A new release of my novel Oxygen is finally out in both e-book form and in paper!
My coauthor (John Olson) and I wanted to write a space adventure novel with a strong female lead character and with a fast-paced storyline packed with suspense, humor, and romance.
As I write this blog, Oxygen has the following rankings on various lists on Amazon:
#141 on the main list for All Kindle Books.
#3 on the Science Fiction Adventure list.
#1 in Futuristic Romance.
About OXYGEN:
Valkerie Jansen is tough, beautiful, and has an uncanny knack for survival. But that doesn’t explain why NASA picks her to be part of a two man, two woman crew to Mars — or does it?
Bob Kaganovski, the ship’s chief engineer, is paid to be paranoid — and he’s good at it. After a teeth-rattling launch, Bob realizes that his paranoia hasn’t prepared him for this trip. He can deal with a banged-up ship, but how’s he going to survive the next five months with HER just a flimsy partition away?
Halfway to the Red Planet, an explosion leaves the crew with only enough oxygen for one. All evidence points to sabotage — and Valkerie and Bob are the obvious suspects.
Oxygen is a witty, multi-award-winning roller coaster ride, with a plot that moves at the speed of light.
The authors had hoped to work in some cool controversy on science, faith, the meaning of life, the existence of God, and possibly even the Coke versus Pepsi debate, but they were having so much fun writing the story that they forgot to offend anyone.
About the Authors:
John and Randy have been collaborating on one crazy project after another for the past fifteen years.
Not only are they novelists, Ph.D. scientists, and entrepreneurs who’ve founded four different corporations between them, but rumor has it that they prowl the night wearing steampunk battle gear to rid the streets of vampires, werewolves, and ducks that poop on your front lawn after it rains.
John and Randy deny all such tales as “vicious exaggeration.”
Extra Goodies for Novelists
What’s in it for you, besides a fast-paced story? John and I worked hard to add in some extra goodies that you, my Loyal Blog Readers, will love. We created four appendices totaling more than 21,000 words:
How We SoldOxygen In Only 7 Weeks — Without an Agent
The Proposal for Oxygen
Randy’s #1 Secret For Writing Fiction, those pesky Motivation-Reaction Units, applied to the entire first scene (which John wrote)
John Strikes Back — his analysis of the entire second scene (which Randy wrote)
Oh yeah, and there’s an Eternal Coupon in the book, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s good for selected writing products on this site. It’s reusable. It never expires. The discount is 50%. Yes really.
99 Cents? Are We Crazy?
We normally would sell what’s in those appendices for at least $15. But in an e-book, we get incredible economies of scale, so we can include them at no extra cost, right along with the novel.
The everyday cost of Oxygen is $2.99. But for this week, now through midnight on Saturday, October 8, 2011, the price of the e-book is only 99 cents.
Caveats: Amazon may charge a higher price to some customers outside the US, and they may not offer the e-book for sale in all countries. It appears that Barnes & Noble only sells e-books to customers in the US and Canada. We gave both retailers full worldwide distribution rights and we set the price as low as we could, but that’s no guarantee that they’ll sell the e-book everywhere at the same price. This problem is above our pay grade.
Where to Get Oxygen
Grab your e-book copy of Oxygenhere on Amazon for 99 cents.
If you don’t have an e-reader, you can get free apps for Macs, PCs, iPads, and most smart phones on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s web sites.
If you prefer paper and you live in the US, you can order a paper copy here at Marcher Lord Press for $16.99.
The paper edition has a different cover than the e-book, but it’s the same content with one difference. The paper edition has an Eternal Coupon worth a 60% discount.
Two years ago at a writing conference, my friend Tosca Lee was acting really weird. She disappeared from the conference hotel for a couple of hours on some lame excuse. Then afterwards, she didn’t want to talk about it.
That evening, NY Times best-selling novelist Ted Dekker dropped by the conference hotel. I know Ted just a bit, and we chatted some. A group of us were about to go out on the town, and we invited Ted along. We all had a great time, but my finely tuned writer’s antennae told me that this was not just a casual drop-by. Something was going on.
Tosca is one of my closest writing buddies, and it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Ted and Tosca were planning to coauthor a book together. When I asked Tosca about it, she begged me to keep it a secret. For marketing reasons, big-name authors like to announce collaborations at special events.
I was happy to keep the secret — for seven months. And I was thrilled for Tosca, whose dark-side novels DEMON and HAVAH both got great reviews and made me think. Tosca is a wonderful, giving person, and a collaboration with Ted Dekker would be a huge boost to her career. I’ve often told Tosca that her books need more “exploding helicopters” and Ted is very much an exploding-helicopter kind of guy.
This week, Ted and Tosca’s first book, FORBIDDEN, is launching. I asked Tosca if she’d like to do a Skype interview, so we spent about three hours on Monday night chatting. I wanted specifically to get her take on collaborating on a novel. Here is the MASSIVELY trimmed down transcript of our interview:
Randy: How did you and Ted decide to collaborate? You guys in some sense are a Dream Team of writers. But how did that happen?
Tosca: Ted had heard about me through his manager and so when I wrote to him asking if he’d take a look at endorsing the re-releasing of Demon, he recognized my name, and we started talking.
The main thing was why it made so much sense. We’re both interested, thematically, in the same kinds of stories and questions. We have two totally different styles, but we’re interested in the same kinds of explorations in story.
Randy: Yes, you both have kind of a dark edge to you.
Tosca: Muhahahaha.
Randy: So then Ted came to a conference you were attending two years ago and you were so hush-hush about it, you gave yourselves away (at least to me) by being so secretive.
Tosca: Now you know that I’m miserable at keeping secrets.
Randy: Had you already agreed to collaborate at that point?
Tosca: Yes. We were on the verge of signing contracts.
