Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

The publishing world has changed radically in the last couple of years, thanks to those pesky e-books. Do the old rules still apply? Does chaos rule? Or are there ways to survive and thrive in the new environment?

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

I’ve been reading what you have been posting regarding self e-publishing with a lot of interest lately. It seems like it’s almost creating a “wild west frontier” type aspect in literature, in which a lot of the traditional “rules” are being thrown out because there are simply better ways to do things.

My question regards the writing itself- with this new freedom for authors to publish what they want, how they want, do you see any trends towards fiction that might have been considered “unmarketable” in a more traditional situation? In this new system that seems to be developing, are there any forces besides market that will dictate what fiction is now? For instance, if I want to write something crazy and experimental (but hopefully entertaining) is there a better chance that I will find a market willing to read it in an e-publishing situation where I am taking most of the marketing onus upon myself?

Randy sez: It’s an exciting time to be alive, if you’re an author.

For the last five hundred years or so, the process of publishing a book was a very expensive process. (In today’s world, despite massive improvements in personal productivity for editors and their colleagues, it can still cost more than $50,000 to produce and publish a book, and that’s not counting the advance that must be paid to the author.)

That meant that large corporations needed to underwrite most books. Corporations who had a high priority to not lose money.

Big corporations aren’t bad people. They aren’t people at all, at least not people who bleed when you poke them. They’re organizations. Their goals are different from yours. When you go to a big corporate publisher to get your book published, you have to take their interests into account, or there’s no deal.

Furthermore, even if you do find a publisher to publish your book, typically you sell it rights to publish in a limited geographic area, such as North America. Getting a book with North American rights into the hands of Australian readers means either an expensive mailing of the printed book from North America to Australia, or selling the Australian rights to an Australian publisher, where it may not have the same economies of scale that it does in the larger US market.

E-publishing changes all that. For a few hundred bucks, you can get a graphic artist to make you a decent cover. For a few thousand dollars, you can get a full-service edit by a really good freelance editor. For a few hundred more dollars, you can find somebody to convert the book to the usual e-book formats. Everything else is free in the e-book publication process. Many e-book authors prefer to do it all themselves, so it’s possible to do the entire book at no cost (other than the cost of a computer, which is a one-time expense.)

So now just about anybody can e-publish their novel. But that doesn’t mean that anybody is going to buy it.

Certain of the old rules still apply.

Quality matters, just as it always has. Excellent writing is more likely to sell than crummy writing.

Marketing matters, just as it always has. If nobody knows about your great novel, nobody is going to buy it.

Luck matters, just as it always has. The nice thing now is that there are more ways to get lucky.

In the old days (before last year), getting lucky meant finding the right agent and the right editor at the right publisher at the right time with the right book, the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing.

If you screwed up on any of those, then your luck wasn’t likely to be all that great. And not all of those were under your control. If your publisher screwed up any of the things that it controlled, your luck was just as bad as if you, personally, had screwed up. Authors didn’t control their own destiny.

That road to nirvana is still open, and a few authors are getting lucky all the time. Hooray for them! We should all wish to get lucky that way.

But there’s a new road to nirvana, e-publishing. Now you need the right e-book at the right time with the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing. And all of those are under your control.

You have fewer things that you must get right with e-publishing, and if any of them get screwed up, it’ll be your fault. Which can make you long for the bad old days when you had “Big Corporate” to blame.

It’s interesting to see how many disaffected authors are out there, eager to “stick it to The Man” by doing an end-run on big corporate publishers. I’m not one of those disaffected authors. I have many editor friends who work for big publishers (although it’s been disconcerting to see so many of them lose their jobs in the last couple of years). I don’t hate big publishers. They’ve produced great books over the years. They’re now trying to drive an aircraft carrier through the rapids, and if they’re slow to react, that’s the nature of the beast.

