Stephen King’s Best Advice For Writers

Today I continue my previous discussion of Stephen King’s book, On Writing. (see: The 5 Best Books on Writing)

At the end of my last post I promised I would talk about Stephen King’s best advice for writers. Let’s do this as a countdown. Starting us off, here’s number five:

5. Fear Is The Muse-Killer

“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one’s own pleasure, that fear may be mild.... If, however, one is working under deadline … that fear may be intense.” “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as “good” and other sorts as “bad,” is fearful behavior.”

4. The Magic Is In You

“I’m often asked if I think the beginning writer of fiction can benefit from writing classes or seminars. The people who ask are, all too often, looking for a magic bullet or a secret ingredient or possibly Dumbo’s magic feather, none of which can be found in classrooms or at writing retreats, no matter how enticing the brochures may be.” King uses Dumbo’s magic feather also as an analogy for the illusory appeal of adverbs (and quick fixes of all kinds) and a writer’s desperate clutching at them. At the base of this clutching is—as we’ve just seen—fear. Stephen King admonishes us to remember that Dumbo didn’t need the feather to fly. And neither do we.

3. Have An Ideal Reader (I.R.)

“When I write a scene that strikes me as funny (like the pie-eating contest in “The Body” or the execution rehearsal in The Green Mile), I am also imagining my I.R. finding it funny. I love it when Tabby [King's ideal reader] laughs out of control—she puts her hands up as if to say I surrender and these big tears go rolling down her cheeks. I love it, that’s all, fucking adore it, and when I get hold of something with that potential, I twist it as hard as I can. During the actual writing of such a scene (door closed), the thought of making her laugh—or cry—is in the back of my mind. During the rewrite (door open), the question—is it funny enough yet? scary enough?—is right up front. I try to watch her when she gets to a particular scene, hoping for at least a smile or—jackpot, baby!—that big belly-laugh with the hands up, waving in the air.” When you write your first draft, write it for yourself. But stories are meant to be told. They are crafted with an audience in mind, even an audience of one. On the first draft—door closed to the world—write for yourself, write imagining your ideal reader. Would he/she laugh? Cry? Be bored? Scared? Irritated? When you rewrite you are no longer writing just for yourself and your ideal reader, now you are writing for the world (door open). Now you want to do two things. First, remove everything that doesn’t serve the story and, second, twist it as hard as you can. If you’re going for a laugh, make it the biggest laugh you can. If you want to scare your reader, terrify them.

2. Writing Is Seduction

“Language,” King writes, “does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story …, [it is] to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.” Yes! That. Of course King doesn’t mean that anything goes. He explains: “It is possible to overuse the well-turned fragment … but frags can also work beautifully to streamline narration, create clear images, and create tension as well as to vary the prose-line. A series of grammatically proper sentences can stiffen that line, make it less pliable. Purists hate to hear that and will deny it to their dying breath, but it’s true. … The single-sentence paragraph more closely resembles talk than writing, and that’s good. Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.” Okay, we’ve reached it! Stephen King’s best advice for writers:

1. Write To Make Yourself Happy

Stephen King writes not because it makes him millions of dollars—I’m sure he would continue to write even if he flipped burgers for a living. He writes because it makes him happy. “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.” If you haven’t read Stephen King’s, On Writing, I would encourage you to. If I could point to any one thing that made me a better writer, it would be King’s advice in this book. In the end, that’s all we can shoot for, not to be as good as the writers we admire, but simply to be better than we are.

Other articles you might like:

The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings
Stephen King: How His Novel "Carrie" Changed His Life
My Analysis of 16 books: Stephen King is correct, the adverb is not your friend.

Be Fearless: Make Your Characters Real

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been overly concerned with what others think about my work, letting it paralyze me at times. This week I want to talk about the importance of knowing oneself and infusing one’s unique perspective into one’s work.

As Grace Paley wrote:

“The difference between writers and critics is that in order to function in their trade, writers must live in the world, and critics, to survive in the world, must live in literature. That’s why writers in their own work need have nothing to do with criticism, no matter on what level.” [1]

The writer immerses herself in the world to, in part, develop her unique perspective on the world. 

Paley goes on:

“One of the reasons writers are so much more interested in life than others who just go on living all the time is that what the writer doesn’t understand the first thing about is just what he acts like such a specialist about — and that is life. And the reason he writes is to explain it all to himself, and the less he understands to begin with, the more he probably writes. And he takes his ununderstanding, whatever it is — the face of wealth, the collapse of his father’s pride, the misuses of love, hopeless poverty — he simply never gets over it. He’s like an idealist who marries nearly the same woman over and over.” [1]

Writers are both stubborn and biased. We have our own questions, our own fears, our own concerns. Certain things mystify us and we are driven to unravel these mysteries even as we recognize the impossibility of such a task.

Paley’s words connected with me like a swift punch to the solar plexus and I realized a truth I’ve been ignoring: each writer’s work is unique because they—a person unlike any other—have given birth to it.  It has grown from the soil of their own concerns, their flaws, their unique worldview.

Creating Human Characters: Letting Your Life Guide Your Writing

This is going to seem like a digression, but hold on. 

I read an inspiring post today, “The Secret Behind Making Me Care About Your Characters,” by Chuck Wendig. In it he wrote:

“When I talk to you about your character, and you start to tell me, “Well, she has to find the DONGLE OF MAGIC to fight the WIZARD OF BADNESS and then she tames HORBERT THE MANY-HEADED DRAGON,” I immediately start to cross my eyes. I emit drool. I have a small seizure and then fall into a torpid grief-coma. Grief over what you’ve done to the human condition.

“And what you’ve done to the human condition is ignore it utterly.”

[...]

“A character doesn’t care about the WIDGET OF MAJESTY or the GIZMO OF FLARNIDONG unless those things suit something altogether more personal. Meaning: the character cares most about things personally relevant to the character. Not global, galactic, kingdom-wide concerns. But concerns about that person’s intimate sphere of influence.”

“Characters care about family, friends, jobs, love, hate. If they care about money or power, it’s because they see it as something they need personally. If they have larger, grander principles, those principles must be rooted in something intimate to the character.”

[...]

“We don’t sympathize with Luke’s galactic ambitions. We sympathize with him wanting to get off that [...] hillbilly planet. We totally grok him wanting to be something greater than he seems to be — the desire to stop being some blue-milk-slurpin’ sandfarmer and become the last of the Jedi, well, shit, who doesn’t want to accelerate past our seemingly mundane destinies?

“And it’s from this — from the part where the characters cleave to their personal goals, ideas and problems that we see them start to make changes.”

[...]

“[W]e look for things we understand. (And here may be the truest exploration of “write what you know” — it’s less about the facts and data and details and more about the authenticity of the human experience that you should draw upon. You don’t know what it is to karate kick a yeti, but you do know what it is to suffer loss and lies, to want love and experience hate [...].”

Although Chuck Wendig goes on to make a larger point about character versus plot, what he says right here, in the excerpts I’ve provided, nicely echoes Grace Paley’s point.

In a way, each of us is trapped inside our own skin, locked into one perspective, one worldview. 

In this light, then, perhaps one of the roles of a writer is to know our own mind, our own questions, our own fears, our own puzzlements, with such thoroughness that we infuse this understanding, this perspective, into our writing. Further, we want to do it so successfully that, for a time, our readers feel themselves transported into another worldview. 

Which, incidentally, doesn’t narrow what we can write about. Just the opposite. By getting in touch with (for instance) our own fear of failure one can craft innumerable believable characters, whether they want to build a rocket to Mars or get through their child’s first day at school.

That’s it! Write your worldview, write your soul. I’ll talk to you again next week. In the meantime, good writing!

