’s easy to surprise your audience if something just falls out of the sky, without any setup to indicate that things falling from the sky is a possibility. When I see writing like that, it reminds me of a mystery-themed party I once went to. It was a big banquet at a hotel, and each table had paper and pencils to keep track of clues, as well as table decor that looked like it might contain clues. Every so often, the emcee came out and told us about some new development. We were diligently taking notes and trying to piece it all together, but when they announced the “solution,” it was some random thing that had absolutely nothing to do with what had been announced. It turned out that it was all a joke, and the solution was the punchline. I guess they thought it made for a good icebreaker, but it was absolutely impossible for anyone to have solved the mystery. You may surprise readers by doing that sort of thing, but most of them will be angry that you didn’t play fair. The solution needs to have been set up properly so that you can look back at the story and see the clues. The trick is to hide the clues in plain sight alongside other clues and to give each clue multiple layers of meaning, so that there’s another reason for it not entirely connected to the solution. One of the better examples of this is the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Everything that happens in the story makes sense in that context — and then there’s a big twist. After the twist is revealed, we see that everything we saw before also had an entirely different reason behind it. Without the twist, the story still makes sense and would have been a good story. The twist changes everything, but it still makes total sense. The second time you see that movie, knowing the twist, it’s an entirely different film.

On the other hand, if you set something up, you need to use it. There’s the old trope of Chekhov’s Gun — that if there’s a gun on the mantel in Act One, it needs to be fired by the end of Act Three (or something to that effect). If you bother to set things up, they need to go somewhere or readers will be annoyed. It may not go where you expect, or may not be directly related to the main plot, but something really should come of it. The more you draw attention to it, the more important it is that you go somewhere with it. If you can cut a whole scene or other story element without having any impact on the plot because that thing really makes no difference, then don’t put it in there to begin with. This applies to pointless side trips, character backstories, desperate messages, and quest items. Even if it’s a red herring, it needs to matter and be relevant in some other way.

Then there are the things that the audience wants to happen. It may not be a huge surprise when these things happen, but the audience is usually okay with that because they’d be disappointed if it didn’t work out that way. Readers of genre fiction generally want to see the couple get together, the villain defeated, the battle won by the good guys, the bad person get a comeuppance, the underdog rise to the occasion. You can keep in some element of surprise by allowing this to happen in an unexpected way, but if you don’t give readers what they’re hoping for, you need to give them something they’ll like even better. Sometimes tropes exist for a reason, and that’s because these are things we enjoy seeing. You can twist them to some degree, but twist them too far or undermine them, and the result is an unsatisfying story.

Finding the balance between surprise and satisfaction is an ongoing struggle for writers that becomes more difficult as readers become more sophisticated consumers of stories. But it’s worth it to put in the work to find a way to meet expectations while keeping things fresh.

To Plot or Not

One of the big debates that arises between writers is the issue of whether or not to plot — sometimes characterized as “plotting” vs. “pantsing” (writing by the seat of the pants). George R. R. Martin has referred to it as “architect” — creating detailed blueprints before starting work — vs. “gardener” — plant some seeds and see what grows — writing. Either way, it mostly comes down to whether a writer plans ahead, creating an outline before doing the actual writing, or just writes the story as it comes. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

There can be a lot of spontaneity with “pantsing,” since the discovery process happens during the writing. Following threads of a story as they arise can help a writer avoid a formulaic plot. A lot of pantsers feel like they would waste the sense of fun and discovery of the writing process if they used it on the outline instead of on the book itself.

On the other hand, this writing process may require a lot of revision and rewriting. Discoveries made later in the book require changes earlier in the book to set them up properly, and plot threads that ended up going nowhere need to be trimmed. Writers who write this way need to pay a lot of attention to continuity to make sure all those drafts still fit together and that everything is consistent. Because of this, it may take longer to write books this way.

On the plotting side, there can be an advantage in figuring out how the plot works before the draft is written. Some writers who do extensive plotting may only write one draft and then proofread it. They’ve done all the discovery process in their outline, so the draft only requires the outline to be fleshed out, and that can mean faster production. Being a plotter also helps when you reach the level in your career when you can sell on proposal. You can write a synopsis of a book and sell the book before you write it. Pantsers can really struggle with this.

On the con side of things, plotting can lead to reduced enthusiasm for a project if the fun part is figuring out what happens. Sometimes, the plot doesn’t work once you start writing, and trying to stick to a planned outline only gets you sidetracked. The outline is what you come up with before you’re really immersed, and if you’re coming up with an outline based on story structure, there’s a chance that your story will come across as more “rote” and won’t really let your characters breathe.

Which is best? The one that allows you to complete a book and make it good. Different people work in different ways. It’s worth trying both approaches and seeing what works for you, and that may change over the course of your career. You may need to plot in your early books as you figure out how a story works, and then you may be able to start pantsing because you’ve internalized that and have done your plotting in your head. Or you may start as a pantser until you figure out your patterns, and from there you may be able to plot first. There’s also a lot of middle ground. The plotting may be just the general turning points, and you improvise from there. You may just know the beginning and the ending when you start. You may outline a few scenes ahead of where you are but without outlining the whole book to begin with. Some books may require more careful plotting than others. If you’re stuck on a project, you might want to try switching approaches. If you’re a plotter and are struggling to write the book you outlined, try throwing out your outline and seeing where the story takes you. If you’re a pantser and don’t know where to go next, try outlining.

If someone tries to tell you that the way they write makes them a “real” writer or a better writer, smile and nod and go about doing it the way that works for you.

Early Career Planning

In my writing posts, I’ve been talking about writing advice that’s good or that depends on the individual. I found myself thinking once again about that convention panel on career planning for pre-published writers, and there are some things that you might be able to do to give yourself a boost besides just writing. I don’t think all of these are mandatory, but they could be helpful if you do them well. Still, though, the main thing you need to be doing is writing. If you don’t do that, none of the rest of these things will do you any good. I’ve seen a lot of writers stall their potential careers because they got caught up in being involved in writers organizations and conferences, etc., and they thought of that as being writing work, but it kept them from actually writing. They may have been a big shot in the organizations and knew lots of editors because of that, but without anything written, all those connections did no good. So, with each of these activities, you have to ask yourself if you’d be better off spending that time writing.

1) Join a writing organization
This is a good way to network with fellow writers, learn about the craft and the business, meet industry professionals, get feedback on your work, and start getting your name out there even before you’re published. Some of the national genre-specific groups allow unpublished writers to join, and many have local chapters with monthly meetings. There are local groups that meet for critiques or that have speakers. Many libraries and bookstores sponsor writing groups. Check Meet Up, your local library calendar of events, bookstore calendars, or do an Internet search for writing groups associated with your genre.

2) Attend writing conferences
Many of these writing groups sponsor annual conferences. They may be smaller local affairs, just one day with a few guest speakers, or multi-day national conventions with a number of industry professionals. At these events, you can hear expert speakers on the craft and business of writing and schedule pitch sessions with editors and agents. These can be rather expensive, so you might get more bang for your buck if you’re fairly advanced and have a manuscript ready to pitch.

3) Look for other events that include writing activities
While a lot of writing conferences may cost hundreds of dollars to attend, there are fan-oriented genre conventions that include writing activities that may only cost about $40 for the weekend. Look for science fiction or mystery conventions. Many of them include a writers’ workshop and panels on writing. The guest panelists for these events are usually published authors, so even if the convention itself doesn’t include a lot of how-to panels, it may offer you the opportunity to network with writers and talk to published authors.

