Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Today’s question is a tactical question on formatting a scene in a manuscript.

Morgan posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

How do you show a break between scenes in a single chapter? I’ve seen some books where they put something (like a symbol or stars or dots) and I’ve seen others where there is a lengthy space before the new scene begins. Does it matter?

Randy sez: This is a good question and opens up several other questions on formatting scenes.

To answer Morgan, you show a scene break in any of those ways. I generally put one line with three asterisks centered as my scene break within a chapter. You can just add an extra blank line. The one thing you don’t want to do is to do nothing. You need to give the reader some visual cue that the scene has changed.

Since we’re talking about scene formatting, let’s address the various other issues that can come up. Remember that your publisher has a typesetter to take your manuscript (typically in Word .doc format) and convert it to the final typeset form. So you don’t need to stress much about making camera-ready copy. You just need to present it to a publisher in a format they’re expecting.

Here is how I format my manuscripts for submission to publishers. Much of this I learned from Sol Stein years ago in a small group that he taught in Laguna Beach. Sol edited about 1600 manuscripts, plus he authored a number of books. His advice is timeless. The main thing is to make the manuscript readable for the editor and to put as few speed-bumps on each page as possible.

• One inch margins on all sides.
• All text is 12-point Times New Roman (or Times Roman). Don’t use Helvetica or any other font without a serif. Don’t use Courier (that went out with typewriters).
• In the header for each page, put your last name, right-justified. (Not your title. If the editor hates the title, she’ll be reminded of how dumb it is every time she turns the page.) All word processors let you define a header that will be on every page.
• In the footer for each page, put the page number, centered. Just put the number, without prefacing it with the word “page”. Editors are pretty smart and they know it’s a page number.
• Double-space all text in the main body of your manuscript.
• Begin the book with a title page that has the title in 36 point type, centered on the page. Beneath it, in a normal font size, type your name.
• Begin each chapter on a new page. Space down about four lines (each of which is double-spaced, so it’s really eight lines). Type the word “Chapter” and the number of the chapter. This should be centered on the line. You should make this a larger than normal font size. I typically use 18 points.
• On the next line, include any dateline or scene information for the scene, if you need it. Most novels don’t, but sometimes it makes sense to have a date or even a time-stamp for the scene. I always type the name of the point-of-view character on this line, centered and underlined. Most authors don’t do this, so this is strictly optional. I do it because it reminds me who I am for this scene, and I think it helps the reader. I first saw this in Irwin Shaw’s book RICH MAN, POOR MAN. If it’s good enough for Shaw, it’s good enough for me. But some editors may ask you to remove it. When my editors have asked if it was really necessary, I’ve always told them “All my other editors have let me do it.” Peer pressure works great here. For some books, you may include even more information, such as a location. In Audrey Niffenegger’s book THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, she always gave the date and the ages of the characters. She gave the date because she told the story out of order in a beautifully non-linear way. She gave the ages because Henry was always time-traveling around. In my novel, THE FIFTH MAN, which I coauthored with John Olson, we gave either Mars local time or earth local time. These get out of sync by 39 minutes per earth day, so it was necessary to keep track.
• Indent each paragraph. Your typesetter will later change this so the first paragraph of a chapter is not indented. Let him do that. You indent every paragraph. The correct way to do this is to use a style in your word processor that automatically indents each paragraph half an inch. The wrong way to do this is to manually insert a tab or several spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. These will screw up your typesetter’s life, so save him some grief and do it right to begin with.
• For scene breaks within a chapter, insert one line with three asterisks centered.
• Don’t use underlines or boldface anywhere in the text of your story.
• Use italics sparingly.
• Don’t use all capitals in your text unless your name is J.K. Rowling and you are selling zillions of copies.
• You are allowed one semicolon in your entire working life as a novelist. You can use more than that if you insist, but quite honestly you have a disease that should be treated and I refuse to be an enabler for you.

I’m pretty sure those are all the main formatting guidelines that I use. If I missed one, my Loyal Blog Readers will post a comment to ask me about it and then I’ll edit the above to be more complete.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

How do you know when you’re too old to write a novel? Is there a magic cutoff age after which fiction writers need not apply? What if you got a late start and you desperately need to make up for lost time?

Scott posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hey Randy, I have a question for you. What is the best way to get started in fiction when you are a late bloomer?

I’m 28, I graduated from the business school, not liberal arts, and have been in the corporate world ever since. I have only recently become enthralled with writing fiction, I’d say within the last year or so.

Everything I know, I’ve learned from sites like yours. As great as your site is, I’m sure I am missing out on things that someone who has always been interested in writing fiction takes for granted. How big of a disadvantage do you think this knowledge gap puts me? And where would you recommend someone who is completely and utterly raw to the craft get started?

Randy sez: Scott, you’re not a late bloomer, you’re a spring chicken. I didn’t start writing fiction until I was 29. Then I worked on my craft for another ten years before I got published.

Strictly speaking, that isn’t quite true. I actually published the first thing I submitted. Yes, really, when I was in grad school at Berkeley, the first piece of writing I submitted was an article titled “Another Look at the Gauged Wess-Zumino Effective Action.” I sent it to the journal Nuclear Physics B, which was at the time the leading journal in elementary particle theory. They published it. (Hope you didn’t miss this extraordinary contribution to literature.) Tragically, it didn’t win me a single Pulitzer or Nobel, but at least it was a publishing credit, right?

Obviously, that wasn’t fiction. But even then, I was starting to think that I really wanted to try my hand at writing a novel. It took me a few years to sit down and actually start writing fiction. It took even longer to get it published.

The moral of the story, if you want one, is that it really doesn’t much matter when you start writing. If you’ve got a pulse, then you might get published someday. If you don’t, you won’t.

Where should you start learning the craft of fiction? You’ve made a good start. You’re at the right place. (Anyone who wants evidence of that should just Google the phrase “fiction writing blog” and see which blog is the #1 result.)

