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I spent a quarter-century as a journalist writing about SEC regulations, mutual funds, tax rules and other glamorous topics before getting a contract for my first novel. The obvious assumption, among my friends and journalism colleagues, was that historical mysteries were a world apart from articles on active vs. passive investing. But now that I look backward, technical articles and novels aren’t so different after all. Some of my work as a financial journalist helped me write about Lady Frances, an aristocratic suffragist solving mysteries in Edwardian England.

Do It On Time

When you write for a magazine, you do it on time. My editor said, “Please submit this article by Friday.” Not when I was inspired. Not when I had time to mull over it. Friday. You had to figure out how to get it done on Friday, because that was your deadline. With a novel, of course, I didn’t have someone breathing down my neck every day, but I told myself I had to get it done. Would Agatha Christie form a tighter plot? Would George Simenon draw more beautiful scenes? Would Rex Stout write livelier dialogue? Don’t waste time worrying about measuring up. I set goals and continued to write, so I’d have a novel in a year, not just a few chapters after a decade. Each evening I just sat down and started typing, following Lady Frances as she traveled through London’s most elegant drawing rooms and lowest taverns. And often, she pleasantly surprised me.

Know Your Audience

I’ve written articles for the most sophisticated financial advisors, for serious investors, for people who barely knew what the stock market was, and everyone in between. If I assumed too much knowledge from my audience, the article wouldn’t be understandable.

It’s easy to say loftily: “My novel is for everyone.” But that’s not true. In Death on the Sapphire, Lady Frances investigates a tragedy whose roots are in the Boer War. I couldn’t assume that modern American readers would know about a war fought more than a century ago between British troops and the descendants of European immigrants in South Africa. And yet, the pain and suffering that came out of the Boer War was central to understanding my characters’ motivations. Without any knowledge of the war, readers would be lost, so I made sure the necessary information was subtly slipped in.

Get It Right

As a journalist, accuracy was the most important aspect of the job. Why should anyone read your publication if you don’t correctly explain a new tax reg? But fiction lets you do whatever you want, right? No, it doesn’t. Even when I write my novels, accuracy is key: What kind of guns were available in turn-of-the-century London? (Characters brandish revolvers, not semi-automatics.) Did they travel in carriages or automobiles back then? (Lady Frances enjoys riding in the first car Mr. Rolls and Mr. Royce produce together.)

Also, I had to look into what kind of education different characters in different classes would have. Lady Frances’ brother, an aristocrat who serves in government, would have gone to Eton and then Oxford. But an old soldier from a rural district, on the other hand, might be barely literate. It’s easy to say, “Oh, only historians would catch any errors,” but in fact, as inconsistencies and anachronisms pile up, the book becomes less cohesive, and the characters less believable.

So I was off to a good start. However, when I first put aside my articles to write my first novel, I found there were some things was a lot I had to learn.

Writing Dialogue

If only writing dialogue were as easy as listening to people talk. (If only jury duty were as interesting as an episode of Law & Order.) I had to make the dialogue streamlined and engaging, and pages of narration with little talking bogged down the action. There was no magic solution here. I had to alternate between rewriting my dialogue again and again, and reading books written by people who were good at dialogue.

Crafting a Effective Plot

Having a story in my head turned out to be very different from getting it on paper. Some parts of the story I wanted to tell just zipped along page after page. Others seemed to drag. The bottom line was that I had to keep readers interested. Did the action move along, and was it in tune with the characters I had created? An editor told me that clues in a mystery had to come from tension in the plot. So on my second draft, a scene that didn’t pass the “tension test” got redlined. But a scene where Frances extracted crucial information from a seriously ill – but still cunning – political powerbroker ratcheted up the tension. I polished it and left it in.

Staying Organized

Arthur Conan Doyle couldn’t remember where Watson was wounded. He once even got Watson’s first name wrong. I sympathized. Lady Frances’ shy suitor had green eyes when she met him, and blue eyes when he confessed his love in a chapter I wrote three months later. A telephone in a stately Elizabethan home migrated over several chapters from a closet off the entranceway to the morning room where the lady of the manor held sway. Problems like this are easily manageable in a 4,000-word story, but not an 85,000-word novel. Part of what I do is write little biographies for my characters upfront that I can refer to later, but you don’t catch every error without constant re-reading–which you should be doing anyway!

Thank you for being our guest here on PubCrawl today, R.J., and congrats on your debut! Readers, what do you think about the relationship between business writing and fiction writing? Do you have any thoughts to add? Please share them in the comments!

About R.J. Koreto:

R.J. Koreto is the author of DEATH ON THE SAPPHIRE (June 14, 2016) and DEATH AMONG RUBIES (October 11, 2016), both from Crooked Lane Books. Like his heroine, Frances Ffolkes, he is a graduate of Vassar College. He has spent most of his career as a financial journalist, holding senior editorial positions at the Journal of Accountancy and Financial Planning magazine, among others. Richard has also been a freelance writer and PR consultant. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, and his work has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Visit him at https://ladyfrancesffolkes.com

Hi, All! Stephanie here with my buddy, and fellow Pub-Crawler, Stacey Lee, with a post that we hope has a little something for everyone, regardless of which stage you’re at with your writing career.

1. Watching Television Pilots. This is one of my favorite things to do in the fall.   Television pilots are similar to first chapters; they need to establish characters, tone, setting, time, and place, and most of all, they need to hook viewers. Analyzing how they do this is a great way to sharpen your craft. Favorite pilots include Alias, Lost, Chuck, Revenge, and the Blacklist (which has an amazing hook near the end).

2. Saying Goodbye to Old Manuscripts. Writing a book is a huge accomplishment. It’s also a very time and soul-consuming task, so we understand how hard it is to trunk manuscripts, especially those that come close to landing agents, or getting sold. But sometimes old manuscripts can be like old relationships, it’s not always possible to make room for the ones unless you’ve let go of the old ones first.

3. Judging Writing Contests. Not only is this a great way to give back to other writers, judging contests will sharpen your skills as a writer. It’s one thing to read blog posts by agents or other writers about what does or doesn’t work in manuscripts or query letters, but it’s a different thing to see it when going through contest slush piles. After reading hundreds of Pitch Wars entries as mentors, we saw first hand the importance of a strong first line, the danger of a weak first line, why it really is a bad idea to start with a character waking up, and just how powerful good comp titles can be. Not to mention contests are an excellent way to meet fellow writers (see number 9 for more on this one).
4. Attending the Big Sur Children’s Writer’s Workshop. For California writers this workshop almost feels like a rite of passage. Held twice a year by the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, the Big Sur Children’s Writer’s Workshop is known for not only its gorgeous location, but for its intense and honest workshops. If you’re a writer who has not yet found an agent, we highly suggest this workshop because it’s a great way to find out from professionals just where you’re going wrong with your writing—it’s also an excellent place to meet other writers.

5. Attend Bookish Events. This can be conferences, book signing, panels, festivals, or other things we’ve never heard of, as long as they involve books and people. If you read our conference post  last month you probably you know why we think conferences are so valuable, but they are not the only events we recommend. For example, if you are a debut author, attend as many launch parties and book signings as you can—not only is this an excellent way to support authors, but once the time comes to launch your book, you’ll have lots of ideas for what makes a great launch. And there is always something to be learned by hearing other authors speak about their work.

6. Entering Contests. There are a ton of free contests that not only can help you improve your writing, but can be useful when it comes to querying. Stacey submitted the manuscript for UNDER A PAINTED SKY for a critique at her regional SCBWI conference, and not only did the amazing editor Sara Sargent provide valuable feedback, Arthur Levine chose it to receive the conference award. She’s certain that my mentioning this award in her query letter helped it stand out.

7. Finding a Critique Partner. We can say with 100% certainty that our critique partners have improved our writing and we’re not just saying that because we are critique partners. A good CP can help you identify and strengthen your writing weak spots, help you brainstorm, and take you out for pearl milk teas when you need them. And on the flip side, when you critique another’s work, it improves your own writing in much the same way that spotting spinach in someone’s teeth makes you check your own teeth.

8. Join SCBWI. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is an invaluable source of support for the kid lit community. In addition to amazing conferences and classes, they offer grants, awards, mentorships, and they foster connections with industry professionals. We encourage you to become a member, and to become active with your local regional chapter.

9. Make Friends with Other Writers. The more supported you feel as a writer, the happier writer you will be, and the more productive you will become. Engaging with other writers not only helps you keep abreast of what’s happening in the publishing industry, it can lead you to discover critique partners, writing contests, agents, and more.

10. Good books inspire. A good read reminds us of why we do what we do, and pushes us to do better.

Now we’d love to hear from you! This list could go on and on and we’d love to know what items you would like to add to it.

This week Kelly and JJ continue with their characterization series with VILLAINS. Apologies for the audio quality this week, folks; this topic is apparently cursed as Kelly and JJ tried to record it TWICE and FAILED. Also, spoilers ahoy for Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOST, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, et al.

Show Notes

• The difference between a protagonist and a villain is standing on opposite sides of a moral divide.
• There are two types of villains: the idealogical villain (e.g. Sauron, Voldemort, Evil) and the personal villain (characters with a personal motive that sets them against the protagonist).
• Villains often lack empathy, in that they often don’t have empathy for others, don’t care about collateral damage, etc.
• Antagonists differ from villains in that they are not necessarily on the opposite side of the moral divide, but are in opposition to the protagonist nonetheless. Antagonists are in opposition to the protagonist, but are not necessarily Evil themselves.
• Stories do not necessarily need villains. Obstacles can be in the form of societal conduct, circumstance, or some external conflict that has nothing to do with a singular villain, or even villains.

Books Discussed/What We’re Reading

• Little Face by Sophie Hannah
• Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Watchmen by Alan Moore
• The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
• The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• Morning Star by Pierce Brown

What We’re Working On

• JJ finished what she hopes are the last round of additional edits/copyedits of Wintersong.
• Kelly is working on ALL THE PODCASTS! In addition to an Avatar: The Last Airbender podcast (with JJ and another friend), she has a parenting podcast called World’s Okayest Moms. Follow them on Twitter!

Off Menu Recommendations

• Gargoyles
• 가을동화 (Autumn Fairytale)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Dollhouse
• Battlestar Galactica
• LOST
• Watchmen
• Halt and Catch Fire
• Archer
• 태양의 후예 (Descendants of the Sun)

That’s all for this week! Hopefully next week we’ll have better audio quality and come back with another series on characterization with LOVE INTERESTS AND ANCILLARY CHARACTERS.