For any of these in-person activities, you need to present yourself professionally. Don’t shove your manuscript at anyone, don’t corner anyone and force them to listen to a description of your book, don’t derail a panel by asking an irrelevant question that only applies to you or that is only a thinly veiled pitch for your book. Don’t be a jerk, in general. Meeting industry professionals in person can be a positive that helps your career, but it can also hurt you if you make a negative impression or come across like someone who’d be difficult to work with.

4) Study on your own
There are a number of online writing workshops and classes, some free, some at a reasonable cost. Authors, agents, and editors have blogs and write articles on writing. There are books about writing. There are online communities for writers. There’s a lot you can learn without leaving your home.

5) Establish a platform
Do you know a lot about something that might relate to your writing? You might be able to establish a platform based on that before you publish a book, and leverage that into a platform to promote your book. If you’re a lawyer who’s writing legal thrillers, you could write a blog or tweet about legal issues in fiction. Review books and movies involving lawyer characters from the perspective of a lawyer (though you might want to be careful about too much snark about books if you hope to sell a book to editors who published the books you’re tearing apart). Ditto if you’re an aerospace engineer writing science fiction, a folklorist writing fantasy, etc. You can talk about costumes in genre movies, analyze the music, create recipes for dishes mentioned in fiction, or whatever your area of expertise or interest might be.

You can also do this sort of thing if you have a strong voice and can write funny pieces about your own life, witty dissections of movies or TV series, or explorations of pop culture. There are novelists who had huge followings before they ever had a book published.

But don’t feel you have to do this. It takes a lot of time and effort and only really pays off if you have a huge impact.

6) Enter writing contests
I’m actually kind of iffy on this one. There are some manuscript contests sponsored by reputable writing organizations that can get your manuscript in front of editors or agents, skipping the slushpile. But there are also a lot of scams out there. I would be wary of any contest that promises publication as a prize because that prize comes with strict contract terms, with no negotiation. If your book is good enough to win the prize to be published, it’s good enough to be published the normal way, and you might get better terms doing so because then you’d be able to negotiate. For short stories, getting the prize of having your story published on a website means you’ve given up first publication rights and will have a harder time selling it to a real publication. So be sure of what you want out of a contest, who’s judging it, and what happens if you win.

Mostly, though, it’s about the writing. None of these things will do any good if you don’t finish a book and revise it until it’s in publishable condition.

Writing Truths

In my last writing post, I talked about some myths — some advice about writing that may or may not be true. Today I’ll give some advice that I think it’s safe to say is absolutely true.

1) Read
If you want to write, you need to read. If you don’t enjoy reading, then you probably won’t enjoy writing. Reading fuels writing, and loving to read is how most writers are first inspired to want to write. By reading, you internalize all the lessons about story structure, characterization, etc. In fact, I would bet that you’d get more benefit from reading a lot and never looking at how-to books or taking writing seminars than you’d get from studying writing without actually reading a lot.

What should you read? Read widely in the genre you’re writing. Read the classics in that genre so you know the foundations. Read the latest releases, bestsellers, and books by new authors so you know what’s selling now. Read the award winners so you know what’s considered good. Read outside your genre. You can learn a lot about plotting by reading mysteries, a lot about pacing by reading thrillers, a lot about emotions from reading romance, a lot about language by reading poetry. Take another look at the classics you were forced to read in school and try reading them without having to write essays or take tests about them. Read the latest thing burning up the bestseller list. Read non-fiction so you learn about the world and about people.

2) Write
I may argue with the “write every day” advice, but it’s hard to be much of a writer if you aren’t writing often and regularly. Yes, it’s important to read and study and research, but at some point, in order to be a writer, you have to write something. You have to write a lot. There are some people who are fortunate and talented who sell the first thing they write, but most writers spend a lot of time writing and write a lot of things before they actually get good at it. You wouldn’t expect to be able to play Beethoven sonatas the first time you sit down at a piano, so don’t expect to produce a publishable novel the first time you try to write. There certainly are cases of the industry not recognizing genius, but for the most part, if you’re failing it’s because you’re not good enough yet, and the best way to get better is to write more. Think of it as your practice sessions so that you learn and get good enough to perform in public.

3) Study
While it is important to write instead of deluding yourself into equating writing-related work with actual writing, it is important to learn about what you’re doing, especially when you start considering publication. I’m constantly surprised and appalled by how many people I talk to who claim to be writing seriously who seem to have absolutely no clue as to how the business works. I was recently at a party and ended up in conversation with an aspiring writer who didn’t realize when I said I was a writer that I truly was a career novelist, and she was boasting about the three books she’d written, but said she didn’t have them published because she couldn’t afford that. She didn’t understand that a publisher pays the writer. I tried to gently educate her about the difference between publishing, vanity press, and self-publishing. If you’re trying to do this, you need to know these things, and it’s ridiculously easy to learn, if you make any effort. Most libraries have a section of books on how to write and how to get published. There are writing organizations like Romance Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America that help educate writers. There are writing conferences and conventions. There’s a wealth of information online for aspiring writers. Many editors and agents have web sites and blogs with advice on publishing. There is no excuse for being uniformed about the industry you’re trying to participate in.

4) Persist
This ties into the “write” advice above, in that it may take you some time and a lot of effort before you see success. You’ll get rejections. You’ll get criticism. You have to decide for yourself whether you can handle this. It’s okay to decide that maybe writing isn’t for you, that it’s not as much fun as it seems, that you don’t want to spend the time it takes to be able to succeed. But you have to be honest with yourself about what’s going on. If you really, truly want it, you have to keep going. You have to carry on and finish that book even though the middle is hard and you just got this other new idea. You have to slog through revisions that aren’t as much fun as the first draft. You have to take rejections and decide to try again and write something new. There’s no guarantee that you’ll succeed if you keep on, but it’s absolutely guaranteed that you won’t succeed if you give up — if you don’t finish something, don’t revise and polish it, don’t keep submitting, don’t write anything else.

So, that’s the quick (well, maybe not so quick) and easy (except not) formula for writing success: Read, write, study, persist.

Busting Writing Myths

There’s a lot of writing advice floating around on the Internet, and not all of it necessarily good — at least, not necessarily good for everyone. Even one of my favorite authors has lately been spouting something that I find to be not true at all for me, but saying it as though it’s an absolute. So I thought I’d address some common myths about being a writer that can be detrimental to you if you treat them as absolutes rather than figuring out what works for you.

1) A “real” writer writes every day — I noticed this in an interview recently, with a writer comparing writing to a bodily function and saying that it would be impossible not to do it every day. I guess you’re not a real writer if you write on days you have time to write or treat it like a job and take weekends off. If you let yourself fall into this way of thinking, you might become discouraged or wonder if you’re meant to write if you aren’t driven to do it absolutely every day.

It may be more accurate that a writer thinks about writing every day. Bits and pieces of the story you’re working on or a future story that you’re still developing may float in and out of your brain all the time, even if you aren’t actually physically writing. However, it may be unwise to go too far in the other direction and use this as an excuse to procrastinate, telling yourself that if you’re thinking about writing, you’re okay.

Bottom line: A writer writes. Writers may write every day or they may schedule their writing sessions when they have the time to write. They’re probably thinking about their writing every day, but as long as they actually write something, they can call themselves writers.