I recommend a four-pronged approach to improving your craft. You should not think of these four prongs as steps along the way. They are four things you should be pursuing simultaneously. You will never, ever, ever get past these, even after you win your Pulitzer/Nobel/big-honking-award:

• Read. Read good fiction. Read good fiction in all genres. Read good fiction in all genres, including the ones you wouldn’t be caught dead reading. Go on, guys, read a romance once in a while; you’ll learn how the women think and your female characters won’t be just male fantasies. And ladies, read a good book with knife fights and bullets and exploding helicopters; this will put some testosterone in your “girlie-man” male characters.
• Write. You don’t get good at tennis by talking about it. You get good at tennis by playing tennis. You get good at writing fiction by writing fiction.
• Get critiqued. Nobody is an adequate judge of their own writing. You need an outside opinion, preferably by somebody who knows what the heck they’re talking about. But remember that even the greenest reader can still nail a weakness in your writing if you listen. Also remember that not everybody gets your writing, and sometimes that big-shot writer or editor really isn’t on the same planet that you are. So don’t ignore everything you hear in your critiques, but don’t believe everything either. Listen to the critiques, then pick your own path to glory.
• Learn the theory. There are a few geniuses who pick up the craft by osmosis just by reading. I hate those kind of people. Most of us mortals need to listen to lectures or read books about the craft. I did. I learned a lot from Dwight Swain and Sol Stein and Jim Bell and Renni Browne and a scad of others. I recommend all of their books (see my page of recommended books on fiction writing). Being a selfish guy, I should mention that my book (WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES) has been doing really well since it came out last December.

Those are the four things that just about all published authors have done to learn this wretched game called fiction writing. Do those and you’ll maximize your chances of joining our ranks.

Remember one thing: There aren’t any shortcuts in this business, but there are longcuts. When you see someone offering you some magic trick that will make you an instant author, that isn’t a shortcut. You’re going to waste your money on it and possibly a lot of time. That’s a longcut. Don’t cut corners. Learn the craft. Read. Write. Get critiqued. Get instruction. Keep doing all four of those, forever.

Scott, in three or four years, after you’ve followed the above sage advice and got your book published, shoot me an email and let me know. I’ll be delighted. But I won’t be surprised.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about those pesky “Motivation-Reaction Units” popularized by Dwight Swain. Today, we’ll look at them a bit more, because (by some coincidence) the next question on my stack is also about MRUs.

Adrian posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hello Randy! I found your articles very useful, they gave me real power to create! I’m currently planning my new novel (already wrote one about 6 years ago) and have a following problem during writing the final text… Let’s say I write a scene. My problem is that sometimes my scene looks like this:

ACTION (Did this, did that)
DIALOG
ACTION
ACTION
DIALOG
etc.

It looks like movie scenario sometimes.
Could you please confirm, that MRUs are the best solution to my problem? I guess use Motivation only and lack Reaction? What do you suggest?

Randy sez: Hmmmm, I’m not sure why the above is bad. If you write excellent action and excellent dialogue, then you’re well on your way to writing good strong commercial fiction. If the problem is that they’re not well mixed, then the solution is to mix them better.

On the other hand, if the problem is that your scene is composed entirely of what Swain calls “Motivation” and with none of what Swain calls “Reaction,” then you do have a problem because your viewpoint character is never doing anything.

The problem we novelists face is that we can’t show “everything happening at once” like they do in the movies. The screen is two-dimensional and there can be a lot of action by several different characters all at once. Fiction has no screen. Fiction has only a sequence of letters that combine to form words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Fiction is much more linear than a movie.

Writing in MRUs solves this problem. MRUs force you to switch back and forth rapidly between your viewpoint character and the other characters in the story.

When you’re focusing on anything but your viewpoint character, you are showing action, dialogue, or description that directly affect the viewpoint character and force him to act. These are what Swain calls “Motivations” but the term is confusing and I’ve taken to calling them “public clips” because anyone can see these things.

When you’re focusing on your viewpoint character, you are showing action, dialogue, interior monologue, or interior emotions. Swain calls these “Reactions,” a term I’ve never liked because your viewpoint character is often quite proactive in these. So I prefer to call them “private clips” because they are experienced by your reader as if she were the viewpoint character — from the inside.

I prefer to mix the various elements well when writing either public clips or private clips. A public clip should not always be JUST action or JUST dialogue or JUST description. (It can be, if things are moving rapidly.) Generally, a public clip will be a mix of these.

Likewise, I think it’s wise to mix the private clips up also. You can show JUST action or JUST dialogue or JUST interior monologue or JUST interior emotion. (Again, if you only show one of these, it tends to speed up the pace.) But generally I like to mix two or more of them.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Are you using Dwight Swain’s “Motivation-Reaction Units” to improve your writing? Do you find them confusing sometimes? Join the crowd! Lots of people have trouble with those pesky “MRUs.” Today, we’ll look at them and disentangle things a bit.

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

German reader here, my English is rather terrible, but… I will try.

I’ve been using MRUs for about two years and although I’ve gotten used to them, sometimes I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing.

Am I right to assume that MRUs only work within “Showing” as opposed to “Telling”? And will every sentence of a “Showing”-Sequence fit into the MRU-Pattern?

Whenever my character remembers something or immediately interprets something he sees, I end up with sentences that could be either motivating stimulus or internal reaction.

I don’t think they matter enough to confuse the reader but they do confuse me sometimes. I’d like to hear your take on this.

Randy sez: Tim, if you hadn’t told me you weren’t a native English speaker, I wouldn’t have guessed it. Your English is excellent.

First, let’s make sure everyone’s up to speed. Dwight Swain has a long chapter, “Plain Facts About Feelings,” in his book TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER. If you want the short version, see my article, “Writing the Perfect Scene” on this web site.

I’ll be blunt, I’ve always hated the term “MRU.” It looks on paper like the military term “MRE” (meal ready to eat, which all military people insist is three lies in one). “MRU” sounds like something a cow would say. Because of that, I decided to change the term in my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. So in my book, I break MRUs into their two pieces and call them “public clips” and “private clips” — in analogy with small film clips.

My thinking is this: When you’re well inside your viewpoint character’s head, the world is divided into two parts — the outside and the inside. Everything that happens outside the character’s head (and which could be experienced by anybody else) is public. Everything that happens inside the character’s head (and which could only be experienced by the character) is private.

When I split things this way, everything comes into focus for me. Now let’s look at Tim’s questions.

Tim asked if MRUs only work for “Showing” and not for “Telling.” I would turn things around a bit from that. If you want to “Show,” then you should use MRUs. If you want to “Tell,” then don’t even think about MRUs. MRUs are a very natural way to structure your “Showing.” They aren’t relevant for “Telling.”

