Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Here’s what I’ve been working on today: I’ve been writing a proposal for my next novel. I want to thank one of our regulars on this blog, Mary DeMuth (alias, RelevantGirl). Mary recently released an e-book on how to write a non-fiction proposal, and I’m finding it very helpful.

I’m an old hand at writing proposals and thought I knew everything there was to know. I’ve discovered that Mary knows a lot more than I do. Of course, there are vast differences between a fiction proposal and a nonfiction proposal, but even so, I’ve gotten some good ideas on how best to write this next proposal. Thank you, Mary!

Mary’s got the e-book for sale on her site for only ten bucks (scroll down a bit on the page and look for the title Nonfiction Book Proposals that Grab an Editor or Agent by the Throat). It has annotated examples of proposals she wrote for a couple of her books. Mary, I hope you’ll do a version of this e-book for novelists soon.

Yesterday, we started a conversation with my friend Jeff Gerke, who will be launching a new publishing house, Marcher Lord Press, next October. Jeff has the “impossible” task of trying to sell Christian fantasy and science fiction novels. This is a task that all the Big Boys in Christian publishing have tried without much success.

Today’s question for Jeff is the following:

Q: You and I brainstormed up some innovative ideas for launching your first few books at MLP. Tell us about those ideas and how you’re coming along with them.

A: The two main marketing strategies we talked about were a massive giveaway prize drawing for launch day (which is October 1, 2008, God willing) and freebie goodies to be given to anyone who actually purchases one or more books on launch day.

The plans for both strategies are proceding apace. But I’ll tell ya, when I thought about forming a publishing company I never thought I’d be reading about how to score cheap international airfare. Ah, it’s an adventure.

I know what I want to give for the grand prize but I haven’t figured out the financing for it yet. The name of the company is Marcher Lord Press. Marcher lords were knights who held the borderland between England and Wales and England and Scotland. Marcher lords were used in other cultures, too. And in literature: our dear Theoden King, is Lord of the Mark (March). So what would be better for a grand prize than sending the winner and a guest to England to stay in the most famour marcher lord castle of all: Caerphilly Castle in Wales?

So if you have any free international airfare tickets sitting around, could I please have them? Oh please, oh please, oh please?

I’ve also gathered and am still gathering tons of other great prizes. I want to have as many as 100 things to give away. I’ve got signed copies of Christian novels, I’ve got an etching from William Shakespeare’s tombstone, I’ve got a leather-bound 50th anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings, I’ve got cups and canvas bags and book markers. I’ve even got a numbered, signed, canvas print by famed space artist Frank Hettick. More goodies continue to roll in, too.

For the added value items to be given away with a purchase on launch day, I’m going electronic. If someone in Australia buys a book, I don’t want to have to mail him my goodie individually (since the book itself will ship directly from the printer). So the goodies will be downloadable, I think.

The first is an original nonfiction book (20,000 words) on marcher lords and their castles by professional castle historian and author Lise Hull. The second will be an art book full of artwork by the many excellent Christian fantasy and SF illustrators I’ve come to know through WhereTheMapEnds.com.

Randy sez: Those of you who’ve heard me teach on marketing know that there are three main things you must create, and you create them in this order:
1) A web site
2) An e-mail list of potential customers
3) A product.

Most writers start with Door Number 3–they write their book, have it come out, and then say, “Oh yeah, guess I better start marketing it.” That is way too late. I will be starting in January to market the novel that I haven’t written or sold yet (the one I’m writing the proposal for now). The book won’t be out for at least two years, but I’ll be starting to market it now–by revamping my web site and using that as a platform to build a list of people who are interested in what my book is about.

Jeff is doing things in the right order. In October of this year, Jeff created a new web site. Then he created an e-mail list where people can sign up to be notified about new books that Marcher Lord Press will release. And he’s got a form on the web site on this page.

