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It’s hard to imagine Ernest Hemingway sitting down at his desk every morning to tweet and blog before, say, diving into a new chapter of The Sun Also Rises. … Or is it? While such a revered author seems as if he would have been far above joining the social media scrum of pet photos and one-liners about Miley Cyrus’ latest antics, he did have a good handle (for a mid-20th-century guy) on what we now call “self-branding.” Hemingway—and many other writers known as much for their personas as for their books—knew how to present the kind of image that makes a lasting impression. It’s not a stretch to envision exactly what we’d see on @papahem’s Instagram (pics of him and F. Scott Fitzgerald tying one on at a Gertrude Stein party, perhaps?). And his famously terse style would have made him an ace on Twitter.

Here are six lessons Hemingway and the other all-time greats can teach us about the modern concept of personal branding.

Photo by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

This gust post is by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, who spent a decade on staff at Entertainment Weekly, co-founded SexyFeminist.com, and now writes for several publications, including Glamour; O, The Oprah Magazine; Fast Company; and New York’s Vulture.com. Her history of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, was published in May.

1. Know what your individual writing style says about you, and lean into that.

Hemingway’s writing is characterized as no-nonsense and muscular (The New York Times’ 1926 review of The Sun Also Rises called his style “a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame”), traits that mirrored his image as the ultimate masculine scribe. (In real life, he was known to respond to criticism with a good old-fashioned punch, and to fish with a machine gun to scare away tuna-eating sharks.) The takeaway for post-Millennium writers? Be yourself, on the page and off. Embrace that persona, and be consistent. If you’re funny in your prose, use humor in your blog posts, social media updates, presentations, readings—everywhere you’re presenting your public image. Same goes for the serious, laid-back, brassy, girly or gruff.

2. Throw great gatherings.

Gertrude Stein was known as much for her Paris literary salons, which included such guests as Hemingway and Ezra Pound, as she was for her unique prose. Gatherings are how you make connections and become known among your peers, who will in turn help promote you and your work. But you don’t need a great Parisian pad to pull it off. A modern-day Stein could organize regular readings with talented colleagues, plan meet-ups at conferences, or host impromptu Twitter discussions or Google Hangouts with fellow authors—anything that puts you in great company.

[What writing expenses are deductible? Click here to find out.]

3. Live your work.

Fitzgerald and his subject matter were one and the same, and he was famous for it: He won uppercrust wife Zelda’s heart by becoming a literary success (shades of Gatsby), and the two became notorious for their partying ways (shades of all of Fitzgerald’s work). In today’s terms, that means that if you write books about seeking spirituality, you should be blogging about your week spent at an ashram or your month on silent retreat; if you write about socialites, post social media updates live from the Upper East Side soirées you frequent. (Just don’t take it all too far: Fitzgerald’s success allowed him to marry the woman he loved, but it also eventually drove him to alcoholism, debt and an early death.)

4. Be witty.

Dorothy Parker’s quotes (“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to”) are popular Tumblr memes for a reason. She sharpened her wit, and helped her words go “viral” by hanging with other writers at the Algonquin Round Table—where her colleagues heard her bon mots and then passed them on via their own writing in The New Yorker and other publications. These days, being like Parker is easier than ever: Simply broadcast your own witticisms—and make sure the right people see them and share them. Cultivate a following by retweeting, complimenting, tagging and otherwise engaging with names both great and small.

[Get Query Help: Click here for The 10 Dos and Don'ts of Writing a Query Letter]

5. Corner a market.

In early 19th-century England, Jane Austen wrote about the personal struggles of women on the lower end of the landed gentry—essentially upper-middle-class ladies—like no one else. By doing so, she distinguished her work, the legacy of which would only grow with time, translating surprisingly well to modern-day formats (Clueless and Bridget Jones’s Diary are among the many contemporary takes on Austen). If you become a go-to source for stories (real or fictional) about a specific time, place, class or social group, your following may be large or small—but it will be loyal. The readers who devour your work will be enthusiasts who talk it up to friends online and in real life.

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6. Make yourself scarce.

Then again, on the flip side to all this, becoming a mysterious recluse has its privileges, as J.D. Salinger proved. … Of course, this approach requires that you first write a novel as brilliant as The Catcher in the Rye. Do that, and you’re free to sign off of all social media and swear off interviews, thus cultivating your mythic persona.

For the rest of us, though, there’s always Twitter.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

The Writer’s Dig is edited by Brian A. Klems. the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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How, strategically speaking, should you begin your novel? When a reader reads your first chapter, what should she find?

There are four primary approaches for beginning a successful novel. Probably more, including some highly experimental ones, but these are the classic main four. Run your story idea through the filter of each of these and see if one of them feels right for your book.

This post is by Jeff Gerke, an award-winning editor of fiction and non-fiction and the author of six novels, five non-fiction books and the co-author or ghostwriter of numerous other books. He is the author of The First 50 Pages and Write Your Novel in a Month, which is excerpted in this piece. Visit him at jeffgerke.com.

1. The Prologue Beginning

A prologue is an episode that pertains to your story but does not include the hero (or includes the hero at a time well before the story proper begins, when he’s a child). It might not be “Chapter 1” per se, but it can serve as a legitimate opening—if it works.

For example, the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (I often use film and television examples when I teach because they illustrate so perfectly the concepts of storytelling and are so universal) begins with a prologue in which two of our main heroes first meet each other as children. Our heroes are onstage, but they’re not at the age they’ll be for the story proper.

Mulan begins with a prologue that establishes the villain, the stakes and the ticking time bomb. The action is contemporaneous with the scene that introduces our heroine, but she is not onstage, and she does not become aware of the danger until deeper into the story.

Game of Thrones (the HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s novels) begins with a prologue showing less-than-minor characters discovering a new danger in the land. Ghostbusters begins with a prologue showing a nonprimary character who sees a ghost, which provides the need for the Ghostbusters to form. The 2009 version of Star Trek begins with the arrival of a terrifying new enemy vessel that can destroy whole fleets, and our heroes haven’t even been born yet.

In these cases, we see some of the ways a prologue-style opening can help your story. These examples also illustrate why it’s one of the most popular ways to open a novel. A prologue can establish why things are as they are in the world of your story, and why the character is the way he is when the main action begins. And a prologue can even hint at or reveal the danger that will soon sweep over the hero’s life.

[Want to land an agent? Here are 4 things to consider when researching literary agents.]

As you probably know, we’re in disputed territory when we talk about prologues. Many fiction experts tell writers never to write a prologue, while others (like me) say prologues are great.

The Anti-Prologuers argue that: 1) No one reads prologues; 2) Prologues are just dumping grounds for backstory; and 3) Prologues prevent you from getting to the main action of the story.

The Pro-Prologuers (Pro-Loguers?) contend that: 1) 95 percent of fiction readers do read prologues; 2) Any portion of a book that is a dumping ground for backstory should be cut—not because it has the word prologue at the top but because telling instead of showing is lazy writing; and 3) Prologues allow you to set the right tone for your novel without having your protagonist onstage doing something heroic.

Can beginning with a prologue engage your reader? Yes. Can it be done so poorly that it disengages the reader? Also yes. It’s not an issue of right or wrong. If your prologue engages the reader, it’s a good thing, and if your prologue disengages the reader, it’s a bad thing.

2. The Hero Action Beginning

In a hero action beginning, the hero is onstage, doing something active and interesting related to the launching of the core story (it need not involve explosions and car chases, but it certainly can).

Groundhog Day begins with Phil Connors onstage giving a (sarcastic) weather report. WALL-E begins with WALL-E onstage doing his daily routine of garbage collecting and compacting. Juno begins with Juno walking through the neighborhood, drinking SunnyD, on her way to the corner store to buy a pregnancy test. Nearly every James Bond story begins with 007 performing some amazing derring-do. What About Bob? begins with Bob going through his neurotic morning rituals.

The hero action beginning is the other most common way to begin a story. Only the rarest of story ideas can’t manage a hero action beginning. Unless your hero is catatonic or incarcerated in a hole or the like, I’m certain you can come up with something interesting for him to do at the start of the novel.

[Did you know there are 7 reasons writing a novel makes you a badass? Read about them here.]

But remember to ask yourself how much of a stretch is it to show that action. And would a prologue (or some other approach) help you more than a hero action beginning? Now you’re thinking strategically about your story—an excellent and essential thing to do.

Some books lend themselves naturally to a hero action beginning. If the protagonist is a superhero when the story begins, you can start the novel by having her save the earth. If he’s a football player, show him on the field in a big game. If she’s a karate champion, show her winning a tournament.

But if your hero isn’t a hero yet or isn’t yet in a position to show it—or if you simply prefer to establish your villain and time bomb in a prologue—perhaps the hero action beginning isn’t right for your book. Mulan begins with a prologue because the protagonist isn’t yet in any kind of heroic capacity. Mulan is feeding chickens on the family farm—not necessarily an interesting introduction. The writers could’ve invented a way for her to be heroic at the outset, but they chose not to, and I agree with their choice.

Don’t force a hero action beginning. We all could make up something for our heroes to do as the book begins. But if it feels like a stretch or a cliché, choose another approach.

3. The In Medias Res Beginning

In medias res is a Latin phrase meaning “in the middle of things.” It’s one of the less common ways to begin a novel, but it can definitely be effective.

With in medias res, you start at a point deep in the story, show a bit of activity to intrigue the reader, and then jump back to an earlier, quieter part in the story. It’s the opposite of the prologue beginnings that show an early episode from the hero’s life. In this case, you show a later episode, and then you hit the rewind button and spend some or all of the rest of the book catching up to that moment.

Battle: Los Angeles begins with U.S. military helicopters flying over a Los Angeles under attack from alien beasties. We see the faces of some soldiers in the helicopters, but we don’t know who these people are. We’re just getting the uh-oh feeling about what we’re seeing, and then the movie skips back 24 hours. It’s a good distance into the plot before we get back to that helicopter moment. And when we do, this time we know what’s going on and who those people are. That’s an in medias res beginning.

The film version of One Day (based on David Nicholls’ novel of the same name), starring Anne Hathaway, uses the in medias res beginning. It opens with Anne’s character happily riding a bicycle through the streets of Paris. Then we jump back about 20 years. It’s a long time before we catch up to her joyride.

Why isn’t in medias res used more often? Part of the reason is because it can be perceived as a gimmick. Sometimes it gives readers that same ripped-off feeling they get when they read a novel that begins with a dream. It can also sacrifice suspense for that whole portion of the story until you catch up with the first moment.

Think about it: If you see the main character alive and well in what you now realize is a future moment, how nervous are you going to be when she gets into danger? I mean, you know she lives, right, at least up to the in medias res moment? An in medias res opening can deflate the tension the way a hole deflates a tire.

One benefit, however, of in medias res is that once you do catch up with that opening moment, especially if it’s taken a long time to get there, the reader is given an injection of fictive adrenaline. Before now, everything has been relatively safe. It’s been within the protective confines of story time when you know the hero is fine. But when you get to that moment, and especially when you surpass it, everything changes. Dramatically.

[Understanding Book Contracts: Learn what’s negotiable and what’s not.]

Now that you know these soldiers and see what’s been happening on the ground, all of a sudden you don’t know if you want them flying in to attack. Now that you care about that Parisian bicyclist, you’re concerned about what’s going to happen to her when she rounds that corner.

The payoff of the in medias res beginning is that thrilling moment of angst you give your reader when you reach that point and go beyond it. The tension shoots through the roof.

Consider your story: Is that the sort of risk/payoff pathway you’d love to send your novel and your readers on? The risk is that you may bore your readers if things are too slow before you catch up to that opening moment. The payoff is that breathless feeling of performing without a net that you give readers who stay with you. The choice is yours.

4. The Frame Device

The final major way of beginning your first chapter is to use a frame device. In this, your story is bookended on the front and back (and usually a few instances in the middle) by a story that is outside the main story. The primary tale is framed by this other story.

The Princess Bride (the novel and the film, both of which were written by William Goldman) is a frame-device story. The movie begins with a kid playing a video game. He’s staying home from school because he’s sick. His grandfather comes over and offers to read the boy a book to pass the time. Whenever he reads the book, the movie switches over to the main story, a fantasy swashbuckling adventure. Throughout the story, we cut back to the grandfather and boy, where we get commentary on the story and see a bond developing between them. Then it’s back to the fantasy world. The movie ends in the modern day as well.

Another example of a film that uses the frame device is Titanic. The story the audience cares most about is the historical tale of Rose and Jack and Cal onboard the doomed ocean liner. But we access that story through the device of an old woman (Rose) in the present. There’s a minor story going on in the modern day—they’re searching for a jewel she had while on the ship—but the real drama is the historical part. Now and then during the story we cut back to Old Rose, and the movie also ends with her, but our interest is in the other set of circumstances.

Would a frame device work for your story? One reason to consider a frame device is that you’re concerned a modern reader simply wouldn’t care deeply enough about your primary topic. If it’s too far removed from where they are in their lives, you might use a frame device to show someone very much like the reader (a kid playing a video game, for instance) coming to enjoy the main tale. Show someone like us getting involved in the story, and maybe we’ll go with you as well.