Tim also asked whether every sentence in a “Showing” section will fit the MRU pattern. The answer is complicated because not all passages can be classified as 100% “Showing” or 100% “Telling.” Furthermore, even passages that are 100% “Showing” aren’t always done well. The MRU pattern helps you in two ways:

1. It helps you identify pieces of a section that are “Telling” when you intended them to be “Showing”.
2. It helps you identify pieces of a section that are poorly done “Showing.”

If a section of your work doesn’t fit the MRU pattern, then chances are good that one of the two above is true. HOWEVER, it’s possible that your work doesn’t fit the pattern and the section is still good “Showing.” There just isn’t any such thing as a paint-by-numbers way to write good fiction.

Tim’s final comment was that when his character remembers something or interprets something, it could be either motivation or response. I would classify any of those as response. More precisely, I’d classify them as “private clips.” (See how easy it is when you ask if something is “public” or “private?” The answer is instantly clear.)

Let’s look at an example to clarify things. I’ll just make something up out of the blue. In this farcical bit of fanfic, Harry and Ron are playing Quidditch and Harry is the viewpoint character but I’m going to scramble up the MRUs and inject a bit of telling:

The Quaffle came hurtling at Harry like a dementor on meth scaring the daylights out of him and making him dodge out of the way and collide with Ron. “Watch where you’re flying!” Ron shouted, which was dumb of him because if he’d been looking, he’d know the Quaffle had gone mental like the time Dobby bewitched the Bludger back in Harry’s second year.

Randy sez: This isn’t fully “Showing” and it isn’t fully “Telling.” It’s certainly mixing motivations and reactions all in one paragraph. You could summarize this in one sentence of narrative summary (i.e., “Telling”). However, it’s exciting enough that I’d recommend that you “Show” it. The procedure is simple: Break it up into paragraphs, so that each paragraph is either public or private, and taking care to turn any sentence fragments into complete sentences. Here’s a first cut at it:

The Quaffle came hurtling at Harry like a dementor on meth.

Fear shot through Harry. He dodged to his right and slammed into Ron.

“Watch where you’re flying!” Ron shouted.

Harry shot upward toward the sky with the Quaffle in hot pursuit. It felt exactly like the time Dobby bewitched the Bludger back in Harry’s second year. Only this time, Harry knew no mere house elf was trying to hurt him. This time it was Voldemort.

Randy sez: If you look at this, you’ll notice it’s longer because I broke things up into paragraphs and had to add some sentences to make sense. Here’s a blow-by-blow accounting:

Paragraph 1 is “public.” It shows what the movie camera would capture — a Quaffle hurtling at Harry.

Paragraph 2 is “private.” I’ve added an explicit emotive reaction instead of the vague original about “scaring the daylights out of him”. Then I’ve made a complete sentence showing his physical response to this emotion. Note that the movie camera could never show the emotive reaction. It could of course show Harry swerving, but this action is still “private” because Harry is the viewpoint character. The reader will experience this action from inside Harry’s skin.

Paragraph 3 is “public.” A tape recorder could catch Ron’s shout.

Paragraph 4 is “private.” It’s all about Harry — his actions, his feelings, and his thoughts. In writing this, it seemed natural to expand on that memory of Dobby and then add in some things about Voldemort that weren’t in my first version. When you write using the MRU pattern, this sort of thing just naturally suggests itself.

There is very much more to say about those pesky MRUs (or “public clips” and “private clips”). If you want to know more, see Swain’s book or my book or read my article on “Writing the Perfect Scene.”

What do my Loyal Blog Readers think? Do MRUs make your life simpler — or more complicated?

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

How critical is it that you know the Three-Act Structure of your novel before you write it? Can you skip this step and come back to it later — or never do it at all?

Gabriel posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, I’ve discovered your blog recently and I’ve found it extremely useful - I’m an engineer so I really can relate to your way of thinking and explaining things!

I’ve wrote short stories in my high school years (I actually won the two contests I entered) but it’s been a while since I’ve written. My current goal is to write a publishable novel.

I’m following your snowflake method, but I found I jumped from step 1 (one-sentence summary) to step 4 (one paragraph per disaster), being unable to do step 2 (one sentence per disaster).

My question is, essentially, how important is step 2? I know your advice is to follow the “method” as much as I want, but you also recommend this paragraph to be the back-cover of the book.

I can’t summarize each disaster in a sentence. Could you post examples of one-sentence summaries extended to one-paragraph summaries extended to 5-paragraph summaries?

I apologize if they are indeed somewhere on the site, I couldn’t find them if that’s the case.

FWIW, I write in spanish, my native language. I adjust word counts accordingly but I doubt it has anything to do with my inability to do step 2

Randy sez: Some background on Gabriel’s question is essential here. Step 2 in the Snowflake method is to write a one-paragraph summary of your story. I recommend that you structure this paragraph as follows:

1. Set the stage for the story in one sentence.
2. Tell the first quarter of the story up to a disaster that commits the lead character (and the reader) to the rest of the story.
3. Tell the second quarter of the story, up to a second disaster that gets the lead character in even more trouble.
4. Tell the third quarter of the story, culminating in a third disaster that forces the lead character (and the villain, if there is one) into a final confrontation.
5. Tell the ending, which includes the final confrontation, the climax, and then the final wrapup.

While it’s difficult to put all stories into this mold, it’s a useful discipline which many writers find helpful. But do you HAVE to do it?

No, you don’t have to do anything. In principle, you can write the whole story without understanding its deep structure in advance. Many writers find that they do their best work working in “seat-of-the-pants” mode. If that’s your way, then that’s your way. I encourage all writers to work in the way that works best for them. Many Snowflakers jump around among the steps, filling them in as the story comes to them. That’s fine. I do it that way myself.

What intrigues me here is that Gabriel skips from Step 1 (a one-sentence summary) to Step 4 (a full page synopsis). This is definitely not writing by the seat of the pants. Instead, it’s a details-first approach. There’s nothing wrong with doing the details before you know the big picture. Again, it’s a matter of finding the style that works best. But I think that it ought to be possible to go back from the one-page synopsis to the one-paragraph summary without that much work. If you can’t do that, then you might need to get some help from a friend who is more a top-level thinker.