Randy: I like Ted. He’s always been very nice to me. Not all big-shot authors take the trouble to be nice to mid-list authors. What was the most valuable thing about writing fiction that you learned from working with him? Aside from adding in more exploding helicopters?
Tosca: Well, there’s the helicopter thing. Aside from that, one of the most valuable things I learned is that in a collaboration, you really need to be aware of what you’re bringing to the table. The point for us was to produce something that neither one of us could do on our own.
Randy: Right, that’s extremely important. Otherwise, there’s just no point in collaborating.
Tosca: Exactly. But to do that, you have to be aware of your strengths as a writer.
Randy: Yes, absolutely. Now who came up with the storyline for Forbidden?
Tosca: We both did. We were talking about the kinds of stories and themes that interest us, and one of the things we landed on was what it really meant to be alive. What does it really mean to be human?
So we were throwing this idea around and came up with this idea: what if everyone in the world were dead, and didn’t know it? Not in the zombie brain-eating sense… But in the sense of what makes us human?
This is a story that takes place 500 years in the future, where all emotion has been genetically stripped from humans. And for me, it was really interesting to explore this idea of what motivates us more: fear… or love? Because I know I personally contend with the Fear Monster a lot.
Randy: You alone of all humanity, Tosca dear!
Tosca: I KNEW IT!!! WAAAHHHH!!! I’m going to go eat worms.
Randy: I think you know me too well to believe a word I’m saying.
Tosca: Oh. Now that I’m into my second nightcrawler, you tell me.
Randy: Because before we started this interview, I was telling you about being ready to throw up because of my own upcoming book launch. That little fear thing.
So put the nightcrawler down now, and nobody gets hurt!
Tosca: Oh, okay.
Randy: How many drafts of Forbidden did you write? And how much did the story change between Draft 1 and Draft N?
Tosca: We wrote several. The thing is, people ask all the time who wrote what, and how did we divvy up the work…
The secret is that we both wrote it. All of it. So it really took twice as long. There isn’t a sentence that is all mine or all Ted’s any more.
Randy: Wow. Yeah, that’s about how John Olson and I worked.
Tosca: It’s had several passes in order to achieve that voice that is not me … or him … but something entirely new.
Randy: Did you divide up the first draft, or did one of you do the first draft and the other edit it from there?
Tosca: Some chapters it was me. Sometimes it was Ted. Who took which chapters? The world will never know! Though I can tell you that any time anyone has guessed… they’ve gotten it wrong.
Randy: When John and I wrote stuff, he owned one main character and I owned the other. And we usually wrote the first draft for our own character. But not always. Did you work like that at all?
Tosca: Not really … though it definitely makes sense. We spent a lot of time talking before each section, each chapter, about what was going on, what would happen … our vision for the characters and the scene.
Randy: Yes, you pretty much have to do that, or somebody gets disappointed.
Tosca: And we found that to be crucial because it turns out we’d often be like, “Hmm. I see him being a bit different …” They turned out to be great conversations. But it takes a ton of time to get on the same page. As you know.
Randy: Oh yeah, it can drive you nuts sometimes. But it’s also incredibly energizing when you’re working with the right person.
If I were to ask Ted what he learned about the craft of fiction from you, what would he say?
[Long pause while Tosca texts Ted to ask him this question.]
Tosca: Ted says he’s watching TV with LeeAnn. So I’m taking that as a go-ahead to say that he learned how brilliant I am. That I am, in fact, the goddess of writing.
Oh wait. He just texted… So he says that he’s come to really appreciate my use of language, which is what I love to do … and conversely, I’ve learned more about pacing from him.
Randy: Yeah. Exploding helicopters.
Tosca: Exactly. Because that IS pure poetry. The thing is, I truly believe that we have many strengths–as people and as … authors … and that there are things we can definitely learn and improve on. Though some of them will never be our trademarks, because we aren’t wired that way.
Randy: I hear you. Every strength has its own shadow, as John always told me.
Tosca: So I may never have Dekker-esque pacing. He may never have Lee-like prose … or Ingermanson Exploding Helicopters … But we can definitely learn more.
Randy: When you have two people writing with different strengths, you get binocular vision. That’s powerful.
Tosca: Absolutely. And I think some things are innate … some can be learned … and some just can’t be learned that well. And so the real challenge comes in trying to really capitalize on our strengths, and manage those areas where we are less strong, even if we’re never GREAT at them.
Randy: Yes, I’ve learned a lot from you about the beauty of language.
Tosca: Aw, thanks, Randy.
Randy: You’re writing another book with Ted right now, correct? What’s that about, if you can talk about it?
Tosca: Right. We have three planned at this time in the Books of Mortals series. We were going to put one out every September, starting this year, but the response has been so great, that the publisher actually begged us to put them out faster. So we’re hard at work on Mortal, which will now release June 2012. And we’ll go right into Sovereign after that, which will release a few months later, in October.
ACK!
Randy: Holy moly! That’s fast! Well, you probably have to get back to writing, so I should let you go.
Tosca: No! This is my only socialization time! You can’t make me leave!
Randy: I suppose we could barbecue some more nightcrawlers and pork out!
Tosca: Mmmm. Nightcrawlers. Can I turn the questions around and ask you about your upcoming release?
Randy: Um … sure. I don’t think I’ve ever been interviewed by my interviewee before, but you go right ahead. This is your show.
Tosca: So, I have to ask (I’m not going. You can’t make me leave!)–I hear you and John have a release coming out the end of this month. Can you confirm or deny this rumor??
Randy: I’ll confirm it. Oxygen will rerelease as an e-book on September 28. The paper version will be available a few days later. (Don’t ask why. It’s complicated.)
The book came out 10 years ago, and we got the rights back to it not too long ago, so we’ve been editing it relentlessly for months now.
Tosca: So when you edit a book that you wrote before, what is that like–what changes?
Randy: We get to fix all the things we hated in the first version.