Another great thing about the frame device is that you can use it to make large jumps in time in your primary story. If you need to jump 10 years, just cut back to the frame story and have the narrator say, “It went pretty much like that for the next 10 years. Until finally …” and then return to the story. The frame device can act like a DJ transitioning between songs.

Why don’t authors use a frame device more often? I think it’s because it sometimes involves people who are out of danger and out of the action, which isn’t especially engaging. The instinct of most writers is to skip the frame and go straight to what’s inside it, and I agree. But there are good reasons to use a frame device in certain situations, and if you show movement or growth in the frame story, too, you can achieve something special.

Consider your choices, and then choose the beginning that fits naturally with the story you want to tell. If you approach your first chapter from a strategic standpoint, you have a better chance of maximizing your novel’s potential—and engaging the reader from the very beginning.

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Overcoming a painful past usually involves sharing one’s story and the associated feelings. Developing insight into past hurts, and connecting the dots between then and now enables one to make better choices moving forward. Journal writing is a powerful tool that opens the path to greater insight and self-knowledge.

This guest post is by Randy Kamen, ED.D., author of Behind the Therapy Door: Simple Strategies to Transform Your Life. She is a psychologist and educator who helped pioneer new territory in mind-body medicine at Boston University’s School of Medicine and Harvard’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. She has long been on the leading edge of her profession, integrating insight oriented and cognitive behavioral therapy with holistic methods in her research and clinical work. She helps women build on their strengths and implement new strategies to deepen their experience of insight, healing, and happiness. Dr. Kamen has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs. She writes for the Huffington Post and other media outlets. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook @DrRandyKamen to learn about her speaking engagements and women’s retreats on Martha’s Vineyard and around the country or visit her website DrRandyKamen.com.

The pioneer work of James Pennebaker in his book Writing to Heal and subsequent research on the topic of journal writing, confirms what many of us already know intuitively: Journal writing is a highly effective way to manage stress and alter a wide range of problematic behaviors. Strongly encouraged in the field of psychology and medicine journaling fosters deeper insight, self-awareness, and behavioral change. Behavioral psychologists often say, “If you can track it, you can change it.”

Journaling opens the door for the writer to express personal impressions, daily experiences, and evolving insights as well as reflections about the self, relationships, experiences, dreams, fantasies, and creative musings. This can be done without judgment or restriction. Reviewing earlier entries cultivates the writer’s ability to learn from past events and circumstances that might otherwise go unnoticed. A repetitive, self-destructive behavior becomes more apparent when seen through the lens of these journal entries.

A Vehicle for Mindfulness

Journal writing can be a vehicle for deepening mindfulness as it helps to clarify and refine thoughts and emotions and brings the writer into the present. Like meditation, journal writing helps to clear the mind by transcribing emotional clutter onto the written page. The writer becomes a witness to his or her past behaviors which then paves the way for fresh thought and perspective. Journaling provides a forum that can be both cathartic and revelatory.

A journal creates a great companion wherever you go. It is a resource for observing shifts in your inner world and outer behavior.

Getting Started

Begin the journaling practice by buying a notebook that you can slip into a pocketbook or even a pocket. Consider keeping a separate notebook by the bed to record dreams. Keeping a journal as a private file on the computer is another option. Choose any method that enables you to write consistently for at least ten minutes a day. Some people find that lingering over the writing takes them into a state of reflection about the past, present, or future. Others prefer to track their thoughts about particular subjects, such as dreams, and certain behaviors like smoking, eating, or mood variations. Journaling helps to identify and clarify goals, wishes, and emotional reality without inhibition. Consider a brief meditation as a prelude to journal writing. At a minimum take a few deep breaths for grounding purposes before beginning each new entry. In this way, you will create the condition for even greater focus and lucidity in capturing thoughts and writing.

There are many ways to keep a journal. You may wish to consider the type of journal you would like to keep. There are four kinds of journal that I am proposing here: free associating, gratitude, sentence prompts, and dreams.

Free Associating Journal

In a free associating journal the writer records what- ever comes to mind. This type of journal helps with processing events and clarifying thoughts. It is a venue for noticing feelings, insights, and matters of the heart. This kind of journaling also creates an opportunity for recording life lessons and reflecting on important questions.

Gratitude Journal

In a gratitude journal the writer makes daily recordings about several events for which she is grateful. The idea behind the gratitude journal is to strengthen the part of the brain that focuses on positive thoughts and deepens the capacity to appreciate. This type of journaling is strongly associated with diminished depression and the heightened experience of inner peace and well-being.

Sentence Prompts Journal

In a sentence prompts journal the writer uses open- ended questions or incomplete sentences to evoke (unique) thoughts, feelings, and associations. For example: My relationships will improve when…A risk I am willing to take today is…My life feels most harmonious when I…My goal today is…I believe that…I have always wanted to…I have decided to…My greatest strengths are…I am grateful for…I love…I am happiest when…


Dream Journal

In a dream journal the writer records her dreams upon awaking. Dreams can be a powerful source of insight. Once you begin keeping this kind of journal, you are likely to improve your dream recall. Your dreams are a window into your subconscious mind, which is a powerful way to understand your inner world. Sometimes, in the time it takes say “Good morning” to your partner, your dream can slip away. At first, you may only remember fragments or images from your dreams, but in time you will find that you have access to more vivid recollections.

Healing Childhood Trauma through Connection

Getting in touch with one’s early childhood memories, particularly memories from a challenging history, can cause old emotional pain to resurface, sometimes with a vengeance. Journaling can be a powerful tool to rethink your past, your current behaviors, and explore opportunities for change going forward.

Enjoy the process

Journal writing can become your guide and confidant. Most importantly you can tap into your authentic self without inhibition or judgment. The precious time spent journaling will deepen insight, and wisdom. You may find that your journaling ushers you into a healthier and happier place within yourself and with others.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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For several years I labored in the agent fields, trying to harvest one for my book on helping doctoral candidates finish their dissertations. My approach, I was sure, was new, based on my longtime practice of coaching doctoral students and editing their dissertation drafts.

I also knew from much research, and the students themselves, that the traditional dissertation-writing handbooks largely ignored the major subjects of my book—the emotional and interpersonal troubles students come up against in achieving this difficult goal. These aspects can trip them up as much as not knowing the right chapter headings or correct scholarly jargon.

In my quest for an agent, I mined the writing annuals, sites, reviews, and interviews for anyone with a hint of graduate education and interest in self-help. Amassing a thick file, I wrote to every one of them. All I gleaned were a few compliments and plenty of good lucks.

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This guest post is by author, editor, writing coach, and spiritual counselor, Noelle Sterne, who has published more than 300 pieces in print and online venues, including  Author Magazine, Funds for Writers, Children’s Book Insider,  Inspire Me Today, Transformation Magazine, Unity Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and Women on Writing. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Noelle has for over 28 years assisted doctoral candidates in completing their dissertations (finally). Based on her practice, her handbook addresses dissertation writers’ overlooked but very important nonacademic difficulties. Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in 2015. In her book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), Noelle draws examples from her academic consulting and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets, relabel their past, and reach their lifelong yearnings. Her webinar about the book is on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95EeqllONIQ&feature=youtu.be  Noelle invites you to visit her website: trustyourlifenow.com
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Dogged Doing

I kept at it, following all leads. I also continued to rethink the book and refocus the premises. I reflected on how many of my clients not only shared their emotional turmoils and relationship problems with me (dissertations often, unfortunately, precipitate divorces) but also admitted that they needed a more spiritual approach in their torturous graduate school journey. After repeated academic sucker punches, they would gingerly assert their faith in a power higher than their dissertation chair.

Spirituality and scholarship don’t often mix. Some of the nursing journals publish a few articles on spiritual qualities and practices (nurses are, after all, helpers and healers). But such a topic for dissertation help in academic circles is generally frowned on or completely shunned.

Today, though, the spiritual is popping up everywhere else, with spiritual-oriented books making bestseller lists, spiritual-themed movies making box office history, and even meditation techniques making the Internet homepages and supermarket magazine covers.

Clients shared with me much personal evidence on the effectiveness of spiritual techniques. I reflected too on my own use of spiritual practices to help students solve the problems their doctoral committees threw at them. So, heartened (and praying), I summoned the courage to incorporate another component in my book in addition to the emotional and interpersonal—the spiritual.

I revised the outline, reworked the chapter synopses, refined the introduction, and restructured the entire proposal. And wrote to more agents.

Nada.

Practitioner, Practice Thyself

Never mind, I thought. As I advised clients, I told myself to keep affirming success. And as I also advised clients, I kept visualizing myself working on the book daily. I also revisited the buoying words of one graciously rejecting agent: “You’ll publish this book in no time.”

During a meditation session, an idea surfaced: switch gears from submitting my proposal to agents and go directly to academic presses. This may not seem like an astounding revelation. But please understand: as a primarily nonacademic writer I’ve always craved an agent—the undisputable symbol, I’ve believed, of finally gaining credibility as a writer.

Following my inner guidance and doing more research, I drew up a list of academic publishers, all reputable, all stalwart. Each had its own proposal guidelines, and I dutifully filled in the blanks and sent the first out.

Speed Emailing

From here, things happened unbelievably fast. You probably won’t believe the chronology, so I chronicle the specifics.

• Tuesday night, 7:17 pm: sighing, back aching, I emailed the proposal to the first publisher.
• Wednesday morning, 8:52 am (seeing address and suppressing incipient elation): I opened the email from the vice-president/publisher asking me how this book would be different from the other three they most recently published, and another due out in two months.
• Wednesday afternoon, 12:29 pm (more research, no lunch): Drafted my reply and checked for typos. Sent!
• Wednesday afternoon, 1:28p: (between gulping sandwich bites and guzzling water): Opened his email: “Very convincing.” I then read, holding onto my desk chair arms so I wouldn’t faint, that they wanted to offer me a contract. “Delighted to have you as one of our authors.” I let go of the chair arms and floated to the ceiling.
• Wednesday afternoon, 1:30 pm: Two minutes later, surprised, I opened this email. The sandwich stuck in my throat. The projected length, he said, would make the book too big and expensive for the very audience I was aiming at, graduate students. And the original title was too long and amorphous and lacked good searchable words. He asked me to suggest alternate titles that “reflect the book’s purpose.” I slid under my desk chair.
• Wednesday evening, 7:41 pm: All day avoiding the latest request, and incidentally attending to a couple of clients’ dissertations, I finally squeezed out three alternate titles. Sighing mightily, I agreed to cut the book length and sent off the email.
• Thursday morning, 8:17 am: He thanked me for agreeing to cut the text and suggested another alternative to my three alternative titles.
• Thursday afternoon, 3:20 pm: After ruminating and chewing on the edges of several research books, I suggested yet other alternatives to his alternative alternative titles (was this a verbal pissing contest?). And waited.
• Friday, 10:00 am: He chose one of the alternative alternatives with a modification.
• Friday, 2:32 pm: I agreed with his choice and suggested a slight remodification (couldn’t appear a complete marshmallow).
• Friday, 2:46 pm: He thanked me and considered it settled. He added,
• “Ready to go, then!” I stood on my desk chair and shouted.
• Friday, 4:06 pm: From his associate, in my inbox appeared a passel of forms, information, tips, and THE CONTRACT. I ran into my husband’s office screaming and jumping to the ceiling.

* * * * * *

How Long?

All this took place in less than a work week—faster than I could ever have imagined. Well, let me correct that: less than a week—and several years. My proposal had to “sit” before I was ready to see it anew and change my focus. I also had to be ready to take the daring leap to include what I consider a major facet of my work, the spiritual.

I knew too that the many proposal revisions had increasingly brought out my expertise in the subject, and my passion for the project became evident. I believe the publisher liked these qualities, as well as my quick replies. I commend him too, an academic publisher, for not being put off by my audacious inclusion of the spiritual. His responses bolstered my conviction that during the many steps to book production we would have a simpatico relationship.

As I now absorb the miracle of this lightning proposal-to-contract, from under my desk I drag out the carton of materials, and from my computer open the windows of swelling collection of files, notes, and articles. And the work begins.

P.S. A bonus: One of the agents who had complimented the work earlier invited me to keep her informed. On Contract Friday, once I simmered down, I wrote her with the news. She then agreed to represent me! So, my toiling in the agent fields bore serendipitous—and wonderful—fruit!

Don’t be boring. That’s it. The shortest article you’ll ever read on how to write for television.

Okay, so maybe there’s a little more to it. You want to write a TV show. Start with the right format. Find a copy of a teleplay – from a book on TV writing or look on Google – pick a show you like and you’ll probably be able to track down a sample script. Invest in a good scriptwriting program – I like Movie Magic Screenwriter, but other writers prefer Final Draft. (Yes, this sounds insanely obvious, but occasionally I see scripts in the wrong format and that screams “unprofessional.” And while we’re talking about unprofessional, double-check your grammar and spelling. If people see your/you’re used incorrectly on the first page there’s a good chance your script will get tossed straight in the loser pile.)

