Archive | Fiction Writing RSS feed for this section

It’s A Outrage!

Posted on May 16, 2013 in Book Promotion, Fiction Writing, Sam the Plumber

“It’s a outrage!” my plumber Sam bellowed through the phone.

I held the phone as far from my ear as I could. “Um, Sam, what’s this about? I paid that invoice of yours.”

“I ain’t talking about that and you know it. You gone and double-crossed me!”

Given the massive amount of money Sam has overcharged me over the years for his dubious plumbing skills, I thought that was a bit ironic. “How have I double-crossed you?”

“I seen it just now on Goodreads! You went and … put up a free copy of that danged book of yers.”

“And that damages you how?”

“Ain’t it obvious? I paid good money fer that book three years ago when it first come out. Now yer giving it away like it’s dirt.”

“Sam, my publisher is providing some books to help me run a promotion. You know, to increase visibility.”

“Oh right, Mr. Bigshot Author. Yer book’s #1 in its category on Amazon, but you got to always be pushing fer more, more, more. When there’s other authors who got to do honest plumbing work just to put food on the table.”

“Honest plumbing work? Who might that be?”

Sam coughed. “What I meant was mostly honest plumbing work.”

“It’s been nice chatting with you, Sam, but I need to be –”

“Not so fast, Mr. Giving-Away-The-Farm. I want my money back on that book of yers that I bought.”

I walked out to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. “Hey, that reminds me. You remember that leak you fixed last month under the kitchen sink?”

“Terrible pipes you got in that rickety old house of yers. Wouldn’t be surprised if something breaks again. Real soon.”

“Sam, you must be psychic. I’m thinking I want my money back on that wretched excuse for a repair that you did. It’s leaking worse than ever and –”

“Whoa, look at the time!” Sam shouted. “Well, hey there, big feller. It’s been real nice chatting with you, but I got to be getting on to the next job. Busy, busy, busy! And congratulafications on that promotion yer running.” He hung up.

“Who was that?” my wife called from the family room.

I shrugged. “Sam the plumber. He called to congratulatify me on the nice promotion my publisher is helping me run right now on Goodreads.”

“That’s nice of him. Did you mention that the sink is leaking again?”

“Of course.”

“And what he did he say?”

I sighed deeply. “It’s a outrage.”

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Writing Fiction For Dummies

by Randy Ingermanson

Giveaway ends May 26, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

1 Comment

What If Your Story Is Unconvincing?

Posted on May 10, 2013 in Editing, Fiction Writing

What if you’re halfway through your novel and it just doesn’t feel convincing? Do you scrub the project? Keep wallowing on through the muck? How do you know what’s right?

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

I’ve had a story theme that I’ve wanted to write as a novel for 4-5 years. My first breakthrough was discovering your Snowflake method, which really helped me to get started, define where I wanted to go, and how I was going to get there (eternally grateful)…
The trouble is, now I’m half way through my second draft, and I believe that the last half of my story isn’t convincing. I know where I want to end, and I believe that I’ve told a good story to about half way along the road, but I’m really not sure that the last few miles are ones I can write as well about as the first.
Any ideas? Should I work on different endings to see if I get a breakthrough? Should I carry on regardless and edit like a devil once I’ve got some meat on the bone? Does it mean that my main characters are flawed in some way I can’t determine? Is the first part of my story misdirected in some way?
The snowflake seems to have melted…

Randy sez: First of all, congratulations on getting through the first draft! That’s a major milestone in writing a novel. I’m delighted to hear that my pesky Snowflake method played a role in your getting there. I hear from writers all the time who’ve found it helpful, and that makes me incredibly happy.

Be aware that many, many, many novelists reach the same point you’re at, midway through editing the second draft, and suddenly get hit with a bad case of the “crappies.” As in, “Uh-oh, my novel is crappy and my story is worthless and I have no talent and probably my best career choice will be sweeping streets with a toothbrush.”