Tosca: LOL! Oxygen is … what number in the number of books you and John have written together?
Randy: That was our first. We still look back on those days writing together as some of the happiest times we ever had.
Tosca: Did you take away any lessons from that first book that you took into your next collaboration? As far as working together?
Randy: We learned that you must NEVER write a scene without having seen the one that came before it.
And we learned that we worked best by each editing IN stuff that we are strong in, rather than editing OUT stuff the other guy is good at.
We also learned that you get a lot stronger book when you are merciless in editing it.
Tosca: Ahhh…. good point. How many books have you and John written together?
Randy: Just two. We’d love to write some more.
Tosca: Just two, but at least one of them was up for or won a Christy, right?
Randy: Both of them were Christy finalists. Oxygen actually won. And it was named by the New York Public Library to its prestigious list of “Books for the Teen Age.”
Even though we were writing for adults, not teens.
Tosca: That’s right. I knew they got critical notice. So … I know both you and John. And I know how you guys love to write together. Did it ever feel like work?
Randy: That’s one of the great things about working with John. Everything’s a game. He’s a ton of fun. Can’t imagine why he puts up with me.
Tosca: You guys really cook up some great stuff together. Mad scientist style.
Randy: I think writing should be fun. If it isn’t, then why do it?
Tosca: True. Especially because you guys are such good friends. Writing is normally so lone-wolf.
Randy: OK, one more question for you: What’s your favorite part of the writing process? Planning? First drafting? Editing? Destroying it with an ice pick?
Tosca: Ice Pick. Definitely.
Randy: Somehow I knew. It’s that Vulcan mind melt thing. Well, I think we’re done. Thanks so much! I know you’re busy.
Tosca: Thank YOU!!!
Here’s some more info on Ted and Tosca’s book FORBIDDEN:
Three books. Two authors. One last chance for humanity.
Visit the Books of Mortals website and get the short story prequel to Forbidden, “The Keeper” free there. When you sign the Book of Mortals you are entered to win a pile of cool stuff through the end of the month–including a trip to Rome, which is where the story takes place.
Many years have passed since civilization’s brush with apocalypse. The world’s greatest threats have all been silenced. There is no anger, no hatred, no war. There is only perfect peace… and fear. But a terrible secret has been closely guarded for centuries: every single soul walking the earth, though in appearance totally normal, is actually dead, long ago genetically stripped of true humanity.
Fleeing pursuit, with only moments to live, a young man named Rom stumbles into possession of a vial of blood and a cryptic vellum. When consumed, the blood will bring him back to life; when decoded, the message will lead him on a perilous journey that will require him to abandon everything he has ever known and awaken humanity to the transforming power of true life and love. But the blood will also resurrect hatred, ambition and greed at terrible risk.
Set in a terrifying, medieval future, where grim pageantry masks death, this tale of passionate love and dark desires from master storytellers Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee peels back the layers of the heart for all who dare take the journey.
Here’s a photo of Ted and Tosca signing books at a recent trade show. From left to right, Sharlene Maclaren, Tosca Lee, and Ted Dekker.
Here’s a YouTube video of the trailer for the book:
And here’s a photo of Tosca and me three years ago at an awards banquet. Tosca is the one on the left:
Is there a rule on how many scenes your novel requires? What are the typical number of scenes in a novel and how do you know if you’ve got too many or too few?
I am finishing up the scene list spreadsheet you recommend in the snowflake model for writing fiction. I am super excited to move on to the next stage, the actual writing. However, I have found that I only have about 60 scenes, and you mention that you normally have over 100 for your novels. Is this too few? Do numbers of scenes vary greatly from novel to novel? Am I possibly not understanding something about scenes that I need to know? I have a page estimate of 320-350 pages, so the novel won’t be short. Furthermore, the scenes I have outline the plot well, I’m saying I don’t think I will need a whole lot more scenes. Should I be concerned?
I know you have addressed what a scene is in some detail, but I’m worried that I might be puting too much in to my scenes if I have to few of them in the finalized scene list.
Randy sez: Different writers are different. Some writers have chapters that average only 2 or 3 pages long. Others are much longer. Since each chapter contains one or more scenes, that means that scenes can be very long or very short.
I’ve written scenes that were less than 100 words. I’ve written scenes that ran longer than 3000 words. On average, my scenes run about 1000 words, which is four double-spaced pages. Since my novels typically run over 100,000 words, that means I end up with about 100 scenes.
There aren’t any rules on the scene length, as long as the story works. You should write the scenes to the right length for your story.
I would guess that most novels have anywhere from 50 to 200 scenes. It might be an interesting exercise to go through some of your favorite novels and count the number of scenes. But a far more interesting exercise is to look at individual scenes and ask why the author wrote it to that particular length. Did she put in too much or too little? How would you have written the scene different?
It’s always easier to analyze somebody else’s work than your own. But analyzing theirs will help you when you go to write your own.
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 can’t seem to complete my first ever “bad” first draft. I’ve berated myself to no end as I struggle to complete just one of the many novels I’ve started and stopped writing over the last couple years, never able to get past the first couple hundred pages, which is when I tend to hit a block, usually seconding guess my story. And yes, I admit, am a chapter-one-aholic (Re-reading and re-writing chapter one . . . a lot!)
Writing classes, workshops, and conferences; critique groups; following blogs like Randy’s; reading a ton of craft books (including “Writing Fiction For Dummies); reading specific genre novels; writing every day for hours . . . Snowflaking, outlining, pantsing, storyboarding . . . I feel like I’ve done it all in hopes of gaining the willpower to keep moving forward. And I continue to do each these things, all the while trying to reach my goal to finally type the words “The End” on the blank last page of my completed novel.
I love writing, and I’ve been writing every day since I fell in love with the art a little over two years ago. I have so many stories I’m interested in writing, filed away — on my computer, on many sticky notes, in stacks of notebooks, in my ever-buzzing brain . . . Is there something out there I haven’t tried to cure me of this so-called hitting-a-wall illness?