As Jeff noted above, he’ll be holding a drawing to give away prizes to anyone who’s on his list on the day his books release. Not everyone on the list will win a prize, but the more people you refer to his list, the more chances you have of being drawn. (This encourages people to tell a friend, and is a primary piece of what is called “viral marketing.”)

When his books launch, Jeff will notify people on his list and make his pitch. Part of that will include some freebies for anyone who orders on Launch Day. Those freebies are electronic, so Jeff can deliver them at no cost to himself. But they are valuable freebies. That’s an ideal situation.

Not everyone will buy Jeff’s books when he rolls them out. But here’s the thing–people will KNOW about his books on Launch Day. They’ll have an incentive to buy on Launch Day. The rest depends on how good the books actually are. I’ve been impressed with the books Jeff has acquired in the past. He mentioned Sharon Hinck and Tosca Lee yesterday. I know Sharon and Tosca and have read their novels. Jeff did extremely well in landing those books.

Andie wrote a comment that caught my eye:

Can’t get to know the manager of local Berkeley B&N. It recently went out of business along with Cody’s on Telegraph. Black Oak Books is teetering too. Sad.

Randy sez: Dang! When I lived in Berkeley, I bought most of my books at Cody’s, which was just a couple of blocks away from my apartment. Is nothing sacred???

For our next blog, we’re going to pose this question to Jeff:

Q: Tell us more about the economics of your publishing model at Marcher Lord Press. How will you edit, produce, and distribute books? What advances and royalties will you pay your authors?

This blog appears Monday through Friday, so Jeff will answer this question next Monday. See ya then!

It was good to see all your comments today on how you’ve done with NaNoWriMo. A lot of you have written a lot of words this month. That’s great! There are just a couple of more days in the month, so I’m expecting that more of you will cross the finish line before the deadline.

I’d like to switch gears now and talk about marketing again. It’s been awhile since we did that.

This time, I’m interviewing a friend of mine who has taken on what I would consider to be the impossible challenge:
1) He’s starting his own publishing house.
2) He’s trying to do what numerous big publishers have tried and failed to do.
3) He’s doing it with very little investment.

Who is this crazy guy? His name is Jeff Gerke, and he’s been a good friend of mine for several years. We’ve roomed together at numerous conferences and Jeff has cheered me on as I learned the strange world of internet marketing.

Jeff has worked as an acquisitions editor at three different Christian publishing houses. His big interest is “speculative fiction”–fantasy, science fiction, time travel, and anything else that’s weird. And this has NOT worked very well in Christian fiction (other than for a few big-name authors and a few young-adult authors).

So Jeff has decided to start his own publishing house. I’ll be interviewing him over the next few days to see how he plans to market his books. He is going to need some innovative ideas to succeed. (Some of those innovative ideas came from a brainstorming session he and I had a couple of months ago.)

In Jeff’s comments, you’ll see frequent reference to “CBA”. This means “Christian Booksellers Association” and refers to the niche market in publishing that caters to Christian bookstores. This has probably been the fastest growth segment in the industry in recent years, which is why Time-Warner, Simon & Shuster, Random House, and other major publishers have been buying Christian publishing houses lately–because money talks.

The first question for Jeff is:

Q: Tell us about Marcher Lord Press and why you want to publish books in a niche that hasn’t worked for anyone else.

A: Marcher Lord Press grew out of my frustration that Christian fantasy and SF novels don’t tend to do well in the marketplace. We have Left Behind and Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, but by and large Christian speculative novels crash and burn, sales-wise.

This frustrated me because I knew there were people who would love these novels if they were aware of them and I knew there were many talented Christian novelists out there wanting to tell these “weird” stories. Fantasy is the single most popular genre in secular fiction and many hundreds of thousands of Christians read it. I knew those people would embrace Christian fantasy and related genres if they could be made aware of them.

Unfortunately, those readers have long ago been driven away from Christian bookstores. This demographic doesn’t exactly like potpourri and cute little stories about knitting for the woman’s heart. They want blood-sucking aliens and fire-breathing dragons.