2) “Real” writing is done with a pen and paper — this one’s been going around lately (and severely mocked). I don’t even know where that’s coming from. I know very successful writers who write by hand and then do their editing as they transcribe. I know very successful writers who type on their computers. I know people who record dictation and transcribe. I know people who write on their phones. I know people who use real typewriters and then transcribe into their computers. As long as the result is words, you’re writing.

That said, there has been research about the mind-body connection being different when typing as opposed to writing by hand. Most of that has been about memory — you’re more likely to retain information you write by hand than information you type — but switching to writing by hand might be an idea to try if you’re stuck. It can be good for brainstorming or even composing if you find yourself staring at the screen and drawing a blank. There’s nothing wrong with giving writing by hand a try, but it won’t make you any more of a real writer.

3) Talking about an idea will kill it — This is definitely something that varies by individual, and it is apparently true for some people. I just don’t think it’s true for everyone or in every circumstance. I first heard this when I was in college, and it’s been going around the writer clusters on Twitter lately, thanks to a very successful author repeating it. The idea is that you expend most of your enthusiasm and creative energy for an idea in telling it to someone, and you may not have any enthusiasm or energy left to actually write it. There’s also a concern that discussing an idea with someone will mean you’ve been influenced by others, so it’s no longer purely your idea.

This may be true for some people, or even a lot of people. It’s not at all my experience. I find that my ideas bloom when I talk about them with others. I like brainstorming out loud. I’m not necessarily getting input from anyone (my mother will joke about whether she actually needs to stay on the phone or whether she can put it down and go do something else while I talk about my story), but sometimes their questions really help me develop my idea. I came up with a lot of the elements in the idea that became my Enchanted, Inc. series when I was chatting with an editor about it at a party and she asked me questions. It was an idea still in its infancy, so I didn’t have answers to her questions, and I was making things up on the fly. It ended up working like a good brainstorming session. She didn’t add any input, just the questions that made me dig deeper into the idea and develop it. Obviously, eight books later, I didn’t lose interest in writing that idea, and talking about it before I had a single word written didn’t kill it. I tend to find that if talking about an idea kills my enthusiasm for writing it, I probably didn’t have enough enthusiasm to go through with writing it, whether or not I talked about it.

However, it really depends on how you work, how strong you are in holding onto your ideas, how developed the idea is, and who you talk to. This is where you have to know yourself. I may have a very different approach because I have a background in working at an advertising agency, where we had big brainstorming sessions for a lot of our work. That may have trained me to think in that way, getting more and more excited by an idea the more it was discussed. I think it also makes a difference that I live and work alone, so by the time I get around to talking with someone about a story, I’ve done a lot of development in my head already, and I’m ready to get outside input. If you’ve noticed that you’re always coming up with great ideas and then losing interest in them, look at whether you’ve discussed them, and then try writing without talking about it. If you find that you get excited about your ideas and rush to write them, then end up with stories that seem half-baked or underdeveloped, try discussing your ideas with someone.

Is there any other bit of writing advice that you’ve heard and wondered about?

Career Planning Before You're Published

I’m late getting to today’s post because I had to shoot a video, and it had to be done in the morning to take advantage of the natural light my house gets.

For today’s writing post, I’m picking up a topic from a recent convention panel I was on, about “Career Planning for Pre-Published Writers.” That’s kind of an odd concept, and the description was about building a platform.

But here’s my advice for how to plan your career before you’re published:

1. Educate yourself on the craft, on the market, on the industry. Go to conferences, join writing groups, read the “how to write” books you find at the library.
2. While you’re doing this, write something. Finish it. Put it aside.
3. Write something else. Finish it. Put it aside.
4. Go back to that first thing you wrote and take a good look at it. Make it better. Put it aside.
5. Go back to that second thing you wrote. Make it better. Put it aside.
6. Take yet another look at the first thing, see if you can make it better. Possibly give it to some of the people you met (other aspiring writers) while educating yourself to get their feedback. Use their feedback to make it better. Repeat with the second thing you wrote.
7. Do serious market research. Who publishes the kind of thing you wrote? Read the most recent books that are closest to yours in genre, subject matter, and tone — not just the bestsellers, but books by first-time authors. Which books currently on the market might compare to yours? If you’re writing short fiction, read the various magazines to see who publishes the kind of thing you wrote. Find out what the submission guidelines are.
8. Research agents (you’ll probably need one to get a novel sold to a major publisher). Look at who’s getting book deals done in your genre. This may be a good time to go to conferences and see if you can get some one-on-one appointments or pitch sessions with agents. Do some serious online searching to make sure the agents you’re targeting are legitimate and aren’t known for running a scam operation. A legitimate agent only makes money by selling books. They won’t ask for money from you, won’t send you to a book doctor that will cost you money (they might recommend you get more editing, but they shouldn’t send you to a specific person because that’s usually a sign that they’re getting some kind of referral kickback).
9. Start submitting to publishers/publications/agents, following their guidelines.
10. I generally recommend that people at least try to go through the traditional publishing route before diving into self publishing, if only to give you a reality check and thicken your skin. If you get a lot of rejections along the lines of “I love this but I don’t know where I’d sell it,” that might be a sign that self publishing could work because you may have a niche product. If your rejections are along the lines of “I couldn’t connect to the characters” or “the plot seems trite,” then go back to step one and write something better.

What about all that building a platform stuff and social media? Really, it will only help you if you do something huge with it. Otherwise, it’s more likely to count against you. If you’re a really clever blogger who manages to get a following in the thousands, or you somehow manage to get tens of thousands of Twitter followers who are real people and not just bots, and your posts tend to go viral, then that might count in your favor when a publishing decision is being made. Otherwise, the main thing is to not look like a total psycho. You don’t want to be ranting and raving about stupid publishers and agents who are rejecting you because they only want to publish trash. Definitely no racist or sexist rants. Mostly, focus on your writing rather than building a platform, unless you have something to build a platform on and can do it in a big way. It would be smart to buy the domain name of your name, maybe put up a placeholder site. But don’t worry about doing any kind of major publicity campaign until you have something to promote.

Choosing POV

I’ve been talking about narrative point of view in my writing posts, covering first-person and third-person narration. How do you know which to use in your story?

Consider using first person if:

• Narrative voice is very important in your genre (YA, chick lit, urban fantasy)
• You need to conceal information from your reader (mystery, unreliable narrator)
• Your narrator character is likely to be present for all the major events in your story
• Your narrator character is someone who is likely to be willing to share the information you need to convey

Consider using third person if:

• There are multiple perspectives you want to cover
• Your story spans multiple locations, with different characters in each location
• There’s simultaneous action going on, so that no one person could be in on all the action
• You want to build suspense by letting readers and some characters know something that another viewpoint character doesn’t know
• You want to get really deep into a character’s head, letting the reader know things the character probably wouldn’t tell anyone

You can always experiment by writing a scene in third person, then going back and changing the pronouns and then figuring out what else needs to change in the switch to first person. Or vice versa. Which works best for this story? Which is more fun or easier for you to write?

There are also ways to mix it up. A lot of “new adult” books use first person for the heroine’s perspective and third person for other characters. Two (or more) characters might switch off in first-person narration (just be sure to label clearly when you switch voices). You can intersperse letters/texts/e-mails/journal entries to add some first-person narration to a third-person story.