One thing I haven’t tried is a writing mentor. Would someone like me benefit from a personal writing mentor to guide me, coach me, push me along the way? Could that be the magic pill I need to get me off the starting block and finish a first draft so I can move on to the next steps?
Any advice — or a magic pill! — you have to offer is greatly appreciated, Randy! Your blog has so many wonderful articles with great advice and interesting tidbits. Thank you for that!
Randy sez: If I had a magic pill to help people finish what they start, I’d be Xtremely rich. I started working on a magic pill like that once, but . . . then I got interested in something else.
I plead guilty to the same sin. I start more things than I finish. My only consolation is that it’s probably impossible to do the reverse. (How could you finish more things than you start?)
A mentor might be the answer. When you go to the gym, you probably work out a lot harder if you have a personal trainer there to crack the whip or urge you on.
I’d love to have a mentor, but I don’t. Instead, I have my writing buddies, and when I need help in getting things done, I turn to them.
Rebecca, do you have a writing buddy? Somebody to whom you can be accountable?
There are two basic kinds of accountability: carrots and sticks.
A carrot is a reward for good behavior; a stick is a penalty.
I tend to respond better to sticks. When I start having motivational problems, I talk to my writing buddy John, and we set up specific behaviors that I have to meet, on pain of paying a $10 fine. I can afford the fine, but I’d rather eat broken glass than pay a fine for something as stupid as not getting out of bed on time. So this works well for me.
Rebecca, for you, the desired behavior is to produce a certain quota of pages per day for your novel. (You probably want to exclude weekends.) Or possibly you might want to produce a certain quota per week. The rule is that the pages have to be on one particular novel and you’re not allowed to quit until the novel is finished. No excuses allowed. You either put out the pages, or you pay up the fine.
See if this works for you. Find a writing buddy and set up an accountability system. You’ll be amazed what you can do when you have to. And you’ll be amazed at how small a fine it takes to produce the right behavior.
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.
The publishing world is changing so fast that a newbie novelist can’t help feeling confused by all the options out there. Now that e-books are hot, hot, hot, should an unpublished writer try to self-publish herself or should she go with a traditional publisher?
Randy I want you to pretend you are a new author and would have your first book completed and ready to submit in six months to a year from today. Would you go the traditional route of getting an agent/publisher or would you self publish as an ebook and why would you choose that route?
This is the timeframe I am looking at and since the market is changing so rapidly I am concerned about going one way or the other and having it be the wrong decision. If I go the traditional route and ebooks take an even larger chunk of the market I may waste precious time marketing a book that no publisher will take because I am not a proven comodity.
If I go the ebook route and am not able to market it effectively my book could fail due to my lack of marketing abilities.
Lastly most of us dream of getting one of our creations turned into a movie, if don’t go the traditional route have we made this dream impossible?
I love your ezine and like so many have writen my novel using the snowflake method and can’t thank you enough!
Randy sez: Wow, Lisa, that’s a tough decision. Two years ago, I’d have automatically said, “Go with the traditional, royalty-paying publisher, because your odds of making it big as a self-published novelist are roughly one in ten million. Whereas your odds of making it big with a traditional publisher are roughly one in a hundred thousand.”
That was then. This is now. Now I’d say that your odds of making it big are about the same, either way: About one in a hundred thousand.
Of course, it’s not necessary to “make it big” to be a happy, successful author. I define “making it big” to be this: Your first novel earns you more than $250,000.
A disclaimer is in order here. I don’t know the real odds of making it big. One in a hundred thousand seems to be about the right order of magnitude. It’s a guess. Might be high. Might be low.
What about if you lower your sights just a bit and think about earning, say, $5000 on your first novel? That’s a lot easier, but it’s still no cakewalk. Hundreds of novelists are going to be able to hit that level of success this year. Probably more than 1000. If we assume that there are 300,000 wannabe writers out there who want to publish their novel, then your odds of earning a $5k advance are probably one in a few hundred. It’s doable.
Now the big question: What if those writers avoided the traditional publishers and went the e-book route? How would they do?
Absolutely nobody knows the answer to that question. My best guess is that some would do better, some would do worse, but on average, they’d probably average about $5k. With $2 royalty per book, they’d only have to sell 2500 copies in a year to do that. That’s a couple of hundred copies per month. Maybe 7 per day. It’s doable. A lot depends on their willingness to market themselves. Those willing to work hard could do Xtremely well.
What about the rest? What about the hundreds of thousands of wannabe writers who aren’t yet writing well enough to sell to a traditional publisher? Would they do better by e-publishing?
That’s easy. Of course they would. For these authors, the traditional route would earn them $0, and you can’t do worse than that. Whereas by e-publishing, they could easily earn dozens of dollars.
So if your writing is not yet up to snuff, you can get in the game by e-publishing and you can earn a few bucks. You will almost certainly not earn very many bucks. But you will earn something.
Should you go that route? Here’s my opinion: If you’re not yet good enough to get published by a traditional publisher, then self-publishing won’t hurt you, but it won’t noticeably help you either. Your best bet is to put your energy into improving your craft.
In my view, self-publishing is most advantageous for the A-list authors. Authors whose name alone sells zillions of copies of their books. An author like that who self-pubbed at a price point of $2.99 would (I believe) see much higher sales than he would by publishing with a traditional publisher (who would want to price the hardcover at $26.99 and the e-book at $14.99.)
I’m guessing here, since I don’t have hard numbers. Very few people have hard numbers. We’ll know more when Barry Eisler’s next novel comes out. (Barry recently turned down a 2-book deal for half a million dollars in order to self-publish.)