Hi All! Today I want to talk about the next building blocks of a novel—scenes! (This is part four of a series built around a metaphor comparing a novel to a city. So far, we’ve imagined words as bricks, sentences as walls, and paragraphs as buildings.)

In a world class city, the streets will get us from point A to point B, but they will also give us a taste of the city’s culture, connect neighborhoods, and create a natural flow. In our novels, we want scenes to get us where we’re going, but we also want them to leave us with new information, new questions, or greater understanding of our setting and characters. In other words, like a great city boulevard, we want a great scene to keep things moving in the most thrilling and memorable way.

Here are some tips that will help you to create strong scenes:

In every scene, the MC should be acting, reacting, or both—all with a purpose.

Every scene must move the main character (or the POV character if the book contains multiple POVs,) toward his or her objective. The reader should know what the character is working toward, and how the actions they take are intended to bring about those goals. You may want to create a scene that reveals the terrain of your story’s world or that lets the reader know the truth about the MC’s father. Definitely do that, but make sure the scene contributes to the MC’s objective.

As an example, consider the scene early in The Hunger Games where Katniss goes hunting before the reaping. As readers, we see the woods around the Seam, we meet Gale, and we learn a lot of backstory. But at the heart of the scene is Katniss’s action in support of her objective of providing for her family and keeping them safe.

Every scene should contain obstacles to the MC’s objective.

A scene that has no obstacles will have no conflict and won’t keep the story moving and the reader engaged. Even if the scene contributes to the MC’s objective, it won’t be engaging if it doesn’t contain a challenge. It doesn’t have to be obvious or overtly connected, but it needs to have some impact on whether or not the MC will achieve his or her goal.

Take another look at the example of the hunting scene from the opening of The Hunger Games. In that scene there is conflict between Gale and Katniss over the idea of whether they should try to run away. They don’t have a huge argument, but Katniss gets irritated and snaps at Gale. She remarks that “the conversation feels all wrong.”  Not a huge conflict, but one that connects to the central objective of keeping her family safe. If Gale encourages her to leave with him, he’s putting that objective in jeopardy. The scene reveals this larger conflict on a smaller scale.

Every scene should matter.

Every scene needs to have something valuable at stake. It could be huge, like the welfare of your MC’s family, or smaller, like her mood on the day of the reaping. But every scene needs to have something connected to the MC’s goal at risk.

The size of the stakes will depend on how strongly they impact the character’s objective. A scene with lots of conflict and high stakes—a head-on car crash that leaves a boy pinned inside a burning car, for instance—only delivers if it connects to your MC’s goal. If your MC is struggling to cope with PTSD, and she saves that boy from the burning car, her stakes are impacted along with his. The stakes might be life and death for him, but this isn’t his story, so those stakes won’t resonate as strongly. But saving him required our MC to face her condition, so she had stakes in the scene, too. It’s the stakes that connect to your character’s goals that matter the most in your scene.

Every scene must move the plot forward, but great scenes will contribute other elements to the story, as well.

A truly great scene contributes more than just goal and conflict. If you can weave in setting, character growth, backstory, etc. you will have created a truly great scene. Think of the trash compactor scene in the first Star Wars movie. There’s conflict that impacts the characters’ goals of rescuing the Princess and thwarting the Empire, but there’s also great use of setting, character development, and dialogue. All these things support the main action of the scene—escaping the trash compactor before they are all crushed to death.

Just like a great city has all sorts of streets keeping things moving and connected, your novel will have many kinds of scenes driving the story forward and keeping the reader turning pages. Next month I’ll post about chapters, the neighborhoods of your novel.

How do you feel about scenes? Did I miss anything important? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

This week JJ and Kelly talk about the characterization of protagonists, how to get a vivid, realistic character, and whether or not “unlikeable” means “unsympathetic.”

Show Notes/Further Reading

• Characters need a balance of flaws and strengths.
• Universal appeal is not possible—it generally means the character becomes incredibly bland.
• Specificity breeds intimacy, and specific action shows more than telling details.
• There is a difference between an “unlikeable” and an “unsympathetic” protagonist. An unlikeable protagonist can still be sympathetic, but an unsympathetic character just makes us not care.
• Writing Wednesday: Characterization by JJ
• Active Characters by Julie Eshbaugh
• Writing Three-Dimensional Characters by Susan Dennard
• Character Movement and Characterization by Kat Zhang
• Creating Characters Readers Care About by Julie Eshbaugh
• Know Your Characters by Marie Lu
• The Ultimate No-Effort Character Sheet for Writers
• The No-Effort Character Character Sheet for Lazy Writers Like You and Me

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
• The Rose Society by Marie Lu¹
• Red Rising by Pierce Brown
• JJ is in a reading rut, so nothing new.

Off Menu Recommendations

• Boredom! Boredom is kind of great. Mindlessness breeds creativity in many ways.
• Carcassonne
• Betrayal at the House on the Hill
• Arkham Horror

What We’re Working On

• Kelly is working on freelance stuff
• JJ is working on Wintersong copyedits and she has a cover! The cover will be revealed on Monday, April 11, but those who are subscribed to JJ’s newsletter will get to see it first!

That’s all for this week! Next week we will be continuing our characterization series with an episode about VILLAINS. As always, if you have any questions, sound off in the comments!

This week Kelly and JJ live-critique five queries submitted for review. Thank you to everyone who sent us their queries! We would love nothing more than to be able to provide personalized critique to each and every one of you, but unfortunately we don’t have all the time in the world.

Show Notes

• We received about 15 queries, so we picked five that we thought demonstrated a breadth of concerns.
• Across the board, we saw a lot of telling, not showing.
• We also saw queries that told us “My book is about [insert theme here].” That’s all fine, but it’s necessary in a query, and it’s wasting space. The story is more important than what the book is about.
• Specifics always make us care more. Don’t be afraid to give us specific details. Vagueness is confusing, not enticing.

Query #1

According to your profile you are actively seeking children’s books that feature “adorakble” protagonists, and I think my story picturebook, TITLE, fits the kind of text you hope to market. My intent for the book is to broaden children’s exposure to music and encourage mixing different styles, while developing a sense of empathy. Each book in the TITLE series would include a brief history of the instruments featured alongside a bar of simple music that could be played with a recorder. The nonfiction and interactive elements would especially appeal to gifted elementary readers.

What happens when you’re the Captain of the Watch’s son returning home from a summer at Hero Camp, but you never mastered Highly Stylized Defenestration? Billy McDougal knows he doesn’t have what it takes to follow in the footsteps of his father and brothers, who are already considered heroes in the community. All of this changes when he finds an old bugle in the attic. His best friend, Claire Annette, encourages him to harness its power to help protect the town of Crescendo from a series of attacks by wild beasts who are in thrall to a mysterious figure with an enchanted Theremin. TITLE stories are set to feature a cast of multicultural characters who each represent different genres of music, from strings and percussion to beatboxing, and use their talents to protect their hometown from a mysterious and vengeful villain. One of my overarching themes is that “villains” are typically only lashing out after having been hurt themselves. The antagonist of the series, Leo, believes himself to be a hero avenging his sister, a musical prodigy who was left deaf after an accident. She is unaware of Leo’s actions and the climax of the series involves her mediating an alliance between her brother and the band.

I have a BA in creative writing from SCHOOL and have been teaching Language Arts for nearly a decade. During the summer I am an instructor at NAME OF CENTER where I work with gifted fourth and fifth graders in the Writing Workshop: Modern Fantasy course. I have seen firsthand how kids can channel their energy into creative outlets, and the results are amazing. I think Billy’s story can inspire the next generation and inform them of music’s historical relevance with hands-on application.

Thank you very much for your time and I hope you enjoy my submission!

Query #2

When Nora’s research leads her to a secret world of time travel, she becomes a marked woman and experiences a love that could change the past and destroy the present. Her story is TITLE, a 76,000-word contemporary fantasy. 

When Nora travels to France to dig deeper into her late mother’s time travel theories, she meets Henri, a man who claims to be a twelfth-century prince and the man she knows will one day become King Henry II of England.

Henri’s struggle for the throne brings him to the twenty-first century to find a relic from a 900-year-old shipwreck, recently recovered from the bottom of the English Channel. Nora joins his quest, thrilled to find living proof of time travel and eager to uncover more details about her mother’s research. But in her growing attraction to the prince, Nora ignores important signs that Henri is not being completely honest with her.

Helping Henri sets Nora firmly in the crosshairs of a dangerous group, the Guardians, who will stop at nothing to prevent time travel. Nora and Henri race across France to find the relic that will secure Henri’s kingdom before the Guardians silence them forever. When the Guardians finally abduct her and expose Henri’s lies, a shattered Nora realizes that her decision to trust him and ultimately love him could change the past and the present.   

TITLE combines historical intrigue in the spirit of Anne Forstier’s The Lost Sisterhood with the lighthearted romantic feel of Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series. This novel, along with most of my writing, is inspired by the piles of research I did for my Master of Arts in History. My short stories have been finalists for the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and the Writer’s Workshop Fiction Contest and have been published in online literary magazines and several small press anthologies, including Copperfield Review. I live in Charlotte, NC, where I’m plotting more adventures for Nora and spinning non-magical historical tales.

The first [insert number] of pages are pasted below, and the complete manuscript is available upon request. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Query #3

Dear [Agent],

Yesterday, Jordan’s biggest fear was being outed as genderqueer. Today, he’s trying to stop the world’s largest video game company from becoming the next Big Brother before they kill him and his friends.

Jordan and his two gaming partners just won tickets for Cruise Con, a convention-at-sea hosted by the company that produces their favorite MMORPG. All they have to do is beta test a new game world with the other contest winners. But after the trial, an anonymous gamer tells them they missed something, and threatens their families if they don’t find it. Jordan wants to go to the police, but cops won’t reach the ship in time, and the security officers on board may not be trustworthy.

Then another curious gamer is killed, and Jordan and his friends get caught in a race to expose a lethal technology hidden in the game’s code before the tech is used against them.

TITLE is a 62,000-word young adult thriller with LGBTQ characters that will appeal to fans of Ernest Cline and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.

I have a B.A. in Classics from SCHOOL and an M.S. in library and information sciences from the OTHER SCHOOL. When not writing, I work as a public librarian, connecting readers with books they will love.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Query #4

Dear __________,

Eleven-year-old twins Seamus and Grady lead a life most boys can only dream of. They have rich, doting parents who never scold them, chuckle when they play hooky from school and give them whatever they want. They accidentally find out why. Turns out, they’re not Americans – heck, they’re not even human. They are twenty-first century, ex-pat leprechauns soon to possess awesome powers … if they can acquire a pot of gold each.