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This guest post is by award-winning writer and producer Ann Lewis Hamilton has written for TV and film. Her TV credits include, among others, “Haven,” “The Dead Zone, “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Saved,” “Providence,” “Party of Five,” and “thirtysomething.” She was twice nominated for an Emmy award, and was the winner of a WGA Award and the Humanitas Prize. She grew up in Staunton, Virginia, in a house full of typewriters – her grandfather was the editor of the local newspaper where her father worked as a reporter and her mother wrote for the society page. Ann’s goal was to write and draw for MAD magazine, but instead she graduated with a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from UCLA. Expecting is her first novel. Visit her at www.AnnLewisHamilton.com.
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Story.

Be original. Be fearless and take chances. Write something you’re passionate about. Don’t make the mistake many networks do – “Hey, Homeland is a big hit, let’s make another show exactly like Homeland.” If your favorite show is Walking Dead, that’s fine. But don’t write a version of Walking Dead. Write something different, something that will stand out.

Outlines.

I would rather be dipped in a vat of boiling Velveeta cheese than write an outline. But the sad truth – although they’re tedious to do, you need them. I usually start with a short description of the show I’m writing – “Kenna, an average high school student living in Los Angeles, wakes up to discover she has the ability to fly.” (I made up this as an example. I’m not saying it’s is Emmy-worthy, in fact it’s pretty sucky.) The structure of an hour TV episode has changed over the years – from three acts to four, to five acts with a teaser. Let’s go with a teaser and five acts. With the teaser you want to hook an audience – a high school girl can suddenly fly? Whoa. Now dive into your acts. A lot of set up in the first act – Kenna’s family, her life at home, at school, her friends. Does she keep her ability to fly a secret? Look carefully at your act outs – end each one with something that will make the audience want to come back. If you figure out your act outs and your amazing ending, the script writes itself.

No, it doesn’t. Only in a dream world. As much as we’d like it to, a script never writes itself. But having a solid outline helps.

Characters.

When I was starting out, a very smart studio executive gave me a list of things to ask about each character. The list is on an index card next to my computer and I still use it. What is a character’s long-term goal, short-term goal. What is a character most afraid of. Biggest secret. Who do they love the most, hate the most. If you can answer these questions, you’ll be able to understand your characters.

Dialogue.

Listen to people talking. Write down things you hear people say. When you’re writing, say your dialogue out loud, even if your pets and children look at you like you’re insane. “Mommy’s a writer,” remind them. If your dialogue sounds clunky and formal, rewrite it. Don’t give your characters too many words or dialogue actors can play like, “I’m sad and gloomy.” Subtext is always better than text.

Looking to write a TV script (or movie script, for that matter)?
Check out Final Draft 9, software that helps you format your script and more.
Order it from our sister shop, The Writers Store at a heavily discounted price.

Description.

Less is more. Remember Kenna, our flying high school girl? What does her bedroom look like? Messy, clean, movie posters? All pink or all black? Don’t go on and on. Aim for short and sweet.

Description of characters. Less is more. Attractive, missing one leg, too many tattoos. 20ish. Mid-30s. Some writers use actors as comparison – “A Jennifer Lawrence type.” I don’t like that. I prefer to let the reader imagine the character in their head.

Scenes.

Don’t forget that each scene has a beginning, middle, and an end. That sounds basic, but it will help when you write.

Write your script for an audience. Be entertaining, let the people reading your script enjoy the experience. Try to surprise them – remember the goal is to keep them turning the pages. You want them to get to the end and say, “Wow, this is awesome. It should be a TV series.”

And you never know. It can happen to you if you keep writing and rewriting. (And don’t be boring.)

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Buy Brian’s book OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL, A DAD’S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO RAISING DAUGHTERS

What do authors want? How are authors faring in this changing publishing landscape? These are questions that need to be answered if we are to help shape the conversation between publishers and authors. That’s why we need your help.

Writer’s Digest and Digital Book World invite all traditionally published, self-published, and aspiring authors to share their experiences by participating in the third annual Author Survey. The survey takes about fifteen minutes or less to complete. The survey results will help us understand the core issues authors face, including their priorities and preferences, their experiences in publishing, and their earnings. Participants in the survey will get a sneak preview of results. Results will be presented at the Digital Book World Conference and Expo in January 2015 and published on the Digital Book World blog as free content. In-depth analysis will also be available for purchase in a comprehensive technical report as well as in a series of briefs designed for authors.

Click here to help us with the survey (and feel free to pass along to all other writers that you know).

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Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Buy Brian’s book OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL, A DAD’S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO RAISING DAUGHTERS

Hunger Games. 13 Reasons Why. Wonder. Young adult (YA) and middle grade (MG) publishing is hot right now. It’s always a group that does well, but with such big hits in recent years there’s a push by agents and publishers to grab the next Twilight or Harry Potter or unique book that’s destined for the bestseller list. The real question is this: How can you make your YA or MG book stand out?

In this live 90-minute webinar — titled “Writing the Breakout YA or Middle Grade Novel” —  literary agent Holly Root will give you an agent’s eye view of the current landscape-with plenty of straight talk about what’s real, what’s hype, and how to thrive in one of the most exciting areas of the publishing business. Plus, as a bonus, Root will critique a one-page query letter about your novel! It all happens at 1 p.m., EST, Thursday, November 13, 2014, and lasts 90 minutes.

Click Here to Register

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• What you can do today to create your strongest story ideas yet
• How to evaluate your own ideas for commercial potential
• How to know when you’re ready to query
• How to reconcile your art and the realities of the business
• How to “think like an agent” in crafting a query that will get noticed
• How to research smarter when targeting agents or publishers-targeting the best people for your work

Click Here to Register

HOW THE CRITIQUE WORKS

All registrants are invited to submit a one-page query letter for their novel. All submissions are guaranteed a written critique by the instructor, literary agent Holly Root. Holly reserves the right to request more writing from attendees by e-mail following the event.

Please Note: Even if you can’t attend the live webinar, registering for this live version will enable you to receive the On Demand webinar and a personal critique of your material. Purchasing the On Demand version after the live event will not include a critique.

Click Here to Register

INSTRUCTOR

Holly Root is a literary agent at Waxman Leavell Literary Agency who represents adult fiction and nonfiction as well as novels for children and teens; she is not seeking picture book clients or screenwriting clients. Her authors include New York Times, USA Today, SIBA, national and international bestsellers, as well as Morris, Nebula, and Rita award winners and nominees and many titles named to ALA Best lists. Prior to joining the Waxman Literary Agency in 2007, Holly worked at the William Morris Agency and Trident Media Group. Visit her online at http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/hroot and http://twitter.com/hroot.

Click Here to Register

I’ve been writing for a couple of years now, both working on a novel and doing some freelance work. What might be considered business expenses that I can deduct on my taxes? —Kaley A.

The writing business is like any other business, and that means you get the benefit of business-related tax breaks. If you’re a writer and are earning money from your writing (or are at least trying to earn money from it), you can deduct most materials related to your writing venture. This includes pens, paper, printing costs, postage and other writing supplies (though not snacks such as nacho-cheese-flavored Doritos, even if you get your cheesy fingerprints on the supplies—trust me, I’ve tried!).

Other deductible expenses that you should keep receipts for include writing-related travel costs, conference admissions, writing group or association fees, and business lunches—such as when you’re interviewing someone over lunch or dining with a potential client. Research materials (all those books, magazines and newspapers, huzzah!) are deductible, too. You may also deduct items such as a new computer or printer, though you may have to amortize the equipment deduction over a couple of years, so it’s best to consult with a professional tax preparer on those types of purchases.

Also, it’s important to note that if you claim your writing as a business, the IRS expects you to start making money after a couple of years. So if you’re making minimal money, for tax purposes you may only be able to claim your work as a hobby, which would allow you to deduct expenses only up to the amount of income you’ve made from writing.

The key to tallying tax deductions for writing-related business expenses is to keep receipts and records for everything. That way, if you’re ever audited, you’ll have the documentation to back it up.

But, if you’re ever in doubt, consult a professional tax preparer.

The first day of November is circled on my calendar in red ink every year, and it has nothing to do with the giant Halloween candy clearance sales. Not entirely, anyway. November 1 marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, a frenzied, caffeine-addled event with an insane goal – to write a fifty thousand word novel in only thirty days.

I first learned about the event in 2011 on October 30. I thought it over for all of about two seconds, and then I signed right up. Three years and three wins later, I recommend NaNoWriMo to all of my writer-type friends. There are so many reasons why.

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This guest post is by Heather Debord. Heather is a writer and full-time keeper in Knoxville Zoo’s Department of Herpetology. She loves lizards, tortoises, and the Oxford comma. You can find her at www.becomingcliche.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @becomingcliche.

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1. It’s all about you.

The official goal is fifty thousand words, sure, but the sky’s the limit. NaNo is an incredible opportunity to pursue some personal goals. My first year, I just wanted to hit that magic 50K. I squeaked over the finish line on the final day with thirty words to spare. The second year, my goals extended beyond the writing itself and included attending some local NaNo writing events to try to develop some real-life connections to other writers. My third year, I aimed big and challenged myself to double the goal. This year, I hope to actually type the elusive words The End, the one thing I have yet to do during NaNo.

2. The discipline.

The tight deadline is a writer’s best friend. We don’t cross that finish line or finish a novel by playing Candy Crush and searching out Grumpy Cat memes on the internet. I know. I’ve tried. To win at NaNo, writers’ gotta write. Spending a month hammering out 1,667 words per day, every single day, builds good habits that can carry over to the rest of the year. Time invested is never time wasted.

3. It’s liberating.

Because NaNoWriMo is so time-limited, anything goes. It’s all too easy to grow roots in a genre. November is the perfect time to step out of our comfort zone write something just for the fun of it, without necessarily thinking of its future commercial success. Always wanted to try your hand at romance? Go for it! Space opera whispering in your ear? There’s no time like the present! And it’s only a month-long commitment. Many of us have spent considerably longer on projects that didn’t quite pan out.

4. The sense of community.

Writing is by its nature a solitary pursuit. I know I tend to live in my head a lot of the time. And many writers don’t have a lot of support in real life. Tell someone on the street that you’re a writer, and they’re likely to look at you as if you’d just revealed your secret ambition is to become a crime-fighting goldfish. NaNo is an oasis in that lonely desert. Imagine working toward a common goal with almost half a million of your closest pals. NaNo is a global event, as well, unfettered by such petty things as time zones. Your personal writing group might not be available for a panicked 2am plot-hole repair, but a visit to the NaNo forums or Twitter feed will likely hook you up with someone who can offer some suggestions, or at least a sympathetic ear.

Click here for FREE character worksheets

5. You have nothing to lose.

Besides sleep, I mean. What is the worst that could happen? At the end of the month, you have a whole new manuscript to show for your efforts, or at least fifty thousand words of it. And there is so much to be gained, so many possibilities. Two years ago, I ended the month with a partial manuscript and an idea I dearly loved. I spent another couple of months completing the novel, which more than doubled in length and in turn led to a sequel that poured out in twelve glorious days. A third novel in that same world is rattling around in my head as we speak, with a whisper of a fourth, and all because I took the plunge on November 1. What are you waiting for?

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest, the editor of this blog and the author of the popular gift book:
Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Purchase Brian’s book of writing prompts: A Year of Writing Prompts

As a nonfiction writer, you might feel a bit left out during November. Everyone is talking about NaNoWriMo this and NaNoWriMo that. All the while, you want to write a nonfiction book in a month not a novel.

Well, you can, and you should. I have news for you, though. You don’t have to do it as a NaNoRebel or as part of an event created for novelists. You can write your nonfiction book in 30 days during an event for writers just like you—nonfiction writers.

During National Nonfiction Writing Month (NaNonFiWriMo) you can start and finish the draft of your nonfiction book in a month. Just take the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge (WNFIN). No need to even restrict your self to a full-length book; you can finish the final draft of a short book, an article, an essay, a series of blog posts, or your manifesto. As long as you embrace the goal of completing a work of nonfiction, this event is for you.

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This guest post is by Nina Amir, the bestselling author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual. She is a speaker, a blogger, and an author, book, and blog-to-book coach. Known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach, she helps creative people combine their passion and purpose so they move from idea to inspired action and positively and meaningfully impact the world as writers, bloggers, authorpreneurs, and blogpreneurs. Some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She is the founder of National Nonfiction Writing Month, aka the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge, and the Nonfiction Writers’ University. www.ninaamir.com

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Let’s say, however, that you do, indeed, want to write a nonfiction book in a month. There’s nothing like a challenge to get your creative juices flowing and to heighten your sense of commitment to completing your project and doing it fast. To meet that goal, though, you need to be prepared before the month starts.

While there are similarities between how fiction and nonfiction writers prepare for a book-in-a-month event, differences exists as well. What you need to do to be ready to get quickly from first to last page of you manuscript by the end of November also has a lot to do with the type of nonfiction book you choose to write.