So if you’ve got the people who want a product and the authors who can create that product, your only task is to get those two groups together somehow.

For years I tried doing so from within the CBA publishing industry. I promoted speculative proposals when I was at the three publishing companies I’ve worked for. I spearheaded the launch of Realms, an imprint of Strang Communications dedicated to Christian speculalative fiction. At NavPress I championed a number of wonderfully weird projects, including Sharon Hinck’s fantasy trilogy (The Restorer series) and a wonderful story by Tosca Lee about a demon narrating the events of the fall of man (Demon: A Memoir).

After years of this I finally came to the conclusion that this wasn’t working (although Sharon and Tosca’s books are doing well, I’m pleased to see). The demographic reached by CBA publishers and booksellers does not embrace the weird. Even factoring in that some Christian novels are being sold through Wal-Mart or Barnes & Noble, speculative novels do not do well when compared to the romances and historicals and female-oriented thrillers that are the bread and butter of CBA fiction.

If I wanted to bring Christian speculative fiction to the people who want it, I realized, I would have to circumvent the CBA industry. They’re very happy supplying the fiction demands of their audience. That’s wonderful for them. I wish them continued success. But it’s not the group I want to reach or the fiction I want to produce.

And so I started playing around with the idea of a small, indie press that would publish only Christian speculative fiction and would use the Internet to reach those Christians who read secular SF and fantasy. I like to say that my target audience is “Christians who love Battlestar Galactica” and “Christians who watch Heroes.” That’s my target demographic–and where are they? They’re all online.

My advantage is the ability to succeed on only a very small number of units sold. While traditional CBA publishers must sell anywhere from 7,000 to 50,000+ copies of any given title to break even, I’ll break even on something like 350 units sold. My experience allows me to do many of the steps in producing a book myself, thus keeping my costs very low, and my network of colleagues and friends allows me to use trusted freelancers to do the steps I can’t do. My own published novels plus my years in the industry give me the credentials to make a go of this.

A Christian speculative novel that “fails” through the traditional CBA publishing and bookselling channel will sell perhaps 5,000 units. If I sold half of that, I’d have a runaway blockbuster on my hands. There’s something wrong with a 5,000-unit selling being called a failure and something right about a 500-unit seller being called a wild success.

Randy sez: It’s an interesting marketing problem, and one that is faced by an enormous number of writers around the world who are writing for small niches. (There are many small niches that simply can’t be filled by the big publishers, because it’s not cost-effective.)

As Jeff mentioned, a book that sells only 5000 copies is losing money at most publishing houses. But let’s remember those brutal numbers that I talked about in my e-zine a few months ago. In any given year, about 98% of all books sell FEWER than 5000 copies. 80% sell fewer than 100 copies!

But let’s remember one other thing: Jeff’s plan is NOT to produce books that will only get read by a few hundred readers. Jeff’s plan is to produce books that will BREAK EVEN if only a few hundred readers buy them. That radically lowers the risk of publishing each book. But Jeff’s plan is to do his best to market his books well so that SOME of them sell thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies. That’s the plan.

How’s he gonna do that? Tune in here tomorrow and he’ll answer the next question:

Q: You and I brainstormed up some innovative ideas for launching your first few books at Marcher Lord Press. Tell us about those ideas and how you’re coming along with them.

A: [in tomorrow’s blog]

I would like to start talking about marketing again, since it’s been awhile since we talked about that. I expect to have a guest on in the near future to discuss some of his innovative ideas. In the meantime, I’d like to hear how NaNoWriMo went for all of you. Bonne posted a note today to say she finished! Congrats, Bonne!

I have never done NaNoWriMo, although I have written a 90,000+ word novel in a month, once. So I’m curious how you all did.

If you’ve finished NaNoWriMo this year, post a comment here to tell us about it so we can celebrate with you.

If you’re about to finish, do the same.

If you gave up, post a comment to tell us why.

