Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

I read through everybody’s questions on branding. There are too many to answer all today, so I’ll take them in groups. I’ll deal first with the “what is branding” questions.

First off, Gina’s post caught my eye, so I clicked through to her blog and read her most recent post. It’s a review of Rene Gutteridge’s latest book, which begins like this:

Having not read Scoop, the first book in the Occupational Hazard series, I was’t sure what to expect. I only knew if Rene Gutteridge wrote it, it had to be an entertaining read.

I was right!

No one does quirky characters quite like Rene Gutteridge.

In Gina’s mind, Rene has a terrific brand–writing quirky characters. Gina hadn’t read the first book in the series, and yet she felt comfortable jumping in on the second. Why? Because she knew that Rene would deliver what she wanted.

Folks, that’s what branding is all about: Establishing a reputation for delivering a particular kind of goods. Branding is about consistency.

Stephen King consistently delivers a spooky tale with great characters. Tom Clancy consistently delivers the guns and ammo and huge explosions. John Grisham consistently delivers legal suspense.

Oops, not so consistent! When he wrote THE PAINTED HOUSE, his fans were upset. Why? Because they bought it assuming they were going to get one kind of experience. Instead, Grisham gave them another.

That’s like going into McDonalds and ordering a Big Mac and having them hand you a pizza. It might be a GREAT pizza, but . . . you came for a Big Mac. You were expecting a Big Mac. You were all primed for a Big Mac. They gave you pepperoni. If you’d wanted pepperoni, you’d have gone to Pizza Hut. You came to McDonalds with expectations, and those expectations were violated.

Now, McDonalds is too smart to actually do that. But we authors want to have the option to do exactly that. We get tired of writing legal thrillers and decide to write a literary novel. We delivery a fine product, but we wonder why our past customers shriek that they were cheated.

They were. If you want to succeed in writing, you need to build a market following. And they are going to want consistency. So do you when you read a book.

Branding is about delivering the same KIND of experience consistently. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same. But it needs to be similar enough that your readers don’t feel cheated.

What do you all think? If I popped out a terrific blog article today on 10 Great Ways to Invest In Stocks, would you all be pleased with me?

I don’t think so. They might be great stock tips, but you come here to read about writing fiction. You are all very different folks. Some of you are wealthy; some aren’t. Some of you are American; some aren’t. Some of you are people of faith; some aren’t. What you all have in common is that you write fiction and you trust me to deliver the goods on writing fiction.

If I violate that trust and deliver some other kind of goods, I have moved away from the one point of commonality you all had. It’s easy to cater to people who all write fiction IF I talk about fiction. But it’s impossible to cater to people who have all different sorts of economic, national, or religious backgrounds.

So I don’t talk about money here, nor politics, nor religion. I may mention one or more of these IN PASSING, but only if they are necessary in order to talk about The Main Topic here, which is writing fiction.

Because my brand on this web site and this blog and the associated e-zine is “Advanced Fiction Writing.” Anything else is off-topic, and should be discussed elsewhere. I can and do discuss other topics. But I do those ELSEWHERE. I picked my topic for this site, and I need to stick with it while I’m here.

When you publish your novels, you too are picking a topic or a genre or a style. People who come into your universe and buy your books are buying your particular topic or genre or style. When they come back to buy again, they’re saying, “Hey, I liked what you did last time. Give me some more of that.” If you now switch topics or genres or styles completely, you are violating their trust.

Early in my career, I did that. I wrote about whatever interested me. I wrote nonfiction and fiction, historical, futuristic, contemporary–whatever. That was wrong. I didn’t know any better. I know better now and I intend to do better.

Today’s blog has answered some of your questions, but mainly it’s been setting the stage. Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about branding and will answer more of your questions.

The comments today were amazing! You all are really gelling into a terrific community.

I’ll tackle just one of the many questions that came up:

Debra wrote:

Is it worthwhile marketing a first novel in advance if the chances of a first novel being published is really low?