Let’s take a look at the eight preparatory steps necessary to successfully write a nonfiction book in a month.

1. Choose your topic.

The first thing you want to do as you prepare for a month-long nonfiction book-writing challenge is choose a topic for your project carefully. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it really isn’t. Remember, you must finish your book in 30 days. (Now, NaNonFiWriMo is not a contest. No one counts your words to see if you won, and you don’t submit anything at the end to prove you finished your project. It’s a personal challenge. Still…you know if you succeed or fail.) Therefore, you don’t want to choose a subject that requires 150,000 words. That would mean you need to complete 5,000 words per day. That’s a tall order to fill for any writer, especially if he or she has a day job.

It’s better to select a topic you can cover in 50,000 words or less. You can write 1,667 words per day over the course of 30 days. If that still feels like a lot, then opt to write a guide, tip book or booklet. Many ebooks sold on Amazon today have only 5,000 to 20,000 words.

Who knows…you might end up with a longer book by month’s end. But don’t start with an unattainable goal. Begin with a topic that lends itself to a word-count that feels doable to you. That gives you a higher chance of success.

2. Create a Content Plan

While you can write a nonfiction book by the seat of your pants, it’s best to have a plan. (Yes, the seatsers vs. planners debate pertains to nonfiction as well as to fiction.) That plan helps you know where you are going so you write in a straight line rather than taking many detours. As you know, the need to make a lot of u-turns takes up a lot of time. When it comes to writing, that means cutting, rewriting and revising. You don’t want to do that if you are going to finish a good first draft or a final draft in a month.

Create an outline or a table of contents for you book. I like to start by brainstorming my topic and then taking all the different topics and organizing them into a book structure. (I use a mind map.) This ends up looking like a table of contents—actually a rather detailed table of contents with chapter titles and subheading titles. You might prefer to just create a simple outline or a bulleted list.

Whatever your method of choice, create something that looks like the structure of a book—a table of contents. And know what content will fill that structure as you create your manuscript. That’s your map.

Then, when you sit down to write each day, you know exactly what to write. In fact, the more detailed you make this plan, the more quickly and easily you will write your book. You will spend little time staring at your computer screen wondering what to write or what comes next. You will know. It will be right there in your writing plan. You’ll just follow the map—your tale of contents—to your destination.

3. Determine What Research You Need

You might think you can write your book “off the top of your head” because you are the expert on the topic. Inevitably, though, you will discover a need to search for something—a URL, a quote, the title of a book. These things can slow down your process. This is where preparation can help keep your fingers on the keyboard typing rather than perusing the Internet.

For each item in your plan—or your detailed table of contents, brainstorm the possible research you need and make note of it.

As you write, if you discover you need more research or interviews, don’t stop writing. Instead, create brackets in your manuscript that say [research here] and highlight them in yellow. Later, do a search for the term “research,” and fill in the gaps. In fact, you can even leave a certain amount of time per week for this activity if you think you will need to do so; this ensures you don’t come to the end of November with a manuscript filled with research holes.

4. Create a To-Do List

Look over your content plan. Take all the research items you listed and put them on a to-do list.

Make a list of URLs, books and articles to find. Look for anything you need to do. For instance, does your research require that you visit a certain location? If so, put “Visit XX” on the to do list.

Don’t forget to put interviews on this list. You want to conduct your interviews now, not during November, if at all possible.

5. Gather and Organize Your Materials

Gather as much of your research and other necessary material as you can prior to the end of October. Purchase the books, copy the articles into Evernote.com, copy and past the URLs into a Word doc, or drag them into Scrivener’s research folder, for instance. Get your interviews transcribed as well—and read through them with a highlighter, marking the quotes you think you want to use.

If you are writing memoir, you might want to gather photos, journals and other memorabilia. If you are repurposing blog posts, or reusing any other previously published or written material, you want to put all of this in one place—an online folder, a Scrivener file or a Word file.

Generally, get as much of what you need to write your book in an easily accessible format and location so you aren’t searching for it when you should be writing. Use piles, boxes, hanging folders, computer folders, cloud storage…whatever works best for you.

6. Determine How Much Time You Need

Each nonfiction book is different and requires a different amount of time to write. A research based book takes longer to write, for example, because you have to study, evaluate and determine your opinion of the studies. You have to read the interviews you conducted, choose appropriate quotes and then work those quotes into your manuscript.

If, on the other hand, you write from your own experiences, this take less time. With the exception of drawing on anecdotes, an occasional quote or bit of information from a book, the material all comes from your head. You need only sit down and write about a process you created, your own life story or your area of expertise.

You might normally write 750 words per hour, but the type of book you’ve chosen to write could slow you down to just 500 per hour. Or you might speed up to 1,000 words per hour. Determine how long it will take you on average to compose the number of words you must compete per day to meet your final word-count goal. Then, figure out how many hours per week you need to set aside during November to finish your manuscript. Allow more hours than you think necessary for “unforeseen circumstances,” slow days and a general need for extra time to complete the project the last week of the month.

7. Create a Writing Schedule

Last, create a writing schedule. You now know how much time you need to write your book. Now find those hours in your calendar and block them off.

Make those hours sacred. Nothing other than an emergency should take you away from writing your book during those scheduled writing blocks.

You’ve heard the advice that goes with this:

• Find a quite place to write.
• Limit distractions.
• Get an accountability partner.
• Keep your appointments with yourself.

8. Put a Back-Up System in Place.

Yes…this is my last tip, because you just never know what happens. Your computer crashes or dies. You accidentally delete your whole manuscript. Your child dumps milk all over your keyboard.

You want a back up of your NaNonFiWriMo project. Always save it to your computer’s drive and onto a thumb drive or, better yet, into the cloud, for safe keeping! Make these plans in advance as well. You can use Evernote.com, Dropbox.com or Google Drive, for example.

The other thing you need to has little to do with planning. During your 30-day nonfiction writing challenge, you must posses an attitude that supports meeting your goal. You must:

• Be willing to do what it takes
• Remain optimistic about meeting your goal.
• Stay objective about your work.
• Be tenacious and not let anything get in the way of finishing your project.

Those four qualities—Willingness, Optimism, Objectivity and Tenacity—constitute an Author Attitude. With that you will finish your nonfiction book in a month with no problem. Woot!

To learn more about National Nonfiction Writing Month, aka the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge, or to register, click here.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

If you’re going to invest in attending a writing conference, you’ll want to be sure to make it worth your while. And who knows better how you can do that than the people who make it all possible? Here, coordinators from 10 top events reveal their best insider tips on how to prepare, network, maximize your time and even dress to impress.

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This guest post is by Linda Formichelli (lindaformichelli.com), co-author of The Renegade Writer. She has been a full-time freelancer since 1997 and has written for more than 150 magazines and websites, including USA Weekend, Inc., Health, Redbook, WebMD, Cleveland Clinic Magazine, Pizza Today, Women’s Health, Family Circle, and Writer’s Digest. She’s also co-authored eight books, has done copywriting and content marketing for companies like OnStar and Pizzeria Uno, and has blogged professionally.

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1. GET IN THE RIGHT MINDSET.
“Writers make two big mistakes at conferences. The first is taking it all too seriously. Some folks are so overwhelmed with being at the conference [that] they forget to enjoy, learn and laugh. On the last day I see some [attendees] close to tears because they missed the trees for the forest. However, the other big mistake is being too laid back and too comfortable and forgetting the goal of getting published. While there are cocktail times and plenty of opportunities to mingle, publishing is a business.”

2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
“Google the writers, editors and agents [who will be featured at the conference] and [get] a good sense of what they’ve written, what kind of publications they edit and what kinds of writers they represent. At Book Passage, for example, we have a mix of newspaper, magazine and online editors, so wise students will spend time researching the different publications and websites. That way they can home in on the three or four people they want to be sure to meet and talk to, and they can come up with some questions they really want to get answered. The writers, editors and agents really appreciate it when the students they speak with are already familiar with their work.”

3. COME PREPARED.
“If you have a manuscript, bring it! You can’t sell it if it’s sitting at home on your desk. The second thing not to forget is your business card—with your photo on it. A lot of people remember faces and not names, so that’s very helpful. The third thing to bring is a notepad and pen. There are many wonderful workshops, and you’ll want to take lots of notes.”

[Understanding Book Contracts: Learn what’s negotiable and what’s not.]

4. BE PROFESSIONAL.
“Dress should reflect each writer’s own signature style. Professional casual is universal and generally makes a good impression. When meeting editors and agents, remember your manners, and don’t rush them or forget that perhaps they need a little break.
“Finally, attend the opening cere-monies banquet. That way you may sit with other authors and speakers from around the country.”

5. BE REALISTIC.
“The biggest mistake writers make … [is to] have unreasonable expectations. [Don't] count on meeting your agent, signing with them and having them sell your work before the conference is over. That just doesn’t happen. And don’t set your heart on meeting/signing with just one agent or editor—you never know who you’ll meet who will like your work. If you don’t meet up with your heart’s desire, reach out and write to him or her after the conference.”

6. SET GOALS UP FRONT.
“When deciding on a conference to attend, research the type of conference that suits your needs and ask trusted friends for recommendations. At the conference, decide where you want to focus—for example, more time to generate work, more mentoring or increased contact with other writers. Once there, open yourself to learning.”

[Here's a great article on how to structure a killer novel ending.]

7. BE COURTEOUS.
“When approaching editors and agents, ask if they want to be solicited, and then listen to their answers. Don’t try to pitch right there—ask how they like to be approached (e-mail, text, phone) and then do exactly as they say. My pet peeve is someone who asks how they should get in touch with me, I give them my e-mail, and then they send me messages on Facebook or Twitter. Or they ask me to e-mail them! That is so not going to happen.”

8. MAKE CONNECTIONS.
“Even if you’re an introvert, push yourself to talk to everyone around you. You’ll triple what you learn, make friends and get tips you couldn’t get any other way. When you get home, send a little two- to three-line ‘so glad to have met you’ e-mail, and then stay in touch with the writers you met.

“If you have a writing specialty, and the person you’re talking with has another, midway through the conversation—not right at first, which could be construed as ‘dissing’ [someone]—ask, ‘Do you know anyone here who writes about X, as I do? Will you introduce me, or point them out?’ ”

9. NETWORK NATURALLY.
“Avoid thinking of it as networking. You’re there to meet like-minded folks also struggling to discover what the world means and how to then communicate some form of that back to the world. Networking is a business word from the business world, and it’s essentially empty. During pitch sessions, don’t come off like a desperate freshman pawing at the most popular cheerleader. Sales don’t happen at conferences, either. It might be good to remember that.”

10. PERFECT YOUR PITCH.
“If the conference offers editor or agent pitch sessions, have a clean, crisp three-sentence pitch for your project: title, hook, basic premise. Practice the pitch in the mirror and on fellow writers. Do not tell the agent or editor how much money you’ll make for him or her, or compare yourself to famous, bestselling novelists. … Don’t whip out the whole manuscript, but do have a few opening pages handy just in case the agent or editor asks. Allow enough time for the agent or editor to ask you questions!”

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

After writing literary short fiction and then six contemporary novels, my then-agent told me to go henceforth and write a romance. A romance? I thought. Really?

After more discussion, I thought what a lark! What a gas! How fun and surely, how easy. I was under the assumption that I could write a romance in my sleep, no matter I hadn’t read one since 1978, the last being the classic The Flame and the Flower. Yes, of course, I could do that. And wasn’t Jane Austen my favorite writer? And wasn’t Pride and Prejudice just a romance at its core?

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This guest post is by Jessica Barksdale Inclán, author of the new novel, How to Bake a Man (Ghostwood Books/October 2014) as well as twelve critically acclaimed books, including the best-selling Her Daughter’s Eyes (YALSA Award Nominee), The Matter of Grace, and When You Believe. Her work had been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Czech. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in Compose, Salt Hill Journal, The Coachella Review, Carve Magazine, Storyacious, Mason’s Road, and So to Speak. She is the recipient of Californian Arts Council Fellowship in Literature and a professor of English at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California and teaches online novel writing for UCLA Extension. For more info, visit www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com.
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Yes, dear reader, you can already sense the conflict in my tale. Writing a romance (just like writing anything other than emails to friends) isn’t easy. In fact, I had to read every romance in my local library, sitting at the tables or slumped in the stacks. During my impromptu self-paced class, I learned a lot about plot and story from the romance writers. While I’m not writing romance these days, the lesson of action, conflict, climax (and then some) are lessons I use to this day.

After discarding my false notions about writing romance, I realized that many writers have assumptions about genres they haven’t even tried to write. Once a romance writer I met at a conference told me, nose up, that she never read literary fiction. “Nothing ever happens,” she said.

At a recent workshop, two literary writers compared romance novel excerpts to literary fiction and nonfiction selections. “How can you compare apples and watermelons?” I asked them. “These writers are doing something else!”