The important thing is that you convey the information the reader needs to know and that the reader is clear on whose perspective the story is in at any given time — unless it’s part of the story that the narrator is a mysterious figure.

Third-Person POV

I’ve been discussing point of view in the last couple of writing posts. This week, I’ll delve into third-person POV. Third person is when the story is told by a narrator who’s not a participant in the story. Therefore, the characters are all referred to in the third person — he, she, they, etc.

Third-person limited POV is probably the most common and widely used in modern fiction. This is when the narrator gets into the head of only one character at a time — usually one character in a scene, with the perspective only changing at scene breaks. While the narrator is in the head of that character, it basically works like first-person POV with different pronouns. We’re in that character’s head, seeing through his/her eyes. We don’t have access to any information that the character doesn’t have. Sometimes the narrative even takes on the flavor of that character’s voice in those scenes. The main difference, other than the pronouns, between third-person limited and first-person narration is that the first-person narrator is aware that she’s telling a story, while with third person, the reader is getting to eavesdrop on the thoughts of a character who doesn’t know she’s a character in a story. That means that the thoughts are less censored. The character doesn’t get to decide what to tell readers and what to leave out. We’re seeing every thought, feeling every emotion. The viewpoint character with limited third has no secrets from us unless it’s such a secret that she doesn’t even let herself think about it.

That means that it’s hard to use limited third for an unreliable narrator or a character who’s keeping secrets. If you’ve got a character with secrets that have to be kept from readers, you can’t use that character’s POV. You have to stick with other characters observing that character and not go into that character’s head. On the other hand, that uncensored perspective makes limited third good for books that involve sex scenes, since it means you can convey all the thoughts and sensations and the character doesn’t have the option of modesty or shyness. Limited third can be far more intimate than first-person narration, depending on the character.

But you still need to keep in mind that you’re limited to what the character sees and experiences. A line like “His brown eyes widened when he read the letter” can only work if you’re in the viewpoint of a character observing this person. If you’re in his head, he’s not going to be noticing his brown eyes, and the way he notices his reaction won’t be to think about his eyes widening. He’s going to be thinking about how he feels.

One benefit of third person is that you can get into the heads of multiple characters, but changing viewpoints can be tricky. If you switch during a scene, going back and forth to make sure the reader knows what everyone in the scene is thinking, that’s generally referred to as “head hopping.” There are very successful authors who do that, but it’s probably best not to try that as a beginner. The danger of head hopping is that it confuses readers who don’t know whose head they’re supposed to be in at any given point, and the constant switching makes it difficult for the reader to settle into any one character’s perspective. The result is that readers will often distance themselves entirely and never really dig into the book. It’s best to let readers have the time to settle into a character’s head before you change viewpoints, and have a reason for changing viewpoints — the next viewpoint character is in a different location or has a truly different perspective. Don’t just change because you want us to know what everyone is thinking.

Having multiple viewpoint characters, especially if they’re in different locations, can be good for maintaining tension and suspense because you can leave one viewpoint character in a cliffhanger at the end of a scene or chapter and then go spend time with another character, delaying the resolution of the cliffhanger. Then cliffhang the new character and go back to resolve what was going on with the first character. You can have one character not knowing what’s going on with the other character, while the reader knows, which creates suspense, but then there’s also the danger that if the reader knows more than one of the characters, it can make the character seem dumb.

Third-person omniscient narration is when the narrator is outside the story and knows all. I’m not going to try to delve into it because I’ve never tried it, and it’s really tricky to pull off well in modern fiction. It’s most often used today for satire, in which the narrator is commenting on events, or pastiche of 19th century fiction.

Next, I’ll get into how you decide which POV to use in a book.

First-Person POV

Continuing my writing post series on point of view, I’m going to dig into first person POV today.

First person POV is when the narrator is a character in the story, so the parts where the narrator talks about him/herself are in first person — “I did this, this happened to me, we went there,” etc.

Usually, the narrator is also the protagonist or the main character, but not always. Dr. Watson is the first-person narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, reporting on the adventures of Holmes, the main character. You may also find first-person narrators in framing stories, something fairly common in 19th century novels — the narrator relates a story told to him by someone, and once the story gets started, he’s no longer a participant. An example of this is Wuthering Heights. Sometimes the narrative ends up getting rather nested, as in Frankenstein, in which the book is a series of letters relating stories told to the narrator by someone he encounters, and within those stories is yet another first-person narrative.

The story may be straightforward narrative — a story the narrator just happens to be telling to some undefined audience — or there may be some purpose or particular audience. The story might be the narrator’s testimony, it might be a series of journal entries (as in Bridget Jones’s Diary), or it might be letters. In the case of letters, there might be two first-person narrators who each tell their side of the story as the letters go back and forth.

One strength of first-person narration is that it showcases the narrator’s voice, which can give the book a very strong voice. This is a big reason this POV was popular for the chick lit genre, with its breezy and very contemporary voice, and why we often see it in young adult fiction. Or that voice can very firmly ground the story in a particular time, place, and culture, as in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. I find as an author that a book written in first person tends to flow more quickly. It’s almost like channeling the character and just letting her talk. On the other hand, you do have to be careful to stay in character and not let your author voice seep through. Anything said needs to be something the character would say, and stated the way the character would say it.

One challenge with first person that can be either a strength or weakness is that it can be rather limiting, since your narrator has to be present for every story event you want to dramatize. If your narrator isn’t present to either witness or participate in the event, you have to resort to having someone else tell the narrator about the event, which is less interesting for readers. That means you have to choose your narrator carefully. This character needs to be someone who is likely to witness and participate in the major story events. Once you’ve committed to a narrator, you’re limited in what events you can show.

But this can also be a strength, and is a reason this POV is popular for mysteries. If readers can only see and know things the narrator sleuth sees and knows, they get to be on the same page and solve the mystery with the narrator. There’s no opportunity for the reader to watch the villain at work, run across evidence the sleuth doesn’t know about, or hear conversations among suspects when the sleuth’s back is turned. This doesn’t mean that the narrator necessarily puts all the pieces together. You can have the narrator note but not interpret something, and clever readers may be able to do the math that the character isn’t inclined to do, so they figure out what’s going on before it occurs to the narrator.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of first-person narration is the fact that the narrator is aware that he or she is telling a story. That means the narrator is choosing what to tell and how to tell it. This is another factor in choosing your narrator wisely. If you want to write a steamy story and your heroine is the sort of person who has to spell the word “s-e-x” and blushes furiously when doing so, she’s not going to make a believable first-person narrator because that character wouldn’t tell anyone about the intimate details of her life. You have to stay in character with what the narrator character would be willing to share, what she’d think about, and what she’d share about her thoughts.

This makes first-person narration probably the best way to tell an unreliable narrator story. With third-person narration, in which the reader is eavesdropping on the characters, who are unaware that they’re in a story, it’s difficult to pull off a big twist about who a viewpoint character is and what their true motives are while still playing fair with the reader. With first-person narration, the character might be lying or withholding information. Your narrator might not share that he’s a secret agent whose real agenda is messing up the operation until he’s ready to reveal himself if he knows he’s telling the story. If you’re just eavesdropping in his brain, you’d think he’d be thinking about his mission and making plans. If you want your viewpoint character to keep secrets from the reader, first-person narration is the way to do it.