Notes

1. This quotation is from a lecture Grace Paley gave in the 1960s entitled, “The Value of Not Understanding Everything.” The transcript was included in the volume “Just As I Thought.” I came across these quotations on the site Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org). Specifically, through an article by Maria Popova, “The Value of Not Understanding Everything: Grace Paley’s Advice to Aspiring Writers.”

Getting Story Ideas

I'm starting a new short story but have only a vague idea about what I want to do. Something involving either an antihero or an extremely flawed character, but the story itself hasn't knit together.

Sure, this is going to be a short story so I don't need to love the seed idea in the way I do for a novel. Short stories only inhabit me for a few days then they are completed, birthed, and given over to the world, but 80,000 word novels can sit with me for years. That's an idea I really have to identify with.

But, even so, I haven't been able to conjure up a new short story idea, one I love enough to devote 20 or so hours of my life to. 

So when I saw Melinda Leigh's article, Stumped for Story Ideas? it was as though I heard trumpets. Yes! I thought, this couldn't have been more for me if the author had put my name on it.

Newspaper Headlines

Melinda suggests looking at newspaper headlines when we're stumped for ideas. She writes,

I’m going to share my little secret. Some of my plot ideas come from news headlines. Here’s my trick:  I don’t click through to the article. Instead, I let my imagination fill in all the details.

Of course! We've all done this at one time or another, but it's something I neglected to try this time. So, let's do it.

The first place I looked was CNN but many of the headlines are about world affairs but I know that my story takes place in Vermont, in a small isolated town. (Actually, I didn't know that until I wrote it just now. Huh! Well, it's working!)

Here's something:

A rare gathering of presidents: Hail to the chiefs. All five living presidents are together today to launch George W. Bush's presidential library.

Also, on the same page is an advertisment for Anthorny Bourdain's new show,

Parts Unknown. 

Wouldn't that be a great title: Parts Unknown? Especially if it was about a serial killer with what used to be called wendigo psychosis?

And, no, I'm not making that up, you can read about it here: Wendigo. (Remind you of anyone? Hannibal Lector perhaps?)

Here's another headline, this time from The Guardian:

UK crime at lowest level for 30 years

I wonder how the level of crime is being reduced? I can think of a few delectable possibilities.

Old Scandals

To be honest, I wasn't inspired by the news headlines, so I tried searching for "scandals." Still the pickings were slim. Then I happened upon this:

Mindy McCready: Fifth Victim of 'Celeb Rehab' Curse

I have NO idea what the article is about. A coven of rogue witches? A rehab clinic that is 'disappearing' their clientele? Or perhaps a previously unknown disease?

Why You Should Never Borrow Justin Bieber's Car

Assassins? Unconventional security measures? Being transformed to look like Justin (he's handsome and rich, but being in the public eye constantly must have its drawbacks)?

Michael Phelps Hooks Up With Most Notorious Hollywood Waitress

It's the first time I've seen "most notorious" paired with "waitress." 

Still, I think Melinda's headlines were better:

“Crude Joke Costs Two People their Jobs”

“Fighter Apparently Tried to Fake Own Death”

“Shootout in Texas may be Linked to Colo. Deaths”

“Manhunt Begins in Coney Island Shootings”

“Congolese Warlord Arrives at War Crimes Court Jail”

I still don't know what my next short story is going to be about, but I've got some possibilities. I'll take it. (grin)

I know this is the most common question a writer gets asked, but where do you get your story ideas? A few times I've been inspired by dreams.

Other articles you might like:

- 6 Tips On How To Read Critically
- How To Create A Press Kit
- Chuck Wendig On Fairy Dross And Pegasus Dreams

Photo credit: "bloodgate fire" by lovingyourwork.com under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Analyzing Story Structure

We've all heard the advice that to become a better writer we must first become better readers. I'd like to take this advice seriously.

I want to read and analyze more flash fiction so I can ... well, I think of it almost like pulling back the curtain on a magic trick. When I read a story I'm caught up and transported into the story world. Because of this I usually don't read critically, I'm happy to be whisked away and entertained.

This will be a challenge.

Here are some guidelines, some questions, I've come up to help me analyze narrative. I haven't made any attempt to provide a complete list of questions so if you see something missing please do let me know in the comments.

An Analysis of Narrative

Characterization

- Who is the protagonist? Antagonist? Who are the main characters? What are their names? 
- What do the characters look like physically? What do they wear? What are their quirks, their idiosyncrasies? What tags, traits and tells are associated with each main character?
- What point of view is the story told from?
- Map out the character arc for each main character.
- What are their goals? What object or state-of-affairs do they seek? (For instance, Indiana Jones in Raiders sought the ark.)
- Conflict. What is preventing the character from attaining their goal?
- Who is the antagonist? The protagonist? Is there a helper character? A foil? A mentor?

Story elements

- What is the setting?
- Is there a theme? If so, what is it?
- Is the story mainstream or genre/category? If the latter, which genre? Which sub-genre? (Wikipedia has a list of genres and sub-genres as well as a list of literary genres.)

Plot

- Describe the original world of the protagonist
- What was the inciting incident/call to adventure?
- Describe the new situation/special world.
- How is the protagonist tested?
- Is there a point of no return to mark the halfway point?
- How were the stakes raised in the second half of the story?
- What was the major setback (also sometimes called the 'dark night of the soul') toward the end of the story?
- Resolution. Was the main arc completed?

Note:

- When listing the facts of the story take note of who the information came from. You may find out later they were lying or, for whatever reason, it wasn't accurate.

Comments

These questions are intended to be suggestions only. Not every story has the same structure, nor should it. For myself, my goal is to simply pay closer attention to how the stories I read are constructed so I can continue to improve my own writing.

What questions do you ask when reading? What elements of story structure do you pay special attention to?

Other articles you might like:

- The Trouble With Adverbs
- 8 Tips For Finding The Motivation To Write
- Describing Character Reactions And Emotions: She Smiled, He Frowned

Photo credit: "shachihoko" by EmreAyar under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 3

Today I'm going to do what I promised yesterday and step us through the rest of our five paragraph summary of the journey of your Hero and his band of intrepid adventurers.

Below are links to the previous articles in this series, something I'm calling The Starburst Method, though I've been thinking of changing the name to something more descriptive. The Sculpting Method or perhaps The Diamond Method.

Since this article is a continuation of the last two (The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey), you may want to give them a quick read.

1. The Starburst Method: What It Is And What It Can Do
This gives a roadmap of where we're going and why we want to get there.

2. The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters 
We begin to get to know our characters, what they want, what they fear, what they do for a living, what their dreams are and, most importantly, what their goal is.

3. The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1
Here we go deeper into our characters and start transforming our knowledge into a narrative. We hone what we know about our characters until it can be expressed in five paragraphs that summarize our hero's journey.

4. The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 2
A continuation of the ideas in (3).

Let's dive right in!

4. It All Falls Apart

Here we meet our antagonist.

Of course your antagonist has been around, in story terms, for some time. Probably ever since you entered the Special World. In fact, he was likely one of the first people your hero met, or heard about, when he entered the Special World. This is just the first time we're meeting him in our summary of your hero's journey.

Also, when I say it all falls apart I'm not talking about The Dark Night of the Soul or The All Hope Is Lost point that usually occurs about 3/4 of the way through a story. The 'All Hope is Lost' point occurs when the hero and his intrepid band of adventurers lumber up to the climax of the story and their Big Plan falls apart.

No, what I'm talking about here is the first sign of trouble. The first real resistance they face in the Special World. (Some would also call this a pinch point.)

For instance, in The Firm everything seems to be going great--Mitch McDeere, the protagonist, has a nice house, great car, awesome paycheck and he's on the fast track to becoming partner--then he discovers that the law firm he works for, Bendini Lamert & Locke, is a front for organized crime and he's in it up to his eyeballs.