There are two parts to my response:

1) You are not really marketing your novel in advance, so much as you are marketing yourself. That is what branding is all about–teaching your readers to make the decision in advance that any book you write is a book they’re going to buy. Several of you mentioned Ken Follett and his book THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH. Not many people bought that book because of their burning interest in medieval cathedrals. People bought that book because they knew Follett could deliver a great historical novel with lots of suspense (and the usual level of “steam”).

Along these lines, I thought Carol has chosen a brilliant marketing strategy–speaking in schools. This is how one of my friends, Bryan Davis, has done phenomenally well with his “Dragons in Our Midst” series. This series had everything going against it: A Christian fantasy published by a nonfiction publisher. But Bryan is an accomplished speaker and he goes to schools and speaks and gets kids fired up and sells a ton of books.

2) By marketing yourself, you raise your chances of selling your first novel enormously. And if you don’t sell your first, then you are still raising the chances of selling your second. It costs tremendous amounts of money to publish a book. Think $50000 to publish a novel. For a children’s picture book, it costs even more (all that art work has to be paid for). Publishers don’t want to risk that much money on a loser, when they could just as well risk it on someone who shows an interest and a talent for marketing.

Let’s talk more about branding, because I can see there are some misconceptions about that. Ask me your most pressing question about branding. I’ll answer the best ones tomorrow.

If I can’t answer you, I’ll ask Allison Bottke. She knows more than I do, and she’s helping me get my own brand focused.

I had a brain burp yesterday and forgot to blog. No reason, I just forgot. But I’ve been reading through all the comments of the last couple of days.

In answer to Jason’s question, a good length for a book is 100,000 words or less. If you are a superstar, it can be economically viable to do much more than this. One of the Harry Potter books was up around 250,000 words, and still felt way short! But we mortals need to shoot for the 90,000 to 100,000 range.

I will second Rachel’s comment on PILLARS OF THE EARTH. That’s in my top five favorite books of all time.

MLE wrote:

Hi Randy, here’s what I’m puzzling over. I haven’t read the ‘wheel of time’ series that Ron referred to, but we all know lots of books that got published and sold well even though they blew all the rules of good writing; some were surprisingly readable, while others were downrigt awful. You were left thinking, “What editor would blow his company’s money on this?”
So I am testing some theses.
1.If you are well-enough known, that is, you have a following, you will sell regardless of what you write.
2. a mediocre work, well-marketed, will sell more copies than an outstanding work poorly marketed.
3. Publishers are erratic.
4. But on the other hand, most of what they receive is pretty bad. I think if you have to read gazillions of proposals a month, it must turn the brain into mush.
5. You have got to know who your writing to, and make sure that is who it will be marketed to.

All five of these are true. Let’s look at these in turn:

1.If you are well-enough known, that is, you have a following, you will sell regardless of what you write.

Randy sez: Yes, marketing in fiction depends strongly on your past history. See, for example, Tom Clancy. Of his last six books, two were excellent and the other four ranged from awful to mediocre. I loved all Clancy’s early work, but the simple fact is that it has declined in quality. Yet I continue to buy his books (and kick myself when they clunk).

2. a mediocre work, well-marketed, will sell more copies than an outstanding work poorly marketed.

Randy sez: Again, true. I personally know a number of outstanding novelists who sell quite badly. I would sell both my cats AND my dog to be able to write like these writers. But they sell about as well as wooden hot dogs.

Truth to tell, I’m not pleased with my own sales numbers. I’ve made a commitment to myself to never again write a novel that I don’t know how to market effectively. My feeling is that an outstanding writer ought to be able to write good sales copy and learn to market himself well. It’s all part of the same game. Writing well is NOT enough.