Here’s an example of a one-paragraph summary for the novel THE MATARESE CIRCLE, by Robert Ludlum. This is excerpted from page 154 of my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES (I have permission from my publisher, John Wiley, to use small excerpts online):

1. Brandon Scofield is an aging US covert agent who’s been inexplicably pushed out of the service on an idiotic pretext.
2. After evading an assassination attempt, he discovers that his own government is trying to kill him and that his only hope is to join forces with Vasili Taleniekov, the ex-KGB agent who murdered Scofield’s wife.
3. Forging an uneasy alliance, Scofield and Taleniefkov uncover a shadowy international conspiracy led by corporate billionaires, but the stakes rise when one of the billionaires is murdered by his controller.
4. After pursuing leads in Russia, Germany, and England, Scofield must make a hard decision when his girlfriend Toni and his ally Taleniekov are kidnapped by the conspirators, who invite Scofield to surrender to them in Boston.
5. Scofield flies to Boston, discovers one final shattering secret, and then walks unarmed into the lair of the conspirators to “surrender.”

THE MATARESE CIRCLE is a complex book, interweaving the big-picture storyline (conspiracy in high places) with the little-picture storyline (Scofield has a second chance at love with this new girlfriend in his life). Despite the complexity, I managed to summarize the core in only five sentences.

Notice that the three disasters each make the main storyline worse. First, our man is on the run from his own government. Second, the Big Bad Guys he thought were the villains turn out to be controlled by somebody even bigger and badder. Third, his ally and his girl are captured, leaving him all on his own.

The first disaster leads to Scofield’s decision to commit to the story. He could run off and hide, but he chooses to join with his enemy and go looking for trouble.

The third disaster leads to Scofield’s decision to end the story. For better or for worse, he’s going to Boston for the final confrontation. Again, he could run and hide, but he wants the girl. He wants the truth. He wants to bring down the bad guys.

THE MATARESE CIRCLE is a great example of Cold War spy fiction. It’s been one of my favorites for a long time. The story is complicated, but the milestones in the Three-Act Structure are absolutely clear.

Without details on Gabriel’s story, I can’t really figure out his Three-Act Structure, but I suspect that he needs help from a good story analyst. Because of massive time constraints in my life, I only do story analyses when I’m at writing conferences. (The good news is that I do it there for free; the bad news is that it costs money to go to a conference.)

Gabriel, do you have a writing friend with good analytical skills? That might be your best bet. Otherwise, you may find that one of the freelance editors listed in the right margin of this blog might be able to help you work out your Three-Act Structure.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

If you self-publish a book, is it possible that you’ll ever sell it to a royalty-paying publisher?

Victor posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I understand that your teaching and mentoring are intended to help authors get published via commercial publishing channels. Nevertheless, an author may ultimately have to accept universal rejection and turn to some form of self-publishing (hard copy or e-books). Question: does the self-publishing of a book preclude the author from ever selling the same book to a publisher?

Randy sez: Victor submitted this question several weeks ago (I have a large backlog of questions waiting to be answered), so it’s a nice coincidence that his question has come to the top of my stack just after my very long blog post on Wednesday about the future of publishing.

First, let’s clarify my teaching goals. I teach writers how to get themselves organized, how to write well, and how to market themselves effectively so that they can earn a decent reward for their creative efforts. Until recently, “earning a decent reward” meant getting published by a royalty-paying publisher.

But the world is changing rapidly. For some years now, it’s been possible to earn a pretty good reward by creating and selling electronic non-fiction products. That’s what I do here on this web site and it’s well worth my time. It’s now becoming possible to do the same with fiction.

A publisher is no longer required for a writer to earn decent money writing fiction. A publisher is certainly a nice thing to have. If you get published by a royalty-paying publisher, you have the gratification of knowing that your work is pretty darn good, because publishers are in business to make money and they’re necessarily pretty good judges of quality. So I’m not at all denigrating the value of a publisher. I’m just observing that money can now be made in fiction without a publisher. That’s a huge change in the industry and it’s happening RIGHT NOW.

Again, I’ll refer you to the blog of Joe Konrath, where he has been detailing his e-book successes lately. The man is earning over $10k per month in e-books on Amazon. That’s a pretty decent wage. That’s better than most authors earn by working with royalty-paying publishers. And I read just a day or two ago that James Patterson has now earned over a million dollars in sales of e-books.

In the past, it’s been rare for a self-published novel to go on to find a home with a royalty-paying publisher. We can all think of examples: ERAGON was originally self-pubbed. So was THE SHACK. So was . . . um, I can’t think of any others right off the top of my head, but I know there are some others. The list is not long.

The future, I believe, is going to be very different. In my last blog post, The Future of Publishing, I predicted that in the next few years, it’ll be common for novels to be self-pubbed first as e-books and then to be picked up by major publishers. In fact, I think it quite likely that nearly all books in the future will be self-published first as e-books, and that the publishers will choose those that do well on the e-lists to be published as p-books.

This is a massive change. Like most changes, it will be good for some people and bad for other people. My view is that the lot of writers will improve. The reason is that there will be less money in the pie for the manufacturing, transport, and handling of physical books. That will leave more money in the pie for everyone else. Since writers are an absolutely necessary part of the pie, they have a fighting chance to get more of that pesky money.

Victor, to answer your question: In the past, it was possible but unlikely to sell a self-pubbed novel to a royalty-paying publisher. In the future, I believe it will become the norm.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I am confident enough in this prediction that I am currently working towards re-releasing all of my old out-of-print novels as e-books. Assuming those do well, I plan to e-publish a couple of other novels that crashed and burned after being sold to publishers; neither of those actually went into production, and I own all rights to them, so I’m going to publish them myself. If these e-books flop, then they’ll flop. But I’m not in the habit of flopping. I expect to do well.

As the saying goes, “I eat my own dog food.” I’m not merely telling you what I think will be good for you. I’m telling you what I think will be good for me and you and all writers.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

I wrote the following article for the latest issue of my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, and I think it’s worthy of discussion here on my blog. I’d be interested to hear what my savvy, intelligent, fiercely loyal blog readers have to say about my predictions for the next several years:

The Future of Publishing

The world of publishing is currently going through massive turmoil. Some people believe that the rise of e-books is going to be the biggest single change in publishing since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type.

I’m not a prophet nor a seer nor clairvoyant. But I do have my eyes open, and in this column, I give you my best predictions for the coming years. They may be right. They may be wrong. Either way, one thing seems certain: Huge changes are coming.