I suspect the solution to your problem is pretty simple. Let me lay it out for you in three stages:

Finish this second draft you’re on. Sure, you feel a little wobbly about it right now. That’s common. It might possibly even be normal. If you’ve ever run a race over a mile distance (or 1600 meters), the third lap can be pretty rough, and that’s about where you are right now in your race to finish this book.
Get a second opinion from somebody you trust. Maybe a skilled writer in your critique group who has shown herself trustworthy in the past. Maybe a good freelance editor. But you need somebody to read the whole manuscript and give you an objective viewpoint. (“Objective” here means “somebody who isn’t you.”) You may need to pay something for this, but very good friends often do it for free.
Read that opinion, and then read through the whole manuscript as fast as you can, making a few quick notes on what you see, now that your eyes have been opened by a second opinion.

Once you’ve done all of the above (yes, it’s a lot of work, but professional writers work really hard), make the decision. Do you go on with the project? Do you walk away from it?

Either decision can be valid. If the story is fundamentally flawed and can’t be fixed, then walk away. If you’ve just lost all taste for the story and you can’t stomach working on it for one more second, then walk away. But if you see renewed hope for a way to make the story work, well then.

It might take you a month or two to get there, but when you do, email me privately on my Contact page to let me know how it turned out. I’ll be interested to hear what you learned and which way you decided to go.

Good luck!

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.

6 Comments

Those Pesky Editing Paradigms

Posted on April 26, 2013 in Editing, Fiction Writing

What’s the right way to edit your novel? Or … is there a right way?

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

I am an amateur writer, and have no idea when to begin revisions. Should I start revising the first part of my writing part way through, or begin revision once I am finished with the whole work?

Randy sez: This is a good question, and there’s no one right answer that works for everybody.

If you’ve read my book Writing Fiction For Dummies, I have a chapter on Creative Paradigms. A Creative Paradigm is a method of getting a first draft down on paper. In my book, I mention four common Creative Paradigms:

Seat of the Pants
Edit As You Go
The Snowflake Method
Outlining

Each of these is perfectly valid, and there are best-selling novelists and award-winning novelists who use each of them. Depending on how your brain is wired, you’ll work best with one particular Creative Paradigm.

Different writers use different Editing Paradigms also. I haven’t put much time into polling writers to find out their Editing Paradigms, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they’re as varied as the Creative Paradigms.

The “Edit As You Go” Creative Paradigm actually mixes in Creation and Editing very tightly. The author writes a bit (a page or a scene) and then edits it immediately. Sometimes this unit gets edited many times before the writer is ready to go on. But once the page is done, it’s pretty close to being final. Dean Koontz writes this way, and so do many other writers.

The important point is that whatever works for you is whatever works.

Here’s what works for me, and I gather that there are quite a few authors who work roughly this way:

I plan my novels in advance, working through my Snowflake method to create a Snowflake document that spells out at a high level how the story is going to go.

Then I write the first draft (usually quite quickly) using my Snowflake document as a guide. As I complete each quarter of the book, I revise the Snowflake document to be up to speed with the changing story. (A story is not fixed in stone, and neither is a Snowflake document).

During the first-drafting period, every day I do a quick ten-minute edit of the previous day’s work. (Usually, this is 2000 to 3000 words.) I fix any spelling and grammar errors and I tweak the wording. If there are obvious problems in the storyline, I fix them. That’s not common, because Snowflaking tends to produce stories that don’t have major structural problems.

Having done a ten-minute edit of yesterday’s work, I’m then primed to start work on the next chapter. I drill that out without doing any editing, and if I have time, I write another scene, up to my daily word-count.

This keeps me moving forward, and I never feel like I’m getting bogged down in a morass of words.

I organize my writing into folders. I have a main folder named “Books Written”.

Within that folder, I have a folder for each book, named with the original working title of the book.

Within each book folder, I have a number of organizational folders for Proposals, Research, Marketing, etc. The first draft goes into a folder named “Draft 1″.

When I’ve finished the first draft and am ready to start editing, I duplicate the entire “Draft 1″ folder and name the copy “Draft 2″. Then I never change anything in “Draft 1″ again. I work in “Draft 2″ until I’ve done a complete revision.

