Created by Randy Ingermanson - "the Snowflake Guy"
America's Mad Professor of Fiction Writing

How To Be More Original

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in Books, Craft, Fiction Writing

As a novelist, it’s hard to be original. How do you learn to be more original, when it feels like your writing is too much like the books you’ve been reading?

H.B. posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve been reading lots of YA recently (hunger games, divergent etc) and recently started writing my own novel. I am only a teenager, but I write in the hopes that I will edit my work and publish it when I’m older. Anyway the book I’m writing at the moment seems too close to other books I’m reading – it has attributes that are very similar to novels in the same genre but I’m not coping on purpose, it just happens as I’m writing! What should I do?

Randy sez: There’s an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I suspect that the problem is that you’re reading books that are too similar to each other. You’ve read the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series, but those are quite similar books. Naturally, when you go to write your own novel, you’re going to produce something like the things you’ve been reading.

Solving the Problem

The solution is pretty simple, but it’s going to take some time.

Read more.

Read widely.

Read stuff you like.

Read stuff you don’t like.

The more you read, the more you’ll expand your horizon on what can be done as a novelist. That will keep you from getting into a rut.

Some Recommended Books

 I’ve tried to read at least something in practically every major category, even categories that I don’t particularly like. Here is a random collection of books that have helped broaden my horizons. It’s a very small selection from my library, but it cuts across all the main categories:

  • The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. The quintessential fantasy series for adults.
  • The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling. The quintessential YA fantasy series.
  • Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. An exciting science fiction novel about an earth-orbiting Battle School where pre-teen military cadets are groomed to save the earth from an alien invasion.
  • The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. A massive historical novel set in 11th century England about the building of a cathedral and the internal politics of a monastery. Most of Ken Follett’s fans think this is his best novel.
  • The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel. A long historical novel set in ice-age Europe about a four-year-old human girl adopted by Neanderthals.
  • Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. A time-travel romance novel set in 18th century Scotland about a British nurse in 1945 who falls in love with a Scotsman after finding herself unexpectedly transported to 1743.
  • Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. The quintessential historical romance novel, about a strong-willed self-absorbed young woman growing up during and after the Civil War.
  • The Chosen, by Chaim Potok. A literary novel about a pair of genius Jewish teen-age boys from rival religious communities who start out as enemies and become best friends.
  • The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. A dystopian futuristic novel about a young woman being used as a concubine in a world where most people are infertile.
  • The Godfather, by Mario Puzo. The quintessential Mafia novel about an organized crime family fighting for survival in the brutal New York underworld.
  • The Firm, by John Grisham. This was Grisham’s breakout novel about an ambitious young lawyer hired to work in a cushy law firm who discovers that his company is a front for a money laundering operation.
  • The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy. This was Clancy’s first novel about a Soviet sub commander who tries to deliver the latest submarine intact to the Americans at the height of the Cold War, with the entire Soviet navy in hot pursuit.
  • The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John LeCarre. In 1961, a washed up British spy is approached by East German spies hoping to persuade him to defect. In my opinion, the best spy novel ever written.
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The quintessential series of mystery stories and novels.
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. A non-linear story about a man with a genetic defect that yanks him back and forth in time—and the woman who loves him.
  • Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen. A classic romance novel about a young English woman who has the audacity to want to marry for love, and the three very different young men who pursue her.
  • Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead. A bestselling YA novel about a group of young vampires in a special academy where they learn how to defend themselves against the evil Strigoi.

I could go on much longer, but this is enough for now. Most of these are classics in their category, and I’ve read almost all of them several times. These cover most of the major categories of fiction. Most of them are not suitable for children, but I will note that most of my writer friends were reading books not suitable for children at a very early age. And so was I. People who are destined to be writers tend to grow up fast and read books that would horrify their parents.

How to Be More Original

My opinion is that every novelist needs to read thrillers. And romance novels. And fantasy. And science fiction. And classics. And dystopic novels. And YA. And horror. And historicals. And mysteries. And religious fiction.