I offer these predictions to suggest ways you might plan for your future. I’m using them to plan for mine.

Prediction #1: E-books Will Surpass P-books Soon

I define a “p-book” to be a book printed on paper. This term includes books created by traditional royalty-paying publishers (usually in large print runs of thousands or tens of thousands). This term also includes print-on-demand (”POD”) books.

P-books are very wasteful and inefficient. To create a p-book, you must pay all of the following:

• The person who typesets the edited manuscript
• The person who cuts the trees to make the paper
• The person who turns the trees into paper
• The person who puts ink on the paper
• The person who binds the paper into books
• The person who puts the books in a box
• The person who drives the box to the store
• The person who unpacks the box in the store
• The person who puts the book on a shelf
• The person who rings up the sale at the counter
• The person who puts the unsold copies back in a box
• The person who drives the box back to the publisher
• The person who unpacks and shreds the returns

To create either an e-book or a p-book, you must pay all of the following:

• The person who writes the book
• The person who edits the book
• The person who makes the cover art for the book
• The person who markets the book
• The person who enters the book info into the store computers

E-books require one other player who must be paid once by each reader:

• The person who makes the e-book reader

I’ve left out a number of minor players in the above cast of characters, but I think these are all the main parts. The marginal cost to create an e-book is lower than the marginal cost to create a p-book. You can automate the sales process for an e-book and deliver it anywhere in the world almost instantly at almost zero cost.

The only obstacle here is the cost of those pesky e-book readers. That cost is dropping rapidly. Furthermore, many phones and other mobile devices now include e-book reading as a standard feature, and numerous software products allow you to read e-books on your computer.

Apple’s new iPad marked a turning point, because Apple promised to pay publishers a hefty 70% of the retail price of each e-book. Shortly after the iPad’s announcement, Amazon began changing their payment model to be in line with Apple’s. This makes e-books very profitable for publishers — and potentially for their authors.

I believe that e-books will surpass p-books in market share within five years.

If you want some specific reasons why, I suggest you read the blog of Joe Konrath: http://JAKonrath.blogspot.com

Read a few of Joe’s recent blogs and see if you’re not astounded at how well e-books can do in the hands of a competent marketer.

Prediction #2: E-books Will Become The “Minor Leagues”

A beginning writer faces a very long learning curve. It typically takes a writer several years to develop the skills and the contacts needed to sell a first novel to a major publisher. It’s not uncommon to hear of a writer who took “ten years of hard work to become an overnight success.”

During that 3 or 5 or 10 or 20 years when a writer is learning the craft of fiction, she earns nothing (or a pittance if she can find a magazine to buy her short stories). Typically, a writer writes several complete novels before she sells her first to a publisher.

That will change in the coming years. The reason is because we writers are an impatient lot, and we all believe that our work is unalloyed gold and that those philistine agents and publishers just can’t recognize genius when it smacks them in the face.

I believed this before I got published. I believe it still about a couple of my manuscripts that crashed and burned before publication. You probably believe it too. In many cases, we’re right.

In coming years, writers will simply short-circuit the traditional route by e-publishing their first book. It will probably sell a copy to Mom and to Aunt Mabel and to a few friends.

If the writer gets any encouragement at all from this first attempt, she’ll e-publish another, and another, and another. As she improves, her books will sell to a wider and wider audience, eventually going far beyond her circle of family and friends.

When I outline this scenario to my writer friends, they’re all horrified at the prospect of a market “flooded with awful e-books.”

My response to that is simple: The market is smart. Readers will ignore the “flood of awful e-books.” They’ll gobble up the e-books that are good and will recommend them to their friends. Those friends will do likewise. The cream will rise to the top. The dregs will not. It’s that simple.

For those who live in terror of the coming “flood of awful e-books,” I’ll simply point out that the market is already flooded with hundreds of thousands of self-published e-books (and p-books). Did you notice? Were you flooded out of your house? Are you drowning in a sea of awful books?

No, no, and no.

The market chooses the quality books because the market is composed of people who know what they like and who talk about it. Word-of-mouth will sift the quality from the quantity, just as it always has. Only a very few people ever see any given “awful book.” Most readers only come across a few “awful books.” Lots of people see the really good books. The market efficiently finds them.

E-books will be the minor leagues of publishing (to use a baseball metaphor). This means that new authors will try out their talents and rise to their own level. Agents and publishers will no longer have to play the role of gatekeepers who try to guess what the market will buy. The market will decide what it wants to buy.

I know there are some authors who think it will be a horrible prostitution of our art that the market should actually get to decide what sells. Tragically, the market has been deciding what sells for hundreds of years. In the future, it will do so better and quicker because the gatekeepers will vanish.

Prediction #3: Beginning Authors Will E-publish First

Beginning writers will e-publish their work long before they p-publish it. They will do so because all the other beginning writers are doing so. Nobody wants to get left behind. Everybody wants to be discovered. Everybody believes they are writing a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

Some writers are.

Yes, really. Some writers are exceptionally good. Those writers will get discovered far quicker than they would have in years past. They’ll earn money at their writing. They’ll blog about their successes, making it clear that their road to success led through e-books.

Many other writers will follow and soon the majority of unpublished writers will be publishing their work first as e-books.

The result of this is that agents and editors will buy fewer and fewer unpublished novelists. Instead, they’ll simply watch the e-market to see what sells. Then they’ll acquire the p-book rights for those e-books that are proven successful.

This is the smart thing for them to do. Publishers have long joked that “The way to be profitable in this business is to only publish the bestsellers.” In the past, nobody had any idea how to predict the bestsellers. In the coming e-future, it will be obvious. Successful e-books will make successful p-books.

I believe publishers will eventually refuse to take chances on any unpublished writers. Those writers will therefore be forced to publish themselves first as e-books, whether they want to or not. This transition will take time, but I expect that within five years, the overwhelming majority of all first novels will be published first as e-books.

Prediction #4: Mid-list Authors May Do Better

Mid-list authors have had a rough go during the last few years. Publishers have been chafed by shrinking profit margins. They’ve been willing to pay big bucks to the sure-thing bestselling authors. They’ve been willing to pay peanuts to new novelists in the hope of finding gold and raking in huge bucks. But they’ve been less willing to keep paying the mid-listers to write book after book that just earns out its advance (or doesn’t quite earn out but does still make a small profit).