Self-publishing would also be a big advantage for a midlist author whose publishers haven’t ever quite figured out how to market her. (There are tens of thousands of these authors out there.) Publishers do their best, but they have a lot of authors, and if they can’t get a handle on how to market them all, you can hardly blame them.
A midlist author who took the time to market herself well would very likely do much better by self-publishing. How do I know that? Because there are a fair number of midlist authors who are very quietly doing exactly that RIGHT NOW. Read the last several months of Joe Konrath’s blog to see interviews with a number of them, and references to many more.
Now finally, I’ll answer Lisa’s question, which was intensely personal. What would I, Randy, do if I were just starting out as a novelist? I’m going to assume Lisa means, what would I do if I had my current set of skills, which include the ability to write an award-winning novel and the ability to market myself online.
See, the answer to that is easy: I’d self-publish myself. Every publisher I’ve worked with has had a hard time figuring out how to market me. (Except for the publishers of WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, who had no trouble at all figuring out how to market me, because I told them how.) I can’t blame my other publishers. I didn’t know how to market myself either, so I could hardly expect them to know. I’m a weirdo, and weirdos are hard to figure out how to market.
But now I do know how to market my work. Here, my weirdness actually helps. Weirdos are Xtremely easy to market, once you’ve figured out exactly what they are and why they’re different from everybody else on the planet. So it makes perfect sense to e-publish myself in the current climate.
What do I mean by the “current climate?” I mean simply this. Currently, traditional publishers are paying no more than 25% royalties on e-books. (That’s 25% of the money received from retailers, not 25% of the retail price of the book.)
Most authors consider that 25% rate to be unfairly low. Insanely low. I know that the publishers have their reasons for keeping the royalties at that level. But I still don’t think it’s a remotely fair royalty rate, and I don’t know a single published author who thinks it’s fair.
Eventually, I believe that publishers are going to raise their royalty rates on e-books. I have no idea when, but I think it’ll happen. I don’t know if they’ll raise it to a fair level (which I would define to be somewhere north of 50% of what they receive.)
In the meantime, I think a midlist author can simply do better by e-publishing herself (if she has any marketing sense at all). That’s the “current climate” in the publishing world. That could change tomorrow, or it might take ten years.
Here’s something you probably learned in kindergarten which is still true: You can’t make people play fair, but you can choose to play in a different sandbox.
So if you think you’ll do better by not going the traditional publishing route, then you can try riding the e-ticket. And if you think you’ll do better with a traditional publisher, then do so. You have options. Act in your own best interest, whatever that is.
Lisa also asked about movies. The fact is that your book has a vastly better chance of being made into a movie if it sells a lot of copies. So if you can sell a zillion copies of your book with a traditional publisher, then that’s your route to moviedom. If you can sell a zillion copies by self-publishing, then that’s your ticket. Either way, let’s be brutally honest, a movie is a long-shot. Probably won’t happen. Try not to have an aneurysm if it does.
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.
Every novelist hits the point, sooner or later, where they think they just might not actually have any talent. What do you do in that case? Should you just throw in the towel? Or muddle forward? How do you know if you’re any good?
I’ve decided a novelist must produce amazing writing AND an interesting story to continue pursuing novel publication with any real, honest hope of succeeding. Even amazing writing must be interesting or it’s not all that amazing.
If a wannabe novelist can be very honest with herself and accepts that she may be a good writer but a mediocre story-teller, and can perfectly picture the finished product she desires but realizes her execution of that goal falls painfully short, and she is beginning to tire in her efforts to improve, what do you suggest she do at this point in her life? I can make it easy on you and give you some multiple choice answers.
Take a vacation to somewhere other than Boring, Oregon.
Take more workshops and read more craft books. While setting your toenails on fire.
Take another vacation but don’t start making a habit of it.
Grit your teeth and keep working on the wretched novel.
Put noveling aside and write something that makes you smile and gets lots of positive feedback from people because beneath the fiction fatigue, you know you were created to communicate something of value and encouragement to others and you miss that.
Get some cheap c-4 and blow your computer to Jupiter. Pop some corn and invite the neighbors to watch, but make room for the S.W.A.T. trucks.
Randy sez: Well, Camille, you’re about due for some angst. You’ve been writing now for three years or so (or is it four?) And you still haven’t sold your novel, and you’re thinking it’s maybe all just some sort of pipe dream that you’ve been smoking for the last few years and maybe you’re a no-talent wannabe that ain’t never going to make it to the gonnabe stage.
This is a valid question. I’ve been writing fiction for 23 years now, and I’ve seen plenty of writers who just didn’t get published. Loads of them. I’ve also seen plenty of writers who did. Some of them went on to win awards, hit best-seller lists, and all that good stuff.
If you’re a discouraged writer, how can you tell whether you’re mediocre or destined for glory?
The bottom line is that you probably can’t. You’re too close to your own career, and you can’t see what’s obvious to other people.
I had this problem for a long time, and I solved it, ultimately, by just slogging through and getting published. But it meant that I spent about eight years in misery.
There’s really an easier way. Ask an experienced published author (one who knows your work) if you’ve got the talent to make the grade. After you’ve been writing for a few years, you either have it or you don’t, and anyone with some experience in the publishing world can tell if you do or don’t.
I happen to know Camille and her work pretty well, since she’s in my local critique group. So I’ll make this Xtremely easy.
Camille is going to get published. I don’t know when. Not sure if it’ll be that first novel she finished awhile back that’s been making the rounds. Not sure if it’ll be the one she’s working on now. I think either of them could sell. Or maybe her third book will be the winner. But I know for sure that Camille’s got the goods. So I just plain don’t see how she can fail.
Oh yeah, sure, there’s one way. She could quit. But Camille’s not a quitter, so she’s not going to.
I’ll bet a number of my Loyal Blog Readers are in the same seat Camille’s in right now. You’ve been writing for a few years. You’ve had some near misses and plenty of kudos but no contract yet. You’re frustrated and tired and angry.