At that moment Mitch's initial goal of becoming a wealthy lawyer dissolves and he gets his true goal, the Story Goal: Get away from the mob with his licence to practise law, and his marriage, intact.

This leads us to ...

5. The Challenge

How is our intrepid adventurer going to thwart the machinations of the antagonist? How is your hero going to get himself, and his friends, out of this big fat mess?

That's the story goal, the challenge. That's what we want to read about and it will form the heart of your story. (I feel as though there should be a drum roll at this point because, in a way, this is what the entire series has been leading up to.)

Yes, there will be hurdles the hero must jump, dangers to avoid, tests to pass--although he should fail at least one, and fail spectacularly--and so on, but it's all because of the hero's goal and the mess he's gotten himself and his friends into.

And why has he gotten himself into that mess? Because of who he is, because of what he wants, because of his Dream and, especially, his Goal.

An Example: The Firm

Yesterday I gave you an example of a five paragraph summary based on Star Wars IV: A New Hope, today I'll give you another. This one is based on The Firm.

1. Ordinary world

Mitch McDeere worked hard to get top grades at Harvard Law School because he never wanted to be poor again.

2. Characters and setting

Mitch would never have succeeded without the love and support of his beautiful wife Abby who, more than anything, wants him to stop running and accept who he is, and to accept his brother, even though his family is a reminder of what Mitch is running from: the shame of growing up in a trailer park, poor, raised by a mother who didn't really care about him.

3. Entering the special world 

When the lawyers from Bendini, Lambert & Locke offer Mitch more money than any other law firm it is a dream come true and he and Abby move into their brand new house, courtesy of the firm.

4. It all falls apart

Everything is great until Mitch learns about the secret files and discovers Bendini, Lambert & Locke is just a front for organized crime. As the FBI closes in on Mitch, threatening him with prison, the mob gets suspicious.

5. The challenge for the protagonist

Mitch has to rely on his wits to save himself and Abby. But is he up to the challenge?

By the way, I took that example from an earlier post I wrote: The Structure Of Short Stories: The Elevator Pitch Version.

What you have at this point--a five paragraph story summary--can form the skeleton of your story. We've met the main characters, or at least their archetypes. They need fleshing out and, as a result, your story skeleton will grow, change, bend, but as long as it remains roughly 'story shaped' (i.e., focused on the hero's goal, the hero's journey) it's all good.

To Be Continued

In our next and final section we'll look at condensing your story down into one or two sentences.

This is handy for two reasons:

a) You'll be able to determine what is really truely important in your story, and
b) If you ever have to write a pitch, you'll have your tag-line ready!

At this point, with your five point summary concluded, you already have a blurb for your book or the start of your pitch.

Update: Here is a link to the final installment of this series: The Starburst Method: Summarizing Your Story In One Sentence

Other links you might like:

- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon: MS Word Styles
- The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 2
- The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings

Photo credit: "Fire Storm" by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 2

This is a continuation of my series on the Starburst Method:

- The Starburst Method: What It Is And What It Can Do
- The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters
- The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1

You don't have to read the previous articles to understand this one, though I would encourage you to read The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1 since this is a continuation of that material.

3. Entering The Special World

The Special World is different. We're not in Kansas anymore.

Whatever rules for acting, for getting ahead, your hero knew in the Ordinary World no longer apply. This is a different reality.

A popular way of demonstrating this strangeness is to test your hero with a series of trials, at least one of which he should fail miserably.

Bar scenes are great for demonstrating how alien the Special World is. Of course the setting doesn't have to be a bar, it can be any kind of watering hole, any place where a lot of different kind of folk meet and where it's easy for the crowd to get ... er ... lively. (Think of the bar scene in Star Wars IV.) This is where your hero can get a crash course on the new rules, the new conventions, as well as meet new friends, make enemies and generally get things moving.

Threshold Guardian

I think the concept of a threshold guardian is one of the most useful concepts in my writer's workbox. I suspect different folks think of the Threshold Guardian in different ways, and would give him different attributes, so what I say here pertains specifically to how I think of him.

So, preliminaries aside, what is a Threshold Guardian? Here's how I think of it: 

A Threshold Guardian is a force--usually a person--that tries to keep the status quo.

How A Threshold Guardian Operates In A Story

Let's back up a bit. When your hero is still lounging in the Ordinary World he'll receive what a lot of writers refer to as a Call To Adventure. This will be an invitation, a reason, for the hero to leave his current existence, his life as he knows it, and enter the strange wonderland of the Special World.

For instance--and I know I talk a lot about Star Wars IV, but, what can I say? I thought it was a great movie!--Obi-Wan Kenobi gives Luke a clear call to adventure when he invites him to learn the ways of The Force and travel to Alderaan.

Refusal of the Call is common too. Luke says, Thanks but no thanks. I can't go. I have responsibilities. I have to help out my uncle and aunt on their farm. And that's a perfectly good reason.

In a sense (this is what I'm going to argue, you might not agree with me) Luke's uncle fills the role of a Threshold Guardian. Why? Because Luke's uncle does everything he can to prevent Luke leaving the farm. Even Luke's aunt says to the uncle something to the effect: Why don't you just let Luke go? The uncle has the best of reasons, I'm sure, but he is like a jealous dragon guarding his treasure and Luke is on top of the pile.

But many different kinds of archetypes can be involved in a Call To Adventure. For instance, The Mentor. After the hero refuses the call often it's the mentor who gets him back on track. For instance, the Frog brothers in The Lost Boys were unlikely mentors to Sam Emerson. Also, though I won't go into it here, The Shadow and The Trickster can also, in their own distinctive ways, be effective Threshold Guardians.

What's the point?

The Threshold Guardian--regardless of which guise he appears in within your story (The Shadow, The Mentor, The Trickster, and so on)--is going to be a pivotal figure in moving your hero from the Ordinary World into the Special World.

Sure, Luke's uncle never got much screen time, but when it comes to why Luke accepted the Call To Adventure his uncle is the single biggest reason. It was his death, and that of his aunt, that both removed Luke's reason for refusing the call--the farm didn't exist anymore--and gave him a positive reason--avenge his relative's deaths by helping to destroy the Empire and, of course, Darth Vader--for taking up the adventure.

How this would this look: An example

Here's an example using--yes, you guessed it!--Star Wars IV:

1. Ordinary World

Whenever there was something that needed fixing around his uncle's farm Luke Skywalker was somewhere else racing his speeder dreaming of adventure.

2. Setting & Friends

Then he met two droids--one snarky and self-absorbed but loyal and the other quirky and full of heart but with a knack for finding adventure--who changed his life ...

3. Special World

... by leading him to mysterious old Ben Kenobi who the droids referred to as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke he used to teach his father before his father was killed by a minion of the Emperor: Darth Vader. Obi Wan offers to train Luke in the way of The Force and take him on a quest to save the Rebel Alliance and help defeat Darth Vader and, ultimately, the evil Empire.

Luke would love to accept but he declines because his uncle and aunt need his help to run the farm.

When the Emperor's minions kill Luke's uncle and aunt and obliterate their farm Luke swears vengeance and, taking up his father's lightsaber, asks Obi-Wan Kenobi to be his teacher.

4. It All Falls Apart

When our intrepid band of unlikely adventurers spots an enormous planet destroyer known as the Death Star they come to the attention of the being, now more machine than man, who killed Luke's father: Darth Vader. With their ship impounded, Obi Wan dead and an ungrateful princess on their hands, how will they ever save themselves let alone the rebel alliance?