3. Publishers are erratic.

Randy sez: Yeah, they’re human. I have a good friend who until recently held the title “Publisher” at a major publishing house. I have another friend who currently wears that title at another publishing house. I have many, many editor friends. Publishers and editors are generally extremely smart, but they can’t make miracles happen. They can’t predict winners infallibly. They can’t make an unsavvy writer into a marketing genius. They simply can’t compel people to go out and read our books.

At the end of the day, they have to pay the electric bill just like everyone else, and if that means publishing a crappy writer who happens to be a brilliant marketer, then it may also mean that a terrific writer with no marketing platform is going to be passed over. Tragic, but true. If you were an editor or publisher, you’d make exactly the same decision. So would I.

The thing here is not to rail at the injustice of the universe. Sometimes you have to go out and kick the universe in the . . . um, groin. As writers, it’s our responsibility to learn to market our fiction effectively. Who else has that responsibility? Not the overworked, underpaid editors. (Most of them are, trust me.) It’s my job and your job to learn to market ourselves.

4. But on the other hand, most of what they receive is pretty bad. I think if you have to read gazillions of proposals a month, it must turn the brain into mush.

Randy sez: Most of what arrives on an editor’s desk is bad. Some is good. Excellence is rare. There are days when there’s a slot to fill in the catalog and the editor has to take what’s available. Other days, there is a wave of great stuff, and only one can be bought because there’s only one slot.

5. You have got to know who your writing to, and make sure that is who it will be marketed to.

Randy sez: Again, very true. I’ve been talking with Allison Bottke lately as we develop our next teleseminar on branding. I am a poster child for how to slow down your career by not branding yourself effectively. Allison has helped me see how to make the changes I have to make. And one of those is to identify your market. It’s not “Everybody.” Nobody gets read by everybody. Even J.K. Rowling only sells to about half of one percent of the planet. Think about that.

Find your niche market, figure out why the heck they should care about you, and then write them a book they HAVE to buy. Easier said than done, but that’s our job.

Artists have never been automatically supported by the Benevolent Universe. The universe is unjust and doesn’t care diddley about Great Art. We artists have always had to fight, kick, scratch, and claw for our livelihood. In the bad old days, that meant you might have to sing for your supper, and if your voice cracked, you got moldy bread.

These days, it means branding ourselves intelligently and marketing ourselves effectively. There are some writers who don’t want to “prostitute themselves” by thinking about marketing. I would bet that none of these writers has ever seen a real prostitute, or they’d thank their lucky stars that all they have to do is sell their writing.

Some of you have asked why I shot my first novel. I had worked on it for two and a half years when I showed it to a friend I met at a conference.

He pointed out that I didn’t have a main character. I had 8 main characters. That was about 7 too many, at least for someone of my limited skills. Also, the projected length of the novel was 220,000 words, which is more than twice too long.

Both of those are serious problems, and reason enough to shoot a novel.

So I cut the story into three parts, created a new character and made him the main character, and started all over. A few months later, I realized that the book was too long, and I decided to make it a trilogy.

So I cut the story into three parts AGAIN, and started over with the same main character. That book did eventually get finished, but it was 160,000 words, which is still too long. So after trying a couple of other things, I came back to the story, but this time with a new main character (a female this time) and turned it into a time-travel novel and made it shorter. My previous main character stayed around as a minor character.

That novel sold and it won me an award and some recognition.

The moral of the story: Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.

I’ve read all your comments over the weekend on my last post on giving yourself permission to be bad.

I was interested to read Vennessa’s comment:

Ditto. I also work as an editor, and I find it extremely difficult to just write without “perfecting” as I go. My brain is constantly analyzing and looking for ways to improve what I have already written.

For instance, my wip is currently at 50,000 words and I am struggling to move it forward because I know there are some major character motivation issues at the start. I “need” to go back and perfect those before I can progress. That requires some major deletion and rewritting.

I worked for two and a half years on my first novel. Then I went to a writing conference and met a new friend and we wound up exchanging critiques on our manuscripts. And something he said convinced me that my manuscript was hopelessly flawed.

So I walked away from it.