In the old days, big publishers had numerous editors, sales-people, and marketing folks who functioned as “gatekeepers.” Their job was to make sure that a book didn’t lose money. Most of the time, they succeeded, although in most cases, the book in question didn’t actually earn much either. The few big winners paid for the entire party.

That is one of the things now changing with e-publishing. There is no gatekeeper. Not really. (Unless you’re writing something so irredeemably evil that the online publishers refuse your book.) Only market forces determine what will sell.

In the old days, every publisher had its own rules for its gatekeepers. Part of the hassle of getting published was finding a publisher whose gatekeepers would sign off on you.

So yes, Jonathan, if you’ve got something wacky and experimental and you want to try it, go right ahead. The categories are blending. If you want to write an Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones, go right ahead. No gatekeeper will stop you, and the market will tell you if that’s a viable category.

But remember that you still need the Big Three: quality, marketing, and luck. Without those, your books won’t sell.

I teach quality and I teach marketing, but I’ve not yet figured out how to teach luck. So all I can do is wish you well, along with everyone else who sits down to write the next great Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones.

Have fun!

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.

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

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.

What if you tried outlining your novel and it doesn’t work? What if it freezes you so you can’t write? Are you defective as a fiction writer?

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

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?

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

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.

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

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!

Novelists talk about scenes all the time. But not all of fiction is composed of scenes. What is it that makes a scene a scene?

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

I have a question regarding story structure. While I was reading through one of your blog posts about a strategy for writing a synopsis you described how the typical novel has 80 to 100 scenes and that some scenes are more exciting than others so that you get “sequences of scenes” (clumps of 3 to 5 scenes where the tension rises to a peak). Well, what I was wondering is how do you define a “scene”?

According to your article “Writing the Perfect Scene” a scene has either a Goal, Conflict, Disaster or a Reaction, Dilemma, Decision. But what exactly IS a “scene”?

Consider the beginning of the first Harry Potter Book. It opens talking about the Dursleys. Clearly JKR had a goal when she wrote it: to get the reader to buy into the premise that there is a secret world of magic. But where’s the CHARACTER’S Goal, Conflict, Disaster or the CHARACTER’S Reaction, Dilemma, Decision? Who exactly IS the POV character? If it has none of these things, then what makes it a “scene”?

But my question extends beyond that. Where does setting fit in? When I think of the word “scene” I think of a scene in a movie or a play: a specific location at a specific time where a relatively significant part of a story occurs. Using this definition there could conceivably be more than one “scene” per Goal, Conflict, Disaster unit.

When you say a typical novel has 80 to 100 scenes do you mean it has 80 to 100 Goal, Conflict, Disaster/Reaction, Dilemma, Decision Units? Or do you mean it has 80 to 100 of the “movie” scenes?

Randy sez: There is more than one question lurking here. Let’s take them in order.

First, what is a scene? That’s relatively easy, and David got it pretty close to the standard meaning. A scene is a sequence of events that happens at a particular place and time and that moves the story forward. The scene consists mostly of “showing” though it may contain some “telling.” The scene has a particular structure that gives the story motion.

When we say “showing,” we mean that the author is using the following tools:

• Action.
• Dialogue.
• Interior Monologue.
• Interior Emotion.
• Sensory Description.

When we say “telling,” we mean that the author is using the following tools:

• Narrative Summary
• Exposition
• Description

I have blogged often about all of these tools, so I won’t try to define each of them here. Being a selfish money-grubbing author, I’ll also note that these are explained at infinite length in my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES.

[And by the way, the paper edition of my book is currently selling at half-price on Amazon, and my publisher is giving a $5 rebate, which is a pretty good bargain for those few remaining souls who don’t yet have a copy.]

Second, how shall we categorize the opening of Harry Potter? That’s easy, now that we’ve laid out our tools. The opening page or so of Harry Potter is a brilliant use of exposition to bring the reader up to speed on the incredibly Mugglish Dursley family. We learn that they are all very sorry excuses for human DNA carriers and that they have a secret. We desperately want to know that secret, because we don’t like the Durleys.