I’ve been there. It wasn’t any fun. I spent 10 years writing fiction and the only thing I sold in that time was one short story to a local computer magazine for $150. That’s $15 per year. I worked it out once–it was three cents an hour. And I didn’t get paid a dime until Year Ten. That really sucks.
Then in the eleventh year, I sold a nonfiction book. And a novel. Yes, both in the same year. Funny how that worked out.
My story is pretty common. A lot of writers took years and years to break in. I know plenty of novelists who took longer than I did. And of course I know a few writers who sold the first thing they wrote with what looked like hardly any effort. I don’t feel superior to the ones who took longer and I don’t hate the ones who got there quicker. The publishing life is one dice throw after another.
If you want a safe, easy career, then you’re going to have to go into something that safer and easier. Try lion taming. That looks safer to me than fiction writing. Or try brain surgery. That takes about the same amount of training as writing a novel, but I have this weird hunch that it’s easier.
Nothing I can do will change the fact that fiction writing is hard and unsafe. I wouldn’t change that if I could.
Because maybe that’s part of what makes it fun.
Camille, you’re going to get published. If I turn out to be wrong by some unlucky chance, and you don’t get published in the next ten years or so, then you can come and slap me silly. But I have a good track record of spotting winners, and I know you’re a winner, so I’m just not worried.
What’s a writer to do when she’s in this boat? Carry on. There are three basic things that every novelist has to do to keep improving:
Keep writing.
Keep getting critiqued.
Keep learning by reading those pesky how-to-write-fiction books.
I don’t know ANY writers who are improving who don’t do all of these things.
Carry on, Camille. When you sell your first book, we’ll do an interview here on this blog. Remind me when that happens.
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.
When writing your novel, do you absolutely have to have a villain? Can the “bad guy” be society? Can it be the environment?
I went out of town a couple of weeks ago to go to a writing conference (had a wonderful time, saw many of my friends, made a number of new ones) and have been in recovery since then. Conferences are great fun, but they’re exhausting.
I just finished reading your e-zine article about villains. Thanks. Sort of. I don’t have a ‘person’ who is a villain in my book, I’ve just called ’society’ my antagonist. I’m confused about whether I ‘need’ a person to thwart my MC, or…well, maybe I’ve missed the boat (it’s ok, only a first draft is done…loads of opportunity for writing in stuff during the editing process!). I have loads of conflict and disaster and whatnot (I DO pay attention to what you tell us!), but no ‘villain’. Do I need to make up someone in particular who causes pain? Thanks!
Randy sez: The short answer is no. You don’t have to have a villain to make a novel work. It’s perfectly OK to have society be the cause of all your lead character’s ills. It’s perfectly OK to have the environment be the “villain.” It’s OK to have your protagonist be his own worst enemy.
Having said that, let me suggest that evil becomes more Evil when it’s personalized.
It’s one thing for Katniss Everdeen to be battling the Evil System in THE HUNGER GAMES. But the heat goes up a notch when the Evil System crystallizes in the person of President Snow.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS would be a powerful story of the battle between good and evil if all the bad guys were orcs, wargs, trolls, balrogs, and dark-hearted men. But by personalizing Evil in the form of Sauron, J.R.R. Tolkien gave us a more intelligent and dangerous foe.
Likewise, the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter series are vile enough, but they are stronger Death Eaters because Lord Voldemort stands behind them. Destroying Voldemort then becomes the tangible goal that symbolizes the victory over all Death Eaters.
So Nicole, you don’t have to have a villain if you don’t want to. But your readers may find your story more powerful if you find a way to bring your evil society to a sharp point, in the form of one person who symbolizes all that’s wrong with your society.
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’ve been writing for a little bit now, but I hardly ever finish what I begin. When I come to a block in my writing I either put it aside or try to outline what happens next. Thinking that if I know what happens next, the story will flow better. But in eality, it’s the opposite. It’s like as soon as I know what’s going to happen I can’t write it. I physically can not write. The entire plot crumbles and I’m left with half finished stories. Once I know what happens I can never return to those days when I simply wrote what came to me. When my characters told me the story as I went. It’s like knowing how the story unfolds eliminates all desire to actually write it, and nothing I do can ever bring me back to where I previously was. No matter how long I wait, how hard I try to forget the outline, I just can not get the story to flow again. The few times I have tried to force the writing, it sucked.
I’ve known about this for a little while now, and I do try to stay away from outlining, but sometimes I forget and do it anyway. And then I end up where I am now. Unable to move forward with my novel and so frustrated that I contemplate throwing everything I have. Any suggestions for how to fix my problem, or how to prevent it?
Randy sez: You don’t have a problem, Molly. You can write fine by the seat of your pants. What’s going wrong for you is that you’re trying to use a solution you don’t need for a problem you don’t have.
That solution is preplanning your fiction. It’s designed to help writers write when they get frozen by not knowing what comes next.
For many writers, that is a GREAT solution. I hear all the time from writers who came across my Snowflake method of designing a novel and it liberated them, because their brain just isn’t wired to write by the seat of the pants, and they had simply assumed that all writers write that way. (Some do, including Stephen King, Jerry Jenkins, and many, many, many others.)
But that solution is not for you, Molly. I’ve been in this business too long to believe that we’re all wired alike. We aren’t. Write the way you were made to write.
Write by the seat of the pants. Don’t plan. Just write. That’s your natural style. That’s your creative paradigm. The worst thing you can do is to try to write using a creative paradigm that doesn’t fit you.
Having said that, let me add that you’re still not off the hook on building a story with great story structure. My Snowflake method is designed to help you find a strong story structure and well-formed characters before you write your first word. If you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer, you need to do that hard work AFTER you write your first draft, not before.