Frankly, I was appalled by all three writers. Literary or romantic, all writing has something to teach us. So when I decided to try my hand at “chick lit,” I knew I would bring all my lessons with me. But then I added to the list. Here’s what I know after finishing How to Bake a Man.

[Here's a great article on how to structure a killer novel ending.]

1. Don’t write down to your audience.

While I might have had about a week’s worth of “romance is so easy,” I was wrong. All audiences are savvy in their preferred genre, and it’s not a good idea to insult them. Take as much time and care as you would with any writing project. Don’t decide that now you can use all the adverbs you want. Now is not the time to slip in your, “Meanwhile, across towns” and “Little did she knows.” Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back isn’t all there is to a love story of any kind. We all respond to good writing, regardless of genre.

2. Everything that you are embarrassed about–your failures, your social fax pas–are what we, the audience, want to read about. We relate.

There’s something endearing about main characters who are down-and-out, unlucky in love and life, struggling to figure out how to just keep going. The shame of not succeeding, of having very bad internet dating experiences, of fighting with parents and siblings, of getting fired, again, is what we also know and understand. Don’t bemoan writing what you know if you know all this. We do, too. And we thank you for putting it out there.

3. Don’t write expecting your mother to approve (I know, Mom. I know). We’ve all tried to get our mothers to approve of us and that hasn’t worked. Write as if Mom is on an extended vacation.

I understand if you haven’t explained to your mother the vagaries of dating. The slightly seedy one-night stands. Being stood up at Starbucks and spending a half-hour talking to the homeless veteran on crutches (Yes, me. And I used this situation in a short story). But those experiences transformed to fiction can lead you deeper into your character and plot. Maybe not to your mother’s heart. But she really doesn’t have to know about it.

[Understanding Book Contracts: Learn what’s negotiable and what’s not.]

4. Small ideas (baking cookies, for instance) can lead to bigger ideas.

On Facebook recently, I was playing around with wild, blown up, ridiculous plot synopses. Here’s a bit of one of them:

Young vampire with leftist leanings searches for hope in the underworld. Little does he know, across town in heaven, a werewolf vixen with a penchant for blood pins her hopes on him after a chance sighting in the ether.

Wow. Where to even begin with that one? So start small. I started How to Bake a Man with cookies. My great-grandmother’s recipe, in fact. I thought about all I learned from my mother and what she learned from my grandmother. I thought about all that female power in the act of rolling out dough, just as women have been rolling out door for generations. Then I imagined a young woman just ripe and ready to change her life. Cookies. That was the thing.

So you don’t have to have the topic du jour, the platform of perfection, the weirdest of weird. Try with what is around you and see what happens next.

Writing in many genres has helped me fill my toolbox. Poetry, short stories, fiction of all kinds. I feel lucky to know enough to pull out a metaphor when I need to and a sex scene when necessary. I hope my list helps you, no matter what you’re writing.

In This Book You’ll Learn:

— Detailed descriptions of more than 20 subcategories within the romance genre
— Tips for avoiding clichés
— How to create the perfect romantic couple
— Guidelines for drafting those all-important love scenes
— Submission information for breaking into the genre

CLICK HERE to download ON ROMANCE WRITING Now >>

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

As the novel consultant, I am often asked how a writer should tell his or her story. I work with clients in both novel and memoir, using similar structural techniques to develop a compelling story. I truly believe that both forms are ideal ways in which to tell your personal story. The choice is up to you.

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This guest post is by Leslie Lehr who is a manuscript consultant and the prizewinning author of six books, including her literary thriller, What A Mother Knows. She speaks at conferences from New Orleans to Newport Beach and teaches at the Writers Program at UCLA as well as for Truby Writers Studio. Leslie has been subscribing to Writers Digest for 25 years and considers it her go-to source for writing tips. For more, go to www.leslielehr.com.

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Only recently did I realize that my genre jumping work was proof of this. During a conference interview, Mary Manzel, Director of the California Center for the Book, asked what would develop from my NY Times Modern Love essay. She had read all of my books, essays and scripts – my entire ouvre. I hadn’t realized I had one, until she pointed out a pattern. Beginning with Welcome to Club Mom, a nonfiction book, “I Hate Everybody”, an essay for the infamous Mommy Wars, and my recent literary thriller, What A Mother Knows, I’ve been exploring the challenges of modern motherhood for twenty years.

Essentially, she tapped into my method of using creative nonfiction as a springboard for fiction. To be honest, I have written a memoir, but it was painful for family members, so I put it in a drawer. I never regretted it, because I fictionalized some of the important themes in my next novel. In fact, when I faced mortality recently, I could honestly say that I would be satisfied if What A Mother Knows was my last book. Here’s why: all the important ideas I have about love are woven into this literary thriller. Go figure!

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If you are torn between memoir and novel, here are eight advantages of each:

NOVEL

Since every element is designed to express an emotional truth…..

1. It may be easier emotionally to write.
2. You don’t have to remember everything that really happened.
3. You can rewrite history.
4. You can include events you did not witness.
5. You can protect yourself and others.
6. You can create a more vivid story.
7. You can explore personal issues on a larger framework.
8. You can create characters and events, expand real ones, and magnify themes.

MEMOIR

Since every event is revealed to express the true emotion…

1. You can explore the real truth behind what happened.
2. You may find it easier to tell a real story than to make one up.
3. The writing can be prompt a profound understanding of your life.
4. You can frame the story dramatically to focus on a particular theme.
5. You can shape the story by expanding or compressing time.
6. You can use more internal narrative to reflect on events.
7. The story may gain or meaning as time passes.
8. You can write about one event now and write more memoirs later.

If you’re wondering whether to tell you story in memoir or novel form, there is no wrong answer. The choice is up to you!

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

BY TED BOONE NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is November) is a brilliant way to jumpstart an aspiring writer’s progress towards completing a novel manuscript. Its goals are clear and straightforward: 50,000 words in 30 days. That goal, while certainly challenging, is manageable for most participants, and the end result is twofold: a solid start to a novel, and the invaluable feeling of accomplishment for “winning” the NaNo challenge.

Given NaNoWriMo’s simple but stringent requirements, many participants adopt some fairly draconian methods to accomplishing their goal. Over the last decade of participation, I’ve observed self-imposed rules like: zero backspace usage, absolute “pantsing” (writing without an outline or plan), stream-of-consciousness-typing, no food/drink/television/whatever before daily word count is achieved (!), etc. The techniques NaNo participants employ to achieve their word-count goal are as diverse as the participants themselves. (For more great tips on National Novel Writing Month [NaNoWriMo], download the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest now!)

The most common technique that experienced WriMos will propose for newbies is the “zero editing” approach. That is, during the month of November, you must resist the urge to edit your novel. The advice is based upon the idea that NaNo participants should always be increasing their word count, regardless of the quality of the words that are appearing on the page.

It’s not a bad plan. Turning off your inner editor during the month of November is often what aspiring novelists need. Getting bogged down in editing can often result in never finishing the manuscript in the first place. Editing is the bane of momentum.

Except, of course, when it’s not.

My confession?

I edit during NaNoWriMo.

Get prepared to write an entire novel in November with
a little help for our October 9 webinar: How to Pre-Plot & Complete
a Novel or Memoir in a Month (comes with a bonus ebook).
Register here.

I edit every single day. Sometimes more than once. I probably spend as much time editing during November as I do writing. There. I said it. Now, let me explain.

I have tried, over the last nine years, to adhere to the mantra, “DO NOT EDIT.” The reasoning behind this mantra is that your inner editor always has its hand on the brake lever, ready at any moment to pull a Full Stop on your writing progress and, in the process, scream epithets in your ear about the utter uselessness of your writing efforts during November.

To wit: your inner editor is an asshole.

So, during NaNo, many writers make the conscious effort to lock their inner editors away, in deep vaults under heavy mountains on distant planets, and throw the keys into the fiery furnace of the local star.

No editing = no brakes, and no internal monologue of self-loathing.

Does this work? For many people: yes, absolutely.

For me? Nope. No way.

My stopping mechanism is different. It’s not a set of brakes being applied by a hypercritical inner child whose parents never showed any affection or approval. It’s the natural function of my rusty gears of thought, which need constant and lavish lubrication to allow the machine to even function, let alone move forward.

What’s my manuscript-writing-machine lubricant of choice? My WD-40?

During November, I write for a few minutes. Then I stop. I ponder. I reconsider. I go backwards. I tweak. I add words. I rearrange paragraphs. I interject conversations.

I edit. Line by line. And while, on occasion, that results in the deletion of words, the net effect is always, always, an increase in word count.

Unfortunately, this line-editing process does mean that I move slowly. Sometimes embarrassingly slowly. A few years ago (much to the perverse delight of my local Wrimos) I wrote 67 words during a 15-minute sprint. That’s… not fast. That’s the opposite of fast. Writing 1,667 words a day–words I’m willing to live with–takes me forever. So, when people say they’re busy during November, I tend to roll my eyes. Busy? You have no idea.

It’s my own fault, but every day of November is an exercise in iteration. I have no idea what “linear writing” means. I prefer loop-de-loops and spiralling detours. A self-inflicted molasses-slow meandering path to my daily word count.

And then, the next day, when I first open my manuscript? That’s when I get truly masochistic. Before I type a single new word, I reread my scenes from the previous day. I kickstart my complacent characters. Then I stand back and see how they react to my poking and prodding. If it’s boring, I go back in and do it again. With flair and panache. Rinse and repeat, until my re-re-re-read elicits a grin.

Once I’m happy with my new, revised scene, I rinse and repeat.

Write. Line edit. Sleep. Kickstart.

The end result has been, historically, a manuscript that’s passable. Not necessarily a first draft, but not exactly a zero draft either. Zero point five. Zero point seven, if I let my ego speak its mind.

So, yeah. I edit. It’s part of my process, and for me, it works.

Don’t agree with me? Cool. Have your own process that works? More power to you. And if anyone tells you your approach is wrong?

Write them into your novel for a little prodding of their own.

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Ted Boone was born in Wilmington, Delaware. An avid fan of National Novel Writer’s Month, Ted has authored numerous SF manuscripts during the month of November, but not yet pursued publication for his novels. Ted currently works as an Instructor for the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

BY ABBY SCHREIBER Everyone has a different take on the writing process, from the classic rhythm of “Write, edit, revise, and repeat” to the scramble of mismatched scenes that eventually come together. As a young author, I find the writing process to be something stretchable, and easy to bend. The writer is the one who truly creates their own writing process out of the twenty-six letters that make up their basic materials.

At some point, though, you in your busy life might wonder, “How the heck am I going to fit this writing into my schedule?”

Well, there are two simple answers. The first is to become a hermit. The second, and possibly more effective solution, is proactive time management. NaNoWriMo, and its Camp NaNoWriMo events are all about managing time. How else could so many people write 50,000 words, or even more, in only a month? (For more great tips on National Novel Writing Month [NaNoWriMo], download the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest now!)

First of all: absolutely do not become a hermit, or remove yourself in any way from friends and family! They will play a major part in the things you achieve. Instead, daydream and seek inspiration whenever you have a moment where getting lost in your ideas won’t be a hazard (because planning a novel in your head during brain surgery doesn’t sound like a good idea, does it?).

Plan beforehand. Whether you write on your own, or solely during events like NaNoWriMo, planning makes things incredibly easier. I’ve found that planning can take many routes, too, but it boils down to this: you wrestle with what needs to happen to fulfill your story, then take note. Perhaps you are like me and string index cards all over your work area, or maybe you make a map of the world you have created.

Get prepared to write an entire novel in November with
a little help for our October 9 webinar: How to Pre-Plot & Complete
a Novel or Memoir in a Month (comes with a bonus ebook).
Register here.

When it comes to making the most of your writing time, there are ways to improve the amount you write, and still have time for your life. You sit down in your free time at your favorite place to write. Let’s say there is only one hour for you to get as much as you can done. What do you do?

First, shut off distractions. Tumblr, Facebook, it all has to go. Turn off the phone, hide away the book you’re reading (I know, it is hard). Once these things can’t be of distraction, you can get started, but with what? You have the characters and the world they belong to planned out, but where do you begin?

Well, with one word, followed by another. You begin writing with the words that may become the ending to the mystery or the introduction of a character. Steps turn to leaps. You leave this world behind to spend a small time somewhere else.

When it is time to get back to work, school, sleep, or whatever else you have to do, remember to never forget whatever it is you write with. Bring a notebook to continue in every spare moment, or your laptop to type during a lunch break. Wherever you go, inspiration follows, even if in the smallest ways.

Don’t write too long. Allow time to get snacks, and to give your mind a break. Writing, like anything, is a process that takes time to learn and improve upon.

Doing NaNo or anything similar is like entering a different world. Set the times when you can immerse yourself in the story that you have created. No one else can write the things you can. Even if you aren’t a writer, there are things that will never exist if you are not the one to create them. Embrace your ideas, establish goals to get where you want to go, and set off!