5. The Challenge

Luke and his not-so-merry band of adventurers have to overcome nearly insurmountable obstacles if they are going to rescue the princess. Can they learn to work together in time to save the rebel alliance, defeat the Empire and save the universe?

Or something like that! I wrote this example in 15 minutes so I'm sure you can do better. Hopefully you can see what I've been talking about as well as where we're headed.

I had wanted to get through parts four and five today but it looks like that's not happening! Tomorrow, even if the post is a bit long, I'll get through this Hero's Journey section. Promise!

Update: Here is a link to the next article in this series: The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 3. (And I do keep my promise!)

Other articles you might like:

- The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters
- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon
- The Magic Of Stephen King: An Analysis Of The Opening Paragraphs Of The Dead Zone

Photo credit: "See No Vader, Hear No Vader, Speak No Vader" by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Starburst Method: The Hero's Journey, Part 1

I'm going to continue my Starburst Method series today, but first I'd like to say a few words about Hugh Howey's book Wool and why we write. If you'd like to skip to where I start talking about the Starburst Method scroll down to the heading "The Starburst Method, Continued".

Hugh Howey and Wool

I started reading Wool yesterday and was amazed by the story. Hugh Howey's characters and events are emotionally compelling. The world of Wool is stark, filled with unpleasant realities, but the characters refuse to give up, they refuse to abandon their humanity.

Here's HH's dedication:

This collected work is dedicated to anyone who dares dream of a better place.

When I read that something clicked for me.

Wool is more than a book. It tells the story of a Silo and the people who live within its metal grip but, somehow, Hugh Howey has managed to do what all great authors have done since time immemorial, he has reached beyond himself, beyond his story, and connected with something universal.

I'm bringing this up because I don't want to lose sight of this aspect of the craft.

What I talk about in these essays—the questions I present ("What is your character's goal?"), the formulae—are meant to be intuition pumps, to help get us thinking in terms of story, they can't be the whole kit and caboodle.

Okay, now let's continue on with our series.

The Starburst Method, Continued

This post is part of a series about a method I'm calling the Starburst method. You can read the first two chapters here:

1. The Starburst Method: What It Is And What It Can Do
2. The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters

I wonder if "Starburst" doesn't give a misleading impression because instead of starting with something small and rapidly expanding we're starting with something big and nebulous—our relatively unfiltered and perhaps contradictory ideas for a story—then honing them.

Perhaps this method is more like sculpting, cutting away parts that don't belong and adding ones that do.

Five Paragraphs: Setting Up The Story

Today we're condensing our story down into five paragraphs. By the end, ideally, we will have reduced each paragraph to a single sentence. Each paragraph represents one stage of the hero's journey.

Let's go through them.

1. The Ordinary World

1.a. How is your hero DISTINCTIVE?

Christopher Vogler writes:

Most stories take the hero out of the ordinary, mundane world and into a Special World, new and alien. This is the familiar "fish out of water" idea which has spawned countless films and TV Shows (... The Wizard of Oz, Witness, ... Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, etc.).

If you're going to show a fish out of his customary element, you first have to show him in that Ordinary World to create a vivid contrast with the strange new world he is about to enter. (The Writer's Journey)

Last time we started to get acquainted with our protagonist. Although we don't know everything yet we have an idea what he does for a living, his name, his special ability as well as his weakness, and so on.

Here's another question: In the ordinary world, where your hero isn't perhaps very heroic, what is the most distinctive thing about him or her?

Is he a troublemaker? If so, quickly write down an example, something that shows he's a troublemaker, a malcontent.

Or perhaps your protagonist is much too much caught up in what society expects of him.

Or maybe he is hopelessly in love with someone unattainable.

Think of some one thing that your character is noteworthy for, that makes him distinctive. That sets him apart from everyone else. What is it that makes the other characters in your story care about him? (They may want to murder him, but that's still a kind of caring! He influences the actions of others.)

For instance, Nathan Bransford in the query letter for his book, Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow, had this to say about his protagonist:

Jacob Wonderbar has been the bane of every substitute teacher at Magillan Middle School ...(My Query Letter for JACOB WONDERBAR)

In only a few words NB paints a clear picture of his hero.

1.b. How is your hero TRAGIC?

That's the first part, setting your hero, your protagonist (I'm using those words interchangeably) as distinctive. Now we need to explain his uniqueness.

There's another part to being a hero, the tragic bit. Many, perhaps most, heroes have something very wrong with their lives, some tragedy. This tragedy can perhaps help explain why he is distinctive in the way he is.

For instance, if your hero is a thief perhaps it's because his parents died when he was a child and he had to raise himself on the streets.

This is how Nathan Bransford put it:

Jacob Wonderbar has been the bane of every substitute teacher at Magellan Middle School ever since his dad moved away from home. (My Query Letter for JACOB WONDERBAR)

Jacob is a terror at school but we get the idea that's partly because of his dad's absence. That one sentence encapsulates, summarizes, gives us a snapshot of the hero's distinctive challenges and character.

2. Friends and Helpers

Everybody needs somebody, even heroes. Who are your protagonist's friends and helpers? What do they do for the hero? What are their weaknesses?

In Lord of the Rings Pippin and Merry are troublemakers. They love eating (they could eat their weight in lembas!) and smoking 'leaf' and they nearly get Frodo killed more than once, but no one could fault heir bravery when a friend was in danger.

Here's what Nathan Bransford wrote about Jacob's friends:

He never would have survived without his best friend Dexter, even if he is a little timid, and his cute-but-tough friend Sarah Daisy, who is chronically overscheduled.

 Again, this paints a compelling picture.

To Be Continued

Tomorrow we'll continue this series and finish fleshing out our five paragraph summary. See you then!

What are you writing about at the moment? What makes your protagonist distinctive? Does she have a tragic past? Who are her friends? What are her friends' weaknesses? What can her friends do well?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon: MS Word Styles
- How To Format A Word Document For Uploading To Amazon
- The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters

Photo credit: "Superlative Beauty // Footsteps of Happiness // Wonderful Moments // The Shelbourne, A Renaissance Hotel Dublin, Republic of Ireland // The Grand Staircase // ENJOY!" by || UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL || under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Starburst Method: What It Is And What It Can Do

Have you ever wanted to write a story, and you had the beginning of an idea, but you didn't know who the antagonist was or what your protagonist wanted, what her goal was?

I've been in that place a few times and it's not fun. The good news is that the more one writes the easier it gets but that is small comfort in the beginning.

The Goal: A One Sentence Summary

I'm going to try something. I'm going to try writing a series of three or four articles, intended for the beginning writer, filled with exercises and pointers to help someone take the raw clay of his imagination and shape it until not only do you know what your story elements are, but you have written a five paragraph, then a one paragraph, then a one sentence summary of your piece.

At least, that's the plan! I hope you folks give me feedback and share your experiences with me along the way.

At the end of this process you won't know everything about the story incubating inside you (why did I just think of the movie Alien? ;), but you'll know the main things:

What We Need To Find Out:

1. Who your protagonist is.
2. What your protagonist wants.
3. What your protagonist's special ability is.
4. What your protagonist's weakness is .

5. Who your antagonist is.
6. What your antagonist wants.
7. What your antagonist's special ability is.
8. What your antagonist's weakness is.

9. What the states are/the cost of failure.

Numbers 2 and 6 must be such that if one goal is achieved the other cannot be. Either the antagonist gets their way and the protagonist loses big time or vice versa.

Ready? Let's get started!

The Starburst Method

We've each developed our own way of writing. For every 10 writers there are 11 methods! No one method is better than any other since the ultimate test is whether a method works for you. Does it help you write? Does it improve either the quality or speed of your work? If so, great!

This method might suit you, and it might not, but if you don't try it out you'll never know.