Unfortunately, pots of gold don’t come easy in their hometown of Boston, so they have to look elsewhere. The twins end up in Africa with an ancient map and a plan to find the lost treasure of Prester John, a mighty king who stashed his loot somewhere in Ethiopia. No quest comes without peril and standing in their way is the undead spirit of a giant African chief who guards the hoard and believes that by sacrificing the boys, he can return to the world of the living … and rule it. Can the twins outsmart a wily specter plus a few other sundry obstacles, acquire their pot of gold and live to ride the rainbow back home?

TITLE is my debut novel. It is a 45,000-word fun adventure aimed at children aged 9-12. It will appeal to readers who enjoy imaginative and fast-paced action books. With a hefty dollop of magic, of course.

I have a BA in Journalism SCHOOL in Montreal and work as a freelance writer to support my creative writing addiction. As per your submission guidelines, I am attaching a synopsis of my story and my manuscript.

Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Query #5

The Crummett siblings have each adapted their lives to fit within the oppressive boundaries of their parents’ expectations. Whether it’s for money, approval, respect, or love, all the children have manipulated their lives conform to the family standards. But when Olive, the youngest and most beloved sister, ends up pregnant outside of wedlock and dares to be happy about it everything changes. Seeing Olive boldly step outside the shadow of their parents ridged expectations forces each of the siblings to question the fundamental motivations on which they have built their lives. This new perspective sends them each on their own unique journey.  

Olive’s closest sister, Sam, goes through a heartrending non-surgical abortion the day before she finds out about Olive’s pregnancy and now has to negotiate an emotional landscape scattered with the question “what if.” The oldest brother, William, a gay man whose parents refer to his long-time partner as his “black friend,” realizes that the only thing holding him back from fully engaging in life is fear of his parents’ disapproval. The oldest “perfect daughter,” Vivian, reignites a relationship she’d sabotaged with too much drinking and unexamined anger over events from her past. And the youngest sibling, twenty-one-year-old Mark, responds in typical fashion by pretending not to give a shit while actually feeling even more disgruntled with and disconnected from his siblings than before.

During this tumultuous time, a new family dynamic begins to take shape: bonds are formed between once distant siblings, close relationships are put to the test, and Mark’s bitter resentment towards his siblings turns dangerous. When the siblings find themselves face to face for the first time since Olive’s announcement tensions run high, and a final act of selfish rage sets off a series of events which end in a tragedy that threatens to destroy them all.

The Crummett siblings live up and down the West Coast in Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, but their lives are intimately woven together as the point of view shifts from one sibling to the next after each phone call or in-person interaction between siblings. This flow of perspective creates the experience of a natural sibling dynamic while also giving readers the opportunity to learn about each character through their own thoughts as well as the observations and judgments of their siblings.

TITLE  is upmarket women’s fiction and is complete at 100,300 words.

What We’re Reading

• Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (PubCrawl alum!)

What We’re Working On

• Kelly and JJ aren’t working on creative projects at the moment.

Off Menu Recommendations

• Black Mirror

That’s all for this week! Next week we’ll return to our Publishing 201 series with SALES CONFERENCE. Thanks for listening!

Years ago, a friend told me that getting published was the easy part. It was staying published that was difficult.

I laughed a little. I died inside.

I was still trying to get published the first time, let alone a second or third time, and I wasn’t having a whole lot of success.

But perseverance won, and eventually I did get published. And because I was one of those annoying overachievers, I’d already written first drafts of the second and third books in my trilogy by the time I turned in my first book, which meant that I had some free time.

I wrote another — unrelated — book, revised it a bit, shared it with a few critique partners and my agent, and when I had another stretch of free time, I went back to it to make the manuscript shine.

But something was wrong. There were huge parts of the book that I loved, but I knew it had problems, and I wasn’t sure how to fix them. I knew the book wasn’t strong enough to give to my publisher, so I put it aside to wait for a spark of brilliance to tell me how to fix it.

That book is still waiting. I had to move on. So I finished writing my first series (again), and I wrote another new book. I gave it to critique partners. I gave it to my agent. I revised the snot out of it. And I thought it was ready, so I gave it to my publisher. They said they didn’t think this was the very best followup to my first series.

Crushed.

I started thinking about that thing my friend had said years before. I started wondering if maybe she was right. I’d been published! People liked my book! But I’d put one new book aside because I knew it wasn’t ready, and I’d had to put the other new book aside because my career wasn’t ready.

But because I had no desire to starve to death and a very strong desire to keep my career in motion, I wrote yet another new thing (while finishing working on my first trilogy). All the necessary people liked it and approved it, and that book became my second series. (For those wondering if that pattern continued, it did not. There were no books between that one and what will be my third series.)

I’m sharing all this because I think a lot of writers believe that once you’re published, you can hand in new books and a couple of years later, they appear on shelves. Not true! New books must go through the same rigorous acquisitions process as the first one, but this time with sales records of your previous books as a key factor in what the publisher decides to do.

I know a lot of authors who’ve written new things after they’ve been published, and for one reason another, had to trunk them. Maybe they knew from the start it wasn’t ready. Maybe their agent said it wasn’t ready. Maybe their publisher said it wasn’t ready.

And you know, there’s no shame in that. Trunked manuscripts — no matter what stage of your career they were written — are still useful creatures. There are no wasted words in writing, even if those words never make it to the bookshelves. All that experiences goes into the next new thing, which will be even stronger than the last ones.

We all have trunked manuscripts. Lots come before getting published the first time, but they happen after, too. For a lot of writers.

And it’s totally okay. Just keep writing. Keep looking forward. (And hopefully one day, you can resurrect the trunked manuscripts you particularly love. That is my plan!)

Hi All! Today I want to talk about the next building block of a novel—paragraphs! (This is part three of a series. Part one was on word choice and part two was on sentences.)

If we continue with the metaphor comparing a novel to a city, we can imagine words as bricks, sentences as walls, and paragraphs as… buildings!

Think of the buildings on a city street. They may be linked together, but each has its own door, its own foundation, its own roof.

Now imagine you’re tasked with planning a walking tour of that street. Your goal is to design a tour that leads from one building into the next. You would want each building to be enjoyed for its own strengths and beauty, but it would be equally important that the tour keep moving! Each building would need to naturally flow into the next and keep the tourists wanting to discover more.

That’s how great paragraphs work. They have their individual strength to stand on their own, but they keep the reader moving forward. No matter how beautiful or strong or resonant a paragraph may be, it fails if it slows the reader’s progress forward. Likewise, a paragraph that’s weighed down by excess might encourage skimming, which has an equally negative effect on the reader’s experience.

You may not even think about paragraphs as you write. (I know I rarely consider them until I’m revising.) Often we group our sentences together instinctively, creating that new indent when focus shifts. This casual approach to paragraphs will often produce very adequate prose. But by giving more care to our paragraphs, we can create a stronger story that won’t let a reader’s attention wander.

Here are three tips for maximizing the strength of your paragraphs:

Make each paragraph contribute more than one aspect of the story. A paragraph of description follows a paragraph of dialogue. A paragraph of action comes next, which is followed by a paragraph of internal monologue. Writing like this will get the story onto the page, but it’s unlikely to make it leap to life. The reader will begin to be lulled by the monotony. Paragraphs that combine story elements will convey the same information, but in a more engaging way.

As an example, here’s a passage of three paragraphs from Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman.

By the time I’s raced back to Silver and grabbed my rifle, Lil’s already disappeared among the dense vegetation. “Thanks for waiting,” I mutter to myself, and take to tracking her between shrubs and cactuses. When I finally catch up, she’s crouched behind a boulder, some sort of net clenched in her grasp.

She puts a finger to her lips and nudges her head toward the other side of the boulder. It’s then I see the quail—maybe a dozen of ‘em, pecking at the dry earth for what I reckon must be insects. I creep forward, but gravelly earth crunches beneath my heel. There’s a flutter of feathers and a chorus of squawks, and the birds go scampering deeper into the thicket of shrubs.

Lil glares. “You walk like your feet are made of stone.”

Those three paragraphs could have been written as a paragraph of description, followed by a paragraph of action, followed by a few paragraphs of dialogue. The same information would have been provided. But by combining these elements within these paragraphs, we experience the characters, the setting, and the action all at once, and the prose comes to life on the page.

Vary the length of your paragraphs. Long paragraphs might be used to reveal something important that needs careful attention. Short paragraphs might be used to keep the story moving quickly through action. Mixing short and long can keep the reader moving while signally where it may be important to linger.

Here’s an example from the opening of Queen and Shadows by Sarah J. Maas:

There was a thing waiting in the darkness.

It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind. It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold. Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength.

He could not remember his name.

In this example, the short first paragraph grabs the reader’s attention, and the longer second paragraph draws the reader in deeper as it gives clarity to the questions raised in the first paragraph. The short third paragraph shifts the focus again.

Consider carefully where you end and begin new paragraphs. This goes hand-in-hand with the tip about paragraph length. In nonfiction, paragraphs are generally organized to support a topic sentence. The organization of paragraphs in fiction can be much looser, however, and paragraph breaks can be more creatively applied. Ending a paragraph immediately after a certain sentence will create a different emphasis than if that sentence occupies the middle of the paragraph or starts the next paragraph. Looking again at the above example from Queen of Shadows, how would the emphasis change if we changed the paragraph breaks? How would the focus change if we did this:

There was a thing waiting in the darkness. It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind.

It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold.

Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength. He could not remember his name.

Changing the paragraph breaks changes the emphasis. As readers, we tend to pay special attention to the content of paragraphs made up of a single sentence. In the actual example from the book, the emphasis is on the effect “the thing in the dark” has on the character. In the revised example, the attention shifts away from the effect to the fact that it was brought here to menace him. We focus on different things depending on the breaks.

How do you feel about paragraphs? Are they a tool you enjoy using? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

This week JJ and Kelly discuss Voice in another installment of their Writing Mechanics series. Voice: What is it? How can you develop it? How many times can they say “voice” in a single episode?

Show Notes

• What is voice? JJ talks about it a little on her blog.
• Understand Voice and Tone in Writing by Grammar Girl
• How to Craft a Great Voice by Nathan Bransford

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
• You: A Novel by Caroline Kepnes
• The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
• Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
• Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones
• Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
• Poison Study, Magic Study, and Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder
• Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher

Off Menu Recommendations

• Still The Black Tapes and Tanis podcasts
• The No-Sleep Podcast (and associated subreddit)
• Kelly is still on the fence about Dawson’s Creek

What We’re Working On

• Kelly will be teaching another class on contracts at the Loft Literary Center and working on her YA novel
• JJ is juggling several different writing projects and is trying to figure out what to work on next

That’s all for this week! Next week we’ll be doing our QUERY CRITIQUE podcast!