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Abigail is a thirteen-year-old writer in Lafayette, Colorado, who has been told that she was practically an adult from birth. Over the past year, she’s written three novels, and hopes to eventually get at least one of them traditionally published. Most day she can be found tucked away in her room, watching Doctor Who, listening to her favorite music, and planning new books. Her first book, Millennium can be found here. Follow her on Twitter at @epikowl.

BY OWEN BONDONO In nature, all living things fill a specific role in their ecosystems. This is called their ecological niche, and organisms need this specific combination of factors to survive.

Similarly, every writer needs their own specific combination of factors to thrive creatively. Some people like quiet, while others like noise. Some write first thing in the morning, others write after everyone else has gone to bed. Finding your writing niche is key to upping your productivity.

Lists and charts have always made me happy. Even if you hate charts, taking notes on your writing habits can help clarify what factors work for you and which factors don’t.

Spend a few weeks setting aside writing time as often as you can. Record all the details of your writing session, including:

• location,
• the day and time,
• how much time spent writing,
• background noise,
• what else you’re doing (eating, drinking, texting, etc),
• words written, and
• anything else you think may impact your writing productivity.

Make sure you switch up these factors during the few weeks you’re recording, so you get as much data as possible.

Sitting back to look at this information will show you trends that are hard to spot on their own, especially when you do the math to figure out how many words you wrote per hour. As the factors change, productivity can vary widely.

Study these numbers for patterns. These patterns of productivity are the factors that will describe your niche. For instance, my niche is in the evening, out of the house, somewhere with some background noise but with my music playing. That’s why you’ll find me in libraries and cafes with too much coffee and headphones that look too big for my head. Everyone has their own niche, and keeping track of your productivity can help you find yours.

Get prepared to write an entire novel in November with
a little help for our October 9 webinar: How to Pre-Plot & Complete
a Novel or Memoir in a Month (comes with a bonus ebook).
Register here.

Make Your Niche Into A Habitat

Once you’ve found your niche, it’s time to burrow in and make it your home. Habitats provide animals with everything important in their lives. They dictate the habits and routines of nature. As humans, we get to decide what is in our habitat.

Routine helps prevent writer’s block and gives you focus. If you always write after supper, then your brain will start shifting automatically into writing gear as you’re stacking your dishes in the sink.

Don’t think of writing time as stolen moments, but as planned time to give your creativity the room to stretch and play. Putting your writing time on your schedule – and sticking to it – helps you and those around you take it seriously. That’s when your niche becomes a habitat, when you settle down to live in the efficiency of routine.

To do this, lay out your schedule for a typical week. Index cards or sticky notes are great for this because you can move them around easily. On each card or note, write out one thing you must do in your day. Include everything: your job, your commute, your mealtimes, your sleep.

Figure out what you can rearrange. Some things you can’t move, like your commute. But with a little flexibility, many things can be moved. Showers can be taken in the morning or at night; the dishes can be washed any time. Rearrange your tasks so your butt is in  your preferred writing chair during your writing niche as often as possible.

Most of us can’t afford to spend hours every day writing. There are just too many other things that need our attention. By making writing in your niche a routine, we can be more productive in less time. We may not be professional writers who can dedicate hours of the day to writing, but 20 minutes of high efficiency writing is better than spending two hours unfocused.

-
Owen Bondono is a border-crossing educator who teaches in Detroit and lives in Canada. He has served as National Novel Writing Month’s Detroit Municipal Liaison for six years and is currently revising his first novel. To write with him this November, visit his NaNoWriMo author profile.

Readers can’t resist turning pages when characters are facing tough choices. Use these 5 keys to weave moral dilemmas into your stories—and watch your fiction climb to new heights.

—by Steven James

Key #1: Give Your Character Dueling Desires.

Before our characters can face difficult moral decisions, we need to give them beliefs that matter: The assassin has his own moral code not to harm women or children, the missionary would rather die than renounce his faith, the father would sacrifice everything to pay the ransom to save his daughter.

A character without an attitude, without a spine, without convictions, is one who will be hard for readers to cheer for and easy for them to forget.

So, to create an intriguing character facing meaningful and difficult choices, give her two equally strong convictions that can be placed in opposition to each other.

For example: A woman wants (1) peace in her home and (2) openness between her and her husband. So, when she begins to suspect that he’s cheating on her, she’ll struggle with trying to decide whether or not to confront him about it. If she only wanted peace she could ignore the problem; if she only wanted openness she would bring it up regardless of the results. But her dueling desires won’t allow her such a simple solution.

That creates tension.

And tension drives a story forward.

So, find two things that your character is dedicated to and then make him choose between them. Look for ways to use his two desires to force him into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

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For instance, a Mennonite pastor’s daughter is killed by a drunk driver. When the man is released on a technicality, does the minister forgive him (and what would that even look like?) or does he take justice into his own hands? In this case, his (1) pacifist beliefs are in conflict with his (2) desire for justice. What does he do?

Good question.

Good tension.

Good drama.

Another example: Your protagonist believes (1) that cultures should be allowed to define their own subjective moralities, but also (2) that women should be treated with the same dignity and respect as men. She can’t stand the thought of women being oppressed by the cultures of certain countries, but she also feels it’s wrong to impose her values on someone else. When she is transplanted to one of those countries, then, what does she do?

Construct situations in which your character’s equally strong convictions are in opposition to each other, and you will create occasions for thorny moral choices.

Key #2: Put Your Character’s Convictions to the Test.

We don’t usually think of it this way, but in a very real sense, to bribe someone is to pay him to go against his beliefs; to extort someone is to threaten him unless he goes against them.

For example:

• How much would you have to pay the vegan animal rights activist to eat a steak (bribery)? Or, how would you need to threaten her in order to coerce her into doing it (extortion)?
• What would it cost to get the loving, dedicated couple to agree never to see each other again (bribery)? Or, how would you need to threaten them to get them to do so (extortion)?
• What would you need to pay the pregnant teenage Catholic girl to convince her to have an abortion (bribery)? What threat could you use to get her to do it (extortion)?

Look for ways to bribe and extort your characters. Don’t be easy on them. As writers we sometimes care about our characters so much that we don’t want them to suffer. As a result we might shy away from putting them into difficult situations.

Guess what?

That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen in order for our fiction to be compelling.

What’s the worst thing you can think of happening to your character, contextually, within this story? Now, challenge yourself—try to think of something else just
as bad, and force your character to decide between
the two.

Plumb the depths of your character’s convictions by asking, “How far will s/he go to … ?” and “What would it take for … ?”

(1) How far will Frank go to protect the one he loves?

(2) What would it take for him to stand by and watch the one he loves die when he has the power to save her?

(1) How far will Angie go to find freedom?

(2) What would it take for her to choose to be buried alive?

(1) How far will Detective Rodriguez go to pursue justice?

(2) What would it take for him to commit perjury and send an innocent person to death row?

Ask yourself: What does my character believe in? What priorities does she have? What prejudices does she need to overcome? Then, put her convictions to the ultimate test to make her truest desires and priorities come to the surface.

[Here's a great article on how to structure a killer novel ending.]

Key #3: Force Your Character Into a Corner.

Don’t give him an easy out. Don’t give him any wiggle room. Force him to make a choice, to act. He cannot abstain. Take him through the process of dilemma, choice, action and consequence:

(1) Something that matters must be at stake.

(2) There’s no easy solution, no easy way out.

(3) Your character must make a choice. He must act.

(4) That choice deepens the tension and propels the story forward.

(5) The character must live with the consequences of his decisions and actions.

If there’s an easy solution there’s no true moral dilemma. Don’t make one of the choices “the lesser of two evils”; after all, if one is lesser, it makes the decision easier.

For example, say you’ve taken the suggestion in the first key above and forced your character to choose between honoring equal obligations. He could be caught between loyalty to two parties, or perhaps be torn between his family obligations and his job responsibilities. Now, raise the stakes—his marriage is at risk and so is his job, but he can’t save them both. What does he do?

The more imminent you make the choice and the higher the stakes that decision carries, the sharper the dramatic tension and the greater your readers’ emotional engagement. To achieve this, ask “What if?” and the questions that naturally follow:

• What if she knows that being with the man she loves will cause him to lose his career? How much of her lover’s happiness would she be willing to sacrifice to be with him?

• What if an attorney finds herself defending someone she knows is guilty? What does she do? What if that person is her best friend?

• What if your character has to choose between killing himself or being forced to watch a friend die?

Again, make your character reevaluate his beliefs, question his assumptions and justify his choices. Ask yourself: How is he going to get out of this? What will he have to give up (something precious) or take upon himself (something painful) in the process?

Explore those slippery slopes. Delve into those gray areas. Avoid questions that elicit a yes or no answer, such as: “Is killing the innocent ever justified?” Instead, frame the question in a way that forces you to take things deeper: “When is killing the innocent justified?” Rather than, “Does the end justify the means?” ask, “When does the end justify the means?”

Key #4: Let the Dilemmas Grow From the Genre.

Examine your genre and allow it to influence the choices your character must face. For instance, crime stories naturally lend themselves to exploring issues of justice and injustice: At what point do revenge and justice converge? What does that require of this character? When is preemptive justice really injustice?

Love, romance and relationship stories often deal with themes of faithfulness and betrayal: When is it better to hide the truth than to share it? How far can you shade the truth before it becomes a lie? When do you tell someone a secret that would hurt him? For example, your protagonist, a young bride-to-be, has a one-night stand. She feels terrible because she loves her fiancé, but should she tell him what happened and shatter him—and perhaps lose him—or keep the truth hidden?

Fantasy, myth and science fiction are good venues for exploring issues of consciousness, humanity and morality: How self-aware does something need to be (an animal, a computer, an unborn baby) before it should be afforded the same rights as fully developed humans? At what point does destroying an AI computer become murder? Do we really have free will or are our choices determined by our genetic makeup and environmental cues?

[Learn the 5 Essential Story Ingredients You Need to Write a Better Novel]

Key #5: Look for the Third Way.

You want your readers to be thinking, I have no idea how this is going to play out. And then, when they see where things go, you want them to be satisfied.

There’s a story in the Bible about a time religious leaders caught a woman committing adultery and brought her to Jesus. In those days, in that culture, adultery was an offense that was punishable by death. The men asked Jesus what they should do with this woman. Now, if Jesus had told them to simply let her go free he would have been contravening the law; if, however, he told them to put her to death, he would have undermined his message of “forgiveness and mercy.”

It seemed like a pretty good trap, until he said, “Whoever is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

Nicely done.

I call this finding the Third Way. It’s a solution that’s consistent with the character’s attitude, beliefs and priorities, while also being logical and surprising.

We want the solutions that our heroes come up with to be unexpected and inevitable.

Present yours with a seemingly impossible conundrum.

And then help him find the Third Way out.

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Steven James is the critically acclaimed author of 10 novels. He has a master’s degree in storytelling, has taught writing and creative storytelling on three continents, is a contributing editor to WD and loves putting his characters’ beliefs to the test.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

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Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

There are many resources out there for writing nonfiction, which can be confusing for writers trying to decide which one fits their needs. Here, with our new Writer’s Digest How to Write and Publish Nonfiction Premium Collection, you get 11 great writing resources covering everything—from writing better nonfiction to crafting your query letter to getting your nonfiction published—bundled together for one low price. There are details to all the books, webinars and downloads including in this collection below, but this is a limited time offer so click here to order before they are gone.