On the other hand, there is some loss of suspense with first person, since if the character is telling the story, that implies that the character survived the events and is looking back on them (unless, I suppose, you make it clear that the character is narrating from the afterlife but don’t make it clear when the character died). I have read at least one book in which the first-person narrator died—the story cut off abruptly right before the character headed off to the final confrontation, and then was picked up by someone else who talked about finding the journal that recorded the previous events, then told what he’d learned of the fate of the person who wrote it. I don’t know how many times you’d get away with that gimmick, though.

There are probably more limits to writing first-person narrative than you find with third-person, but those limits can be used to your advantage. Next, I’ll talk about third-person narrative.

The Curse of Clever Characters

I’m starting to see why it’s so tempting for authors to create characters who are Too Stupid to Live: It’s so much easier to write that way. If it’s totally in character for your people to just blunder into things or rush rashly into things, then it’s easier to get them into trouble. If your characters are really clever and thinking several steps ahead, considering possible consequences, planning their actions, and generally having common sense, they’re less likely to be able to get into the kind of trouble that makes for an interesting plot. There’s not much fun in a story that has a character see what the bad guy is up to, research it, come up with a plan that has several backups, and then execute that plan perfectly to achieve victory.

That means that if the characters are smart, the writer has to work a lot harder to make things interesting. There have to be unexpected snags the characters couldn’t have anticipated — events they weren’t aware of, betrayal by other characters, mechanical failure, badly timed weather events. This is the rare place when you can get away with using coincidence. The general rule is that you can only use coincidence to make things worse for your characters, never to make things easier. So you can use the coincidence of weather hitting at the worst possible time, the rare guard who shows up early for his shift change, a traffic accident that blocks the road and impedes the getaway, etc. Even the smartest person can’t plan for absolutely everything.

I keep running into this in the Rebels books because my main characters are so smart and logical. Verity doesn’t rush into things rashly. She does her research and thinks things through, trying to account for all contingencies. That means my first attempts at her carrying out a plan tend to be boring because her plans work. I have to go back and break her plans in ways that don’t make her look dumb.

And I’ve run into that yet again, only this time it’s both her and Henry, so we have two smart people, one of whom has extensive experience in pulling off elaborate plans and then getting away. Anything they come up with should work — and that’s a real problem for me. I have to come up with things they didn’t account for to force them to improvise. I have to be even smarter than my characters. It helps there that I can know things they don’t. I can make someone betray them, derail a train, cause an accident. But I still seem to always have the “the plan works” draft that has to be scrapped for the “unexpected things make everything more difficult” draft. At least this time around, I figured out what was happening only three pages in, and I removed the situation that made things too easy. That back door mysteriously vanished, like it never existed. No trace remains in the story.

I would say that I should give myself a break and write a dumb character, but I think I’d find that annoying for other reasons.

Falling into Structure

Among writers and other people involved in the books biz, there’s often discussion about various plot structures and their merits or whether they should even be used at all. Some claim they hate the hero’s journey or the three-act structure, or Save the Cat, or whatever the current trend is. But the thing is, I suspect most of them come down to more or less the same thing, expressed in different ways, and if you’re doing it right, you’re probably going to fall into these structures, even if you didn’t plan it that way.

For instance, the last few days I’ve been writing the big midpoint part of the book — not the climax, but the big stuff that happens in the middle to lead up to the climax. If you’re thinking in terms of the hero’s journey, that would be the Ordeal section. I did plan that because I’ve found that the best way to avoid a sagging middle is to write a big action sequence in the middle of the book. It’s kind of the midterm exam for the characters — they’re being tested on what they’ve learned so far and realize that they aren’t quite ready for the final confrontation, so they have to regroup before we get to the big climax of the story.

Yesterday’s writing picked up from that and went into the aftermath, a quieter scene of waiting, characters who hadn’t spent much time together getting to have a conversation, and even a bit of romance. And then I realized that without having planned it that way, I was writing the Reward scene (aka Seizing the Sword). It’s the regrouping after the Ordeal, a time of letting the characters and the readers catch their breath, often a time of bonding or a love scene. It’s the emotional aftermath of what they’ve just gone through. I didn’t chart it out to happen that way. It was just what seemed logical to write next, and that’s why the pattern is the pattern. It’s what makes sense in storytelling to maintain the sense of tension and emotion.

Today’s writing should get to another big emotional moment, as it involves a big discovery about something I’ve been teasing for a while, and I don’t have anything I really need to do today, other than write (and maybe a walk to the post office), so I hope to get a lot done, since I’m out all day tomorrow and Saturday at Choristers Guild. There’s a specific session on dealing with “live wires” in young children, and I need all the help I can get with my choir. My gang of unruly boys seems to absolutely love being there — they race to be first and would happily come into the room as soon as I arrive to set up if I let them — but it seems to be more about getting to play together than about actually doing choir stuff. My reward for going to learn how to direct my kids is getting to participate in a few of the adult sessions to learn to be a better singer. The sightreading sessions, where everyone else in the room is a professional, mostly with music degrees, are daunting and challenging, but still a lot of fun, and I get to sing first soprano for a change.

Point of View

It’s a new year, and time to get back to the writing posts. If you have a question or topic you’d like me to address, let me know. I’m also thinking about compiling these posts into an e-book. Would there be any interest in that? I’d have to figure out what a reasonable price would be. There would be a lot of content, but all that content is also available for free if you’re willing to dig through the blog archives.

Anyway, I’m going to address point of view because I recently tried to read a book and could never get into it because of a huge point of view error in the opening paragraph. So, time for a refresher!

There are four main points of view that you can use in writing fiction (and probably subgroups, but I’m going to try to keep it simple here).

The most common point of view used in fiction is probably third-person — the “he did” and “she said” kind of books. The narrator is outside the story. There are two main varieties of third-person POV.

Third-person omniscient has a narrator who knows everything, including what is in each person’s head and events that the characters don’t know about. To some extent, the narrator has his/her own voice as the storyteller, even though the narrator isn’t a participant. The narrator can dip into various characters’ heads to give their thoughts or can clue readers in on things the characters don’t know (the “little did he know, his life was about to change” sort of thing). You see this kind of narration in fairy tales and fables. It was also popular in a lot of Victorian fiction. Charles Dickens often used this POV. I think Jane Austen fits in here, too, as her books are very much in Jane’s voice, with a fair amount of editorial commentary on the characters and situations. It’s less popular today, but sometimes pops up in more satirical works, like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books.

The more common version of third-person narration is limited third, where you’re in only one character’s head at a time. It’s still “he did” and “she said,” but through the eyes of a particular character. The perspective may change from scene to scene, so you get multiple viewpoints in a book, but while you’re in a character’s head, you only see, hear, think, and experience what that person would be aware of. To see that character from the outside, you have to get into someone else’s head.

Another point of view used in fiction is first-person. That would be the “I” books — The narrator is a participant in the story and is telling his/her own story. You see this a lot in mysteries. I write my Enchanted, Inc. and Rebel Mechanics series in first-person. Because the narrator is a character, you’re limited to what the narrator character sees, hears, and thinks. You can’t dip into anyone else’s head. You can’t show events if the narrator isn’t present.

Finally, there’s second person — “you” books. This is fairly rare and tends to be used either in more literary stories or in choose-your-own-adventure books. It turns the reader into the protagonist: “You wake up in the morning and don’t know what’s happening.” Aside from pronouns, this functions a lot like first person because readers don’t get access to anything the protagonist doesn’t know or experience.