I’ll mention my own news. I wrote up three sample chapters before the holidays and sent them out to my freelance editor. She’s quick! She already sent me back her review of the chapters. She likes them, but she’s spotted a recurring problem and wants me to work on it. She even recommended a particular resource that I can use to help me. I bought it this morning and am awaiting its arrival so I can start learning something new.

I’ve probably mentioned this already, but the life of a novelist is about continuous improvement. You will NEVER arrive. You will never be perfect. The trick is to identify your biggest weakness and work on it until it’s no longer your biggest weakness. And so on, forever. This is why God created freelance editors–to poke holes in your armor and help you figure out what your weaknesses are.

Hi All: I got back late last night after taking my daughter back to Seattle after the long weekend. Woke up late this morning and have been playing catchup all day.

I noted Camille’s question:

Don’t you notice that in stories like P&P, for those who know the novel/film, ’scenes’ (ie goal, conflict, disaster) are subtle?

Chapter 16 describes a dinner party setting, which includes the ridiculous Mr. Collins who exists, as far as I’m concerned, for comic relief. As far as I can tell, the scene is primarily about Lizzie discovering something from Wickham that significantly increases her dislike for Mr. Darcy. If this is a ’scene’, her goal, as I see it, is to hang with Wickham. The next chapter moves on to another setting, where Lizzie and her sister discuss the new info and decide how much merit it deserves. Gripping stuff, I know. I bet you thought the next scene was Det. John Maclean stuffing Mrs. Bennet into a helicopter and flying it into the Lincoln tunnel.

My point—can I be honest guys? I want permission to explore the intricacies of human nature without feeling pressured to blow something up.

Randy sez: Shall we vote, folks? I vote that Camille can do this if she wants to. As for John McClane and his exploding helicopters, I vote for those too. A side note: in Die Hard 4, McClane shot down a helicopter using a CAR as the projectile. Ya gotta love a guy who can do that. It shows . . . character.

Now getting back to P&P, I don’t have my copy handy right here, but I’m assuming that’s the scene where Wickham reveals what a dastardly guy Darcy is, right? Well that’s a major disaster in the story. In my Three Disaster analysis of P&P, that is the middle disaster that ensures that Lizzie will hate Darcy forever.

One should not confuse “lack of exploding helicopters” with “boring.” Of course a scene may very well be boring and not have an exploding helicopter in it. I’ve seen it done. But a good scene can explode anything–a helicopter, a hippopotamus, or a hypocrisy. What you explode is up to you. Just make sure you give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience in the process.

Tomorrow, we’ll start a new subject.

To all my US readers, Happy Thanksgiving! To everyone else, um, happy Thursday! (Wow, what a concept.)

Before I sign off for the weekend, there’s one last question to answer:

J Parker Haynes wrote:

Let’s say we have a story with only two characters of consequence. In keeping with current events, let’s call them Obama and Hillary. Now we’re writing this story entirely from Obama’s POV. Must every Goal/Conflict/Disaster be Obama’s, or can some be Hillary’s as seen from Obama’s POV? Or is there something I’m not seeing and this is a stupid question?

Randy sez: What ridiculous names these characters have! Nobody names their kid Obama or Hillary. Where did you get these?

Typically, you want the disaster to be a disaster for your POV character. That’s one strength of multi-POV stories–you can spread the disasters around more evenly. Of course, not every scene can end in a disaster. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your POV character has a victory in a given scene. But you can always try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by making it turn to ashes, somehow. Often this involves some sort of a sideways jump in the storyline. Somehow, some way, you can put a cloud on that silver lining

By the way, getting back to dear Hillary. Those of you who’ve read my novel OXYGEN will know that on page 41, one of my characters gets a call from the president, who turns out to be a female. I didn’t actually name the president, but I had in mind Hillary. The scene is set in the summer of 2012, and so I knew that whoever gets elected in 2008 will be that president, and my calculations said it would be Hillary. I wrote that scene (not my coauthor John Olson) back in 1999, so I’ll get the credit when it turns out to be true. Ya heard it here first: H.C. in 08.