In the coming e-future, mid-list authors will try their hand at e-books and discover that their fans love them in e-format just as much as in p-format. Mid-listers will decide that self-publishing an e-book for 70% of the pie is better than working with a traditional publisher for 7% of the pie.

This is rational behavior. Those mid-list authors who can market themselves at least 10% as effectively as their publishers would market them will decide to do so. They’ll e-publish their own work and market it themselves, no longer subject to the whims of their publishers.

Some mid-listers will flourish in this e-culture. They’ll connect to their fan base and grow it. And the publishers will notice. The publishers are both smart and rational. They’ll see which mid-list novels do best as e-books and will bankroll them as p-books.

Some mid-listers will refuse this route. I believe they’ll do less well as time goes on. They’ll find their publishers increasingly fearful of publishing their work and increasingly stingy with advances.

In this world, publishers will finally achieve their goal — they’ll only publish the winners.

This may take longer than five years to sort out, since mid-list authors appear at first glance to have the most to lose. It will take them some time to see that they can do well in an e-future. I believe they’ll see it eventually, and the sooner they see it, the better they’ll do.

Prediction #5: Bestselling Authors Will Profit Most

Bestselling authors always profit most. The reason is because the market rewards best what it likes best. In the coming e-future, the market will operate more efficiently. That means it’ll reward the best performers more quickly and more richly.

It’s hard for me to predict how one aspect of this will play out. It may be that traditional publishers will retain their top-performing authors in e-book format. Or it may be that bestselling authors will e-publish on their own first and rake in all the e-profits, and only then sell the rights to the p-books. Right now, I can’t foresee which way it’ll go.

I’m confident that p-books will live on and flourish. A strong segment of the market wants p-books. If publishers publish a p-book only after the novel has already proven itself in the e-market, then they’ll benefit from better information and will not lose their shirts on wildly expensive gambles. Even if they publish a novel in e-format and p-format simultaneously, they’ll benefit from the improved efficiencies in the e-market.

Prediction #6: Publishers Will No Longer Accept Returns

Currently, publishers allow bookstores to return unsold books for full credit. This practice began in the Great Depression, and it’s been a curse on the industry ever since. Bookstores can order more copies than they expect to sell, because there’s no risk. Anything they don’t sell just goes back to the publisher.

What this has meant for the publisher is that returns on a book can kill them. It might make great PR to tell everyone they printed a million, but it’s not so pretty if half a million come back as returns.

Returns are wasteful. E-books can’t be returned. In the coming e-future, I suspect that publishers will decide that p-books can’t be returned either.

This prediction is not a certainty. I don’t think it’s quite as likely as most of my other predictions here. But it seems rational to end the practice of accepting returns. I suspect that as soon as one of the major publishers makes this move, the others will follow.

Prediction #7: Agents Will Stop Reading Slush

In the old days of publishing, publishers received enormous numbers of manuscripts from hopeful writers. The manuscripts went into a large stack (called the “slush pile”) and publishers hired staff to sift through the slush looking for gold.

Few publishers these days will even open a manuscript from a writer they don’t know. Instead, they rely on agents to submit manuscripts. Effectively, publishers have off-loaded their slush piles to the agents.

Agents were already overworked, and this has put a massive strain on them. Their real job is to represent their clients. Now they also have to sift through mountains of slush, written by people whom they don’t represent and most of whom they will never represent.

In the coming e-future, agents will stop reading the slush pile because they’ll have a much more effective method of finding new talent. They’ll ask to see sales numbers on e-books by prospective clients. If a writer can’t show a good enough track record for sales of e-books, then the agent won’t even consider representing the writer.

In effect, the agents will off-load the slush pile to the market. The market won’t mind, because the market is extremely efficient. The market will ignore writing it doesn’t like and reward writing it does like.

Please note that I didn’t say “the market will ignore bad writing and reward good writing.” I do believe there is such a thing as good writing and bad writing. The problem is that there isn’t any consensus on which is which. I like one kind of writing. My wife likes another. My best friend likes a third.

“Good” and “bad” are multi-dimensional concepts when applied to writing. That makes it very difficult to choose what to publish. It really is true that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

However, sales numbers are one-dimensional. There is a world of difference between selling 10 copies and selling 10,000.

The market efficiently translates its likes and dislikes into hard sales numbers. In the future, I believe that agents (and of course publishers) will do their initial sifting simply by looking at those numbers. Then, from the novels that have a good track record in e-sales, they’ll select the ones they like.

If this prediction is correct (and I can’t prove that it is, but it seems reasonable), the life of agents will get a bit easier in the future.

However, I believe that fewer books will be p-published in the future, and that probably means that fewer agents will be needed. So I foresee a winnowing of agents. Those who are currently successful will be more successful or will have to work less hard. Those who are currently marginal may well go out of business.

Prediction #8: Publishers Will Become More Profitable

I believe publishers will be more profitable, but they’ll publish fewer titles.

They’ll be more profitable because they’ll publish only those authors that have a strong track record in the e-market (or an exceptional track record in sales of past p-books). It’s got to be more profitable when you only publish the winners. It’s got to be more profitable when you have more information about potential sales before you publish a book.

Publishers will publish fewer titles because not all books are winners. Some books just don’t do well in the market. In the past, publishers had to guess the winners. In the future, publishers will read the winners off the e-book charts. They’ll ignore the losers on those same charts. That has to mean fewer titles.

This does not mean the public will have less choice. The public will have much, much, much more choice in the e-market. It will have less choice in the p-market, but those choices will have higher average quality. That’s a net win for the public.

While I think it very likely that publishers will have higher profit margins in the future, it’s an open question whether they’ll earn more in gross revenues. I make no prediction on that. Naively, it seems that they would gross less. However, they might conceivably gross more, depending on complex factors that I can’t foresee.

Prediction #9: Some Will Do Better; Some Will Do Worse

I believe that talented authors will do somewhat better in the e-future. I believe effective agents will do better and so will most publishers.

I foresee a burgeoning market for freelance editors (who can help writers polish their work before taking it to e-market). Likewise for freelance graphic artists (who can create great covers for e-books).

I foresee a larger, better array of choices for the reading public.