That’s right, I quit that novel. I don’t believe in continuing work on a novel that I’ve lost confidence in. It feels too much like a writing exercise, and I don’t do writing exercises.

I started work the next day on a new novel. Same setting, somewhat different characters, somewhat different storyline. But it was a novel I had confidence in.

That lasted about 4 months, before I realized that one was hopeless too.

So I abandoned that one and started a new one. I actually finished that one. It was a good story idea and not too badly executed. I never sold it, but it was enough to get me an agent and give me some hope that I could finish a novel.

Then I worked on novels 4 and 5 and abandoned both.

Novel #6 was the first one I sold.

One of you noted that this writing game is scary because you only succeed if you have real talent, and how do you know if you have real talent? You only know that if you succeed.

That is very true, and I can’t say that I ever “knew” I was going to get published. However, I always thought I had talent, and as the years went by, writers I respected told me I had talent. So I made up my mind that I was going to act as if I was going to get published, and that meant writing my best work.

By that, I mean, writing my first draft (with permission to be bad), and then editing it and taking in in for critique and then learning what worked and what didn’t. Repeat every month for ten years.

Honestly, that was a traumatic ten years. I have a friend who took TWENTY-SIX YEARS to get published. I have other friends who did it in two years. That’s what makes this writing game so nerve-wracking. You don’t know if you’re on the two-year path or the ten-year path or the twenty-six year path.

What you do know is that you have a compulsion to write and you’re going to keep at it until they bury you or publish you.

It’s been fun reading through the comments today.

One housekeeping note: I don’t mind if you include a link inside your comments. I have my blog set up so that I moderate all posts with ANY embedded links (to catch the spammers). So if you put in a link, it won’t show up until I have a look at it. I don’t mind links if they’re relevant. I do mind links by self-serving people who are just spamming this blog to get backlinks. But people like that don’t read this blog, so don’t worry, I’m not talking about any of you.

Now, on to the topic of the day:

Doraine wrote:

OK. I feel frumptious, flabbergushed and frustrated. I’m writing my first novel, so my experience level for this is low. I’m a sort of SOP that’s in need of some organization. I’m not enough of an SOP to sit and write 10K and like it. But I’m not organized enough to project what’s going to happen. So I’m about half way through this thing and can’t figure out where it’s going. So I keep going back and trying to edit what’s there with the Scene/Sequel/MRU ideas in mind, hoping that I’ll figure out what happens next. So far, I’m just muddling around in my own angst and digging myself a deeper hole. Sorry, enough complaining. I did voluntarily decide to start this project.

Doraine, you have my permission to write a bad first novel. Most people’s first novel is pretty bad. Mine was wretched and I’m incredibly thankful that it never got published. Not that there was any danger of that, but still.

All of you who are published will know what I mean here–you will never be GOOD unless you give yourself permission to first be bad. Probably bad for two or three novels. And slowly you get better. As “relevant girl” Mary wrote:

The more you write, the more you polish, the more you make deadlines, the cleaner your prose will be the first time out of the gate. It is possible to spit out clean copy and be creative. But it takes lots of BOC time (butt on chair) to get to that place.

This is Xtremely true. When I started writing, it was all I could do to churn out one page per hour. And it wasn’t a good page. But I kept at it and I got faster and my first drafts got better. Nowadays, my first drafts tend to be either very good or way off track. I have a literary assistant to tell me which is which. And I write 3 or 4 or 5 pages per hour.

That’s the result of practice. Twenty years of practice. It didn’t come cheap. My first 5 or 6 novels never made it out of the birthing room. I didn’t sell one word of my fiction until the 10th year of writing, when I sold a short story to a local computer rag for $150. If you do the math, that’s $15 per year.

I worked like a dog for those 10 years. As Mary says, I put my butt in the chair and typed. I gave myself permission to be bad, but I desperately wanted to get good, so I took it to my monthly critique group and listened. I hate getting critiqued, but I did it.