If you need help in figuring out all that, let me selfishly recommend my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, which explains all about story structure, characters, and a whole lot more. I’ll unselfishly recommend STORY ENGINEERING by my friend Larry Brooks, which will do exactly the same thing. Also, PLOT & STRUCTURE, by my friend James Scott Bell. Also . . .
You get the picture. There are a pile of books out there that explain what your fiction needs to be like in its final draft in order to get published. Be aware that when you write by the seat of your pants, your first draft is almost certain to not be in publishable form yet. You’ll have to work hard to clean it up. That’s no problem. Plenty of writers work through 5 or 10 or 20 drafts to edit a horrible first draft into shape.
It’s that simple. Not everybody should outline or Snowflake. Some people are just destined to write seat-of-the-pants. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Good luck, Molly, and shoot me an e-mail when you get your novel finished, so I’ll know you got it done and I’ll know that I was right.
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.
Ever wondered why in the world authors collaborate on writing a novel? After all, writing fiction is incredibly hard work, even when it has to be done inside a single brain. Why add all the communication problems that inevitably arise when you try to divide up the work? What’s the gain?
I have noticed that a couple of your novels were written in collaboration with another author (John B. Olson). I have recently embarked on a collaborative novel project with a friend and fellow fantasy writer, and so I am interested to know about your experience of working with another author.
My questions relate primarily to the process of collaboration: How and why did you decide to collaborate? When you were planning the novel, how did you negotiate any differences of opinion? How did the writing process work? (i.e. How did you divide the writing between you?) How was the publication process different (if at all) to having a novel published as an individual author? And finally, what were the benefits of working with someone else rather than working alone?
I realise that there may be too many questions here to answer in one blog post, so please feel free to answer only some of them if necessary.
Also, for a little context, my co-author and I are unpublished writers who are at roughly the same stage on the stage in our writing journey: Sophmores who have a reasonable amount of writing under our belts, but haven’t really moved into the realm of thinking seriously about publication until recently. We have complementary styles in planning (he is good with strategic thinking and the big picture; I am good at details), and our writing styles are also quite compatible (we have written together before, for small projects that were about the fun of writing rather than seriously considering publication). The experience thus far has been incredibly enjoyable; we have drawn on the Snowflake Method in a number of areas to help with our plot and character planning (and it has been an enormous help!).
Thank you for taking the time to share your ideas and insights, both on your blog and your e-zineóI have personally found them incredibly helpful on my writing journey.
Randy sez: Whew! This is a big topic. Let’s take those questions in order:
Jules asked: How and why did you decide to collaborate?
Randy sez: I met John 15 years ago at a writing conference. We discovered we were both science geeks and quickly hit it off. I’m not quite sure why John likes me, but I like him because he’s fun to be around, makes me laugh, gets my jokes, and . . . hmmm, I guess that’s enough.
However, that’s no reason to write a book together. You write a book together only if you find reasons to believe that you can produce a better book together than either of you could on your own.
That means that the other guy must bring something to the table that you don’t have. And it means that you need to be able and willing to give up control of some parts of the process to him.
In our case, it didn’t take long for us to learn that the other guy could write. We do tend to write differently, but I respect and admire the way John puts words on the page. Apparently, he thinks the same about me.
We spent a couple of years exchanging a lot of email and going to conferences together and brainstorming before it ever occurred to us to coauthor something. What happened was this:
I thought John needed to focus on just one project. He’s incredibly creative and he gets way more ideas than he can ever use. So I used to hound him to “focus, focus, focus.” Finally, he sent me a list of 10 projects he had in development. I asked him which ONE of those he’d work on if he could only do one. He told me, “Number 4 on the list.” Then he made me an offer. He said, “I’ll focus on that one if you’ll coauthor it with me.”
That was a deal made in heaven, because it was an idea that I thought was brilliant AND it was a book I could contribute to. The premise was simple: An explosion on the first mission to Mars leaves four astronauts with only enough oxygen for one of them to make it to the Red Planet alive.
What I liked about the story was that essentially it was “Survivor on a spaceship.” It was a psychological thriller in closely confined quarters. But there was techie stuff too, plenty of biological tech stuff for John (who’s a biochemist) and plenty of physical science tech stuff for me (I’m a physicist).
So I agreed to work on the story with him. Since it was his idea, I insisted that his name had to be first on the cover, even if that broke alphabetical order.
Jules asked: When you were planning the novel, how did you negotiate any differences of opinion?
Randy sez: We split up the areas of expertise. John knows life-sciences, so he got to decide on any questions of biology. I’m the physics guy, so I got to decide on the rocket science stuff.
John wrote the scenes in which the female biologist, Valkerie, was the point-of-view character, and he got the final word on all Valkerie-related issues.
I wrote the scenes in which the male engineering physicist, Bob, was the POV character, and I got the final say on Bob issues.
We had a third POV character named Nate, a rough-edged teddy-bear of a guy who was mission director. It turned out that I can write a rude character easily, so I took on all Nate responsibilities.
This actually worked out very well. Our editor, Steve Laube, asked us right at the start how we’d settle any irreconcilable differences. I said that the book was John’s idea. If we couldn’t agree, then I’d back out of the project and let John take it from there. Since we both knew that neither of us could write the story alone, that was strong motivation to settle all problems amicably. We never really had any major battles. Vigorous discussions, yes, but never any hurt feelings.
I’ve been told that we were idiots and we should have had a written contract in place that spelled out what could go wrong. OK, so we were idiots. Maybe God protects idiots, or maybe we were just lucky. But we both often said that we thought we were lucky to be working with the other guy.
I still feel that way. I’ve known John now for fifteen years and he’s my best friend, aside from my wife.
Jules asked: How did the writing process work? (i.e. How did you divide the writing between you?)
Randy sez: Gack! We had to learn how to do that. At first, we thought we could speed things up by planning things in advance and then just writing the scenes simultaneously. So we tried that and found that it just didn’t work. John would write a scene and I’d write the one that was supposed to come right after it. And they didin’t connect emotively.