However, not everybody will do better. Some people will do worse. Let’s make a list of them. We already discussed these people before, but let’s list them here again:

• The person who typesets the edited manuscript
• The person who cuts the trees to make the paper
• The person who turns the trees into paper
• The person who puts ink on the paper
• The person who binds the paper into books
• The person who puts the books in a box
• The person who drives the box to the store
• The person who unpacks the box in the store
• The person who puts the book on a shelf
• The person who rings up the sale at the counter
• The person who puts the unsold copies back in a box
• The person who drives the box back to the publisher
• The person who unpacks and shreds the returns

None of these people contribute actual value to the story. They only contribute value to the medium — the handling of paper and ink. As the demand for paper and ink shrinks, so will the demand for these folks. That may be cruel and Darwinian, but it seems to me inevitable.

In addition, I also think that brick-and-mortar bookstores will become smaller (as measured in square footage). It’s hard to say for sure if they’ll also become fewer in number, but it’s a good bet that they will. That’s been the trend for several years, and I suspect it’ll continue. It’s possible that they’ll become a bit more profitable, since they’ll be stocking only p-books that are marketplace winners. But they may face increasing pressure from the online merchants for p-books, which can stock a much larger choice. I make no prediction on their profitability.

Summary

Those are my predictions for the future. I can’t prove that any of them will come true. But I’m making my own plans based on this vision.

It’s not the gloomy-doomy future that many writers see ahead of us. However, it’s a future that will require serious adjustments from just about everybody in the publishing industry.

In five years, we’ll know whether I’m right or wrong.

How do you handle an unreliable narrator in your novel? Do you have to be over the top, or can you be more subtle?

Jonathan posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I am interested in creating an unreliable narrator for my story (kind of like in the Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

My problem is, I don’t want to just use the “Hey, this guy is crazy!” card, I would like it to be a little more subtle so that it’s open to interpretation whether or not the narrator is, in fact unreliable.

Are there any good ways to do this without beating the idea that he is crazy into people’s heads?

Randy sez: There are a lot of ways for a narrator to be unreliable. In Mark Twain’s novel, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, the narrator is Huck Finn, a naive and uneducated young boy who tells the story as he perceives it. The reader knows that Huck will tell the truth as he sees it, but the reader also knows that Huck often gets it wrong. Huck “knows” that he’s doing wrong by helping the runaway slave Jim, but the reader knows Huck is doing exactly the right thing. When Huck encounters two feuding families, he can’t see the Romeo/Juliet kind of disaster looming, even though it’s obvious to the reader.

It may be helpful to remember that just about every character ever written is unreliable to some extent. Nobody perfectly understands what’s going on. The hard part is communicating the real situation to the reader in spite of the character’s failure to understand.

If you’re going to use an unreliable narrator, it’s important to get yourself fully inside the skin of the character. You need to understand exactly what makes him tick and how he thinks and why he’s slightly out of touch with reality. You don’t have to make him overtly crazy.

You can make a narrator unreliable even if he’s perfectly sane and highly intelligent.

One of my favorite historical novels is RIVER GOD, by Wilbur Smith, set in 18th century BC Egypt. The narrator is Taita, a slave owned by the wife of the pharoah. Taita is clearly a genius. This is clear from his actions, but also from his interior monologue, because Taita is only too happy to tell you how clever he is. He’s very knowledgable for an ancient Egyptian. But at one point, his knowledge is defective. Taita has taught himself a lot about human physiology by doing dissections on corpses, but he has no idea what the brains are for. The ancients believed that the seat of emotion and intelligence was in the heart — the one in your chest that beats. There’s an amusing passage in RIVER GOD where Taita mocks some poor foreign fools who suggest (get this) that the seat of emotions and intelligence are in those stringy gourd-like brains inside the head. Ha! Imagine that!

Another novel I really like is THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, by Mark Haddon. It’s about a 15-year-old autistic boy, Christopher, who’s investigating the murder of the neighbor’s dog. Christopher is brilliant at math and is a very logical thinker, but he doesn’t understand how other people think and so he’s unreliable when he describes his relationships with them. This novel is a really good example of a somewhat unreliable narrator.

So the answer to Jonathan’s question is that you have a lot of choices in how to make a narrator unreliable. You can be overt or you can be subtle. The choice is yours.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Must you do on-site research for your novel in order to be “authentic?”

Melissa posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m currently reading a book on writing historical fiction in which the author strongly emphasizes researching on location. While I agree with him 100% that on-site research will enrich your story, it’s not always feasible to travel to your stories physical location to do so. What would you say is the second best option available to a writer who wants to authenticate the physical location of a place that he/she has never been?

This question is a good one, whether you’re writing historical fiction or any other kind of fiction. Must you do on-site research?

I remember years ago reading an interview with Tom Clancy in Writer’s Digest. I don’t have that interview anymore, but one thing stood out to me. If my memory is correct, in that interview, Tom said that he had never been on a submarine until after he wrote his book THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. But he had talked to lots of people who had.

Since THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER was notable for its highly authentic feel of life on a nuclear sub, this surprised a lot of people. How did Tom make his readers believe that they were experiencing life on a sub, if he hadn’t experienced it himself?

The answer is not merely that Tom talked to a lot of people. Tom also asked those people the right questions. His books are packed with details — things that make you believe you’re right there. I’ve never been on a sub, so I can’t speak from experience on whether those details are right. But the very fact that the details are there makes you FEEL like they’re correct. In principle, a writer could make it all up, and yet make it feel real by simply showing lots of details of the environment. But more importantly, the writer must make it matter to the reader by finding the emotive impact those details have on the characters.

I’ve never been to Mars, and yet I wrote two novels set on Mars with my co-author John Olson. John and I studied up on what Mars is like, based on the best information we had. Then we imagined what it would be like living in a small habitation module on Mars, recycling the water, dealing with the peroxide-laced Martian dust, getting on the nerves of the other astronauts, living in constant fear of a depressurization event that would mean certain death, and suffering the effects of hypervigilance as a result. Then we took that imagination and made it real in the form of sensory details and everyday actions in the lives of our astronauts. In the end, the physical details were less important than the emotive impact those details had on our characters.

I’ve never been to ancient Jerusalem, but I wrote three novels set there. I have been to modern Jerusalem, and I spent an entire day studying a model of what the ancient city looked like. I also wandered around the old city, getting a feel for the color of the stones, the blue of the sky, the size of the city. I also spent absurd amounts of time reading the writings of people who lived in that time and place, learning the way they expressed ideas and how they interacted with each other. I tried to imagine what they cared about and what they feared and hoped for. Then I took all that and put it into concrete details. Again, the actual details were less important than the emotive effect they had on my characters.