Hi all, Julie here!

This is the second post in a series. If you want to read them in order, the first post was Building Blocks of a Novel: Word Choice.

Although the central analogy of this series compares writing a novel to constructing a city, forgive me for switching to a different metaphor for a moment. If we think of a novel as a living body, sentences create the heartbeat. Choices a writer makes about sentences can alter that heartbeat—make it speed up, slow down, pound harder, or even skip out of rhythm.

Returning to the city analogy, if words are the bricks, then sentences are the walls. They provide support and structure, but they also control how a building is experienced. High ceilings, narrow passageways, walls of glass and steel–change these things and the whole building changes. In the same way, each sentence makes a difference, and each must be deliberately crafted.

Here are some tips for creating great sentences:

Use sentence length deliberately. Long sentences can force the reader to linger, allowing an image to appear in the reader’s mind. Here’s an example from Truthwitch by Susan Dennard:

“As Iseult det Midenzi wriggled free from her sea-soaked tunic, boots, pants, and finally underclothes, everything hurt. Every peeled-off layer revealed ten new slices from the limestone and barnacles, and each burst of spindrift made her aware of ten more.

This ancient crumbling, lighthouse was effective for hiding, but it was inescapable until the tide went out. For now, the water outside was well above Iseult’s chest, and hopefully that depth—as well as the crashing waves between here and the marshy shoreline—would deter the Bloodwitch from following.”

Long sentences can also carry the narrative along, picking up speed as they go. Here’s an example from The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry:

“The walls and floor are aging now, the light still juddering through its phases like a movie from a projector, until the drywall starts crumbling, spiderwebbed with vines and weeds. From those vines, flowers blossom and wither and grow back and die again. Seasons stretch into years stretch into decades stretch into centuries, all in moments, while I can hear Beau’s breath, make out his edges through the millisecond of dark before another morning comes.”

By contrast, short sentences cut out all the window dressing. They ensure pauses. Short sentences change a rolling pace to a staccato rhythm. This can be effective for focusing attention on the plain meaning of the words. Here’s an example from The Martian by Andy Weir:

“I ache all over. And the shovels I have are made for taking samples, not heavy digging. My back is killing me. I foraged in the medical supplies and found some Vicodin. I took it about ten minutes ago. Should be kicking in soon.”

One thing I love about the above example is how a sentence starts with “And…” rather than continuing from the previous sentence. If those two sentences were joined into one, the resulting long sentence would ruin the effect that the shorter sentences create: a man in pain giving a spare description of his circumstances.

Vary the structure. This is important advice if you have a favorite sentence structure, because you may not realize how frequently you repeat it. Your reader will notice, though, and those wonderful sentences will lose their power. I personally love parenthetical phrases—especially when set off by dashes—but if I use too many on a page the sentences become muddled. Changing up the structure keeps the reader engaged. It combats boredom. Here’s an example of varied sentence structure, from Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard:

“He stares at me, scrutinizing everything from my face to my worn boots. It makes me squirm. After a long moment, he heaves a breath and lets me go. Stunned, I can only stare at him. When a silver coin spins through the air, I barely have the wits to catch it. A tetrarch. A silver tetrarch worth one whole crown. Far more than any of the stolen pennies in my pockets.”

One of the things I like best about the above example is the fact that the last three sentences are fragments. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore that red underline in Word that tells you the sentence isn’t grammatically correct. Here, it’s clear that those sentences are thoughts in the narrator’s head, and we rarely think in complete sentences.

Check for clarity. Sometimes we try so hard to create prose that stands out that we let communication suffer in the name of style. You can create lovely, lyrical, complex sentences, but your writing will suffer if clarity is sacrificed. Parallel structure, consistent tense, and clear pronouns are all the more important when sentences become more intricate. Here’s a made-up example of what I mean:

“The trail was blanketed in snow and shadows, creating a patchwork design that climbed into the mountains. The hikers paused. Their feet ache in their damp boots, memories of so many miles imprinted on their soles. It’s terrifying, Megan thought. Terrifying, yet beautiful. Her freezing toes wiggle inside her boots as they press forward, leaning into the wind.”

This example is loaded with clarity issues. The first line seems to say that the trail was creating a patchwork design, when it’s actually the snow and shadows. There are multiple tense changes, and it’s unclear what Megan finds terrifying yet beautiful. The view, or her aching feet? The last line seems to say that her toes are pressing forward, leaning into the wind.

How’s this instead?

“Snow and shadows blanketed the trail, creating a patchwork design that climbed into the mountains. The hikers paused. Their feet ached in their damp boots, memories of so many miles imprinted on their soles. It’s terrifying, Megan thought, her gaze taking in the view. Terrifying, yet beautiful. Her freezing toes wiggled inside her boots as she and the others pressed forward, leaning into the wind.”

Still not great prose, but the sentences are clearer! They make more sense and better support the story.

What are your thoughts on sentences? Do you have any advice to add? Please share your ideas in the comments!

Stephanie: I love the feel of experiencing new places through reading. I adore being submersed in a scene—tasting and smelling and touching along with a character. When a story is full of vivid settings and unique descriptions, I feel as if I’m taking a magical (or sometimes terrifying) vacation.

Unfortunately, setting descriptions are also the parts that I often find myself skimming, and I imagine I’m not alone. Describing something accurately is not the same as bringing a place to life.

So, since Stacey and I both like lists, we’ve put together a list of our favorite tips for—

Putting Soul Into Your Setting

1. Decide the feel of your book.

Stephanie: Setting affects tone. A thriller set in the Black Rock Desert during Burning Man will feel different than a thriller set in Sweden’s ICEHOTEL. Just like a sci-fi set on a massive spaceship full of highly sophisticated technology (like Star Trek’s Enterprise) will feel different than a sci-fi set on a small, transport vessel that’s been described as a “load of worthless parts” (like Firefly’s Serenity). Each of these settings will attract a different cast of characters as well—which will also impact the feel of your book.

I once wrote a space opera and during an early draft I made the error of setting much of the book on a stark white spaceship, which not only lent itself to horrible descriptions, it was not a place where I wanted to spend time.

So choose your settings with care. An interesting or unique setting will naturally lend itself to more captivating and distinctive descriptions.

2. Make sure your descriptions reflect your character’s unique lens.

Stacey: Include unique details (a ‘face like a wet sponge’ is more memorable than a ‘face with big pores’), viewed from the lens of your character. Each character comes with her own quirks and biases. A description filtered through the character’s lens does double duty of describing your setting, and revealing character.

Example:

Weak description:

A glass-covered rose seemed to hang above the desk in the library. Beauty watched the petals fall, one by one.

This example is weak because it lacks unique details, and is unfiltered.

Improved description:

A white rose edged in red hung, suspended, in a glass cage. It was like the head of paintbrush dipped in blood, and as the petals fell, Beauty remembered the cruelty of time, and how she only had minutes left before someone burst into the library.

If I’ve done my job, this description should evoke the particular tone I’ve chosen (fairytale setting (see point 1)), and be memorable.

3. Leave room for your reader’s imagination.

Stephanie: When I’m composing descriptions, I go overboard, I write out every detail so that I can clearly picture the scene. Then I cut, cut, cut leaving only the most important and interesting details. That way, none of the most important details get buried. And the reader doesn’t need all of my descriptions, only enough so that their imagination can fill in the rest.

Take a look at your favorite book, and I bet you’ll notice that some of the most vivid descriptions aren’t the longest, but they probably inspire your imagination to take off.

4. The amount of time you spend describing a place should reflect how important that place is for your story.

Stacey: I once read a story that spent a good page describing a ‘bush riotous with blooms.’ Not only was it unfiltered and not interesting, it had nothing to do with the story. It left me feeling betrayed. Readers like to try to figure things out on their own, and they also like a good twist, but the twist should not come by way of tedious prose that goes nowhere. I still to this day have no idea why I spent so long reading about riotous bushes.

5. Use all five senses, but pay special attention to one or two.

Stephanie: Just like with going overboard on setting details, too many sensory details will cancel each other out. So while it’s good to have scenes that evoke all five senses, think about which sense you’d like to evoke the most, and pay extra special attention to those senses.

6. Cut the clichés but don’t overdo it.

Stacey: How much cliché is too much? Strive for less than one. You don’t have to be as militant as me, but remember that if you flex your writing muscle, your story becomes stronger. Having said that, you don’t have to go crazy in an effort to avoid the cliché. Do not write things like:

“The pizza enticed him, like a lover reaching out for a kiss with cheesy, greasy lips.”

Or

“As they danced the music turned darker, rougher, like the sound her bathroom pipes made just after flushing the toilet.”

Now for CONTEST TIME! Stacey and I had so much fun coming up with our overdone descriptions that we thought it’d be fun to have a contest. So, give us your most entertaining overdone descriptions in the comments and we’ll pick one winner, who we’ll send an awesome book prize pack to!

To get things started, here’s one more overdone description:

“She didn’t fall in love with him all at once, it happened gradually, like the way a man begins to lose his hair, strands falling slowly at first, until one day he looks in the mirror and realizes he’s lost it all.”

 Contest ends at midnight, February 23.

This week Kelly and JJ go into a little more detail about how to write a query: what works, what doesn’t work, the who, the what, the where, and the whys. Also, have a query you want to have critiqued? Email us!

Show Notes

• Browse all of PubCrawl’s posts on querying: Query Tips, Querying, and Querypalooza!
• Our previous podcast episode about Querying and Representation
• JJ has laid out “formulas” for copy before
• More about Inciting Incidents (which we also discussed in our first NaNoWriMo episode)
• JJ’s query for Wintersong (then called The Goblin King)
• Our episode about the High Concept Pitch

Tips for Best Query Practices

• Emotional distance from your work is best (we know this is hard!)
• Don’t go too broad; the more specific the better
• You don’t need to include absolutely everything about your book in your query—just enough to entice the agent into wanting more
• The shorter, the better: sweet spot is 250 to 400 words
• Let your story speak for itself; don’t talk about your book (show, don’t tell!)
• Try to limit the number of characters you’re naming in your query (they generally say no more than 3): the protagonist, the antagonist, major ancillary character
• Also, you may write a flawless query, but the agent may still pass because it’s simply not their taste

The “Formula”

SETUP: A brief “laying of the scene”: setting, premise, etc. The “status quo”, as it were.
INCITING INCIDENT: A disruption of the status quo (e.g. a stranger comes to town)
CONSEQUENCES OF INCITING INCIDENT: How the world has changed after the Inciting Incident
THE MOMENT THE PROTAGONIST BECOMES PERSONALLY INVOLVED: What it says on the tin

The SETUP but when INCITING INCIDENT happens CONSEQUENCES OF INCITING INCIDENT occur, so then THE PROTAGONIST BECOMES PERSONALLY INVOLVED.