You don’t have to read a lot of books in a category you don’t like. But you should read at least enough to prove that you really don’t like the category. The goal is to learn what’s out there, and what can be done with the written word. My list above is tilted a bit towards thrillers and historicals, because that’s what I like.

Reading in a wide variety of categories is the best inoculation I know against the dread disease of accidentally writing like your favorite author.

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 the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The Road to Glory for Novelists

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in Career Management, Fiction Writing

How do you reach your goals in fiction writing as fast as possible? Is there a shortcut that will get you there quicker? What’s the secret to finding the road to glory for novelists?

This is the time of year when people make those dreaded New Year’s resolutions. Some of them stick, but we all know that most of them don’t. Why?

The problem is that we all want a quick success. We all want a five-day rush to glory.

I want that. You want that. We all want that. It’s not a crime.

It’s just a mistake.

There is a road to glory, but it’s not a five-day trip. It’s not a five-week trip either, and generally not a five-month trip.

But a five-year road to glory is quite possible. If you make a five-year plan right now, and if it’s the right five-year plan for you, then in five years, you will be amazing.

So if you’re going to make a New Year’s resolution, think long-term, not short.

The Five-Year Road to Glory

You should be asking now how anyone could possibly sprint for five years.

Short answer: you can’t.

The road to glory is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

And the road to glory is not paved with good intentions. That would be the road to hell.

The road to glory is paved with good habits. A set of things you do every day, every day, every day for the rest of your life.

And it’s easy to make the mistake of trying to set up all those good habits right now, when the good feelings from New Year’s Eve are still with us. Just set up fifty excellent habits that will put you on the road to glory.

But that’s not going to happen. It’s hard work to build a habit. Extremely hard work. It takes about three weeks of doing the same thing every day before that habit sticks. You can’t possibly build fifty habits all at the same time.

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about creating a habit of writing every day. That’s a great habit to have. It’s one of many you’ll need on the road to glory.

And what are the others? What is the list of habits you need in order to ride the road to glory?

I wish I could give you a simple list, but that would be simple-minded.

Every writer is different. Your list is not my list and my list is not yours.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to know the whole list right now.

All you need to know is the next one on the list.

One at a Time

Start with the writing-every-day habit that I blogged about just lately. If you didn’t start that habit two weeks ago, read that blog post and start now. Do it for a solid month.

And during that month, be thinking about what the next habit should be. Maybe it’ll be daily exercise. Or a daily reading plan. Or daily flossing. Or daily something else. It could be anything that will make you a better, stronger, smarter, more productive, more amazing writer. You have a whole month to figure out that next habit. Pick a dynamite one.

When next month rolls around, start that new habit. Maintain the old one, but start the new one. And remember, keep it ridiculously easy for the first three weeks. After that, you can ramp it up if you need to. Building a habit is hard, so make the actions of the habit as easy as you can when you’re starting out. Eventually, those actions may get quite demanding, but by then, the habit will be in your blood and in your bones.

A Habit of the Month

One new habit, every month, for the next five years.

Call it the Habit of the Month club.

That’s my prescription for the road to glory. It’s the slow road, yes, but it’s the one most likely to get you there.

If you choose your habits well, build them carefully, and maintain them conscientiously, in five years, you are going to astonish yourself by what you’ve achieved.

My habit this month is to get up every morning at 6:30 AM. I have particular trouble getting out of bed in the morning. It’s not about the earliness of the hour. It’s just as hard to roll out at 6:30 as it is to roll out at 9:00. Once I actually roll out, I don’t have any trouble getting moving. But it’s that three seconds of putting feet on the cold floor and sliding out from under the warm covers. That’s hard. The best solution seems to be to do it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Sure it’s awful, but do it fast and get it done. So that’s my Habit of the Month, this month.

I’m on Day 3. In a month, I hope to be solid on this, so I can move on to something more fun.

That’s my plan.

What’s yours?

Your Novel’s Best Reading Level

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in Craft, Fiction Writing

What reading level should you shoot for in your novel? Twelfth grade? Second year of college? Fourth year of college?