Enough for today. Catch you all next Monday morning, if I’m able to think coherently by then.

Thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday.

Today, I’ll just answer a few questions that came in:

Holly wrote:

I’m seeing the wisdom of breaking my work into scenes and sequels, but I’m a little confused about sequels: how long do they need to be? If a scene ends in disaster and I need to take my character from that right into another action, is what happens between those two scenes a sequel even if it’s only a paragraph or so? And more importantly, can there be action in a sequel, pushing the MC to the decision–or is that then just another scene?

Randy sez: A sequel should be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. The trend these days is to minimize the sequel. You can get by with a paragraph long sequel, if it does the job. You can even skip to a new POV character in a new scene and then allude to the sequel of the previous scene, without ever showing it. Sequels can be boring if done boringly (duh) and so it’s best to avoid that. Yes, there can be action in a sequel. It’s probably better that way.

Rachel wrote:

What about different POVs about events that take place at the same or at an overlapping chronological time? How can you cover the same (or not distinctly separate) time period from two different POVs?

Randy sez: This is fine, as long as it works. Orson Scott Card once wrote two novels that covered the same time period and the SAME EVENTS, but from the POV of two different characters. ENDER’S GAME and ENDER’S SHADOW. In the first, you see the whole story from Ender’s POV, and a little kid named Bean is a minor character. In the second book, Bean is the main character and you now understand the first novel better, because Bean knows things that only he can tell.

Many novels have shown scenes going on that overlap in time. It’s perfectly OK to do that, as long as you maintain emotive tension.

Lynda wrote:

My critiquer complained that the story was too dark and breakneck. I intentionally added a few humerous scenes to slow things down and give the reader a breather. They aren’t sequel and don’t necessarily advance the plot, but they do deepen characterization and mileu. And, they bridge to the plot. Is this done?

Randy sez: Yes, it’s done all the time. It even works some of the time. You should make sure that your critiquer actually reads your kind of story. Otherwise, you may be taking advice from someone who is not your target reader. It’s rare (but does happen) that a novel is too fast-paced. Or maybe I’m just getting old. One or the other.

Camille wrote:

I’d like to know if, in general, the key elements to good storytelling that we talk about, like Scene/Sequel, apply more to commercial than literary fiction?

I guess I’m writing a relational drama, women’s fic. I have some chapters that move the story along but don’t have a disaster, unless it’s subtle. Can you have an emotive punch in a scene without a ‘disaster’? Isn’t humor an emotional experience? In a story about relationships and inner struggle, can inner conflict and interpersonal drama produce enough emotional experience? Or is it a hairy bore?

Randy sez: Yes, the Scene/Sequel schema is for commercial fiction. Literary fiction is its own world, but the truth is that some literary novelists could really use a little Scene and Sequel magic so as to stop being so darn boring. The literary novelists I read are not boring. Chaim Potok is never boring. Neither is Elizabeth Moon or Audrey Niffenegger or Alice Sebold.

Humor is not really an emotional experience. Humor is good, but it needs to be on top of that pesky Powerful Emotional Experience. I always use some humor in my books, but its the pepper, not the potatoes.

Inner conflict is always good, even in movies with lots of exploding helicopters. (See the Die Hard movies for examples.) Interpersonal conflict is always good. You can only blow up so many planets before it loses its charm. Whereas interpersonal conflict never loses its charm. I have watched PRIDE AND PREJUDICE well over a dozen times and have not got bored with it yet, not even the five-hour BBC marathon version.

Davalynn wrote:

The problem comes along when I’m reading something that is not written in my “style” or similar to my voice, and then I start mimicking that writer’s style! Not overtly, but in things like sentence length or sarcasm or pacing. You have mentioned reading several different types of fiction: do you ever face this challenge, or is it simply a freshman/sophomore thing?