All of this together gets across what the stakes are, and that’s what generates tension and interest in a story.

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
• Salvage and Sound by Alexandra Duncan
• Morning Star by Pierce Brown
• Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers
• Scripted by Maya Rock

Off Menu Recommendations

Lots of other podcasts this week!

• Limetown
• Lore by Aaron Mahnke
• The first season of Serial

Oh, and this is the DVD box set of Hart to Hart with JJ’s high school on the cover. And if you have not seen Legally Blonde, we suggest you rectify that immediately.

What We’re Working On

• Kelly has been giving classes at The Loft about contracts, so if you’re in the Twin Cities area, you should check it out!
• JJ is still working on mental health, but still thinking about writing

That’s all for this week! Next week, in continuation of our Publishing 201 series, we will giving an overview of SUBRIGHTS. 

This week Kelly and JJ discuss critique groups: how they found theirs (each other!), how to find one in general, whether or not you need critique groups, and how to give effective feedback.

Show Notes

Kelly pointed out that she and JJ met 10 years ago, and now they both feel super old. They met through a mutual friend when they were both living in New York.

• Browse all our posts on Critique Partners
• How to find critique groups
  • Start your own or join an existing group
  • Do research: online, literary center, library, organizations like SCBWI or RWA
  • Critique groups are often about chemistry, and that you all understand each other’s work
• How to critique work and offer feedback
  • Generally, line edits are not useful feedback at the drafting stage
  • Character development, plot obstacles, etc. are more helpful than pointing out misplaced commas
  • Once a month is probably a better timeframe to meet than weekly, in terms of how much time you have to produce work and to review others
  • Asking questions is good method of critiquing, as it allows the author to remain in control of their own work
• Try and find a group of people who are “at the same level” or slightly “better” than you so you can learn from them and learn together. Being the “best” in a group means you have nothing to learn and you’re just teaching. You want to challenge and inspire each other.
• Before going into a critique meeting, maybe come up with a list of concerns that you would like your partners to focus on: voice, characterization, dialogue, etc.
• Stephanie and Stacey will be hosting a critique partner connection here at PubCrawl later this month, so stay tuned!

What We’re Reading

• The Assassin’s Masque by Sarah Zettel
• The Scorpion Rules and Plain Kate by Erin Bow
• Soundless by Richelle Mead
• Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Magicians, The Magician’s Land, and The Magician King by Lev Grossman

What We’re Working On

• Kelly is working on her YA and rereading old drafts
• JJ is struggling to get the culture of East Asia and its language into an English mode

Off Menu Recommendations

• Kelly is watching The Magicians TV show
• JJ is still making her way through Life is Strange
• Minorities in Publishing podcast
• 2015 Diversity Survey of Publishing by Lee & Low
• Lore podcast

That’s all for this week! Next week we will be talking about ROMANCE. Be prepared for a long one, folks, as both Kelly and JJ have FEELINGS.

This week JJ and Kelly are back to their regular format and discuss X Meets Y, or The High Concept Pitch: what it is, what it entails, and whether or not you need it. Also, the difference between “commercial” and “literary” (if any), and as always, what we’re reading and enjoying this week!

Show Notes

“High concept” is really just the ability to distill your premise down to one or two sentences. It can encompass the “X meets Y” pitch, but a high concept pitch is really the kernel of a story—the handle, as JJ’s old boss used to say—you can pick up and hand to someone else (i.e. sell).

• “Commercial” vs. “literary” is a false dichotomy; they are writing styles, not concepts. You can have the exact same idea and write it in a commercial way, or write it in a more literary manner.
• The Art of Writing Copy by JJ

Name that Book/Movie/TV Show!

• The children of Greek gods go to summer camp.
• A retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma set in 90s Beverly Hills.
• A retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice as told through a neurotic British woman’s diary entries.
• A retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew where Katrina is a 90s riot grrl.
• Children battle each other to the death on reality television.
• House of Leaves meets Battlestar Galactica (bonus: this is a PubCrawl alum’s book!)
• Labyrinth meets Amadeus (we’re giving this one to you)
• A girl who can’t go outside falls in love with the boy next door

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• The Corrections and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (and movie)
• The works of Margaret Atwood
• Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
• The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
• The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
• Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson
• Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
• Truthwitch by Susan Dennard
• Passenger by Alexandra Bracken
• Fire and Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore (JJ actually reviewed this on her blog)
• Star Crossed and A Curse as Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

What We’re Working On

• Kelly is working on an old YA project.
• JJ is setting aside her middle grade for the moment and focusing on an adult project to get ready to send her publisher for her option book.

Off Menu Recommendations

• Top Chef
• Life is Strange (JJ is on the bandwagon!)
• RadioLab’s episode “The Cathedral“
• That Dragon, Cancer
• Jane McGonigal’s TED talks and SuperBetter
• Arkham Horror (not Arkham Asylum as JJ mentions, although she has played that too)

That’s all for this week! Next week we’ll talk about CRITIQUE GROUPS! If you have any questions you would like us to answer, send us an ask or leave a comment!

I’ve been meaning to write a detailed blog post about how to make a book trailer for years now, since I made one for my first novel, Fair Coin. So that was back in… 2012. Yikes!

This isn’t that post—not quite. Consider this more of an introductory overview of the process, and if people are interested, I will break the process down further in a series of subsequent posts to make a more comprehensive guide on tools and techniques and other resources.

Anatomy of a Book Trailer

So, you want a book trailer. The first question you have to ask yourself is: Do you need one? Opinions are split on whether they actually encourage people to buy books, even among marketing professionals; it’s difficult to measure those outcomes. Then again, it’s hard to say how much film trailers encourage (or discourage) people from heading to the theater. For a while it seemed like every book had a trailer, just because, but you certainly don’t need one to sell books, and you aren’t necessarily at a disadvantage without one. Schools and libraries sometimes show trailers to their teens, or help them make trailers for their favorite books, so there could be some value in making people aware that your book exists. And the very slick, very professional trailer that my current publisher, Adaptive Books, produced for The Silence of Six was shared widely, and many people commented that it made them want the book.

Maybe you just want a trailer because trailers are cool, or you have a neat idea for one, or you have time and money in excess. For me, the thought process was:

1. I know how to make a trailer myself, so why not?
2. I want to do everything I can to make my debut novel a success, so if there’s a chance a trailer can help, I’m gonna have one.
3. I have a fun idea for a trailer, and I really want to make it happen.

But you’ve decided, yes, there will be a book trailer. The next thing you should do is talk to your publicist to see what they might have planned. Some publishers will handle all that for the author, others will cheerfully wish you luck.

If you’re on your own, your next decision is a big one: Do you hire a professional to make your trailer, or do you make it yourself? You can make a trailer yourself even if you have zero video production experience, but if you want something lavish, something cinematic perhaps, you will probably need to get more people involved. A basic trailer could run you several hundred dollars, but if you’re planning to film this from scratch with actors and costumes and special effects, expect to spend much more than that. For now, let’s assume you have practically no budget, because you’re a writer, and you still have to buy swag (which should be a separate blog post). Would you believe you can make a decent trailer for $20 or less?

Here’s the basic stuff you may need in your book trailer, with some examples from the Fair Coin trailer, embedded below:

A concept

Do you want your trailer to have actors or video footage or a slideshow of images set to text or music? Personally, I don’t like trailers that have actors or even narration dramatizing scenes or passages from the book; I prefer getting a sense of the book’s tone and plot, which trailers are excellent at conveying. Fortunately those are much cheaper to produce as well.

Because Fair Coin is about a coin that grants wishes, I wanted to show someone flipping a coin. That should be easy, right?

Assets

To make a video, you need assets: video clips, images, sound clips, music, etc. You can find a lot of this for free, usually through a Creative Commons license or for a licensing fee, or you can of course record your own (which then requires, at minimum, a smartphone and at best, a video camera). Licensing fees can vary from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars. In a future post, I’ll point out some great places to get free or cheap music and stock photos.

It turns out that to capture a coin flip, you really need a high-speed camera, which is expensive — even to rent one for a couple of hours. High quality stock footage runs a few hundred dollars for just a thirty-second clip. But I lucked out: I found a perfect clip on YouTube and wrote to the creators for permission to use it. Since it was something they shot just to test their camera, they were happy to give it to me for free, and sent me high quality source video. I still had to tweak the color to what I wanted, but it cost me nothing! I got permission from Sam Weber, the artist who painted the cover for Fair Coin, to use it in the trailer and bookmarks, and he also sent me a high resolution file to work with, which I also tweaked subtly. (Check out Jenna’s eyes.) I couldn’t get permission for the music I wanted, but I found royalty-free music that I liked and paid $20 to license it. I got the sound effects for free. Total cost for assets: $20.

Editing Software

Even a very simple trailer, like a slideshow, requires editing software. I’ve made trailers in Windows Movie Maker, and there are some things it does very well, like filters, so I’ve returned to it even when I have access to fancier programs. So free software like Movie Maker and iMovie on Macs are very much an option, and you can use Audacity for easy audio mixing. I primarily use Adobe Premiere Elements, which is very affordable and offers a robust set of professional features, but you could also spring for Avid or Final Cut if you have the cash and a computer that can run them. I already had Adobe Premiere, so I’m calling that cost zero as well.

You’ll see a few simple visual effects in my trailer. The one I really wanted — the ripple effect — didn’t come with the version I owned, and it was kind of expensive to buy it so I ran a trial version on the clips that I wanted and saved them separately. Tricky, but free!

Total Cost: $20.

Then What?

To oversimplify things, you use the editing software to put all your assets together, then you output a video and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo or Facebook, or however you want to share it. In reality, even though I wasn’t paying someone to do the work for me, it did cost me around two days of my own time, which is also valuable. If I had been paying myself to work on the video at my usual freelance rates, I couldn’t have afforded it! But basically, I ended up with this:

When the sequel, Quantum Coin, came out, I was pretty sure I didn’t need a trailer, but I made one just on principle, and for the symmetry of it, and the process was very similar.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to know more about making book trailers, and if you have any questions. Also, please share some of your favorite book trailers! Two of my favorites, which are fairly straightforward, are for A Wrinkle in Time (50th Anniversary) by Madeline L’Engle and Tempest by Julie Cross.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about Inciting Incidents that seemed to be helpful for a lot of our readers at PubCrawl, and I’ve had a few requests to continue dissecting story beats. So I’ve decided to tackle the next one on my list: The Midpoint.