That’s a broad overview. In the coming weeks, I’ll dig deeper into the more common viewpoints and address the strengths, weaknesses, and pitfalls.

Your Novel Writing Resolution

This will be the last writing post of the year. I'll take a break during the holidays and be back in the new year.

A lot of people may try to write a novel during National Novel Writing Month in November, but I suspect a lot of people also make a new year's resolution to write a novel. If you're planning to make 2017 the year you finally write that book you've always wanted to write, here are a few tips to get it done.

You can start working on it now -- maybe not writing, but this is a good time to start thinking. What story do you want to write? Who are the characters? What are the conflicts? What is the setting? Is there any research you need to do? The more you think about it, the more ready you'll be to start writing, and the less likely you are to fizzle out after the part that came with the initial idea is done. If you aren't sure what you need to figure out, try writing down everything you know about this idea. You'll soon see what parts need to be better developed before you can start writing.

When making your writing plans, set realistic goals based on your writing pace and the time you have available to write. If all you want is to finish a novel by the end of the year, just writing a page a day will get you there. It's better to set an easy goal you're sure to achieve (and even top) than an overly ambitious goal that you're likely to miss on a regular basis. If your goal is to write five pages and you write two, you feel like you've failed and are running behind. If your goal is to write one page and you write two, you feel a sense of accomplishment and triumph that will give you some momentum into the next day. You can always up your goal after you've established a habit and can see what your pace really is.

But you don't have to write every day to succeed. I keep seeing that advice from writers who claim that if you don't write every day, you're not a real writer, and it's nonsense. You're a writer if you write, period. You can get that book done in a year whether you write one page a day, seven pages on a Saturday, or three and a half pages on Saturday and three and a half pages on Sunday. Unless you're a full-time writer, you have to fit your writing around your existing life, which probably includes things like work, family, and taking care of your home, maybe even a social life. However, that doesn't mean you can use life as an excuse. You just need to take it into consideration when you schedule writing time like it's an appointment. When I was working full-time, I designated writing days and life days on weeknights -- I tried to cram all after-work errands, appointments and weekday activities into certain nights, leaving other nights entirely free. I didn't expect much from myself on weeknight writing sessions, just enough to keep the momentum going, and then I tried to get serious amounts of work done in marathon sessions on Friday nights and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Other people have great success fitting in small bits of writing in every little bit of free time -- a page at lunch, a paragraph or two every time they pass the computer. Some people are most productive if they get up and get their writing done first thing in the morning, before work and life. Others do best at the end of the day, after taking care of everything else. There's no one right answer. You just need to figure out what works for you.

Don't give up if you falter. Just get started again. No one will know when they read the finished product whether you stuck to your schedule or had to catch up. The point is to get it done. If you don't have a contracted deadline, you're not even obligated to finish the book this year.

Try to get a good way into the book before you let yourself give up on that story. Sometimes you do figure out that a story idea isn't viable, but if you've never written a whole book before, it's hard to tell whether you're dealing with a non-viable story or whether you're just stuck and need to work through it. You may need more brainstorming or research. Don't ditch the book you're working on if you get a brilliant new idea. The more you write, the more creative you get, so the ideas will start flowing. Don't let them distract you. Write them down and keep going. You need to finish something if you're ever going to go anywhere. A half dozen partial novels won't do you any good. You can do something with a completed novel.

Have a reward in mind for finishing your project. Visualize that reward when you want to give up (and it's not fair to cheat and reward yourself without reaching your goal).

Good luck, and have fun!

You've Finished NaNoWriMo. Now What?

If you participated in National Novel Writing month, you just have a few more hours (depending on when you read this) to finish. If you "won," congratulations. When I finish a book, it's a kind of high. All those moments in the middle when it felt like a slog and I was tempted to give up are forgotten, and when I get to the end, I'm convinced it's the best book ever. You may be tempted to send it off to editors or agents or upload it to Amazon right away.

Don't.

Most editors and agents are winding down their reading for the year, trying to clear out their in-boxes before the holidays, so sending it now probably won't do you much good. And it's probably not ready for publication. Here are some things you might want to do before you try to get it published:

1) Put it aside. Enjoy the holidays. If an idea relating to the book strikes you, write it down, but otherwise don't look at the book until the new year. Giving yourself some distance helps you make better revisions. That's because right now, you're still attached to the emotion of writing it. You remember which parts were difficult, which parts came easily, where you got all the ideas. Remembering all that makes it more difficult to make the right edits. I've often found that when I look at a book again after a break of more than a few weeks, there are things I don't understand about my own plot, or I don't get my own jokes. Distance allows you to come closer to reading it like an editor might.

2) When you get it out, try to read it like a reader would. If you've got the technological capability to put it on an e-reader or tablet, do so, and then just read, not editing, but taking notes if something strikes you. This read is more for plot structure -- when does it drag? Is there something that doesn't make sense? How does it flow? Try to outline the piece and see how it holds together, then figure out what major surgery needs to be done. Are there scenes that need to be cut, added, or replaced to make the plot work? Do scenes need to be rearranged? Do you need to add or cut a subplot? Are there dangling plot threads you need to deal with? Are there any continuity errors that require you to set things up earlier in the book so they'll work at the end?

3) Now you can get down to editing. I generally make at least three passes. The first is the major surgery -- the bulk of the rewriting. That's when I add, cut, or replace scenes and make the plot work. The next pass is to make the words pretty. That's when I make sure the writing is tight, that I'm not repeating words too many times, that the jokes make sense, that all the words that need to be there are there, that I've used the best words for the occasion, that the character voices are unique. The final pass is proofreading, and then I usually read it out loud. That's when I spot awkward sentence structure, missing words that my brain tried to fill in, repetitions, and clunky dialogue. I often change fonts in the document between each phase, which makes it look like a different book. Words are in a different place on the page, which makes you see them differently, and it creates juxtapositions that may show you that you're repeating words within a paragraph or page.

4) Find someone else to read it. This is especially true for a first book. Get someone you trust to give you feedback. You can find critique groups or partners in online writing groups or in writing organizations. Friends and family aren't necessarily a good bet unless they're writers or avid readers who will give you honest feedback. And when you get feedback, accept it graciously. The goal for all of you is to make the book better. You're not helping the book if you get defensive about criticism and treat the person giving feedback like an enemy who's trying to hurt you. The criticism may be wrong, but you may have done something wrong that led the person to make the wrong conclusion. If something's unclear earlier in the book, it may lead readers to make wrong assumptions that affect their reactions to something later. Really mull over and think about the feedback before you accept or reject it.

5) Then you may go through another few rounds of revisions, fixing things that came up in the feedback, then proofreading after you've made those changes.

6) Now you might be ready to submit, though it might be a good idea to let it rest again for a week or so and give it one more read. Meanwhile, you can be researching your options. Don't submit to an agent or publisher without doing your research. Make sure you're dealing with legitimate agents who actually sell books and legitimate publishers that actually put out books. See how they like to receive submissions and work on your query. You may want to customize the query for each person you send it to. If you're thinking about self publishing, do some research into that.

7) Now you can send queries to agents or editors, if you're planning to take that path. If you're going to self-publish, you need to find an editor to hire. You might want to get a developmental editor to work on the story itself, especially if it's a first book, and you definitely need a copyeditor. You'll also need an artist and/or cover designer. Look at the books that are out there and see how yours will fit into the market. Independent publishing is easier than it once was, but you can't just throw something out onto the market and expect it to make money. You need to put some work and money into it.