The Basic Idea: The One Sentence Description

Here's the basic goal: You will work from an initial concept to produce a one sentence description that communicates who the protagonist is, what she wants, as well as the central conflict of your story.

Why one sentence?

There are a number of reasons why you would want to refine and condense your idea until it can be expressed in one eloquent sentence.

1. Keeps you on track

It's easy to start off writing one story and end up writing a completely different one. Many, many, years ago I started off with a female protagonist who had psychic powers and ended up in the wild west with a male protagonist named Bronco Bill. Yes, that's extreme, but it's easy to wander off topic.

Here's a less extreme example: if you don't know where you want to go, what your story is about, you may waste your valuable time creating scenes that don't push the story forward.

Of course an outline helps (see: Mary Robinette Kowal and The Mysteries of Outlining) but condensing your idea down to a one-liner will encourage you to figure out the main themes of your story now--before you spend 200 pages writing a gritty urban fantasy only to discover the romance between your protagonist and her handsome helper is the real story you want to tell.

Trust me, rewrites aren't fun. The fewer you have to do the better.

2. Helps you write your pitch

Traditional Publishing
If you plan to submit your story to a traditional publisher you'll need to write a query letter and as part of that letter you'll have to tell the editor/agent/publisher what your story is about in approximately 300 words or less.

That's not easy. I know writers who think writing a query letter is more difficult than a novel! But when you know the core elements of your story your pitch will be much easier to write.

Don't worry if at the moment you don't have a clear idea of the elements of your story. We'll talk about that more in the next part of this series.

Independent Publishing
By the way, crafting a summary of your story is useful even for independent writers because you will need to create a blurb for your book as well as a description for the various online stores your book will be sold in. I find it helps to have a one sentence summary or tag line (also known as a one-liner), a two sentence summary, a summary about a paragraph long, and a longer summary of about five paragraphs suitable for posting in an online bookstore.

3. Makes you look professional

One question everyone is going to ask you the moment after they hear you're writing a story is: What's your story about?

The first time I was asked this I was completely unprepared and had the deer-in-the-headlights response: my eyes swallowed my face and I promptly forgot my name, let alone what my story was about. I think I stammered something like, "Well, it's about a girl."

Nice. Great description. Not. I'm sure the person walked away shaking their head thinking: She's a writer?

So, have your one sentence description memorized and rather than leave friends and family with the vague dread that they'll be asked to read the literary equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, be kind. Let them be proud of you and wow them with a snappy, concise, description.

Ready, Set, Write!

Ready to start? Great! Tomorrow we'll begin taking our relatively formless idea and molding it until it has the form of a story.

Update: Here is a link to the next installment in the series: The Starburst Method: Discovering Your Characters.

If you want to follow along with these posts and you don't already have an idea for a story, here are a couple of writing prompts that might help you get started:

A Writing Prompt: The Girl In A Mask
A Writing Prompt: The Thing was close
Writing Prompts: Defeat Writer's Block And Generate Ideas (This post contains links to several sites that list various writing prompts.)

Note: This series of three or four articles will draw material from a series I published on this blog last year, The Starburst Method. The present series of articles will focus on the first three steps of the Startburst Method and include a lot of new material. I intend to redo all of the posts in The Starburst Method and then publish them as an electronic book.

Question:

What is your idea for a story? How do you generate ideas?

Other links you might like:

- The Magic Of Stephen King: An Analysis Of The Opening Paragraphs Of The Dead Zone
- Scene Goals: What Do Your Characters Want, Why Do They Want It, How Do They Get it?
- How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select

Photo credit: "Droplets on dawn nastursians" by Lenny Montana under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Magic Of Stephen King: An Analysis Of The Opening Paragraphs Of The Dead Zone

I loved The Dead Zone by Stephen King. I read the novel, watched the movie and then, much later, the TV series starring Anthony Michael Hall.

What's that advice writers are always given? We are urged to read the best, read what works. I shared a quotation of Stephen King's yesterday and one part of it stayed with me. King wrote that

[R]eading offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. (Stephen King, On Writing)

As I mentioned the other day in my post (The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings) the hallmark of Stephen King's writing (for myself) was its ability to (metaphorically) grab me by the throat in the first few paragraphs and drag me, at times kicking and screaming, through the novel.

I say 'kicking and screaming' (this is along the lines of the confession of a deep, dark, secret) because I don't like horror! Well, no, that's not true. What I don't like is a certain kind of horror, the nails on a chalk-board kind of psychological horror that Stephen King so masterfully produced in, for example, Misery.

I loved Misery. I read it cover to cover in a couple of days and then never read another King book for years. I was too scared!

Think about that. Stephen King got me to identify with John Smith so strongly I spent upwards of 8 hours of my life reading something that genuinely horrified me, and not in a good way. That, ladies and gentleman, is character identification on steroids. (Stephen King is also a master at generating narrative drive. See: Writing: The Starburst Method, Part 8: The Rough Draft & Narrative Drive)

So now to the question: How does Stephen King do it?

An Analysis Of Stephen King's The Dead Zone

I know I've been talking about Misery, and I will get to that analysis one day soon, but today I'm going to discuss The Dead Zone.

The question: How does Stephen King do it? How does he create that kind of Krazy Glue-like attraction, that bond, between the reader and his creations? His characters?

A few days ago I analyzed King's book, It, and, in that post, mentioned Michael Hauge's 5 ways to create character identification and attempted to use Michael's categories to analyze how King was able to weave his magic. If you're unfamiliar with Michael's 5 ways or what I mean by character identification, you might want to take another peek at it: How To Get Your Readers To Identify With Your Main Character.

The text: the first three paragraphs of The Dead Zone

By the time he graduated from college, John Smith had forgotten all about the bad fall he took on the ice that January day in 1953. In fact, he would have been hard put to remember it by the time he graduated from grammar school. And his mother and father never knew about the fall at all.

They were skating on a cleared patch of Runaround Pond in Durham. The bigger boys were playing hockey with old taped sticks and using a couple of potato baskets for goals. The little kids were just farting around the way little kids have done since time immemorial--their ankles bowing comically in and out, their breath puffing in the frosty twenty-degree air. At one corner of the cleared ice two rubber tires burned sootily, and a few parents sat nearby, watching their children. The age of the snowmobile was still distant and winter fun still consisted of exercising your body rather than a gasoline engine.

Johnny had walked down from his house, just over the Pownal line, with his skates hung over his shoulder. At six, he was a pretty fair skater. Not good enough to join in the big kids' hockey games yet, but able to skate rings around most of the other first graders, who were always pinwheeling their arms for balance or sprawling on their butts.

I usually don't use extensive quotations but since we're examining Stephen King's writing it helps to have the text before us.

First paragraph

In the first paragraph Stephen King starts introducing what I'm going to call "The Threat". I'll talk more about this in another post, but I'm fairly sure that some version of The Threat appears in most of his stories. In The Dead Zone we learn of a 'bad fall'. That we're hearing about this in the first paragraph and that King spends the entire paragraph on it tells us this is something important.

So what is paragraph two about? That's right! The fall.

Stephen King doesn't tell us in the first paragraph that the fall is a terrible thing but, well, it's a bad fall and, besides, when are falls ever a good thing? King does a lot of work in this first paragraph. We hear about The Threat right away, first thing, and we know who The Threat endangers: John Smith.

Second paragraph

Another thing I've found in most of Stephen King's stories is vulnerability. There is a threat and he introduces us to characters who are vulnerable. In It the paper boat was vulnerable to the water it sailed on just as the little child was vulnerable to the conditions the storm left in its wake.