I am paraphrasing a question that I saw posted recently on a writing site. Never mind where, because I’m sure it’s been asked a million times.

It’s a good question and deserves a good answer.

But First, A Little Story

When I was in high school, I used to read a magazine aimed at high-school students.

I remember one writer in particular who wrote often for this magazine.

This writer never used a short word when a long one would do. Never.

I got the feeling that he wrote his stories first in normal English. Then he hit the thesaurus to “raise the reading level.”

I never could figure out why he chose to inflate his words. It didn’t make the story better. It made it worse.

It was awful. I got to hate that writer’s work.

And I came to believe three things about writing:

  1. Short words are better than long ones.
  2. Short sentences are better than long ones.
  3. Short paragraphs are better than long ones.

Then I Went to Grad School

Eventually I graduated from high school and went to college and majored in math and physics. Then I went to grad school at UC Berkeley and got my PhD in physics. Along the way, I read a ton of journal articles and technical papers.

Here’s what I learned.

Smart people know how to make hard things simple. Part of the genius of Einstein was that he could take a hard problem and make it simple. Same with Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the twentieth century. Ditto for Ed Witten, who may be the smartest theoretical physicist of all time. These guys tackled hard problems. Using simple words.

I realized that any fool can solve a hard problem the hard way. It takes a genius to make a hard problem simple.

Your Mission in Writing Fiction

Your mission in writing fiction is to give your reader a powerful emotional experience. Period. If you also want to make your reader think, learn, reason, or fall into a deep pit of existential despair, feel free to try.

You have a better chance of doing that if your reader actually finishes your novel. Which they will do if you give them a powerful emotional experience.

You don’t need big words to be deep. To be deep, all you need is to have deep ideas. Almost always, short words are better than long ones. And short sentences are better than long ones. And short paragraphs are better than long ones.

So What is the Best Reading Level For Your Novel?

Now we can get back to the main question. What reading level should you shoot for in your novel?

The answer is simple: As low as possible, while still being able to tell your story.

I’ve heard that James Patterson writes his novels at the fifth grade level. You may have heard of him. He’s been the best-selling writer of fiction in the English language so far this century.

I’m currently writing a series of novels that my editors tell me is the best stuff I’ve written yet. They say it’s deeper than I’ve gone before. I’m glad they think so, and I hope the books do well in the market.

I got curious yesterday and ran a few of my recent scenes through an online analyzer that tells you what grade level you’re writing at. I was hoping it would say at most grade 6. Even better if  I could get it down to grade 5.

The first scene I tested came in with a grade level of 3.2. I thought that might be just a lucky fluke, so I tried the scene just before it. That had a grade level of 1.7. Then I tried the scene before that. It had a grade level of 3.1.

I wrote another scene yesterday, and I ran that just now. The level was 3.3.

I’m seeing a trend here. My new series looks like it’ll have about a third grade reading level.

Sounds good to me.

Isn’t That Just Dumbing Your Story Down?

You may be thinking that I’m telling you to “dumb things down.”

No, not at all.

There is a huge, huge, HUGE difference between “simple” and “stupid.”

I believe it takes a lot more brains to write “simple” than to write “complicated.” If you don’t believe me, go find one of Albert Einstein’s books and read it. You’ll find it’s clear and simple and definitely not stupid.

I just now ran this blog post through the analyzer. The reading grade level for this post is 3.7. I blame it on the existential despair thing.

How to Use The Force to Write Your Novel

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in Fiction Writing, Production

How do you find time to write your novel when there isn’t time to write? When your life feels like a treadmill to nowhere? When it seems like you’re in exactly the same place you were a year ago?

I hear from writers all the time asking how to manage their time so they can write the novel of their dreams.

The Most Powerful Force in the Universe

There’s a secret to doing this. I’m going to let you in on that secret right now.

If you want to write a novel…

You need to make it a habit to write every day of the week. (Or every weekday. Or every weekday plus every Saturday. Or whatever schedule fits your life.)