I know a lot of writers struggle with middles, but I’m actually not one of them. For me, the middle of the novel is simply an extension of the beginning, and in fact, I tend to think of my books more or less in halves: the beginning, and then the end. The point that delineates the beginning from the end is the midpoint.

First of all, let me say: there is no wrong way to write a novel. Write however works best for you. For me, my stories tend to naturally structure themselves into four acts, with three inflection points: Revelation (end of Act I), Realization (end of Act II), and Resolution (end of Act III). The Realization (end of Act II) generally tends to be my Midpoint.¹

So what is the Midpoint, exactly? Why is it given such emphasis in all these story structure/plot books? I mean, a middle is just the boring bridge between the opening and the ending, right?

Personally, for me, the Midpoint is the moment of greatest change; in fact, I would argue it is the top of the mountain of your story arc. Everything builds up to it, and then everything unravels from it. The Midpoint is what the beginning of your novel is working towards and what the ending of your novel is working from. Because of this, I actually think the Midpoint of your novel is where your story reveals itself.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the sort of plot point/character development that is your Midpoint² reveals the type of story you’re writing. The “point” of your book, as it were.

For example, in Pride & Prejudice, the Midpoint of the novel is when Darcy sends Lizzy a letter, explaining himself after she has turned down his offer of marriage. Until she reads his letter, Lizzy has been staunch in her prejudice against Mr. Darcy based on a bad first impression, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Suddenly, she realizes she has interpreted all his actions incorrectly due to a mistaken pride in her own cleverness.

And there you have it, the entire point of Pride & Prejudice, as neatly summarized by the Midpoint.

The Midpoint is often referred to as a Midpoint Reversal, because there is often some sort of reversal of fortune or big twist or some other reveal that changes the entire context of the story (as in the case of Pride & Prejudice). However, not all Midpoints involve a reversal of some kind. For example, the Midpoint of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone³ is when Harry discovers just what Hogwarts has been protecting: the eponymous stone itself. And there you have it: the point of the first Harry Potter book.

All stories, regardless of how they’re structured, have Midpoints. They may not fall in the exact middle of your book, but they are in that neighborhood nonetheless. Without them, you have a “sagging middle” and, I would argue, no actual point to your story.

So there you have it: Midpoints! Are there any other story beats you guys would like for me to cover? Sound off in the comments!

This week JJ talks with New York Times bestselling author Beth Revis about her publishing journey, revision, how she learned to revise and critique, and what she’s reading and enjoying!

BETH REVIS is the New York Times bestselling author of the Across the Universe trilogy, as well as The Body Electric, Paper Hearts, and the forthcoming A World Without You. She lives in the Appalachian mountains with her boys: one husband, one son, and two very large dogs. You can find out more on Facebook, Twitter, or online. If you never want to miss a thing and also get exclusive insider opportunities, sign up for her newsletter here.

Show Notes

• Our previous podcast episode about revision, as well as all the articles we’ve ever written about Revision on PubCrawl!
• The podcast episode where we discuss the vagaries of The New York Times bestselling lists
• Learn to revise by editing! Beth learned to revise by practice, and by critique other people’s work. JJ learned to revise by editing other people’s manuscripts.
• Creation vs. Discovery writers, or rethinking the Plotter vs. Pantser dynamic by JJ

Beth’s method of revision

• Approach your booze of choice.
• Make up a list of all the changes that need to be made.
• Take out all the compliments.
• Work chronologically through the manuscript.
• Beth uses the split screen function on Scrivener, with the old version on top and new on bottom.
• Go through the list of changes and work page by page.

What We’re Working On

• Beth is working on the last Paper Hearts book and the revisions for the forthcoming A World Without You
• JJ is working on her middle grade and waiting on cover concepts for Wintersong

What We’re Reading

• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
• I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
• Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
• More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
• Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George
• The Witches: Salem 1692 by Stacy Schiff (yep, still!)
• The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

Off Menu Recommendations

• Jessica Jones (TV show)
• Daredevil (TV show)
• Bojack Horseman (TV show)
• We Bare Bears (TV show)
• Steven Universe (TV show)
• Adventure Time (TV show)

Paper Hearts: Some Writing Advice

Your enemy is the blank page. When it comes to writing, there’s no wrong way to get words on paper. But it’s not always easy to make the ink flow. Paper Hearts: Some Writing Advice won’t make writing any simpler, but it may help spark your imagination and get your hands back on the keyboard.

Practical Advice Meets Real Experience

With information that takes you from common mistakes in grammar to detailed charts on story structure, Paper Hearts describes:

• How to Develop Character, Plot, and World
• What Common Advice You Should Ignore
• What Advice Actually Helps
• How to Develop a Novel
• The Basics of Grammar, Style, and Tone
• Four Practical Methods of Charting Story Structure
• How to Get Critiques and Revise Your Novel
• How to Deal with Failure
• And much more!

Enter for a giveaway of PAPER HEARTS: Some Writing Advice! Beth has generously donated a signed copy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

That’s all for this week! Next week we return to our regularly scheduled PubCrawl podcast posts and discuss X MEETS Y, or THE HIGH CONCEPT IDEA.

Hi all, Julie here!

Recently I found myself looking out a hotel room window at a cityscape. The view made me think of the components of a city—streets made up of buildings, buildings made up of walls, walls made up of bricks.

I found myself thinking of all the unnoticed bricks that were holding up the city below my window.

This observation got me thinking about novels. I started considering all the components of a novel—chapters made up of scenes, scenes made up of paragraphs, paragraphs made up of sentences, sentences made up of words.

This whole metaphor gave me the idea for a series on the building blocks of a novel. This post will be on words—the most basic building block. The next will be about sentences, then paragraphs, then scenes, then chapters. Of course, most things as intricate as a novel are greater than the sum of their parts, so maybe the final post in the series will be about how a novel transcends (or hopes to transcend) all these things that go into it.

Starting with words.

Word choice is one of the most fundamental aspects of writing, so much so that we don’t talk about it much. But the wrong word can leave writing flat or confusing, and more importantly, the right word can make writing come alive on the page.

There are so many ways in which word choice impacts a piece of writing! Since we’re talking about novels, I want to focus on clarity, voice, and sound.

Clarity

One of the most powerful things about word choice is the subtle change in meaning that can happen when a writer changes just one word. Consider the differences between the following:

“She dropped the package to the ground.”

“She chucked the package to the ground.”

“She hurled the package to the ground.”

Swap package with bundle and ground with pavement and the meaning changes even more. Consider the difference between “She dropped the package to the ground,” and “She hurled the bundle to the pavement.”

This is a painfully simple example, and the lesson here is so basic and elementary, it’s easy to assume this is something we all know how to do and dive into what we perceive as more “advanced” methods of improving our writing. But all the symbolism and metaphors and motifs in the world won’t rescue a sentence from the wrong words. Without clarity, our meaning is lost. We can all think of at least one book we’ve read that felt muddled and murky. Just as you wouldn’t want to watch a movie that was shot through a blurry lens, you wouldn’t want to read an out-of-focus story. Word choice instills meaning and tone, and without intentional language those things suffer.

Voice

Word choice has a huge impact on that elusive aspect of writing we call voice. There are many ways to define voice, but for this post, I’ll turn to something Kat Zhang wrote in a fabulous post on the subject for this blog:

“Voice is, I think, the way a story is told. Just as how the same piece of music sounds quite different if played on a violin versus a flute (or sung by a choir or a rapper), a story that involves that same plot, characters, world, etc, can still change a lot depending on the voice used to tell it.”

By carefully selecting the right words, a writer can alter the voice of a story from tense to sarcastic to poetic. I often turn to The Catcher in the Rye when I need an example of a story told with a distinct and unmistakable voice. Imagine how word choice would affect the voice of just the first line:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

~ JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.

If Salinger had changed just a few words—substituting painful for lousy and stuff for crap, for instance, the voice would have been significantly altered.

This example also demonstrates how strongly word choice impacts characterization, especially in a first person narrative. But even in third person, word choice will help or hinder characterization. If I write, “The family always dined at six,” your idea of the characters will be different than if I write, “The family always ate at six,” or “The family always broke bread at six.”

Rhythm and Sound

I’ve written about adding sound to your prose on the blog before, but I want to mention it here because sound ties in to any discussion of word choice. Comedy illustrates this beautifully. Think of Bill Murray’s line in the movie Stripes: “That’s the fact Jack!” So much of that comedic moment relies on the sound and rhythm of the words. Comedian Brian Regan has a whole bit about forgetting to do a project for science when he was in the sixth grade and handing in a “cup o’ dirt.” The entire joke depends on the staccato sound of the words. If Regan had said he handed in a “container of soil,” the joke would lose all of its impact. Of course, the importance of choosing words for their sound and rhythm applies to all writing, not just comedy. If you can think of a book that received praise for its lyrical prose or its taut tension, you can be sure it contains excellent examples of words carefully chosen for their sound.

Returning to our metaphor of a city, the words you choose for your novel really are comparable to the bricks used by the builder. When bricks are well chosen and do their job, they go unnoticed. They hold everything in place and create beauty and function. The words you choose will do the same. The right words will hold up the structure of your novel and give it style without calling attention to themselves.

What are your thoughts on word choice? Do you have any advice to add? Please share your ideas in the comments!

A question I used to see a lot from aspiring writers when I was still working in publishing was Do I need a website? Do I need to get on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Instagram/[insert social media platform]? What do agents and editors mean when they say “online presence”?

I won’t lie; whenever I received a submission from an agent, the first thing I did was Google that author. I wasn’t necessarily looking to see if the author had an enormous platform or following; I just wanted to get a sense of the person behind the words. For me, it was always the most helpful if the author had a personal website where I could go, read their bios, find their social media links, etc. Not having a professional website isn’t a deal-breaker, but these days, it would strike me as a little odd.

I’ve been coding and designing websites since I was in high school (does anyone else remember Geocities? No? Bueller? Bueller? Okay, I’m just old then.), so I’m pretty comfortable with this sort of thing, but I know this entire process bewilders a lot of people, so I thought I would write a tutorial for our readers (and some of our members!) to help them out.

This is a bit of a long post with a lot of images, so the rest is under the cut!