In the second paragraph of TDZ King starts to build up our picture of the child John Smith once was by telling us about his world. Look at his language:

- bigger boys
- little kids
- old taped sticks
- potato baskets for goals
- their [the little kids] ankles bowing comically in and out

The language is nostalgic. "Remember when we were kids?" he is saying. Even myself--I never skated on pond ice and rarely skated in a rink and never, ever, took part in a game of hockey--I can picture this. I wish I had been there.

King's language is vivid. Evocative. I've seen the scene he's painting/creating. It's true that I never did any of those things but I'd seen kids out on the ice, even wished I was one of them. So I guess one reason it's easy for me to identify with this nostalgic vision of yesteryear is that I'd like this to be true/real. I'd have liked my childhood to have been like this.

Third paragraph

Now we're tying things together. The first thing I'd like you to notice is the first word of this sentence. Stephen King is no longer talking/writing about "John Smith" he's writing about "Johnny".

Also notice there has been a considerable amount of movement. The first paragraph--the feeling, the mood--was detached. Almost distant. Then we got all sticky and nostalgic about 'the way it was' and now SK is showing us the protagonist again, but we're not seeing John Smith, we're seeing Johnny. We're seeing the protagonist when he was an innocent child before anything bad happened to him, the child living in this lovely nostalgic world.

The second and third paragraphs show the child, and the child's world, before The Fall. (Now that I've written the words, I realize again how powerful imagery can be.)

- Johnny is a "pretty fair skater". He's "able to skate rings around most of the other first graders."

Recall that one of Michael Hauge's 5 points was to make your character good at something. And not just anything, something--a skill--that is valued in the character's world. If your character is a football player and he's great at chess it's not going to help!

Also, notice that Stephen King maintains--perhaps even steps up--building his evocative, nostalgic, image of childhood. King writes that the other first graders "were always pinwheeling their arms for balance or sprawling on their butts". Now THAT I remember! I remember ice rinks and being bundled up in layers of winter clothes until I looked like the original Michelin Man--and I had about the same mobility! At least the falls didn't hurt as much.

What Does This All Mean?

I'd like to stress that what I've done here, the analysis I've made of Stephen King's work, isn't meant to be in any way authoritative. If you agree with something I've said and you think it may make your writing stronger then that's wonderful! Use it. But if you don't, or if you see something completely different, then go with that.

I do think reading great writing, writing that moves you, and then attempting to analyze what it was about the writing that created that effect in yourself, can help a writer become better at her craft. Perhaps in the final analysis it's the only thing that can.

But everyone, every single person, is different. What I find emotionally compelling might not seem so to you, what turns me into the proverbial puddle of tears may leave you cold.

That's why it's important for each of us to read what works for us, as well as what doesn't, and then examine each story to see why the one gripped us emotionally and the other didn't.

#   #   #

Who is your favorite writer? What is it about their prose that hooks you? That produces that can't-put-it-down quality which drags you, willing or not, through the book?

Other articles you might like:

- The Magic Of Stephen King: How To Write Compelling Characters & Great Openings
- How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select
- Edward Robinson And How To Sell Books Using Amazon KDP Select

Photo credit: "Stephen King" by robbophotos under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How Many Drafts Does It Take To Write A Novel?

How many drafts does it take to write a novel? It depends on the writer. For the overwhelming majority of us it takes more than one. Probably more than two. As Beth Shope writes:

Some never rewrite, but those who manage to produce something publishable after a single, unrevised draft can probably be squeezed in among the dancing angels on the head of that proverbial pin. (True Writing is Rewriting)

Two Draft Writers

For every rule there is an exception.

Holly Lisle has a terrific system she calls One-Pass Manuscript Revision which I'll write about in more detail at some point in the near future. Her method requires a printed copy of your manuscript, a spiral notebook, pens, a cat-free table, good lighting and nerves of steel.

You'll go through your novel scene by scene: Is it clear what your protagonist's goal is in this scene? Is it clear whether she attains her goal? Does the scene advance the story? And so on.

At the end of the process you'll have a notebook filled with things to do/change and a manuscript marked up to within an inch of its life (you can see the pictures here).

As you do the revisions if snappier dialogue occurs to you, include it! If better character descriptions occur to you, use them! But if different character arcs, entirely new characters, new goals, and so on, come to mind write them down in another file and use them for the next book. As Holly writes:

The point of a novel revision is to finish this book. I guarantee you that as long as you’re willing to keep piddling around with the same manuscript, you’ll find ways to make it different. You don’t want to make it different. You just want to make it as good as it can possibly be, and then get it out the door.

Why? Because the definition of a writing career is: Write a book. Write another book. Write another book.

Nowhere in that description is included: Take one story and make it a monument to every idea you ever had or ever will. (One-Pass Manuscript Revision)

Three Draft Writers

The most common answer I've heard for the question, "How many drafts does it take you ...?" is, "Three. But new writers might do more".

For instance, Stephen King wrote in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that he does a first draft then lets it sit for about six weeks. During this time he writes other things such as novellas and short stories. After the six weeks are up he re-reads the manuscript, thinks about theme, and so on, then writes draft number two. He sends this draft out to beta readers, takes their feedback into account--especially those points more than one person raised--and writes the third draft.

Or something like that. The above is more a summary of what a number of traditional writers have written about their process.

Multiple Drafts

Lisa Gail Green asked a number of writers how many drafts they complete before pronouncing their manuscript finished. (See: How Many Drafts Does It Take To Get To The Query Stage?) Their responses ran from 4 to 13. For instance, Leslie Rose wrote:

Here are my drafts:
1 - vomit draft - let it fly baby
2- Story arc pass - main story subplots - overall structure
3- MC & supporting character arcs - including character development & embellishment
4- grammar/punctuation pass & bad habit pass (adverbs/tense/sentence variety/word choice)
7 - Hard copy read - make corrections
8 - Kindle read - make corrections
OUT TO BETAS
9 - Including Beta notes pass
10 - Holistic read - wearing my audience hat
11 - Corrections from Holistic read
QUERY TIME 

Sarah Skilton gives great advise when she writes:

[W]hen you can't stand it any longer and you're absolutely certain your novel is ready to go out into the world, wait. Give it another week before you hit "send." Take a break. Go on a walk. Wait just a teensy bit longer, and give it fresh eyes for typos. It's tough to do, but the person reading it will thank you.

Kris Rusch On Drafting

For some reason I had the idea that Kris Rusch (she'd probably laugh if she read this!) sat down and did a very clean first draft and that's it. Done! Apparently not, or at least not always. In The Business Rusch: Where Art Meets Commerce, Kris writes:

When I write fiction, I am constantly struggling to improve my craft enough to get what’s in my head on the page, every single time.

Failure is an option. If the manuscript doesn’t work, I redraft—in other words, I throw out everything I did and try again. Yes, that means I write sometimes two or three times more material than the readers will see in print. And yes, that means I sometimes toss out more material than I publish.

I figure it’s the price I pay to tell the story I want to tell.

My haphazard, follow-the-story writing method is one of the many reasons why I always balked when one of my editors in traditional publishing asked me for an outline of a book. I can write a damn good outline, one that will make an editor want to buy the book sight unseen. That’s what good outlines do.

But then I’m tied, in some way, to that story, the one communicated in the outline. And I hate being tied to anything. If I get deep into the writing of something and realize that my heroine is just too mean to be a credible protagonist for the romance I’m writing, I want to be able to start over and make her the villain of the piece.

An outline won’t let me do that. I’ve had to do all kinds of machinations to make sure that I’m not trapped by an outline, all the way down to writing the novel first and writing the outline second.

.  .  .  .

If you want to get technical about it, my early drafts are my outlines, and my brand-new second or third draft (done from scratch) are me trying to follow those outlines.

But even that metaphor breaks down when you get into the nitty-gritty of my writing process.