Good luck!

Worldbuilding: The Trouble with Magic

In my writing posts, I've been talking about worldbuilding. You're doing worldbuilding whenever you write fiction, but we tend to think of it as relating to fantasy, where you're creating a different world that works in unusual ways. One of those differences is generally the existence of some form of magic, and that's one of the big pitfalls of fantasy worldbuilding. If you don't handle magic well, it can completely derail your plot. Magic can either make things too difficult for your heroes -- if the villain has it and they don't -- make things too easy for your heroes -- they can solve the whole thing with a wave of a hand -- or make your heroes look like idiots if they have the power to solve the whole thing with a wave of a hand and still go about it the hard way. If you're going to have magic in your world, you need to put some thought and planning into it. It's a really good idea to have at least a general idea of how your magical system works and what the rules and limitations are before you start writing, and then force yourself to abide by it. If you make up the magic as you go and resist codifying it into any kind of system along the way, you'll actually make things more difficult for yourself because it gets harder to come up with a plot that still works.

First, think about the source of your magic and who can use it. Where does the power come from? Is it in the atmosphere? In objects? In people? Is the ability to use magic something a person is born with? Is it something anyone can do, but some people can do better than others? Is it something that happens to a person? Is it genetic, running in families, or is it random? Does it require training? Do some people have more power than others, or is the difference in training? You don't necessarily have to spell all this out in your story, but you should probably have some rationale for which characters have magical abilities and which characters don't. You also probably want some kind of balance between the villain and the hero, enough to maintain a struggle, with some way of one side finding an advantage in the final confrontation. If one side is overpowered, it's hard to keep things going. Why doesn't the more powerful person just crush the other? Sometimes, that balance can come from the hero needing to learn and gain abilities -- he may not face the villain until he's leveled up some, might lose the earlier confrontation, then may grow some more until he's able to win. You need to build these possibilities into your magical system and think about how it plays into your characters.

Next, it will really help your plotting if there's some kind of limitation on magic use, whether it's a power supply issue, the way the magic works, or rules with real consequences. Otherwise, magic makes things too easy and drains all the suspense from the story. If all your magical characters can just wave their hands and do anything they want, non-stop, then you have to contrive ways to keep them from being effective immediately. It seems less artificial if limits are already built in. Your characters might get tired and hungry from all the power used to do magic. There may be more or less magical power in different locations. They may need to use tools, like wands, to use magic -- if your magic user is useless without a wand, it's easy to temporarily take away his power. They may need to use specific spells that require ritual or ingredients. They may need to know the incantation and motions to make a specific spell work. There may be rules about who can use what forms of magic in particular circumstances, with dire consequences if those rules aren't obeyed. If you want to really make things tough, there can be a major cost -- the magic user gives up part of her lifespan, ages, suffers pain, has to draw upon someone else's lifespan, uses up finite resources. All of these things keep people from just waving their hands and getting anything they want.

Having magic will change society in some ways. Part of that will determine -- or depend upon -- whether magic is open or secret and what the consequences are for spilling the secret. If magic is open, are the magic users in power? If not, why not, given that they have all that power? If magic is secret, the same questions apply -- are magical people secretly using their magic to get into power? If not, why not? If magic is known, what does everyone else think about it? Is it revered or feared? Have non-magical people tried to pass any laws regulating magic use? Are laws like that a reason magic is now underground, if it's secret? Does magic create a class system? How does magic affect day-to-day life? Has it affected the development of technology? How does it affect the economy if some people can create things out of thin air? What kind of transportation system is required if people can poof themselves from place to place?

One particular issue relating to magic is the possibility of magical healing. It's handy to be able to badly injure or even kill your characters and then get them back on their feet again without a lengthy recovery period, but that can also sap suspense from your story if you know that any magic user can wave a hand and heal any wound. If that's possible, why have hospitals and doctors? It works best if there are even more limits to healing than to regular magic -- that's a special magical talent, it takes certain training, it has a high energy cost, it may mend a wound but not take care of related problems like blood loss, etc. Then you can maintain some suspense as to whether a character will live or die and still have the chance to have a character healed, without guaranteeing that every character can be so easily healed and without making your characters look stupid or callous if not everyone is healed that way.

Magic can make writing easier in some respects -- I've had editors give up on nitpicking something in a book when they realize that they're dealing with a world where magic works. "A wizard did it" can be a perfectly valid explanation. But at the same time, making "a wizard did it" be plausible requires a lot of background work.

Worldbuilding: Using Your World

I've been talking about worldbuilding, getting into the physical location and the society. Now it's time to start using this world. After all, you're not writing an encyclopedia entry. You're writing a story, so it's more about the things that happen in this world than it is about the world itself.

A lot of how your worldbuilding plays into your storytelling depends on your creative process. Sometimes, you build the world, then figure out the possible stories. Sometimes you come up with the story, then build the world where it can happen. You may come up with characters first, then figure out what kind of world they live in, and then figure out the story. You may come up with the story, think of the characters needed to tell the story, then figure out what kind of world they might live in. Or it may be a series of layers -- a bit of each, building as you simultaneously develop the world, story, and characters, with each new idea in one area sparking new ideas in other areas.

However you go about it, the world itself will show in the larger societal conflicts and in the interpersonal conflicts. You'll see that in wars and the reasons for them, in the crises that are affecting your characters (drought, natural disasters, wars, curses), the places your characters need to travel to obtain the things they need, etc. And it will show in the skills your characters have (or don't have), the resources they have, the resources they need, the way they see and interact with other people. It will show in the laws that constrain their actions and the consequences for violating those laws, as well as what the characters have to do to avoid those consequences or make others pay consequences for their actions (is there a legal system, or do you have to take justice into your own hands?). Your world will even show in what your characters eat, what they wear, where and how they live, the language they use, their superstitions and beliefs, their attitude toward authority, and how that compares and contrasts to other characters who might be from a different culture or class.

A lot of how your world is conveyed will depend on how we're seeing it. If you've ever traveled with another person and both of you had cameras, you might notice that each of you has a very different set of photos from the same locations because you notice or are interested in very different things. The perspective of the point-of-view character makes a big difference. Imagine a stranger coming into town and taking stock of his surroundings. If he's a thief, he'll notice how much wealth there is, what objects worth stealing there are, how much security there is, what the consequences might be for thievery, and what possible exit routes there might be. A poor person from a rural area might see even a relatively poor town as wealthy compared to her experience. A wealthy person from a big city may see the same town as poor, shabby, and provincial. A seamstress may notice the clothing, colors, fabrics, and workmanship, while a metalsmith wouldn't notice any of that, instead focusing on the ironwork on the buildings and the armor worn by the guards. A cook may pay attention to the cooking smells coming from houses and the variety of foods available in the market. A hungry person will mostly notice food. A weary person will home in on inns. You get the idea. What would your viewpoint character notice or care about in the parts of the world he visits? If it's not the things the reader needs to know to understand the plot, then you may need to adjust the circumstances -- change the character or find a way to create a situation that will force the character to notice the things you want to convey. I think this is one reason why thieves are such popular fantasy characters -- their work requires them to notice a lot of details, they pay attention to the wealthy as potential targets, and they move among the lower classes. That gives the writer a lot of opportunities for describing the world through the characters' eyes.