1. Pick a domain name.

A domain name is your address on the internet, as it were. Ours is publishingcrawl.com, but as an writer, it’s best to have a domain under the name you’re writing under. (For example: Mine is sjaejones.com because I am writing as S. Jae-Jones.) The first thing I would do is check to see if your name is available. The easiest way to do that is simply type yourname.com into your browser and see if anything turns up.

If your name is already taken, then you can add -writer or -books to the end of your name, or else try .net or .biz, although .com is probably best for search purposes.

2. Select a web hosting plan and register your domain.

Most web hosting services will register your first domain for free, and for the sake of simplicity, I would recommend you do it all at once.¹ Select your plan of choice. (For most writers who don’t expect heavy blog traffic, the most basic plans are sufficient. You can always upgrade later.) Register your new domain name with your host provider.

3. Install WordPress.

Okay, now here’s where things get a bit complicated. Think of a website as a piece of property: the host is the land itself and the domain is the address. If you want to live on that piece of land, you need to build a house.

If you know HTML, you could code that house yourself. (I’ve done so; it’s incredibly time-consuming and exhausting.) Or you could download and install a CMS, or Content Management System, like WordPress, Joomla, or similar. We at PubCrawl use WordPress (and I do for my own website as well).

Once you’ve set up your domain, you will prompted to set up a username and password for your host. Once you’ve done that, log in to access your Control Panel (usually called cPanel by most hosting services).

Once you’ve been logged in, at the top navigation bar, you will see cpanel. Clicking on that will lead you to your Control Panel, which will look something like this:

Bluehost and other providers will often provide a 1-step installation for WordPress and other CMS builders. Under Website Builders, click on the WordPress logo and you’ll be brought to a page that looks like this:

Start a brand new install, select your domain name, and Bluehost will do the work for you.² Set up your WordPress login with a username and password.

Once everything’s been installed, in order to access the backend of your website, type www.yourname.com/wp-admin/ and you’ll see this:

Fill in your username and password and that will take you to your Dashboard, which looks like this:

Ta-da! Now your website has been set up. Time to make it look pretty.

4. Select a theme to install on your website.

The default WordPress theme is actually pretty decent, but if you want to put your own personal stamp on your website, I would recommend browsing the WordPress themes gallery. There are a lot of themes you can choose, many of them for free. You can also hire a designer to make your website more personal at this point, but to be honest, a lot of the free themes at WordPress are clean and professional, so there isn’t a huge need to break your bank account.

5. Fill your website with content.

In your WordPress Dashboard, you’ll see an option on the lefthand navigation bar titled Pages. This is where you can create different pages for your website: an about page, information about your books, a blog, a contact page, etc. As an editor, I didn’t need all that much, just a place to contact you. Readers may like a lot more extra content, so include as much information about your book as you please!

That’s all for this post. Hope this was helpful for everyone who’s looking to set up a website and didn’t know where to start. If you have any further questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll try my best to answer, although each case will be different, of course. 

Happy new year! This week JJ and Kelly are back after a holiday hiatus, traveling through time with an episode recorded in 2015 about REVISION! Once again, apologies for the mouth-breathing: winter is a rough time for JJ’s sinuses.

Show Notes

You can browse all our Revisions posts at PubCrawl via the tag! (Check out our Resources page too.)

• So You Finished Your First Draft—Now What? by Jodi Meadows
• Tackling Revisions by Susan Dennard
• Intro to the Art of Revision: Part 1 and Part 2 by Kat Zhang
• Revision: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 by Jodi Meadows
• Correcting Problems with Pacing by Julie Eshbaugh
• Kill Your Darlings by Erin Bowman
• Revision for Pansters by JJ

Things we discussed in the episode:

• LET THE MANUSCRIPT REST. No seriously, put it aside for as long as you can.
• Have a clear vision for your work.
• Revision is different for everyone, but JJ works from the biggest issues to smallest, generally pacing.
• The skills needed to revise is mostly patience.
• “Kill your darlings”—keep all your beloved bits in an “Orphans” file.
  • Be wary of your emotional attachment to your initial version of your book, especially if the story is going in a different direction.

What We’re Working On

• Kelly’s been making paper snowflakes!
• JJ is procrastinating on writing her middle grade by writing other things in her middle grade universe.

What We’re Reading

• The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce
• The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
• The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
• The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon
• Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George
• These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
• A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Off-Menu Recommendations

• Writing Excuses podcast
• Still Hamilton, you guys
• Hilariously, we mentioned wanting Serial to come back, and then the day after we recorded, Sarah Koenig dropped the next season like she was the Beyoncé of the podcast world

That’s all for this week! Next week we got back to our Publishing 101 series, this time with a more advanced course. Publishing 201, if you will. We’ll be covering MONEY: advances, royalties, etc.

Hi, Julie here! In anticipation of the opening of The Force Awakens, Stephanie Garber and I have teamed up to bring you a post on writing lessons we’ve learned from Star Wars! These are all taken from little-known, fun facts about the movies we found compiled in a great article called 37 Things You Might Not Know about Star Wars. From those 37 things, we’ve chosen seven we feel contain great lessons on the craft of writing.

Stephanie first! Here are four writing lessons she’s learned from Star Wars:

Lucas’s Initial Draft of The Script Was Too Long

This worked out for Lucas, who was able to trim his original script and use the excess for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but before this happened his screenplay was rejected by multiple studios. If Lucas hadn’t been an Academy Award nominee, who knows, Star Wars might have been rejected again by 20^th Century Fox, and then the world would have never known the greatness that is Star Wars.

So, don’t let the world miss out on your literary masterpiece because it’s too long. When a manuscript is significantly longer than the standard word count for its category, it can betray an underlying problem with either the writing or the story. If your manuscript is only slightly longer than average, see where you can trim extraneous words and sentences. If it’s significantly longer than the norm, it might be a sign you have unnecessary scenes, or too much going on in your story.

Alec Guiness didn’t want to be in The Empire Strikes Back because it was “fairy-tale rubbish”

As a fantasy writer, I’ve felt people haven’t always taken me seriously purely based on my genre. What makes me even sadder, I’ve seen some of my creative writing students embarrassed to share their work because they don’t want their peers to judge them—I’ve witnessed this happen to students who write a variety of genres. I’ve also noticed that my students who feel embarrassed really hold back from taking their stories as far as they could go, out of fear that others will see how deeply they love what they are writing. As a result these stories are never as strong as they could be.

But the truth is, people want to read stories where the author doesn’t hold back. Love is infectious, so I suggest putting all your passion into your stories—don’t hold back out of fear that people will judge you. Because in all honestly, people may judge you and that is their mistake to make—like Sir Alec Guiness.

Han Solo’s Best Line was an Ad Lib

This continues to be my favorite fun fact from Star Wars. During The Empire Strikes Back, right before Han Solo is frozen in carbonite Leia tells him, “I love you.” Originally Han was supposed to respond with, “I love you too,” but instead, Harrison Ford changed the dialogue to, “I know.”

This line is not only highly entertaining, it helps to define Han Solo’s character. It can be easy to give characters lines that anyone can say, such as, “I love you too.” But if you go back through you manuscript and change those lines to things that only your character could say, you will not only have stronger characters, your book will be much more entertaining.

Vadar’s Big Reveal in The Empire Strikes Back was Kept Secret From Nearly Everyone

I believe this was done to keep spoilers from leaking out. However, when I read this fun fact it inspired me to share something I enjoy doing as writer. I love keeping secrets from myself. For example, I might know that at some point my main character is going to be faced with the two things she wants most, but I try to never figure out which one she is going to choose, which not only makes it more fun for me to write—because I honestly don’t know what will happen—this also prevents me from falling into the trap of having my main character make plot based choices. Instead I get to dive into scenes with her and see what she does based on her ARC and current emotional state.

I love your four lessons, Stephanie! (I especially loved the one about Sir Alec Guiness!) Here are three writing lessons I’ve learned from Star Wars:

Lucas was Inspired by Akira Kurosawa For The Story’s POV

George Lucas has said that he was inspired by the POV used by Akira Kurosawa in his film The Hidden Fortress. Apparently, in that film, Kurosawa reveals the story through two of the lowest characters. Lucas applied this technique when he let Star Wars unfold through the perspective of the two droids.

The lesson I take from this is that Lucas studied the work of masters and applied what he learned. He saw a technique that worked and wondered what effect that technique would have on Star Wars. We can all do this. Maybe you’ve read a novel in verse and found it moving. Maybe a book written in present tense struck you with its immediacy. Don’t hesitate to try a range of writing techniques to see what works best for your story.

Theaters Didn’t Want to Show the Movie

When the original Star Wars movie was ready for distribution, fewer than forty theaters agreed to book it. A different film from 20^th Century Fox, The Other Side of Midnight, (based on a bestselling book,) was in high demand instead. Consequently, the studio required theaters that showed Midnight to also show Star Wars.

Contrary to what the theater owners expected, Star Wars became the hit and The Other Side of Midnight was a big disappointment. But the theater owners wanted to go with the movie based on a bestseller because it was safe. Sometimes this happens in publishing too—sometimes books get buzz because they follow a trend or are similar to a hit book—but don’t let this influence your writing. Audiences and readers respond to stories, not trends. Write the best story you can write. Write a story you connect with, and others will connect with it, too.

Han Solo was Supposed to Die

When Han Solo is frozen in carbonite at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, the filmmakers didn’t know if the character would live or die because Harrison Ford had only signed on for two movies. The lesson I find here is that you need to stay flexible with your story. Consider all options for your characters! Let your characters grow, and if they make choices that are more interesting than what was in your outline, follow their lead! Stay open to new developments on the page.

So those are seven writing lessons Stephanie Garber and I have learned from Star Wars. We’re sure there are many more! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments—on these lessons or any others!

Stephanie: When I first started writing, I thought revising was proofreading. In fact, I knew so little about revisions I believed that if there were mistakes in my manuscript it was no big deal because that’s what editors are for. Thankfully I outgrew this delusion rather quickly. Unfortunately it took me a much longer time to find solid critique partners and figure out what it means to revise.

So, for any of you who might be in need of a little revision or critiquing guidance, Stacey Lee and I have put together a critique checklist.

We’ve geared this information toward critique partners, but it can also be used as a checklist, if you are revising your own work.

Steph & Stacey’s Critiquing Cheat Sheet

First, if you are working with a critique partner, before you dive into their work always make sure you know what they want help with.

• Do they want you to point out every nit-picky detail?
• Do they only want big picture help?
• Do they actually just want a cheerleader? 