Every writer is different, and every writer has preferred methods of working. Some writers are lucky enough to have organized minds and can create a story in outline form before they ever write the first fictional chapter. Other writers make me look organized in the extreme.

Because, at its core, what we do is an art form. The fact that many of us choose to make a living while committing art makes for some difficult moments—made more difficult by “shoulds” and “have-tos” and “this-is-how-it’s-dones.”

None of that is true in creative mode. There are good ways to work and better ways to work, but mostly, there’s your way to work. And if what you—the writer/artist—are doing works for you (meaning you finish work regularly and get it ready to market regularly), then keep doing that, no matter what anyone says.

I'm a bit like Kris in that--while I do create an outline in the beginning, one that is more of a suggestion, a starting point--I get my real outline from my first draft.

In the end, use whatever works for you. The tough part is that you'll only find out what that is after you've done this a few times! If this is your first time through do as many drafts as feels right and, if you're in doubt, ask your writing buddies what they think.

Whatever you decide I like Sarah's advice to, after you feel your manuscript is finally, completely, done, to put it away for a week, or even a month, and then read it one more time with fresh eyes. If you're anything like me, you'll be glad you did!

What I Do

I generally do 7 drafts. In the beginning I outline my ideas and do character sketches. Then I write the first draft. This usually takes two or three weeks.

I let my first draft sit for at least a week (ideally, I'd leave it for six) and then do a complete read-through without editing. As I do the read-through, on a separate piece of paper, I create another outline from my first draft. After I have my more-or-less finished outline I see how it flows (I think about the monomyth, etc.) and make adjustments. (See: 11 Steps To Edit Your Manuscript. Edit Ruthlessly & Kill Your Darlings)

Once I have my finished outline I go back to my first draft and 'slot' scenes into the new, polished, outline. My second draft is spent filling in scenes that are in my outline but that aren't in my first draft and I prune out any scenes that no longer fit, or that are weak, etc. I print that all out and give it a read.

For my third draft I make sure everything flows, I look at grammar, spelling, prune out weak words ("very", adverbs ending in "ly", etc.) and then hand it to a trusted beta reader, someone I know well and who has given me good honest feedback.

After I get my manuscript back from my first beta reader I generally have to dig in and do revisions, sometimes extensive revisions. That's draft number four.

Once I've completed my fourth draft I give it back to my first beta reader but also hand it off to a trusted group of beta readers--my wonderful writing circle. I find that often my first beta reader--since the big issues have been dealt with--notices several minor issues that need to be addressed. Then my reading group rolls up their sleeves and gives me a whole new perspective. Really, I can't thank these literary angels enough. Any story they have commented on has been enormously improved by their feedback.

After I get my last feedback and make whatever changes are needed (this is the sixth draft) then I let the manuscript sit for as long as I can stand. At least a week! Then I give it one more read-though and call it done. I'll send it off to a line editor at that point. After I get my manuscript back I make whatever changes are indicated and, that's it. It's finally, finally, done. My seventh draft is the final draft (* knock on wood *).

There is no one 'right' way to draft, everyone is different. How many drafts do you do?

Other articles you might like:
- The Cost of Balance
- If Instagram Can Sell Your Photos Without Your Permission, What Is Next?
- The Cure For Perfectionism

Photo credit: "Saturday Evening Room Service @ The Hilton Dublin Airport // Rep. of Ireland : ENJOY!" by || UggBoy♥UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL || under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Cost of Balance

"The point is to have balance in life."

I've heard that often enough and I've even said it a time or two, but is it true? Can we have a balanced life and be a success as a writer?

The Unbalanced Life

I'd like to think so. Sure, when I was in university the cost of earning good grades was not having anything even vaguely resembling a balanced life. I would stay up all night studying, guzzle coffee and eat junk food.

Also, it was difficult keeping in touch with old friends because I was too busy studying to spend time with them. The only friends I had were my study partners!

Is that what is required to be a professional author?

No.

Or at least I hope not! There's another expression: Older and wiser.

The Key To A Balanced Life: Prioritizing

The number one thing a writer must do is write. Anything that is not writing takes a backseat. Even editing. 

Editing is important, absolutely, but one needs to write to have something to edit.

Over the past couple of days I've started to record the amount of actual writing time, as well as editing time, I put in. The results were sobering. I spend more time doing other writing-related tasks than I do working on my stories. (See: Getting Ready for 2013: A Writer's Guide)

I need to streamline my schedule so that I can accomplish the same things but in a more efficient way. I need to prioritize, accomplishing the most important tasks first and leaving the less important for the end. That way I'll at least accomplish the most important things.

Have you made any writing resolutions for the new year?

Other articles you might like:

- If Instagram Can Sell Your Photos Without Your Permission, What Is Next?
- 19 Ways To Grow Your Twitter Following
- How To Design A Great Looking Book Cover

Photo credit: "Kindness is like snow" by Lel4nd under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Cure For Perfectionism

A fellow blogger and writer, John Ward, published a post today about the problem of perfectionism. (See: The Trap of Perfection)

That got me thinking.

I know I've written in the past about my encounters, actually they were more like knock-down-drag-out fights, with writer's block and how the feeling that one's prose has to be perfect lies at the heart of it. (See: Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity)

Of course we all want our writing to be brilliant, but there's a special sort of inferiority, a certain acute sense of ennui, of hopelessness, that blossoms within me whenever I read a truly stunning piece of prose--two of my favorite writers are Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood--and I'm pretty darn sure my own scribbles aren't going to ever ascend to that level.

The Cure For Perfectionism

The cure, for me, is to realize I'm not alone.

It's not just your prose that is likely never going to ascend to the dizzying heights of the greats. The overwhelming majority of writers--and here I'm talking about professional writers, folks who have spent their careers publishing book after book and who sell well--aren't going to be wordsmiths of that caliber. (This is, of course, IMHO.)

So, you're in good company. Professional writers don't let the fact that they probably will never be nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature stop them from writing the best darn story they can. Remember, stories are about plot too, and creating narrative drive and all the rest of it.

While Dan Brown will likely never be nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature, he told a darn fine story, one that many folks enjoyed reading and that sold well. For me, Dan Brown is an inspiration.

The next time you're feeling as though your writing will never be 'good enough', go down to your local bookstore and browse through the bestseller section. These are books that have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and I guarantee you that you're going to find at least one book where you have the reaction: I can write better than this.

Hold onto that!

In those times when you feel like giving up, look at books like these. Sometimes that's just the sort of perspective you need to leave your self-doubts, your self-consciousness, behind and write.

At least, one can hope! :-)

If you have a tip or trick for smothering the siren call of perfectionism please leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Other articles you might like:

- The Value of Google+ As A Writer's Platform
- Getting Ready for 2013: A Writer's Guide
- The Structure Of Short Stories

Photo credit: "winter friends" by AlicePopkorn under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Writing Goals Versus Writing Dreams: How To Get From One To The Other

Dreams vs Goals

Wouldn't it be great to win the lottery? Or sell a billion books? Or have one of your titles hit the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list?

These are dreams.

Dean Wesley Smith defines a dream as follows:

A DREAM is an object of desire over which you do not have direct control.

That's a paraphrase.

A GOAL is an object of desire over which you DO HAVE direct control.

This is Dean's example:

Dream: Winning the lottery.
Goal: Buying a lottery ticket every week.

Just because you buy a lottery ticket every week doesn't mean you'll win the lottery, but it's a course of action that will make achieving your dream more likely. And if you don't buy lottery tickets you are guaranteed not to win the lottery.

You have 100% control over whether you buy a lottery ticket each week. You have zero control over whether you'll win the lottery. There are no guarantees. You may win the lottery, you may not, but you're doing something to make your dream more likely to come true.