I generally do 5 or 6 drafts, and for each of these, there’s a separate folder. When I look at the files, they’re ordered nicely and it’s easy to see what’s the current draft. It’s the highest numbered “Draft” folder.

As I mentioned, I’ve never tried to figure out what Editing Paradigms other writers use, but this might be a good time to do it.

So authors, please leave a comment and describe your Editing Paradigm! There’s no prize here, other than the massive fame you’ll get by leaving a comment on the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog. And what more could you want than that?

4 Comments

Defining the Target Audience for Your Fiction

Posted on November 21, 2012 in Fiction Writing, Marketing, Publishing

So you’re writing a novel and your critique buddies want to know who your “target audience” is. What do you tell them?

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

Hello Randy,

I am a newbie at the writing. A new “writer” friend insists I must know my audience and for whom I am writing BEFORE I start my story – so I will know what those readers will be expecting/anticipating in my story.

HOW can I know this concept? Right now, I’m writing a fictional piece because I’m having fun telling a simple Baby-Boomer character story. I ain’t got no clue who all’s my “audience.”

Can you shed me some light on this particular?

Randy sez: Yes, it’ important to know the target audience for that novel you’re writing.

No, that doesn’t mean you need to have detailed demographic information about your target audience.

John Locke wrote a book on marketing that had some nice thoughts on defining your target audience. What I took away from his book is that the author only needs to know what emotional needs the book is going to fill.

Locke’s fiction features a psychopathic assassin named Donovan Creed. Donovan works for the government but takes private contracts on the side. If you took Donovan Creed at all seriously, you’d hate the guy. But John Locke’s readers don’t take Donovan Creed seriously. Donovan Creed is a fantasy.

Locke says that his male readers would like to BE Donovan Creed.

Whereas his female readers would like to DATE Donovan Creed (although they recognize that he wouldn’t make good marriage material).

Now it should be obvious that almost nobody would really like to be Donovan Creed and almost nobody would really want to date him. Fantasies don’t have to make sense.

John Locke knows the fantasies that Donovan Creed drives in the minds of his readers.

So when you sit down to define your target audience, you need to know what emotional buttons you’re planning to push in your readers. That should start with the emotional buttons that your fiction pushes in you.

My own fiction is driven by the fact that I’d like to be Sherlock Holmes. And Albert Einstein. And Indiana Jones. All at the same time.

No, that isn’t rational. I know perfectly well that I can’t literally be any of those guys. Much less all of them at the same time.

But each of those names pushes certain emotional hot buttons in me. Those emotive buttons drive my fiction. I assume that those are also hot buttons for people who like my books. So in that sense, my target audience is composed of people who want to be Sherlock, be Einstein, and be Indy, all at the same time.

There’s more to defining your target audience, of course. Part of the game is to define your category. And to know the rules and standard operating procedures for that category.

That’s most true in the most sharply defined categories, such as romance, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. Each of these has a large number of subcategories. If you write in any of these subcategories, then you really need to read a lot in that subcategory so you know what’s been done and what your reader’s expecting.

The good news here is that you don’t have to do a poll to find out the age, gender, economic status, and favorite ice cream of your target audience. Most writers have fans all across the spectrum. But those fans are fans because they’re responding to the emotional hot buttons that the author is pushing.

One last comment: When I talk about hot buttons, I’m of course not implying that you should be calculating or mechanical about your target audience. Write the sort of fiction that appeals to you. Figure out why it appeals to you. Your target audience will be the people who also find that appealing.

Recently I hired a graphic artist to create the cover for my next e-book. I love that cover. (Not going to show it here–I’ll save that for when we get closer to release of the book.)

I showed the cover to one of my friends. She said, “Wow! I love that cover! Who’s the target audience?”

I said, “The target audience is the set of people who like this cover.”

She thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. The cover hits a lot of hot buttons for me. I expect it’ll hit those same buttons for readers. And I expect they’ll like the book. And no, I really can’t say any more about it just yet.

That’s all for today. My US readers will be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow. Happy Turkey Day!

4 Comments