That’s the first page of Book One of Harry Potter. The rest of the paragraph uses quite a bit of narrative summary to take us through a day in the life of the Dursleys, the day that Harry Potter’s parents are killed and Lord Voldemort loses his grip on this mortal coil. The day that baby Harry is foisted off on his none-too-willing Dursley relatives.

As the chapter progresses, we see increasing amounts of “showing” and decreasing amounts of “telling.” We really don’t see much of a scene until Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall arrive at the Dursley home and then Hagrid shows up with Harry.

So the second half of the first chapter qualifies as a scene. It’s in fact a proactive scene, in which the goal is to place Harry with the Dursleys. The conflict is that they just aren’t all that suitable, but they’re all the relatives Harry has. The setback is that Harry is left with them and when Mrs. Dursley comes out in the morning, she actually screams when she sees him.

It’s a bit easier to launch a fantasy with this kind of narrative summary, because fantasies are grown-up fairy tales, and fairy tales have a long history of beginning with narrative summary. You’ll notice that very few police procedurals, romances, thrillers, or any other kind of fiction begins with “telling.”

Third, David asks whether a typical novel has 80 to 100 scenes of the type that I define in my book and in my Writing The Perfect Scene article, or whether the novel has 80 to 100 movie-like scenes. The answer is the former, although it seems to me that most movie scenes have a similar arc to novel scenes. I could say more about that, but I think this post has gone on long enough.

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 often hear that flashbacks in fiction are always bad. Is that true? If not, then how do you know if the flashback in your novel is working? And what do you do if it isn’t?

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

I am writing in first person and having difficulty with inserting back story. Currently my dilemma is with flashbacks. To use or not to use them, and if so how much is too much, or when is the best use of them? Frequently when I resort to a narrative in a flashbacks place I think what I have written is boring and stiff. What is your take on the flashback?

Randy sez: A flashback has one thing going for it and one thing going against it.

What’s good about a flashback is that it’s written in “immediate scene”–meaning that it’s shown happening right here, right now, minute by minute, without summary. That’s the most compelling kind of fiction (although if your novel is 100% immediate scene, something is probably wrong).

What’s bad about a flashback is that it’s yesterday’s news. Or last year’s news. In extreme cases, it can be last millennium’s news. It’s backstory. Flashback is a compelling way to show backstory, but it’s still backstory.

If you’re going to use a flashback, a generally good rule of thumb is to wait until the reader absolutely, positively MUST know the information contained in the flashback. Then show as little of the flashback as possible. Then return to the main story.

No reader on the planet ever said, “Wow, I’m going to buy this book because I’m dying to hear what happened before it takes place!”

Nope. Readers buy a book because they’re dying to hear what happens DURING THE MAIN STORY.

Backstory is a necessary part of any story. Strong backstory makes a strong story. But in writing fiction, practice the fine art of withholding information. That creates mystery. It creates suspense. It keeps your reader reading.

Can you hold off on showing any flashbacks until at least 25% of the way into your story? If not, then maybe the real story isn’t your story. Maybe your real story is the backstory and you should have started sooner.

Can you hold off on showing any flashbacks until you’re 75% of the way into your story? If so, you might have a real killer of a story. Remember, as long as you’ve got a secret, your reader wants to know it. Once you’ve told the secret, your reader no longer wants to know it.

Delay, delay, delay on that pesky backstory, whether it’s a flashback or any other kind.

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: Barry Eisler recently turned down a two-book deal for half a million dollars with a major publisher in order to self-publish in e-book format. Is Barry crazy? Not hardly. Read a mammoth 13,000 word dialogue between Barry and his buddy Joe Konrath on e-books, legacy publishing, agents, self-publishing, and money on Joe’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

In every scene of your novel, you have a lead character, and you can get inside this character’s head. But how do you handle the supporting characters? How do you work them into your scene?