Goals And The Self-Published Writer

I think all new writers have a similar dream. They would like to, one day, be able to pay for all their wants and needs with the money their writing generates.

Before we look at what goals will bring us to that place let's look at the entrance requirements, the cost of the dream, what kind of person will be able to achieve it.

Dean Wesley Smith: What it takes to be a professional writer

Here's Dean's list of qualities:

1) Determination bordering on psychotic.
2)  The ability to keep standing back up and going on when something knocks you down.
3) The ability to ignore the negative from all those around you, especially family and friends.
4) The hunger to keep learning writing craft and the knowledge you will never be good enough.
5) Fearlessness.
6) The desire to learn business.
7) The ability to control your own time and what comes at you.

Got it? Feeling that fearless psychotic determination well up inside you? Great! Now let's set some goals.

Goal One/Path One

Figure out how much material (short stories, novels, flash fiction, whatever) you could, reasonably, create in a year. From that, guesstimate sales.

1. Reconnoiter and inventory: What are you doing now

Each day for a week (Dean says 3 or 4 days) keep a log and record:
- How much time you spent writing
- The time of day
- Where you wrote
- Your mental state (e.g., Were you too tired to write until you had your coffee?)

Also record:
- How much time you spent reading.
- How much time you spent doing research
- How much time you spend on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. (That's my suggestion.)

Folks, this is an excellent idea! I set goals for myself every Sunday and, this week, this is my goal. For the next 7 days I'm going to record how I spend my time.

By the way, I want to do the recording for 7 days rather than 3 or 4 because my schedule changes quite a bit on the weekends. For me, it would be much more representative if I looked at the amount I work per week rather than per day.

Okay, that's the first step.

These next two steps don't have anything to do with the time of day your wrote at or where you wrote or what your mental state was like, that's for you, and it's (I think) valuable information.

I'm going to start a running log. Today, right after I finish publishing this post, I'm going to get a new notebook and make it my recording notebook.

2. Figure out your words per hour

This is what you'll do next Sunday. Take the data you've gleaned from (1) and figure out, on average, how many words you write in an hour.

3. Figure out how much you could write in a week

Take the data from (1) and (2) and figure out, on average, how many words you write a day. This will help you figure out how many books you'll be able to publish in a year. Of course you could do this from your words per week (words per week * 52 = words per year) but math is fun! :-)

An example:

Let's say you dutifully do your recording and one week from now have the following scribbled in your notebook:

The Data:
Writing time (time spend writing, not editing or researching):
Sunday: 2 hours; 1,500 words
Monday: 1 hour; 800 words
Tuesday: 5 hours; 3,000 words
Wednesday: half an hour; 500 words
Thursday: 3 hours; 700 words
Friday: 2.5 hours; 2,000 words
Saturday: None

Total writing hours that week:
2 + 1 + 5 + 0.5 + 3 + 2.5 + 0 = 14

Total words written:
1,500 + 800 + 3,000 + 500 + 700 + 2,000 + 0 = 8,500

First step: Calculate, on average, how many hours you wrote per day
14 / 7 = 2  
Average writing hours per day: 2

Second step: Calculate, on average, how many words you wrote per hour.
8,500/14 = (about) 607
Average words written per hour: 607

Third step: Calculate, on average, how many words you wrote per day
607 * 2 = 1,212
Average words written per day: 1,212

Fourth step: Calculate, on average, how many words you'll write in a year
You could do this two ways:
8,500 words per week * 52 weeks =  442,000 per year
1,212 * 365 days = 442,380 words per year = (about) 442,000 words

Fifth step: Calculate how many novels you can write in a year
Let's say you want to write novels that are about 80,000 words long.
442,000 / 80,000 = 5.525

Let me say, wow! If a person writes only 1,212 words a day for a year, you'll be able to publish 5 novels that year? (I just did the math again.) Yep!

I read Dean's figures but it didn't sink in until just now. That's amazing! Over NaNoWriMo I discovered I could write 1,500 words an hour without too much difficulty. 1,500 words a day, one hour, and I'd have over 5 books at the end of the year!

Huh.

Well, editing is where my time goes. For every hour of writing I spend 4 editing the darn thing (writers can have a love-hate relationship with their manuscripts. A lot like teenagers that way ...)

Goal Two/Path Two

Figure out how much money you need to live and then figure out, from that, how much material (novels, short stories, whatever) you'd need to create in a year.

Let's say (this is the number Dean uses) you need to make 50,000 dollars a year from your writing. There are two ways of doing this, the traditional publishing route and the independent publishing route. Let's take the traditional route first.

Traditional Publishing Route

What can a new author get for a first book, or for their first few books? It's very difficult to judge, but let's say $5,000 per book. Perhaps the first book would be less, perhaps some books would be more, but let's say $5,000.

At $5,000 per book you'd have to sell 10 books a year to make $50,000.

That sounds discouraging and I don't mean it to. At first no publisher will give your book a big print run but as you continue to sell more people will want to read your books, you'll get larger print runs and so publishers will give you larger advances.

It just takes time.

Independent Publishing Route

Dean says that, at first, an indie author would be lucky to sell 25 copies a month. So, let's say they're lucky and that the novels are selling for, as Dean suggests, $5.99. That means (if they are being sold on Amazon) the author will get 70% or $4.19 (let's say $4).

Each month our indie author will make 4 * 25 = 100 per month or 100 * 12 = 1,200 per year. That means they'd have to have (50,000/1,200=41.67) 42 books in the Amazon store to make $50,000 per year!

Of course 42 books is entirely doable, but not in a year!

Which, I think, is Dean's point.

So, how long would it take you to earn $50,000 per year if you wrote 5 novels per year? That's easy: 42/5 = 8.4. It would take around 8 years for an indie author to make $50,000 per year.

Actually, that's not bad. That's doable! 25 sales per book per month isn't much and many indie books are priced at $5.99 these days.

Wow. I think this was, for me, Dean's most awesome post--and there've been quite a few!

Focus On What You Control

There are no guarantees. Your independently published book might sell less than 25 copies a month. Significantly less. Your traditionally published book might under-perform and your publisher might drop you (if memory serves, this happened to Laurell K. Hamilton with her first book Nightseer).

There's a lot we don't control but there's two things we do:

- (T & I) How much you write.

- (T) How many manuscripts you send out.

- (I) How many books (short stories, etc) you publish.

- (I) The quality of your published books (blurbs, cover art, formatting) and where the book is sold (the markets, whether you have a print copy, audiobook, etc).

Indie Authors: Focus on selling your work in as many forms as you can

Dean stresses, and for what it's worth I agree wholeheartedly, that it's a good idea to make your work available in as many formats as possible (ebook, POD, audiobook). Dean writes:

You control the attempt to sell. You don’t control the buying or not buying, but you control the attempt to sell.

I think that, even if an author doesn't sell a lot of audiobooks, it's worth doing for the exposure to another market. It is one more way for you to get discovered by readers/listeners. That said, producing an audiobook can be expensive, but you can do it yourself. (See: How To Record Your Own Audiobook: Setting Up A Home Studio)

Dean warns against exclusivity and that's an old debate, one I've written about previously a few times. (See: Does Amazon KDP Select Drive Away True Fans? and Amazon's KDP Select Program Has A Lot To Offer New Writers, But What About Established Ones?)

That's just a sample of Dean's advice. I urge you to read his article: The New World of Publishing: Goals and Dreams.

Other links you might like:

- The Structure Of Short Stories: The Elevator Pitch Version
- Where Ideas Come From And The Conspiracy Against Nothingness
- The Structure Of Short Stories

Photo credit: "Blue Darkness Across A Beach" by A Guy Taking Pictures under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.