Writing fiction is mainly about getting the emotive stuff right. Style and plot and concept and theme matter, but you can screw up all those and still score with your reader if the emotional impact is right. And we weren’t getting it right.
We both had day jobs, so that presented a problem. We solved it by simply planning things carefully.
On Sunday nights, we’d call up on the phone and work out exactly what would happen in every scene for the next 3 chapters or so. We’d define who the POV character was, and that would determine who got to write the scene. Then we’d assign time slots, something like this: Randy writes the next “Bob” scene on Monday morning and emails it to John. John revises it as needed, and writes the follow-on “Valkerie” scene Monday night. Randy revises that Tuesday morning and makes sure that it’s in sequence with the “Bob” scene. Tuesday night, Randy writes a “Nate” scene. And so on, through the week. We were on a tight schedule, so we couldn’t afford to miss a time slot.
Jules asked: How was the publication process different (if at all) to having a novel published as an individual author?
Randy sez: Essentially the same. We pitched the concept verbally to an editor at a writing conference. John did almost all the talking (because he’s better at verbal pitches than I am). I just nodded wisely and said, “Uh-huh.” We did our research in parallel. We wrote the proposal, submitted it, and sold it within 7 weeks, without an agent. (That would be a lot harder to do now, but it’s still possible.) The process was very much the same process throughout, except that some things (like the contract) had to go through both John and me.
Jules asked: And finally, what were the benefits of working with someone else rather than working alone?
Randy sez: John’s strengths are in concept development, pitching the book, female characters, and emotive writing. My strengths are in fleshing out a storyline, male characters, making the logic work, and project management. So our strengths were highly complementary. And likewise, our expertise in the techie aspects was complementary. It just made sense to work together on this project.
You didn’t ask about the possible hazards of coauthoring, but I’ll give them.
First, you might lose your friend. This didn’t happen to us, but it’s happened to others. Writing puts stresses on a friendship, and if it can’t handle it, then either the book or the friendship will go. Both John and I felt that we valued the friendship more than the book. If you go into it with that attitude, you have a good chance of coming out OK.
Second, you might simply have styles that are too different. John and I have different techniques, but we agree on the main elements. We also have different management styles, but we were able to take the best of both.
Third, you might have different skill levels. A book in which one coauthor writes much better than the other is going to be a problem, unless one of the authors acts as the expert and the other acts as the writer. This can work extremely well, and there are some teams in which one author does all the writing and the other provides some valuable skill.
Fourth, you might have different work ethics. Writing is hard, and not everybody has the time or ambition to put in the time it takes. In our case, the writing took an enormous amount of time. We always liked to say that John wrote 80% of the book — and I wrote the other 80%. It takes more work when you’re constantly revising the other guy’s work. But we think it turned out better than either of us could have done.
Would I coauthor again with John? LOL, of course! In fact, I did do it again. Our first novel OXYGEN was very well-received, so we wrote a sequel, THE FIFTH MAN. (Both are now out of print. We’ll be releasing both of these books soon as e-books.)
After writing these books, we both had other books to write that weren’t so well-suited for coauthoring, so we went on to write those on our own. But we’ve often talked about how much fun we had and how much we want to write something together again someday. I’m sure that’ll happen when we get the right project. We’ve been tossing around some ideas lately.
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.
Blog of the Day: Check out the second half of my interview with Larry Brooks on his blog at www.StoryFix.com. Larry asked me my opinion of the current crisis in publishing, and I gave him my latest thoughts on the subject.
Sometimes you can get yourself tied in a knot about whether you should or shouldn’t write the story you want to write. When in doubt, my rule is simple. Just write the story.
I’m new to your blog (it’s great btw!) so forgive me if you have already answered a similar question.
I would like to write YA fiction and I have an idea I really like, but I’m unsure about whether its concepts/themes will appeal to teenagers. The obvious solution would be to write it for adults, and I would be happy to do so, if it weren’t for the fact that my protagonist is a 16-year-old girl.
It will be speculative fiction set in a somewhat dystopian future, with themes strongly addressing beauty and the media. But as much as it will be a story about this world, it will also be a story about a teenager who’s just trying to find out who she really is and where she fits in the greater scheme of things.
As a 21-year-old, both appeal to me, but as I sit in the middle as a reader of both YA and adult fiction, I’m afraid this idea won’t fit in either market.
Should I abandon it, change it, or just write it anyway?
Randy sez: Write it.
Teens are a lot smarter than many people want to think. They don’t mind big issues. If you’ve read THE HUNGER GAMES or the Harry Potter series, then you can’t possibly doubt that. When I was in my teens (feels like about two years ago), I didn’t like it when adults assumed that I wasn’t smart enough or serious enough to get what they were talking about. Teens who read a lot are plenty smart and plenty serious.
Teens do like to be entertained, same as every other age group. So the same rule applies to writing YA as applies to writing every other category — write a good story. Make it entertaining. Make it move the emotions of your reader.
Other than that, there aren’t any rules that can’t be bent, bashed, beaten, or broken.
Just write the story. If it’s any good, then you should be able to sell it or self-publish it and gain a following of loyal fans. If it isn’t any good, then figure out why.
Then go write another story. Over and over again for the rest of your life.
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.
Blog of the Day: Larry Brooks just posted Part I of a two-part interview that I did with him last weekend. Larry knocked himself out coming up with what I consider the best set of interview questions I’ve ever been asked. I knocked myself coming up with answers that were (I hope) worthy of the questions. I even used the tongue-in-cheek phrase “mentally impoverished scoundrels” but I won’t tell you the context. You have to read the interview, which you can find here: “Interview With a Superstar Writing Mentor — Randy Ingermanson.” I’m still laughing at the title, which Larry came up with, not me. Have fun!