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

I am a little confused with how non-POV characters are supposed to be properly included in the magical “motivation-reaction unit”. If the reaction part must include reaction from the POV character, where does a different character fit in? An antagonist character will fit in the motivation part, but what about a supporting character that is helping the POV character? I don’t want to swith point of view too rapidly for fear of confusing the reader, but I’d also like to include secondary characters in my scenes more often.

Randy sez: For those of you who are just joining us and aren’t sure what a “motivation-reaction unit” is, you can get up to speed instantly by reading my article, “Writing the Perfect Scene.”

Just to clarify Kyle’s question, the “reaction” part of the MRU is everything that the point-of-view (POV) character does, says, thinks, and feels. The “motivation” part of the MRU is everything else that any other character does or says and everything happening in the environment.

So both the antagonist and any other supporting characters are classified as part of the “motivation.”

This of course seems very weird, because aren’t motivations supposed to be thoughts of the POV character? The answer is yes, they are in a different context, which is why I’ve never liked the term “motivation-reaction unit.” The word “motivation” has multiple meanings, and in this context, it means “anything other than what the POV character does, says, thinks, or feels.”

My rule in writing is to show each character in a separate paragraph. If the paragraph is focusing on the POV character, then the paragraph is a “reaction”. If the paragraph focuses on anyone else or anything else, then it’s a “motivation.”

It really doesn’t matter whether a character is the antagonist or merely a supporting character. Either way, anything they say or do is a “motivation.”

Just as an example, let’s make up a few snippets of an imaginary scene involving three characters whom I’ll give the random names, Scarlett, Ashley, and Rhett:

Scarlett grabbed for Ashley’s hand, wondering how she could convince him. “Oh, Ashley, darling. If you marry me, I’ll be the happiest of women!”

Ashley stepped back. “No. I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m the wrong guy for you. You’re a miserable, greedy, grasping, selfish bitch, Scarlett! You deserve somebody like . . .”

“Like me,” Rhett said. “I’m a miserable, greedy, grasping, selfish jerk. Scarlett and I would be perfect together.”

Scarlett blushed scarlet. “Oh, no, Captain Butler! How could you say such a thing?”

Randy sez: Scarlett is the POV character. This is obvious from paragraph 1, where we hear her thoughts. The first and fourth paragraph are “reactions” because they focus on Scarlett.

It’s hard to say whether Ashley or Rhett is the antagonist in this scene, and it hardly matters. All that matters is that neither one is Scarlett. Paragraphs 2 and 3 are “motivations.” One focuses on Ashley, the other on Rhett. It’s quite fine to have two or more paragraphs of “motivation” in a sequence, each focusing on a different character.

Fiction is like a game of ping pong as seen from one side of the table. The action switches from the camera side (the POV character) to the opposite side (any of the other characters). When the ball is on the camera side of the net, we call that a “reaction.” When the ball is on the other side of the net, we call that a “motivation.” It really doesn’t matter how many players are on the other side of the net. All that matters is that the camera side only has one player — the POV character.

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.

A friend of mine referred me to a blog post today on “Why Some E-books Cost More Than The Hardcover” by Nathan Bransford.

The article is worth reading because it explains why an e-book can now cost more than a p-book (a paper book). It shows how, until about a year ago, Amazon actually sold some e-books at a loss in order to gain market share. At that time, Amazon would buy an e-book at a wholesale price that was typically 50% of the retail price set by the publisher. Then Amazon would sell the e-book at $9.99, which in some cases cost them several dollars per book.

When Apple announced the iPad and the associated iBookStore, they promised to sell books on an “agency model” in which the publisher would set the retail price and Apple would sell an e-book for that exact amount and then pay the publisher 70% of that price, keeping 30% for itself.

Soon after Apple made this announcement, Amazon made the agency model an option for e-books. 5 of the 6 major US publishers took the agency model option then, and now all of them use this model.