Click here to order now >>

	Publish Your Nonfiction Book PAPERBACKThis book collects every resource you need to publish your nonfiction story in one place! Whether you haven’t written your first page or you’re a published author, this book will make the process from idea to publication a painless one. Learn if you have the necessary skillset necessary for nonfiction writing, how to develop your platform and target your audience, and how to navigate the relationship with editors and publishers.
	Writing Creative Nonfiction PAPERBACK This compilation presents more than thirty essays examining every key element of the craft of writing creative nonfiction. Learn from today’s top creative writers how to draw on your own experiences for compelling nonfiction story ideas, how to structure your novel, how to use satire and other forms of humor, and more. This resource also includes a creative nonfiction “reader” featuring pieces from popular authors.
	3 Secrets to Getting Your Nonfiction Book Published ONDEMAND WEBINARThis presentation will get you from idea to published in three steps. Find out the secrets of a nonfiction story that thrills agents and editors, how to craft a selling handle, the basics of proposal writing, and more. The webinar includes everything you need to know about the publishing process to ensure your story hits the shelves.
	Selling Your Nonfiction Book EBOOKNot every nonfiction book is picked up by an agent or editor. There’s an art to writing your proposal and finding a publisher. This eBook outlines the seven components to crafting a nonfiction book proposal, what to include in the query letter, and books, websites and organizations that can help you prepare a winning nonfiction story proposal.
	How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal DIGITAL DOWNLOADDo you know what prescriptive nonfiction is? This tutorial will outline how it can speed up the process to publication. As a nonfiction writer, you have to know how to position yourself as an expert on your topic and how to show editors that there’s a need for your book. This 30-minute video will uncover the best way to sell yourself in your book proposal.
	Nonfiction Books – Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript EBOOK EXCERPTThis eBook excerpt will guide you through the nonfiction story submission process. All components of your book proposal will be addressed: Cover letter, cover page, overview, marketing information or business case, competitive analysis, author information, chapter outline, sample chapters and additional attachments.
	How to Pitch and Publish Your Nonfiction Book DIGITAL DOWNLOADPublishing nonfiction books is a different ballgame than fiction publishing. You pitch differently, you prepare differently, you write differently, and you get paid differently. This tutorial describes how to pitch your nonfiction book idea, how to complete the book proposal, and how to write your table of contents (TOC). The tutorial also covers authorship, co-authorship, contributing authorship, agents, and publishers.
	Marketing Plan Template for Non-Fiction Authors DIGITAL DOWNLOADHow strong is your platform? In today’s publishing climate, nothing influences a publisher’s interest more than the strength of an author’s marketing plan. If publishers aren’t sure an author can help sell books, they tend to reject the book proposal and choose someone else. This downloadable template is a concise, four-page, Word document that walks you step-by-step through building your own marketing plan to distinguish yourself from the pack.
	Bestseller Website Tutorial for Non-Fiction Authors DIGITAL DOWNLOADResearch has shown that websites are the top way readers choose to support their favorite authors. The more people you attract to your website, the more likely your book sales will increase. Sadly, too many authors hinder their success by throwing together a shoddy webpage or never setting up a website at all. Get expert insights from Rob Eagar, and build a website worthy of a bestseller!
	Ask the Editor: Nonfiction 2014 Writer’s Digest Conference Session DIGITAL DOWNLOADThe market for nonfiction books is thriving and it can be substantially easier to get nonfiction published than fiction. In this Writer’s Digest Conference session, a panel of high-level nonfiction acquisition editors answer a range of important, thought-provoking questions about how books are acquired, what you can do to seal a deal – or kill it – and what they’re looking for, regardless of what the latest “trends” suggest. You’ll also learn about their stance on self-publishing and whether doing so can help or hurt your chances of securing a traditional contract.
	The Five Keys to Selling Your Nonfiction Book or Memoir OnDemand Webinar ONDEMAND WEBINARIf your submission is going to get any consideration, you have to know what to emphasize and how to prioritize your points to make your book attractive.Your nonfiction book can quickly stand out and get attention if it presents the 5 key aspects of a book project. In this On Demand Webinar, learn how to craft your sales proposition, give good comparative titles, present your marketing platform, build your TOC and choose sample chapters to make agents want to represent you.

Learning how to write a great query—one that will not only make an agent want to read your book, but pick up the phone and call you the minute he/she reads your query—is essential if you want to be a published author.

In this live 90-minute webinar — titled “Querying 101: Putting Your Best Book Forward” —  Literary agent Jennifer De Chiara will guide you, step-by-step, in writing the perfect pitch for your book. She’ll offer do’s and don’ts from her 16+ years of agenting and share queries that got her attention and those that didn’t. De Chiara will also give tips on how to find the right agents to query.If you’ve written a dynamite query, it’s still worthless if you’re not sending it to the right agents. It all happens at 1 p.m., EST, Thursday, September 25, 2014, and lasts 90 minutes.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• How to start your query
• How to write the perfect elevator pitch
• Common mistakes that writers make
• How to find the right agent to query
• How to highlight your hook
• How simple and direct can often be the best way to go

INSTRUCTOR

Jennifer De Chiara is President and Owner of the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, which she founded in 2001. Before forming the agency, she was a literary agent with two established New York agencies, worked in the editorial departments of Simon & Schuster and Random House, and was a writing consultant for several major corporations. A New York City-based writer, she is a frequent guest judge for the WRITER’S DIGEST, WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING, and THAT FIRST LINE writing contests, among others. She is a frequent guest lecturer on publishing and the art of writing at universities and writers’ conferences throughout the country, including New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute, the Penticton, Canada Writers Conference, the San Diego State University Writers Conference, Backspace, the International Women’s Writing Guild, and the Learning Annex. The agency represents both children’s and adult books, fiction and non-fiction, in a wide range of genres. They represent many best-selling, award-winning authors, including: Pen Award-winning author Carol Lynch Williams, Edgar Award-winner and PEN Award-winner Matthew J. Kirby, Newbery Honor Medal-winner Margi Preus, Lambda Award-winning YA novelist Brent Hartinger, best-selling children’s book authors Chanda Bell and Carol Aebersold, best-selling, award-winning Cathie Pelletier (aka K.C. McKinnon), and #1 New York Times’ best-selling author Sylvia Browne. The agency has a strong presence in Hollywood and is affiliated with many of the top film agencies there, with many film and television projects in development, several of which De Chiara has created and/or co-produced.

HOW DOES THE CRITIQUE WORK?

All registrants are invited to submit their query letter for review. All submissions are guaranteed a written critique by literary agent Jennifer De Chiara. Jennifer reserves the right to request more writing from attendees by e-mail following the event, if she deems the query excellent. Instructions on how to submit your work are sent after you have purchased the webinar and officially register in Go-to-Webinar. When you have registered in GTW, you will receive a confirmation email from [email protected], which contains the information you need to access the live webinar AND the Critique Submission Instructions.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Writers who are unsure about how to craft a query
• Writers currently composing a query who want to make sure their work gets read
• Writers who want to write the perfect elevator pitch
• Writers with a finished novel or proposal who are ready to submit their work to editors and agents
• Writers who have been rejected by agents and editors and wonder if their query letter was at fault
• Writers in need of help with the business side-rather than creative side-of publishing
• Writers who want a professional critique by a literary agent

Just as the world thought they had seen the last of the great tabloid trials in 2009 when Brooke Astor’s son was found guilty of looting his philanthropist mother’s estate of millions, two years later another equally contentious case made its way into the New York Court System.

—by Sharon Hazard

In the fall of 2011 long-lost relatives of the reclusive heiress, Huguette Clark marched into Manhattan Surrogate’s Court on Chambers Street seeking a share of her millions and for the next two and a half years, author Meryl Gordon was there to witness it all. No stranger to the system, Gordon had covered the Brooke Astor circus and had written a book, Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach, based on her astute observations of the famous trial and the cast of characters involved.

    According to Gordon, “When 104- year-old Huguette Clark’s obituary appeared on page one of the New York Times on May 25, 2011, her publisher, Grand Central called. Since my first book, had centered on the final years of another memorable Social Register centenarian, they thought of me for this project, which would come to be titled, The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Mysterious Death of Heiress Huguette Clark.”

Three years later, after many interviews and a massive amount of research, Gordon had the manuscript ready, or so she thought. The author said, “I actually wrote two entirely different versions of the book.” The first one had the usual suspects, well-meaning relatives, loyal care-givers, a lawyer and accountant under investigation for mismanaging Huguette’s affairs and the star witness, Hadassah Peri, Clark’s long-time caregiver who was primed to inherit the bulk of the Clark Family fortune.

Then came a delectable dilemma that any investigative writer would find hard to pass up. More research became available to her. Seventy-six boxes chock full of archival material removed from Huguette Clark’s Fifth Avenue apartment filled-with tell-tale tidbits of information that would put a new spin on her story.

The litigators presenting the case recognized Gordon as a well-respected journalist and director of Magazine Writing at New York University and knew she would give a balanced account of the proceedings. After four sets of lawyers signed off, Gordon was allowed several days to go through mountains of new information revealing intimate details about the woman who for the last twenty years had chosen to hide from the world in a drab hospital room in New York City while still owning three sprawling apartments on Fifth Avenue, a 23-acre oceanfront compound in Santa Barbara, California, original artwork, rare antique furnishings and jewelry worth millions.

After sifting through each box and reading Clark’s personal diary, love letters, many of which were in French and seeing receipts dating back to the 1930s for jewelry purchased at Cartier’s, Gordon knew she had to begin revising her book about Huguette who hadn’t seen her relatives since 1968 nor stepped outside her hospital room since 1981. Now on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List, the Phantom of Fifth Avenue is both a biography and the story of the high-stakes fight over Huguette Clark’s $300 million fortune.

About writing the book, Gordon noted, “I was able to talk to virtually all the key players in this legal battle and I have tried to explain how Huguette’s unusual life-choices and complicated relationships led to this public drama.”

Gordon said, “Going into this project I knew very little other than what the tabloids were reporting about this mysterious millionairess, but as I got to know Huguette Clark, the woman born in Paris in 1906 and raised in a 121- room Beaux Arts mansion on Fifth Avenue through her own words, I found her to be a warm and talented person and I had affection for her at the end.”

What began as a courtroom tell-all ended up exposing a very private person as a personality worth far more than the millions left to her by her father, Senator William Andrews Clark. The copper magnate was the second richest man in America when he died in 1925.

Gordon said, “Huguette wanted to make everyone around her happy, even if it cost her a fortune.”

Pablo Picasso said, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” I wasn’t there when he said it, and I have no idea what he meant. He may have been in a bad mood. But I’ve always thought the statement sounded pretty cool. It makes the creative artist seem powerful and iconoclastic, smashing with the hammer of artistic vision the statues of conformity. As writers, we do have that power, if we’re willing to use it.

For our purposes, we’re going to use the quote to begin a discussion of destroying our initial idea. Sometimes the generative idea for a piece is more an avenue to richer ideas than an end in itself. At those times, we must be willing to let go of our initial premise. We have to explode the idea. In some ways, to echo Picasso, this is the first act of creation.

—by Jack Heffron

There are few comments more deflating than when your readers agree that your 25-page story “really begins on page 24.” We’ve worked hard on those first 23 pages. They’re honed and crafted and have a lot of good lines in them. And now we’re supposed to believe they’re a mere prelude to the real story? Sometimes the answer is yes.

At such times, we must remember that we wouldn’t have achieved the real start of the story if we hadn’t written what came before. Our initial premise led us to literary gold, even though now it must be discarded. I had this experience with a story I wrote a few years ago. It concerns a mother and daughter who are lost in Los Angeles, far from their Ohio home. I worked hours on extended dialogues between the characters and took great pains to deliver the exposition in an unobtrusive way. I had conceived the story much like a play, focusing on subtle shifts of character as the mother and daughter conversed. Near the end, two rough-looking guys enter the doughnut shop where the story takes place. My plan was to have a brief encounter with the men and for the foursome to leave together at the end. Several readers said they felt the story spark to life when the two guys enter. But that was at the end! This was a Beckett-like story of tightly woven dialogue, not some tale of women being picked up by truckers. Hel-loo. Tightly woven Beckett-like dialogue here. You folks are missing the point.

I let the story sit for some months. Then I read it with a fresh view. Then I reread the readers’ comments. They were right. My pages of tightly woven, Beckett-like dialogue were cut extensively. I now could see that much of it was self-conscious and tiresome anyway. The tension between the mother and daughter as they sat in a doughnut shop wasn’t enough to carry the story. After five pages or so, the story felt static. In the revised version, the men enter the doughnut shop on the top of page 2. The foursome is out the door by page 7. But those weeks of working the dialogue helped me get to know the mother and daughter, and my knowledge of them led to surprising turns in the revised story—turns I don’t know I’d have imagined if I hadn’t had such a rounded understanding of the characters.

When you find yourself in a similar place, listen to your readers. If only one reader advises to start with the ending, give the piece to a second reader or put it away for a while. Your first reader may be imposing her own vision of your story world and is stating the way she would handle the material. If a second reader offers similar advice, it’s worth considering. If the second reader says something more like, “It seemed kind of slow to me,” ask for specific places where it seemed most interesting. If the reader points to the place the first reader suggested to begin the story, you have a decision to make.

Lopping away a big chunk of story isn’t easy and requires consideration. Put the piece away and move on to a new one for a while. Give the piece at least a month to cool off. Set a date for rereading it. Put it on your calendar. The date will ensure you don’t read it sooner than is helpful, and it also reminds you the piece is waiting. We sometimes forget about our projects for so long that we have trouble bringing them back to life. And so the deadline works in two ways, making sure you don’t return too soon or wait too long.

When you return to the piece, note in the margins where it’s working and where it needs help. Are the readers correct in their assessment of the sections that could be cut or be significantly condensed? Read the piece again, beginning at the place where it might be made to start. Does it make a strong opening? What needs to be pulled from the cut material, and how much can be set free?

Letting Go

It takes a certain amount of courage to cut away pages of a project. Don’t forget to put these pages in an idea file or in a separate document—they may contain the seed of another idea. But when you’ve cut the pages, they’re gone. Don’t agonize over them or rationalize ways of returning them to the story.

Letting a piece go where it wants to go also can be difficult for us. Our initial premise dictates a certain structure, a clear narrative path. And yet, when a piece is well underway, it takes on a will of its own. I don’t talk a lot about characters taking over or telling the writer what to write. I’ve always found such talk a bit fallacious and self-aggrandizing, turning the creative process (and therefore, the creative artist) into an inspired genius in touch with mysterious forces beyond the powers of normal folk.