Are they looking for big picture help?

• Plot (Do you get a sense of what is at stake, of what the MC wants, and what lies in their way?)
• Pacing (Is the pacing too slow? Are there scenes that fail to move the story forward, or that feel episodic? Do scenes drag? Do you want to stop reading? Or does it move to fast? Do you feel as if a lot is happening but you don’t feel connected?)
• Character (Are the characters flat or cliché? Are they relatable? Memorable? Is the MC a character you want to read about?)
• Showing vs. Telling (Most early drafts tell when they should be showing)
• Clarity (Mystery is good, confusing is bad)

If the big picture items are good to go, pay attention to:

• Descriptions (Is too there much, too little)
• Setting (Is there a sense of place? Could this be set in a better place?)
• World building (Is the world too vague or confusing? Or are there too many details)
• Dialogue (Is the dialogue stilted? Is it easy to read or does it read like an info dump? Does it read like actual conversation? Does it speak for itself or do they rely on adverbs?)
• Inner Monologue (Did the writer rely too much on inner dialogue, which tends to be ‘telly,’ rather than showing the scene through dialogue or action?)
• Tension/Conflict (Is there tension in every scene? Are there internal and external conflicts?)

If the pages you’re reading are fairly polished, pay attention to the details:

• Details (Are there enough details? Too many details? Do their details show things about their main character, supporting characters or the world they’ve created?)
• Sentence structure/variance (Are sentences clunky? Are they always the same length, same tone, same rhythm?)
• Character voice (Do their characters have distinct voices? Is the voice of their work appropriate for the genre and category?)
• Dialogue tags (Can they cut any dialogue tags? Do they need extra dialogue tags? Is it always clear who’s speaking?)
• Word choices (Are there any unnecessary words? Are the words they’ve chosen appropriate? Do they have any pet words, or word echoes? Could they use stronger words? )
• Passive voice (Can sentences be written in a more ‘active’ voice? Can they get rid of ‘fog bound’ phrases such as “There are,” or “It was,” and/or place weak verbs like ‘is’ or ‘get’ with stronger verbs?)

Stacey: Finally, a good critique partner helps you identify the weak spots. A great one identifies the weak spots, and suggests fixes for them. One of things I appreciate about Stephanie is that she always tries to give me solutions, and even if I don’t ultimately use those solutions, they inevitable unlock other possibilities in my head. Or, we’ll go to our favorite pearl tea place and brainstorm. My brain is her brain and vice versa.

In the comments, let us know if we’ve missed anything in our critique partner checklist. And for those of you in need of a new critique partner, we’re planning on doing a critique partner connection soon, so stay tuned.

I wasn’t sure what to write about this month, so I asked trusty Twitter for advice. Two people in a row asked about sifting through ideas and how to decide what goes in a book. So, that’s what we’re doing.

First: I get it. You’re a writer. You have lots of ideas. You have ~*~imagination.~*~ But how to sort through all of that and put only the best things in the book? Good question.

1. Maybe you need a list. Or several lists. Whatever.
   I find lists to be very calming things. They make me happy. They make me feel more organized. So when I make lists for a book, it’s all the things I think I’d like to put in that story, from phrases to ideas to objects — everything.
2. Sometimes I don’t need lists because I’ve already started writing the story, and a cool idea slams into me while I’m brushing my teeth.
   Sound familiar? I bet it’s happened to you too. These ideas are sometimes for the book I’m working on, but sometimes they’re for other books. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which. We’re going to get to the “how to tell” part in a second.
3. How to tell what goes in this book and what goes in another book. (See, I told you it would be a second.)
   I like to imagine various characters interacting with the thing somehow. (“The thing” being the idea or line or whatever.) Does it feel right? Does it feel more right with another character from another story? How does it fit thematically? And will it ruin all my plans in a good or bad way?
   I’ve seen lots of advice that talks about not hoarding ideas, not saving them for something else because you should just put every cool thing into your current story. And on some level, I get that. The advice is meant to keep you from having only one or two cool things in a story — when you could have lots of cool things! It’s meant to help you complicate situations and worlds, and make the story more interesting in general. But sometimes the idea really does belong elsewhere, and it’s okay to set it aside to fit in another story you have cooking in the back of your mind, or as a concept for a completely new story.
4. Sometimes the idea doesn’t belong in a story at all because it’s just not that great.
   Sorry. We all have lame ideas sometimes. (I could fill an entire novel with mine!) They can be fun to entertain for a while, but it’s always a good idea to run ideas by trusted friends. You want honest answers to “is this idea dumb?”, just like you want honest answers to “is my hair okay like this?” This is also a point where you need to be really honest with yourself. Does the idea truly fit? Is it going to make the story better/more interesting? If the answer is no, ditch it. You’ve got more ideas where that one came from.

One of the most fun things about being a writer is having lots of ideas! But it can also be frustrating when you’re not sure what goes where, or if it goes anywhere.

I hope this helps offer a little direction when it comes to sorting through everything. And if you have any tips or tricks about how you choose what goes in the book, please feel free to share it in the comments! 

Recently a friend asked me whether she should address the concerns of a beta reader who had clearly missed something in her novel that everyone else got. This started me thinking about the challenges in revising a story when you’ve received critiques from many different people, particularly when their comments contradict each other.

We’ve talked a lot at Publishing Crawl about revising your novel on your own and with editorial letters, but what about earlier in the process — maybe before your book even reaches agents or publishers? I am a big believer in beta readers and critique groups, and I participate in an amazing writing group. Almost every piece of fiction I have written has benefited from the sharp insights of other writers who tell me what’s working and what needs work, and call me out when I’m being lazy. If you’re fortunate, there will be a consensus, a clear sign to what you should focus on, but often there’s very different feedback from everyone, and it isn’t at all obvious who is “right” about your story. Now what?

First and foremost, it’s your story, so you have to follow your instincts. That said, you do have to be open to the possibility that you can make it even better by listening to suggestions you may not immediately agree with. And always remember that you can’t make everyone happy, but that isn’t the point; you’re trying to figure out how to make the story as good as it can be, which should also be the goal of your critiquers.

My record for critiques on a single piece is probably around twenty, for some of my short stories at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which is where I developed my process for juggling feedback and planning a revision strategy. Whether I have seven or 17 critiques, my first step is to read through everyone’s comments and my notes from the crit session, jotting down the key points and organizing them into four categories:

1. I totally agree with this comment and I will definitely do this
2. I disagree with this note, but they’re probably right, so I’d better fix that
3. That’s very interesting, I’ll keep that in mind
4. Nope

Although here I’m focusing on what needs to be improved in the next draft, make sure you’re also noticing the good stuff, which can show you where your story is on the right track, as well as give you an ego boost that is likely sorely needed about now. This is the stuff you don’t want to break when you’re fiddling with everything around it — which can easily happen, especially if you’re trying to follow every suggestion you received.

Once you’ve listed everything out, categories 1 and 2 should give you a pretty clear idea of what changes to make in your revision; however, sometimes you will get two or more recommendations that are  incompatible, and you have to choose one. Assuming you don’t want to settle for the fastest and easiest fix, you should consider what makes the most sense for your characters and their story, and what fits with the rest of the feedback you’ve received and strengthens what was already there.

You can also consider the source of the feedback: For example, if you’re writing a YA novel, you might weigh criticism from other YA writers or readers more heavily than feedback from someone who rarely reads YA or doesn’t enjoy it. (Their perspective is still valuable and probably shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, but they may be unaware of some of the nuances of your particular genre.) Or certain readers “get” your work or connect with your story more than others, so they have a better idea of what you were trying to accomplish.

Once I have a sort of road map of the changes I want to make, I usually dive in and start editing from beginning to end, in a linear order, layering in changes as I go. Of course every edit ripples throughout the piece, so the more time I can spend focused on and immersing myself in the story, the better to keep it all in my head, and ultimately put it on the page. I’m also keeping in mind some of the criticism that I am less sure about, or even some of those “nopes,” because as the story changes, they might make more sense or I’ve become more receptive to them. As I change the story, I feel more free to take it wherever it needs to go. If I take it too far or it doesn’t work, I can always revert back to the previous draft!

When I first started revising this way, it sometimes felt like I was writing by committee, and I resisted taking too many suggestions from others. Whose story is this, anyway? But if you’re committed to telling it in the best possible way, so it will reach the most readers, getting lots of feedback from many different perspectives is incredibly helpful. Don’t forget that every reader is different — just look all those wildly differing reviews on Goodreads! (No, don’t.) In a way, they’re all correct, because reading is such a personal, unique experience. And so is writing. In the end, you decide what your story will be, and you’re the only person who can write it.

Everyone’s writing and revision process  is also unique! So, how do you reconcile varying feedback from multiple readers?

Sometimes, terrible things happen to characters. It’s just a fact of fiction.

But as authors, sometimes we want pull back before things get too awful for our sweet, precious characters. Sometimes we want to make things easy because we love them.

My dear writer friends, that is not how our characters grow. Like mama birds shoving their chicks out of the nest to make them fly, we must make everything just awful so their true potential can shine.

Here are a few ways I like to shove my character birdies out of the nest:

1. Take away something they love.
2. Give them something they want. Take it away.
3. Make it impossible for them to have something they want because of their own action/inaction.
4. Do the opposite of what they want. If they want to go right, force them left.
5. Make someone else want the thing your character wants so they have to race for it.
6. Give someone else the thing your character wants.
7. Use one goal against another in a battle of What’s Most Important?
8. Destroy the thing they want so that no one can have it. (Cackling encouraged.)

Okay, lots of my ways to ruin lives involve waving what they want in front of them—then snatching it away. That sounds really, really mean, but believe me, properly motivated characters are characters willing to take action. And the closer they get to what they want, the harder they work.

And if the thing they want is gone/impossible to get, the character might have to reach higher for a new goal— something they didn’t know they wanted until everything else was stripped away. Maybe they couldn’t see it before. Maybe their focus was divided.

Don’t limit their goals to one thing, though! Give them a few things to desire, even if they mostly take action toward one thing. Keeping loved ones safe is always a good goal. Going after their personal dreams is another good one. Family and dreams can be good at conflicting with one another. (Sometimes families want characters to be a blacksmith, but the character wants to be a candlemaker! And sometimes characters have to choose between saving the blacksmith family from a tragic goat stampede . . . and going to the chandler convention in the next town over.)

And heck, definitely use combinations of the above list. Don’t limit yourself to one trick. Push until those little character birdies fly.

How else do you like to ruin your characters’ lives motivate your characters to take action?