Amazon still sells paper books using the wholesale model, while selling e-books using the agency model. This can lead to cases where the hardcover edition of a book on Amazon is about the same price as the e-book (or possibly even cheaper).

Bransford backs this up with some calculations, but the results are misleading because in most cases, the assumptions are incorrect. Quoting from the article:

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of wacky about the wholesale model vs. the agency model: the publisher made more money per copy with the wholesale model. 

Again, napkin math for a $24.99 hardcover. Let’s say the e-book would have sold for $9.99 at Amazon in the old days but now the publisher charges $12.99:

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $12.50 (roughly 50% of $24.99 hardcover retail price)
Amazon: - $2.50 (selling at $9.99)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher:  $9.09 (70% of $12.99)
E-bookseller: $3.90 (30% of $12.99)

Randy sez: The napkin math would be correct, if its napkin assumptions were correct. But one of those assumptions is usually wrong. E-books are NOT usually assigned the same retail price as a hardcover these days. E-books are usually assigned a retail price no higher than the retail price of the trade paper edition, which is typically close to half the retail price of the hardcover.

[Note added on 3/15/2011 as a result of a comment left by Nathan: Even when there is no trade paper edition of a book, the e-book version is generally sold at a price point no higher than a typical trade paper book. I looked at today’s Amazon Top 100 Kindle list and found only 3 e-books priced as high as $14.99. A few were at $12.99 or $11.99. Most were at $9.99 or less. I can’t recall seeing any recent e-book on Amazon in which the retail price for the e-book was anywhere close to the retail price for the hardcover. There are some cases where the retail price for the e-book is about the same as the heavily discounted price for the hardcover, but the retail price for that hardcover is close to twice the retail price of the e-book.]

Let’s wipe off that napkin and do the math again and let’s also figure in the author’s cut, assuming 25% of the publisher’s net, which is the absurd standard royalty these days:

The hardcover price is $24.99 and the trade paper price is $12.99. We’ll assume the e-book price also gets a retail price of $12.99.

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $6.50 (50% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $3.49 (selling at $9.99 and paying $6.50 to the publisher)
Author: $1.30 (25% of publisher’s take of $6.50)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher: $4.55 (35% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $8.44 (selling at $12.99 and paying $4.55 to the publisher)
Author: $1.14 (25% of publisher’s take of $4.55)
[Note added 3/15/2011: This is a revision of figures I showed in the original post, where I was using a 70% royalty rate. An alert reader reminded me that Amazon pays only 35% to the publisher for e-books priced above $9.99.]

Clearly the agency model benefits Amazon, costs the publisher and the author, and screws the consumer, who ends up paying $3.00 more for the book and therefore ends up buying 23.1% fewer books because if the consumer has a fixed number of dollars, those dollars will only buy 9.99/12.99 as many books at the higher price point.

That reduction in sales volume needs to be accounted for too. The simplest way to do that is by subtracting 23.1% from the Agency model computations:
Publisher: $3.50 (76.9% of $4.55)
Amazon: $6.49 (76.9% of $8.44)
Author: $0.87 (76.9% of $1.14)

Comparing these to the wholesale model for books priced at $9.99, we see that the publisher and the author come out behind and Amazon comes out ahead.

However, the story changes pretty dramatically when we look at the agency model for books priced at $9.99, where the publisher’s royalty rate goes up to 70%:
Publisher: $6.99 (70% of $9.99)
Amazon: $3.00 (selling at $9.99 and paying the publisher $6.99)
Author: $1.75 (25% of the publisher’s take)
This is why most of the e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 or lower. The publisher does considerably better at this price point than it does at higher prices. [Amazon’s royalty is 70% for price points between $2.99 and $9.99. The royalty is 35% for all other price points. The last time I checked, the 70% royalty was paid by Amazon US only for sales to US customers; it was 35% for sales outside the US. I have not checked on royalties paid by Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK. The situation, as you can see, is complicated, and of course it is subject to change.]