Randy sez: There is nothing wrong with mimicking somebody else. That, in fact, is probably how you develop your own voice–by mimicking others and finding those aspects of their voice that resonate most powerfully with you. I have been doing a daily exercise recently where I type a couple of pages of another author’s work. That’s all–just type them. Then I go write. I have not noticed that my voice is warped by those other guys. But I’ve ripened on the vine for a long time. A freshman or sophomore may be a bit more pliable. Don’t worry about that. When you get to be a Senior, your voice will be strong and powerful and unique.

Tami wrote:

Randy, I can’t seem to grasp this Scene/Sequel thing. I’ve read Dwight Swain’s book and even listened to his lectures, but it just excapes my understanding.

I know it will be one of those things that makes me slap my forehead and say “well duh!” when I finally understand the concept, but for now I get frustrated trying to “get it”. Yes, I have listened to your Fiction 101, Fiction 201 and also the tapes of Fiction 101 you did with Brandilyn Collins. Am I just hopeless?

Randy sez: Scene and Sequel is hard! Don’t give up. Write a scene and then look at how it ended. Does it end with a disaster or a decision?

If it’s a disaster, then you have a Scene. Make sure the disaster actually disasts–(it should frustrate some goal). That goal should be clearly spelled out at the beginning of the Scene. If so, you can’t help but have conflict in the Scene.

If it ends in a decision, then you have a Sequel. What were the options available before the decision was made? That is the dilemma. Make it as tight as possible.

If you have neither a disaster nor a decision at the end of your scene, then strangle that scene because it’s not helping you.

OK, I better get this blog posted before midnight.

This is going to be a light week. For one thing, it’s the week of Thanksgiving here in the US, and most people get 2 days off from work–Thursday and Friday. Thursday is for porking out. Friday is for fighting other shoppers at the mall to launch the Christmas shopping season. Also, my birthday falls this week, so I’m going to take it just a little easier than usual.

Several of you posted good comments today. I’ll note that I’m currently writing the first three chapters for my book proposal, so I’m facing the same self-editing issues that we’ve been discussing lately. I find it helpful to do a light edit on the previous day’s work before I start writing new material. The goal is not to “make yesterday’s work perfect.” The goal is to “get into the same groove I was in yesterday so today’s work will pick up seamlessly.” This scheme works for me. Be aware that it is not the only way to do things, and for some of you it will not work.

Mary wrote:

The hardest thing for me right now is to make each chapter count. Does that make sense? I have a few chapters that just don’t push the story forward, but they provide necessary information for the plot to work. I am wrestling through them, trying to add page-turning conflict. It’s not easy, this fiction thing.

Randy sez: No, it’s not easy. Mary, you do make it look easy. When I read your work, I am always impressed. But the art of fiction is to hide the sweat stains. For each of those chapters that are not advancing the plot, I wonder if you can extract that “necessary information” and put it somewhere else. It may not be possible or necessary in your case, Mary. You are toward the literary end of the spectrum, and literary novelists have license to run the pace a bit slower. Just make sure those chapters carry emotive punch. Every chapter needs to be providing a Powerful Emotional Experience. There is never an excuse to slack off on that.

Pam wrote:

I think when we come to the end of a manuscript, the tendency is to rush through it because we just want to be done. HA! That happened to me in my second middle grade story. It was longer than my previous attempt, and I was so excited, I ended it. My writing partner said I had to add something because she could tell I was in a hurry to finish.

Randy sez: Yes, and the danger with a rushed ending is that we tend to not edit our endings as much. So a hurried ending may never get fixed, and it can leave the reader with the “huh, what happened?” feeling. I love an ending that really ends the story. I finished reading THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS today and it has a very nice ending that really tied it all together. Last week, when I finished reading NEXT by Michael Crichton, I did not feel like the story had ever really got rolling, so the ending simply was the termination of the text, rather than any kind of a summation.