Are there factual errors in my novels? Almost certainly. The evidence available for both Mars and ancient Jerusalem is fragmentary. But you can’t write a novel using fragmentary descriptions and details. You have to fill things in as best you can to create a coherent picture. Some of what you fill in will be wrong. That is one of life’s little tragedies, and the smart writer will accept that and not worry about.

Create an imaginary world that fits the facts as best you know them, but which fills in the holes in such vivid detail that the reader can’t tell the difference between what you know and what you imagine. Remember, it’s a novel you’re writing, not a documentary.

I won’t go into all the tools you have at your disposal for doing research. That depends a lot on what time and place you’re writing about, what information exists, and what form the information is in. It can be very helpful to find experts who know the world of your novel better than anyone else. Don’t be surprised, though, if you ask 3 experts and get 4 opinions. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s better that you form a coherent picture in your own mind of the world of your novel, and that you create that world in vivid detail for your reader. Then translate that coherent picture into an emotional impact on your characters.

Repeat after me: It’s a novel, not a documentary. It’s a novel, not a documentary. It’s a novel, not a documentary.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

I frequently hear from young writers who are working on a novel. Almost always, they assume that their age is working against them. But is it? I’ll address that question today.

Colby posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy! I’ve been a fan and follower for around a year now, but I have a question that never seems to get addressed in any book or e-zine or article on fiction writing anywhere I’ve seen. I am guessing that there are many others out there who have the same sort of question.

You see, as it is my question/problem lies in one thing - my age. I’m a 15 year old to be exact. I’ve studies plenty of books on writing, written a good bunch of just about everything, won dozens of awards for writing in school, and have been seriously planning and plotting (and am almost ready to begin) my current novel for over a year. I have (surprisingly) been to a writers conference (which did earn some peculiar stares from all the…ahem…more elderly individuals, and, of course, have read plenty of novels in my lifetime. Plus I currently have and enjoy your “Snowflake Pro” software, and am planning on purchasing your WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES.
HOWEVER -
What do I need to do differently if I want to be a novelist as a teenager? What do I do when I get my first novel finished? Is it like I just send my manuscript/book proposals out and hope a kind-hearted agent receives my work with glee willing to work around any schooling I have, let my mom drive me to any meetings, and have a parent or guardian sign any paper work?
AND -
Does your “Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior” 1 year-ish program still apply for me? I would love to be published before leaving high school to help with future careers as well as the fact that no college can disregard the fact that a student is published when applying for a scholarship.
I might not be making a lot of sense, but I was just wondering if there is anything I should do differently and if so what and how since I am a teenager. Two of the advantages I see are: 1- I am writing toward target readers of my exact age, so if I like it…. and 2- I will have an entire high school of target readers to market to if I do get published.

Randy sez: Colby, you’re correct that there are a lot of young writers who are asking similar questions. As I noted a couple of days ago on this blog, I hear from writers younger than 18 all the time. Often, they’re much younger than 18. Almost always, they assume that their age is working against them.

It isn’t. If you’re under the age of 25, your age isn’t working against you at all; it’s working for you. The only thing working against you is your inexperience in life. Writing is about life. The more life you’ve lived, the more likely you are to be able to express it in an emotively powerful way. It’s quite possible to live a lot of life before you’re 15. My friend, Mary DeMuth, (whom I’ll be interviewing in my next e-zine) had already accumulated more hellacious life experiences by the age of 15 than most people do in 100 years.

On to Colby’s question: What should he do differently than most writers when he finishes his novel?

There is only one thing he should do differently. Remember that when you write a query letter to an agent, you always include one short paragraph about yourself. In Colby’s query letter, he should insert a sentence in this paragraph that says, “I’m 15 years old.”

He should write the rest of his query letter and his manuscript exactly like an adult would write it. Which is to say, professionally. He should write a killer hook for his book in the query letter. He should describe the story in no more than one paragraph. He should write the story exceptionally well. The ONLY clue that he is not an adult should be that one sentence, “I am 15 years old.” There is no reason to apologize for being that age. There is no reason to emphasize how cool it is to have written a novel so young. If the writing is good, there will be nothing to apologize for, and the agent will be able to figure out that this is a cool project.

Agents and editors have no prejudice against teen writers who write like professional writers. Agents and editors have terrific prejudice against teen writers who write like amateurs. Agents and editors have that exact same prejudice against writers of any age who act like amateurs. Act like a pro and your age will work incredibly in your favor.

Colby, when you get your novel finished, polish it up and make it perfect. My book, WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, will tell you how to do that. (Remember, however, that success in writing takes both talent and training. Books supply the training; you have to bring your own talent to the table.) Once the book is as good as you can make it, choose some appropriate agents and send them query letters. Again, my book spells out the steps you need to take to approach an agent.

You are not going to ever rely on the kindness of agents. You are going to rely on the greed of agents. You are going to rely on agents reading your work and saying, “My God, this kid writes fantastically well! I’ve got to sign this kid before those other weasels do, because I can sell this kid’s work and earn a buck.” There is absolutely no other acceptable reason for any agent ever to work with any author, teen or fogey or anything in between.

As for the question of whether my article, “Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Author!” applies to teens, the answer is yes. It applies to everybody. You really can’t hurry the process. It’s possible to radically slow down the process by trying to cut corners. So the best thing you can do is to avoid behaviors that slow down the process. The biggest mistake writers make is failing to give themselves the time to develop naturally into the best writer they can be.

I took my middle daughter Gracie to a writing conference with me when she was 13 years old, because I saw that she had talent for writing. She had a great time and met another young writer her own age. She refused to go to the “teen track” workshops. Instead, she went to the classes she felt like going to. She’s now studying journalism and math at a major university and doing Xtremely well. But she hasn’t written a novel, because that just wasn’t something she’s wanted to do.

My advice to young writers is the same as for anyone else: Study the craft of writing. Don’t try to cut corners. Give yourself time to learn the skills. The publishing industry doesn’t hate you or fear you. The publishing industry doesn’t care about you at all. The publishing industry just wants to earn a buck. If you write well enough that some publisher somewhere can earn a buck by collaborating with you on a book, then you’ll get published. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s really that simple.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.