At the same time, I don’t agree with Nabokov’s famous comment about characters being his “galley slaves.” The creative process isn’t just a mechanized act of will, an application of learned techniques. Our subconscious minds, the mythmaking power of our imaginations, do come into play. Conscious craft and subconscious artistry unite in a piece, granting it a power we can’t always control. I don’t know that it’s a matter of characters taking over. I think it’s that, at some point, the story moves along its own path. It knows what it wants to be, even when we have different ideas about what it should be.

Creative writing is such an intuitive act that it’s tough to make this point in a concrete way. To recognize when you’re forcing a piece away from its natural course, look for places where it begins to sound awkward to your artistic ear. Do you find yourself, at some level, asking whether the character would really do that? Does a scene end with one character having the last word in a way that seems false? Does the analysis of a key event in your personal essay serve more to make you look innocent than to provide an authentic insight? Trust your instincts. Perhaps you’re working against your own piece. You’ve moved beyond your initial premise into territory you may not want to visit, but your uneasiness is suggesting you have to explode that generative idea and move on. Responding to that uneasiness, even consciously feeling it, requires spending enough time on a piece to really hear what it’s telling you.

At first, we may feel uneasy about an aspect of the piece in a faint way. We may feel it sometimes as we read, but at other times, it feels just fine. Sometimes it takes another reader to point it out, causing us to say, “I sort of wondered about that part. It never seemed quite right to me.”

For example, we’re trying to end a scene but nothing works, nothing feels like the natural place to stop. Whatever final lines we write don’t have the ring of finality. If you want to say that the characters have taken over, that they’ve decided they don’t want to stop talking, fine. I would phrase it more along the lines of the story asserting its own course. The falseness enters because we are sticking too closely to our idea of where the story must go. We say to ourselves, “This isn’t an important scene. It’s just a transition, taking me from this event to that event. I can’t spend 10 pages on a transitional scene.” And yet, something about that transitional scene remains unresolved. If we trust our intuition, we allow the scene to find its own resolution. Perhaps a better idea is emerging, but we stick stubbornly to our original concept of the piece, trying not to notice that something about the scene bothers us every time we read it. Something just doesn’t quite feel right.

Try not to see the need to explode your idea, blowing it up and beginning a new course, as a failure. It’s not. It’s another way of perceiving and building upon the possibilities of the original idea. The explosion creates all sorts of wonderful fragments that can be new ideas in themselves.

As in relationships, breaking up with an idea is hard to do. We try one strategy after another, but still the relationship isn’t working. We read books, surf Internet sites, seek counseling. Nothing helps. Something essential is missing, and all the advice and effort in the world won’t bring back the love you once felt. At some point, we need to tell the piece to sit down. We need to summon the courage to say, “Honey, we need to talk.”

The biggest literary agent database anywhere
is the Guide to Literary Agents. Pick up the
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Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

*********************************************************************************************************************************

Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

New Adult (books with protagonists ages 18-25) has swiftly become the hottest thing in both self-publishing and traditional publishing. New authors are making astonishing strides in this category and making great deals with the big traditional houses. Recent success stories include Molly McAdams, whose book Taking Chances has sold more than 200,000 copies so far.

The rise of New Adult has introduced questions, such as: Is it a genre? Does it need to have sex scenes? How do you define it? Should you self-publish it? How do you know if an agent wants NA? How is it different from YA? Despite all the questions, New Adult manuscripts have been selling remarkably well, no matter how it is published. The readers want it, it is here to stay, and we are among many agencies actively looking for it.

In this live 90-minute webinar — titled “How to Write and Sell New Adult” —  Literary agent Gordon Warnock will help you understand New Adult fully from all aspects of the business, whether you need to know the rules of the category, how to pitch it to agents, or how authors are hitting the bestselling lists with modern marketing techniques. Plus, as a bonus, Warnock will critique 1,000 words of your manuscript! It all happens at 1 p.m., EST, Thursday, September 18, 2014, and lasts 90 minutes.

Click Here to Register

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• What makes a story New Adult
• How NA is different from YA
• What’s hot and what’s next
• Characters, settings, and themes that work well for NA
• How to tell if an agent wants New Adult
• How to brand yourself for long-term success
• What you need to do online to sell more books

Click Here to Register

INSTRUCTOR

Gordon Warnock is a founding partner at Foreword Literary, serving as a literary agent and editorial director of the Fast Foreword digital publishing program. He brings years of experience as a senior agent, marketing director, editor for independent publishers, consultant, and author coach. He frequently teaches workshops and gives keynote speeches at conferences and MFA programs nationwide. His NA books include A Real Emotional Girl by Tanya Chernov and Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories by MariNaomi. You can find him on Twitter @gordonwarnock.

Click Here to Register

HOW THE CRITIQUE WORKS

All registrants are invited to submit the first 1,000 words of their manuscript for critique. All submissions will receive a written critique by Gordon Warnock. Gordon reserves the right to request more writing from attendees by e-mail following the event, if he deems the writing excellent.

Please Note: Even if you can’t attend the live webinar, registering for this live version will enable you to receive the On Demand webinar and a personal critique of your material. Purchasing the On Demand version after the live event will not include a critique.

Click Here to Register

In classical terms, rhetoric is the study of persuasion—or more specifically, the study of the means of persuasion. And for a couple thousand years, it was mostly divorced from literature. The history is long and twisted, shaped by institutional politics, religion, and philosophy, but the result has been this: writers, scholars, and students have had to choose between the literary arts and the study of persuasion. For recent English majors, that’s meant either an MFA or a rhetoric degree. But as Wayne Booth and plenty of others have made clear, fiction relies on rhetoric. A story works only when it convinces us that Ahab is real, that Daisy Buchanan lives behind the green light.

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This guest column is by John Mauk, who has a Masters degree in literature from the University of Toledo and a PhD in rhetoric from Bowling Green State University. He writes and works at the intersection of rhetoric and fiction. He has three college writing textbooks, published by Wadsworth/Cengage. In 2010, his short collection “The Rest of Us” won Michigan Writer’s Cooperative Press chapbook contest, and its first story, “The Earthbound,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His debut novel, Field Notes for the Earthbound, was a finalist in the Hudson Prize contest. For more info, visit johnmauk.com.

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So what particular elements convince us? How does a story compete with the real world and all of its lures: air, cell phones, family crises, food, and drink? For me, it all comes down to the narrator, to the storytelling voice. Narrators don’t simply say what happened. They create a reality, a world that readers believe, keep on believing, and want to keep believing. Whether first, second, or third-person, good narrators make fictive worlds real, which takes a lot of persuasive power—more than all the politicians in Congress. And while the list of persuasive elements is long, here are three small but crucial moves, things that narrators do when they most successfully convince us:

[Want to land an agent? Here are 4 things to consider when researching literary agents.]

Create Memory: Most people, on most days, wake up in the same room, with the same insufficient hairdo, wearing or staring at the same clothes. We see the same stuff and forget to ask, “Am I still me? Is the world still here?” Memory is a persuasive force on consciousness—a reflex that keeps convincing us of this reality. Narrators get to use that force. They get to create and then call on memory. They establish a detail (the way a family cat limps or the fact that Melissa spilled a full cappuccino in her Toyota Corolla last Tuesday) and then bring that detail back at some later point: there’s Limpy the cat again and that milk has created a serious funk now that it’s a week old. Each time the cat walks through the house, every time that dead milk smell wafts up from the floor, readers nod along. They are comforted by what they already know and reminded that they belong here in this world.

Create Horizon: Every reality has a place where vision stops, where the walls, mountains, trees, or curvature of the Earth won’t let us see further. The basic feeling of location comes only because we can’t see everything at once. The same goes for readers. If they are to belong, they need horizon, a way to distinguish here from everywhere else. There are countless ways to make this happen—a small stream of facts that murmurs of faraway business, a finger of smoke, something we see in the distance, anything that lets us know that a factory is churning, that a reactor is reacting. The most stunning and explicit version of this—at least in my mind—is Love in the Time of Cholera. Even the title suggests the up-close and the faraway. In the story, the narrator occasionally reminds us of some distant affairs—national turmoil, sickness, and brutality writ large. And those affairs occasionally haunt the immediate.

Sometimes, horizon is crucial to the narrative tension—to the way we feel while drifting with Huck and Jim, romping with Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist, or romanticizing Antonía. The narrators in these stories create horizon differently, but it’s there and it’s crucial each time. Scenes are often imbued with a sense of up-close and faraway—in other words, space. And without space, there is no reality.

I should, though, admit that this might get dangerous. A clumsy or self-involved narrator can abandon the main characters in favor of abstract exposition. But horizon doesn’t require lengthy passages. It needs only a quick turn of the head, a brief glance into the distance, or a squint over someone’s shoulder. If characters are like people, they’ll look up from their own laps—even their own cell phones—often enough to remember what’s out there.

[Did you know there are 7 reasons writing a novel makes you a badass? Read about them here.]

Disclose All: The best narrators tell all. They say so much right out of the gate (in the first five pages, for instance) that they establish an agreement with readers: if you stay with me, I’ll tell you everything as soon as I know or remember. That’s an attractive promise. Consider how Annie Proulx’s narrator in The Shipping News heaves so much at us, how that torrent of facts about Quoyle’s sloppy life comes rushing out in a few pages. The sheer volume and intensity of terrible stuff demands acceptance.

Of course, we have to acknowledge the unreliable narrator, the voice that’s intentionally holding back or shifting facts for personal gain. But I stand by the notion that the promise still gets made. Whether or not the narrator keeps it is another compelling matter.

In closing, I’ll admit: these three strategies can be characterized as artistic rather than rhetorical. But that nasty old distinction doesn’t help us. In fact, I believe it hurts fiction writers and poets alike. When I imagine my narrators as persuaders, they develop voices of their own. They get real. In short, there’s much to be gained when we see our narrators as the ultimate rhetoricians, when we make cuts, additions, and tweaks based on the single most important goal: to create a coherent reality, one more solid and factual than all the news and history channels can conjure.

Learn the difference between a pedestrian telling of a story
and a powerful telling is in how the point of view is handled
with The Power of Point of View.
Get this excellent resource in our shop at a discount.

Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.

*********************************************************************************************************************************

Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

It’s indisputable: All authors must have their own website. It’s critical for effective marketing (online AND offline), as well as long-term career growth. Even unpublished authors can benefit greatly from establishing a starter site. Why? You work through the learning curve, you build online awareness, you make contacts in the writing and media world, and more opportunities open up to you.

In this live two-hour intensive webinar — titled “Create an Author Website in 24 Hours or Less” — you’ll learn the simplest, most robust, and FREE tools to get a site up and running in a day or less—often in one evening! You don’t have to know any code, understand any technical jargon, or have previous experience with websites or blogs. You also don’t need to own your own domain or have hosting, although advice will be given on those issues.

While several different site-building options will be discussed, this session offers a step-by-step tutorial on setting up a site using WordPress—a best-in-class system that underpins 1 of every 6 websites on the Internet. WordPress is free to use, open source, and continually improving. It all happens at 1 p.m., EST, Thursday, September 11, 2014, and lasts 120 minutes.

Click Here to Register

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• 5 simple services that help you create a codeless website, for free, in an hour or less (plus what services to avoid)
• Absolute must-have elements for every author site, even if you’re unpublished
• The difference between a blog and a website, and whether or not you need a blog
• How to get started with WordPress, either at WordPress.com or on your own domain
• What WordPress themes are best to use, plus what premium themes you might consider investing in
• Basic and free WordPress plug-ins that you need, plus how to extend the functionality of your site with more advanced plug-ins
• How to add multimedia to your site (audio, video, photos, etc.)
• How to integrate social media sharing tools onto your site
• What site upgrades or additional features you might want that necessitate further investment
• An easy-to-understand explanation of domains and hosting (but you don_t need to own a domain or have hosting to get started!)
• Common mistakes and pitfalls of websites and blogs
• When you should hire a professional designer or site developer, and how much you can expect to spend
• All these points and more will be answered in this nuts-and-bolts webinar about creating a model author website

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INSTRUCTOR

Jane Friedman is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest, who now serves as web editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR). She spent more than a decade evaluating book proposals and manuscripts for publication, and continues to evaluate pitches through her work at VQR and at writing conferences across the country. Her blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com has more than 35,000 unique visitors every month and was named one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers in 2011/2012. Find out more at JaneFriedman.com.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Writers who want to establish a new website from scratch
• Writers who want to learn how to use WordPress to build a new website
• Writers who have tried to use WordPress but need a tutorial
• Writers who want to transition from a blog-only site, such as Blogspot or Tumblr, to a full-featured, long-term site on WordPress

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HOW DOES THE WEBINAR WORK?

The webinar is broadcasted via the internet with live audio delivered through your computer speakers or over your telephone. The live webinar’s visual presentation is displayed directly from the Presenter’s computer to your computer screen. The Q&A is managed through a chat-style submission system with questions being read and answered by the Presenter for the entire class to hear. In the event some questions are not answered during the live session, an e-mail with questions and answers will be sent to all webinar attendees. By attending the live webinar and/or asking questions, your full name may be stated during the live event and captured in the recording.

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