Christophe wrote:

I can see now that waiting to self-edit until later is a good thing for a couple of reasons, but I keep having this nagging gut feeling that if I don’t fix things right now, then I’ll end up not doing a good job later. I do leave little annotations as a reminder, but I still can’t shake that feeling. Am I being overly paranoid and/or is there a better way to handle this?

Randy sez: Editing is a highly reproducible experience, in my opinion. You are very likely to edit it as well next month as you would today. You might even do a better job next month, because you will understand your story better then and you’ll be a slightly better writer.

Bonne wrote:

Maybe this is too broad a question, but how many POV’s can you get away with in a YA novel?
My main character is separated from her best friend and we need to see what’s going on with her before they are reunited.

Also, does the WHOLE scene or sequel need to be one POV?
I’m reading Dwight Swain and everything and I still am having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. In an important scene, there are many obstacles between the character and the goal. For a complex obstacle, it seems like sometimes I need someone else’s POV on it…help!

Randy sez: You can have numerous POVs in a YA novel. I would recommend less than 1000.

As for each Scene or Sequel, yes, I believe you should restrict each to a single POV. But remember that you can break after each Disaster or Decision to a new POV character. It’s possible to string together a whole series of scenes that all take place in the same place and happen one after another, each from a different POV. But remember that a Scene or Sequel has emotional unity. If a character has a Goal, then you want to show Conflict that frustrates that Goal and a Disaster that destroys the Goal. All of those are a single emotive entity, and they need to be experienced by a single POV character. Otherwise you are castrating your fiction. You read that right. As in neutering, neutralizing, emasculating, oatmealizing. DON’T DO THAT.

M.L. Eqatin wrote:

I’ve decided to add another POV for just one chapter. I came to that conclusion when I started looking at the whole from my reader’s perspective. I’m using three POVs, pretty much evenly balanced, each of which moves the story along in turn from a unique perspective that the others could not. But for this one chapter, a very revealing moment which set up the final plot crisis, the P.E.E. was much more powerful if I let the reader see inside this character’s head. And it took a lot less words than trying to show what went on through one of my 3 main characters.

Randy sez: It’s perfectly fine to add a one-shot POV character if it works. The goal is to give that Powerful Emotional Experience. Whatever it takes to do that — do it.

It’s a light and easy week, so feel free to comment on any of these, or anything else you want to talk about this week. To my US readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

We are coming to the end of the questions on self-editing which you all asked, and which Renni Browne has so graciously answered. Renni is of course the co-author of the famous book “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” and is an extremely well-known freelance editor.

Here is the last question I have on my list:

Pam Halter wrote:

I’ve read a lot about cutting when editing. How do you know when you should add?

Renni answered: Lord, I think this is a gut feeling. Listen to your instincts when you read over a scene or chapter, an exchange of dialogue, whatever. Does it feel to you that something’s missing/lacking? But let’s go a little deeper. That may be exactly the way you want the reader to feel after reading the scene, which gets us to the question many writers fail to ask themselves: How do I want this scene to affect the reader? Many writers put all this great energy into working on a scene and no energy whatsoever into how the scene is going to work on the reader. If you want the reader to be, say, convinced that a wife is a lot smarter than her husband, reading over the scene in which we meet the couple with that in mind will let you know if you need to add anything to help the reader make such a deduction.

Randy sez: When I’m editing, I add text under the following conditions:
1) The scene does not have a Goal, a Conflict, and a Disaster (if it’s a Scene) or it does not have a Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision (if it’s a Sequel). (To see a discussion of Scenes and Sequels, see my article on Writing the Perfect Scene.)
2) Parts of the scene are unclear and can be clarified by adding text.
3) The pacing is too fast to support the action and needs more text to slow it down.
4) I can’t tell who’s talking.
5) The scene is not delivering a Powerful Emotional Experience because I am giving short shrift to the emotive aspects.
6) The scene lacks visual elements (or other sensory elements).