What is missing here is the same set of calculations where the author self-publishes the book and prices it at $2.99, where it will sell many more copies because it is now an impulse buy:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is out of this picture)
Amazon: $.90 (30% of the price of $2.99)
Author: $2.09 (70% of the price of $2.99)

Assuming the consumer will now buy 3.341 times as many books as the wholesale model priced at $9.99 (this is just 9.99/2.99 and it assumes that the consumer only has a fixed number of dollars to spend on books and will spend them on as many books as possible), the real advantage to the author becomes clear:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is still out of the picture)
Amazon: $3.00 (3.341 times $.90)
Author: $6.99 (3.341 times $2.09)

It should be clear that low-priced e-books with an agency model massively benefits the author and the consumer (as compared to the wholesale model priced at $9.99), slightly costs Amazon, and massively crushes the publisher.

This is why we call the thing happening right now a “revolution.”

What role will agents play in the not-so-brave new world of publishing which is evolving rapidly? Does a novelist still need an agent? If so, what will that agent do? If not, where will all the agents go?

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

First I would like to thank you for the work that you are doing to help newbie writers like myself to delve into the world of fiction writing. I must say if it weren’t for your website and your snowflake method of writing, which in my structured and incredibly anal opinion is pure genius, I would still likely be flailing with the first few chapters, or more likely burning them in the nearest fireplace in frustration.

All that out of the way, the question I have is probably painfully obvious to anyone in the business but has become more and more confusing to me. I have been reading your and several other blogs about publishing and the way the business is turning away from printed books and more toward digital versions. My question however, has less to do with which direction I should go than how to get there. I understand the importance of agents and publishers if I am able to go the route of the typical printed author but what about going in the direction of e-books. Should I still look for an agent and if so what is that he/she would do. Does an agent handle the editing and promotion of a digitally published book? If an agent handles such things then do certain agents specialize in this area or would any agent be open to doing it? I guess what Iím saying is what exactly does an agent do that I couldn’t do for myself if I self published in the digital realm. I for one am excited about the way publishing is going, probably because I have no idea of what I’m talking about, but none the less, if my book turns out to be a decent story, I hope to be able to take advantage of this new turn in the publishing world.

Well that was my incredibly long winded and probably overly vague question. I hope you will excuse the lavish butt kissing in the beginning but truly your methods have helped me to do something I have always wanted to do but never had the courage to start. Thanks to you I have one scene left to write in my rough draft and then God willing I will edit and start looking for that way to get my preverbal foot in the door. Thanks again for all you’re doing and I look forward to your response.

Randy sez: I believe agents will play a crucial role in the evolving book market. The reason is simple: Agents are industry pros who understand the complex blend of craft, marketing, and career planning that writers so desperately need. Your agent is on your side. The more money you earn from traditional, royalty-paying publishers, the more your agent earns.

Having said that, what about the e-book thing? Does an agent get a cut of your self-published e-books?

The answer depends partly on your agency contract and partly on exactly what sort of self-publishing you’re doing.

If you have an out-of-print book that you and your agent agree isn’t marketable as a paper book, then you are probably free to self-publish that as an e-book with no money due to your agent. You should of course check with your agent and look at your agency contract to verify that.

Likewise, if you have an unpublished book that you and your agent were just never able to sell, then probably the same situation applies, but again you should check with your agent to make sure.

If you have an unpublished book that your agent hasn’t yet had a chance to sell, then your agent probably has the right to try to sell it for you and take a cut of the profits. Your agency agreement should specify that sort of thing.

If you don’t have an agent, then before you sign on with one, you should discuss your plans for self-publishing e-books, (if you have any such plans) and be clear in advance what books are your agent’s job to sell and which ones are off the table.