One challenge in conveying a world is that a character isn't naturally going to take note of the ordinary. If things are going on just like they always have, most people aren't going to have an interior monologue noting the ordinary details. You want to avoid the "As you know, Bob" conversation in which two characters tell each other things both of them already know. Most people don't sit around talking about the history of the place where they live or think in detail about how a device they use daily works. One good way around this is the fish-out-of-water character, a newcomer who doesn't know these things and who can ask questions -- why does everyone do that when the king passes, why does this city fear that city, how do you use magic, etc. That can either be your viewpoint character who's the newcomer and has to learn the ways of this new situation, or your viewpoint character could be the veteran who has to explain things to a newcomer. The other way to describe the ordinary is to break it. You wouldn't have a character who routinely uses a machine think in depth about how it works when it's working normally, but if it stops working, he may think about what it's supposed to do while figuring out what's wrong. If something unusual happens to break routine, then people might think about what usually happens and what's different about today. If it's a dry climate and it almost never rains, people may not think about the lack of rain, the heat, and the dust, because that's just the way it is. If it rains unexpectedly, then they can notice the difference and notice when things return to normal. Breaking the usual also adds conflict and tension, so it drives the story while describing the world rather than just being description.

Ideally, the worldbuilding should be a seamless part of your story and characters so readers just feel immersed. You want them to understand the world enough to understand the story and for it to feel like a real place. You don't want to become so enamored of your world that you stop the action to tell us all about it.

Next, I'll deal with the special case of worlds that involve magic.

Worldbuilding: Society

I'm continuing a series of writing posts on worldbuilding. Last time, I talked about geography. Now it's time to talk about the people who inhabit the world, since they'll probably have a lot to do with the way your story shapes up. People can be very influenced by the place in which they live. That can have something to do with climate -- you get very different cultures at the equator than you do in harsh northern areas -- or location -- more remote areas are likely to be more homogeneous, while places that are easy to get to will probably end up being more diverse. That diversity doesn't always come without struggle and opposition. If you look at patterns in immigration in port cities in our world, you see initial opposition to newcomers, who at first keep to themselves in enclaves. Gradually, their children assimilate, and the greater culture begins to adopt some of their culture (food, arts, etc.). They become part of the greater culture, which is then resistant to the next wave of newcomers.

What kind of people live in your story setting? Think about their daily lives -- what are their homes like, what foods do they eat, what do they do for fun, what are some of the key industries that might employ them, what kind of arts do they pursue? One tricky area that tends to get left out in fiction is the matter of faith. Most human cultures have had some kind of belief system that explains their origins and the world around them. These belief systems may grow and strengthen, get replaced by something else, morph into something else, or fade away. Even a society that has become more secular has generally made a choice to turn away from old beliefs, and there are people who still hold onto them. Most legal systems have developed from religious laws, and a lot of cultural rules and attitudes have their roots in religious beliefs. Many of the arts were first used as expressions of faith. You get a richer world if you at least consider the question instead of creating a world where this doesn't even come up. You could get a very different society by imagining an old religion with a very different set of beliefs and tracing how those beliefs affect laws and culture. That could change traditional gender roles and views of morality.

Are the people in this area conquerors or the conquered? There are nations that tend to be the aggressors and those that tend to get overrun, either because of their geographic location with no natural barriers or defenses or because of their tendency not to put up a fight. Is the conquered nation currently under occupation or control, or are they autonomous again after being liberated by someone else? History of conquering or being conquered will affect the psyche of a nation and possibly the attitudes of the people living there, as well as their view of outsiders, violence, and the need for a military.

How does the economy work? What is traded? What is produced? Is there currency, or is it a barter economy? Is there any kind of economic control by the government, or is it a free-for-all? What's the distribution of wealth? How do people feel about the distribution of wealth? Is there a class system, and how flexible is it? Can someone move up just by amassing wealth and status, or is birth a major factor? If there is a rigid class system based on birth, how did the upper-class families attain their status, and when?

And is any of this changing, on the verge of changing, or subject to change if outside forces (like events in your story) act on this part of your world? Is someone -- either your hero or your villain -- trying to change it? How stable or precarious is your society? Is it strong enough to survive a disaster, or will it all fall apart if one thing happens? Is there some similar or contrasting society nearby that may affect this society -- enemies that might invade, enemies this society might invade, allies, potential allies? Where does this culture fit into the overall world? Is it better or worse than other cultures?

History is a great place to look for ideas of how a society might develop and what can tear it apart.

Once you've developed all these things about your world, it's time to think about how you'll show them in your story, and that will be the next topic.

Worldbuilding: Geography

In my writing posts, I'm doing a series on worldbuilding. Previously, I introduced the topic by talking about your story world being a place where things can happen. Now we need to look at the actual place and think about geography.

This isn't just about the maps at the front of a fantasy novel. It's about what those maps imply and what goes behind the maps. Although we call it "world" building, it may not be about a whole planet, but rather about the places that affect your story. This is where some knowledge of geography and historical geography can help. For one thing, there's usually a reason why people live in a particular place. You can look at a map and see groupings of towns and cities. This is especially obvious in older settlements. People tended to come to places where they had things they needed to survive. Water was especially key, for crop irrigation, as a source for food (fish), as a draw for wild game, and as a means for transportation. It's easier to get to and from a place near a river, and it's easier to bring in goods and send away materials for trade.

Settlements might also arise near some other natural resource, like a mine or quarry. In a fantasy world with magic, cities might be built along ley lines. While many settlements arise because of easier access, there might also be settlements built because a location is safe and easy to defend, like a mountain outpost.

There can be less natural reasons for a settlement. A city might arise around a religious shrine that's based on an event that happened in that location. Once transportation technology comes along, it can drive settlement. If you travel on a road that parallels railroad tracks (or former railroad tracks) that date to the age of steam trains, you'll probably find a town or some kind of settlement every seven miles, whether or not there's a natural reason for there to be a town there. That's because steam trains required service every fourteen miles, and they set up the stops so that every other one served trains going in opposite directions. That meant there was a railroad facility every seven miles, which meant that the people who worked there needed a place to live and access to services. Since the trains stopped there, it was a good place to put things like stores. Other people then settled there to serve the railroad people and travelers, as well as people like farmers who brought good there to ship elsewhere. Churches and other civic institutions were established. Some of these towns became self-sustaining and continue today, even though the trains no longer stop there. Some remain as just a cluster of houses or an old church because there was little to keep people there if there weren't trains stopping.

The reason for the settlement and the ability to access it will affect the way that society develops. A place that's easy to reach by long-distance travelers is probably going to be more culturally diverse than the secure mountain fortress. A place with good resources is going to be wealthier, but also may have to be more fortified because others will covet that wealth and try to take it by force.

So, in planning the corner of your world where your story takes place, why are people living there? Can people from other places get there easily? What do they bring with them? What would happen to that society if something changed? If the mine is played out or the trains stop running, would the society continue? Do people feel safe living there? Is the place under attack often? How does this place compare to its surroundings or the rest of the world? Has the society spread from the initial settlement?

You don't have to actually draw a map, but knowing why people live there is a good start to figuring out how your place works. If you're using a real setting, it might help to look at some of the history of that place to understand why it's there and how it developed. That will affect who lives there and why, which could have an impact on your story.