OK, any other questions on self-editing? We’ve been on this for a couple of weeks, so it’s about time to move on, but I’ll entertain questions from the floor for one more day.

I launched a 36-hour special yesterday at noon and sent out notifications to everyone on my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine list. However, I forgot to mention it here on the blog. The special ends at midnight Pacific time TONIGHT, Friday, November 16. If you’re interested, check it out here.

We’re getting close to the end of the questions on self-editing. First, a quick response to a question that came in today, in response to my celebration yesterday that my Snowflake is done and I’m ready to start writing my book.

Camille asked:

I’m curious, what does a completed ‘Snowflake analysis’ look like for you, Ultimate Snowflake Guy? If you don’t mind… How far did you go with it, how many separate docs, pages?

And as you get into the novel, if/when things change, do you usually go back and change your snowflake?

Randy sez: In this case, it’s one Word document of about 67 pages, and one Excel file with 50 or 60 lines in it. I started writing Chapter One today! I typically revise the spreadsheet as I complete each quarter of a book. I don’t revise it a lot, but I do tweak things around because writing the story is the ultimate way to know your characters and understand the story. The reason I do the Snowflake is that it’s a lot easier to revise a spreadsheet of 60 lines than a manuscript of 400 pages. It just is. Like the Pirate Code, that Snowflake is just “guidelines” for me to follow if I feel like it. It is usually a pretty good guideline, but I have no compunction about changing it on the fly.

On to some of the questions that were posted for Renni Browne, self-editing expert extraordinaire:

Donna asked:

I also am a edit-as-you-go writer (as well as a seat-of-the-pants writer). I can’t seem to stop it and the Dean Koontz interview gave me hope that I’m not doing it wrong. I’m interested in her views on this type of editing, even though most everything says not to do it this way. I know it adds to the writing time but does shorten the editing time.

Renni Browne responded: I’d like to add that no writer should tell another writer her process is wrong. If it works for you, fine. If you’d like to shift the balance and let the writing flow less impeded by rewriting, try putting a comment to yourself at the point where you want to edit, then sail right on.

Randy adds: Hear, hear! A writer needs to follow whatever process works. I find it useful to listen to other writers and see how they do things, because that may give me a good idea. Or not. If it does, then I’m ahead of the game. If it doesn’t, then I lose nothing to listen.

The next question on the list is Christophe’s! I guess he and I jumped the gun there. He thought I’d skipped it, and I didn’t see it on the list that Renni answered. That’s what I get for skimming. In any event, let’s see how Renni answered his question.

Christophe wrote:

How do you edit a chapter that has been rewritten ten times? A chapter that you can’t get a clear view of anymore because you have all the ghosts of the previous versions haunting your brain. It’s been rewritten so much you can’t make out anymore if it’s good or bad or somewhere in between.

Renni responded: I just had this situation with my article at www.editorialdepartment.com “What Editors (Really) Do,” which is about the length of a chapter. It was important to me–I’ve been editing manuscripts for forty-five years, and people don’t know what that actually involves. There are different kinds of editing at different stages, and I wanted to make distinctions. Now, I wouldn’t dream of writing anything for publication anywhere without having it edited (my writing is my child, just like yours), so I always send my final draft to an editor at The Editorial Department. But in this case I kept writing the piece over, putting it aside, and writing/rewriting it again. Came a day when I read it and felt the way you describe yourself so colorfully in your post. I e-mailed it with an SOS to one of our editors, who liked it very much but also pointed out a huge goof I’d made and didn’t see because I’d bogged down in all that rewriting. All of which is a roundabout way of saying when you get to this state, unless you can put the chapter aside for a l-o-n-g period, professional feedback–or, at least, experienced feedback you don’t have to pay for–is the only option that makes any sense. Problem chapters (or articles, or short stories) are problematical for a reason. You can’t see it, you’re too close to it, it’s your child, you can’t be 100% objective about it.

Randy adds: Funny old game, this writing thing, isn’t it?