If you don’t have an agent, should you get one? That depends:

Do you plan to exclusively self-publish your work and are you willing to do all the grunt work to make that happen (or hire somebody to do so)? If so, then you don’t need an agent. You might need a marketing guru or a freelance editor or a graphic artist or a career planner or some mix of all of those. But you don’t need an agent, because an agent sells your work to publishers and receives payment for that hard work.

Do you plan to first publish your work through a publisher and let the publisher do all the e-book stuff? If so, then you definitely need an agent. The publishing contracts are becoming increasingly slanted to benefit publishers. An agent will get you a much fairer deal than you can get yourself, in much less time.

I have believed for several months that agents are going to shift towards the e-book business. There are two main reasons for this:

• Publishers are not currently giving a fair deal on e-book royalties. The almost universal royalty rate paid by publishers is 25% of monies received. This is ridiculously unfair to authors. I think everybody in the industry agrees with me on this point. I believe that a fair royalty for e-books is AT LEAST 50%, and probably a bit higher. If publishers won’t budge on this, then agents can and will provide an e-publishing service that pays the author a much higher royalty rate.
• Many authors have books that are out of print and earning nothing. They would love to put these back into print as e-books, but they’re daunted by the technology. It takes time and effort to put out a good e-book. It may require hiring a graphic artist to create a new cover. Many authors would be happy to give their agent a cut of the profits to just “take care of the problem” and get those out-of-print books back on the market.

The obvious question is, “What about a conflict of interest?” If an agent has a choice between e-publishing an author and selling the author’s work to a publisher, won’t the agent take the option that earns him the most money–even if it doesn’t earn the most money for the author?

Randy sez: Yes, I suppose there is that possibility. An agent gets a 15% cut of an author’s earnings when sold to a royalty-paying publisher. If the agent were to also earn a 15% cut on the author’s e-books, it seems to me that the whole question would become a moot point. In that case, the agent’s self-interest exactly coincides with the author’s self-interest. I might be wrong here, but that seems plausible.

It’s worth noting that agents have ALWAYS had an implicit conflict of interest whenever they represent more than one author. After all, if two authors have similar work and are both represented by the same agent, then the agent has a vested interest in promoting the more salable author harder. And furthermore, an agent may hesitate to be a jerk with a publisher on behalf of one author if that would damage other authors. In both these cases, the conflict of interest is actually pretty minor, and agents have many years of experience in dealing with them. I haven’t heard that either of these issues has caused authors major grief. Again, I might be wrong, but I just don’t see that it’s ever been a big problem.

Frankly, I’m not that concerned about the potential conflict of interest of an agent who also does e-publishing. The agent is on the author’s side, more so than anybody else.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: The world of publishing is changing incredibly fast. E-books are giving authors power they’ve never had before–the power to cheaply publish a book and market it effectively on a global scale without interference from “gatekeepers” who decide what the market wants.

Will agents still be around in 5 years? I am very sure they will, and I believe the best agents will be earning more than ever. I do think some agents are going to transition to other ventures, such as free-lance editing, book development, and e-publishing. But I see most of them continuing on as agents.

Will publishers still be around in 5 years? I believe they will, but they’ll be smaller and leaner, earning less revenue but higher profit margins. I believe they’ll be forced out of the e-book business, though. I foresee publishers being willing to die on the hill of 25% royalty rates for e-books. I foresee that authors will simply walk away from that deal. By the time publishers cave in and offer higher rates, authors will have found better, faster, and much more lucrative deals elsewhere. And authors won’t come back to publishers, except to say, “I’ll sell you the rights to the paper edition only. Take it or leave it.”

Will chain bookstores still be around in 5 years? That’s an open question, but I suspect they will. Again, they’ll be smaller and leaner, assuming they survive. They’re an endangered species, but if they can learn to sell e-books effectively, they’ll survive.

Will authors still be around in 5 years? Now THAT’S a no-brainer. You can’t have books without authors. As long as people want story in text form, we’ll have authors to write 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.