Now I’m not saying that you should TRY to be bad in your writing. I’m just saying that early on, volume is more important than quality, so you’re going to go through a stage where you write a lot of bad stuff. It’s OK! You have permission to be awful. Dreadful, even.

Get the words out. Find your voice. Figure out what works. A lot of it won’t work, but you won’t know that until you’ve typed it. That’s the only path I know of to getting good.

I just read through all fifty-some comments for my last blog entry.

Wow! I see a lot of angst here. Which is good, because a writer without angst is a pretty shallow and boring writer. So angst on and be proud of it!

You’ve given me enough to blog on for about the next week! I’ll start with the comments by a few of you about getting tied up in knots over the “rules.”

Well, drat it! Fergit those pesky rules!

I mean it. Never, ever, ever worry about the rules when you’re writing. When you’re writing, just write the blessed thing. There will come a time to worry about the rules, of course . . .

That time is called “editing.” The very worst thing you can do to yourself is to try to write and edit at the same time. Oh, sure, a few people can do it. Some people like to drive with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. Some people can dance the tango while they’re balancing their checkbook.

Some people can. I can’t.

When I sit down to write, I just write. I usually edit the previous day’s work, just to get myself rolling. When I run out of stuff to edit, that’s my cue to switch into writer mode and start drilling it out. And my goal when I write is to jam out 1000 words per hour. I can’t do that if I’m going back and fixing every little thing.

My friend James Scott Bell likes to say, “Get it written, then get it right.” He stole that from some famous writer, who stole it from some other famous writer.

I know some of you are scared to death that if you don’t fix that typo you just made, then it’s going to be there forever and your career will be ruined.

Poppycock. If you see that typo today, you’ll see it tomorrow. Editing is one of the things that most people will do the exact same way 9 times out of 10. I’ve sometimes mistakenly edited a piece of work twice–usually because I couldn’t find the original edits, so had to do it again. Then, by chance, I’ve found the original edits and compared notes.

You know what happened? I edited it almost the exact same way both times! Editing is a highly reproducible activity.

Whereas creativity isn’t. When you’re in creative mode, when the juice is flowing and the words are flying, whatever you do, DON’T BREAK THE MOOD to edit yourself. Forget the rules, forget spelling, forget grammar. Just let the words blast out.

Like Scarlett said, tomorrow’s another day. Fix it then. Just for today, give yourself the freedom to blissfully, happily, joyously, royally screw up.

I’ve been off of blogging for a few days, just getting caught up with life. Last Thursday, I released my latest e-book, a Snowflake analysis of Gone With The Wind that I wrote with my daughter. That kept me busy for a couple of days.

I also had some extra work to do on an ongoing consulting assignment. Plus the lawn to mow (we have about an acre and a half of grass, and it’s the growing season right now). Yesterday and today, we burned a large pile of accumulated vegetation from the yard. But I’m back to blogging tonight, at last.

Sometime this weekend, one of my Loyal Readers wrote to ask about how to deal with Senioritis. This was a reference to my article on the four stages that prepublished writers go through on their way to publication: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior. As I recall, the specific question was how to deal with being a Senior way longer than you expected.

In a Just Universe, of course, great writers would get published and be paid what their writing is worth.

Tragically, we live in an Unjust Universe. I’ve long ago learned to deal with this, although I do allow myself one day a year to rage against the injustice of it all.

My question for you all is in two parts:
1) What stage are you in?
2) What is your biggest obstacle to writing in this stage?

There is no prize for answering, except that I might make a brilliant and insightful suggestion on how to deal with your particular obstacle. And it’s even more likely that one of my other Loyal Readers will have a brilliant and insightful suggestion. One thing I’ve learned is that there is tremendous knowledge in a large group of smart people. And my set of Loyal Readers is both large and intelligent.

So leave a comment and let’s get talking! Even if we don’t solve your problem, sometimes it’s just nice to get a little sympathy from your fellow writers.