The most powerful force in the universe is force of habit.

Why You Need a Writing Habit

Writing a novel is a major project. You can’t slam it out in one sitting, and you can’t slam it out in a week of all-nighters.

Writing the first draft of a novel is going to take you at least a hundred hours, maybe two hundred. Maybe even a bit more. That’s a boatload of work.

You have to tackle it one chunk at a time.

You do that by creating a habit of writing every day.

It sounds like I just made things twice as hard.

It sounds like now you’ve got two major projects on your plate:

  1. Writing your novel.
  2. Building a habit to write every day.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. In fact, I just made things a whole lot easier. You don’t have two major projects on your plate. Now you have only one:

  1. Building a habit to write every day.

Once you’ve built that habit, getting your novel written will be automatic. It’ll get done purely by force of habit.

Four Steps to Building Your Writing Habit

Now how do you build a habit to write every day? Here are the four steps, and you can start the ball rolling right now:

  1. Decide how long you’ll write every day. Make this ridiculously easy, like 5 minutes per day.
  2. Decide what time you’ll write every day. It’s best to make it the same time every day.
  3. Set an alarm on your phone to go off every day at the time you’re supposed to write.
  4. When your alarm goes off, set the timer on your phone for your set period of time. And then write for exactly that long, and no more.

“Ridiculously Easy” is the Key

You may be thinking that 5 minutes per day is too little to get anything done. Don’t you have hundreds of hours of work ahead of you? How are you going to get anywhere on only 5 minutes per day?

The answer is that the 5 minutes per day is just a gateway to bigger things. You’re building a habit right now, which is already a hard task. Building a habit normally takes about three weeks of doing the same thing every day.

During that first three weeks, you want the habit itself to be ridiculously easy. So easy you can’t fail. So easy, you’ll be jumping at the chance to do it. So easy that you do it EVERY SINGLE DAY.

After three weeks, that habit will be firmly in place.

That’s the hard job.

Now all you have to do is maintain that habit, every day, every day, every day.

Ramping Up Your Habit

And by the way, now you can start boosting the amount of time you’re writing. If 5 minutes feels just too short, now you can ramp it up to 6. Or 7. Or even 8.

Don’t go hog-wild and boost it immediately to 15 minutes per day. You’ll get to 15 minutes soon enough, but keep the amount of time ridiculously easy.

You always want your writing time to feel ridiculously easy. That’s the key to doing it every day.

Every week, add a bit more time to your daily quota.

In a few weeks, you’ll be logging 10 minutes every day, or maybe 15 or 20, and now your habit is much more firmly wired into your brain.

After two months, you’ll look back and see that you worked on your novel EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR TWO WHOLE FREAKING MONTHs.

Which is pretty cool. That puts you way ahead of the hundreds of thousands of wannabes out there.

In three months, maybe you’ll be up to 30 minutes every day. Every single day. And that’s probably all you need to write your novel in a year. You can build a writing career on 30 minutes per day. Or if you want to go really crazy, an hour a day.

Just keep it to a ridiculously easy level. A level you know for sure you can hit every day.

You’re allowed to run overtime now, whenever you feel like it, but make sure you always know that you don’t have to. You’ll run overtime only when you want to.

In a year, you’ll very likely have the first draft of your novel written, and you’ll look back and say it was ridiculously easy.

Force of habit. The secret Jedi mind trick that will make you amazing.

New Snowflake Method Audiobook

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in Book Promotion, Fiction Writing

Snowflake Method AudiobookI’ve just released an audiobook version of my best-selling book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. The book is voiced by a terrific narrator, James L. Rubart.

Many of my Loyal Blog Readers are familiar with this book, so the short version is that you can get a copy exclusively at Amazon, Audible, or iTunes. Here are the links. You might want to click through just to listen to the audio sample, which Jim did a wonderful job on.

  • Amazon (The audiobook is FREE if you start a trial subscription with Audible.)
  • Audible (The audiobook is FREE if you start a trial subscription with Audible.)
  • iTunes

What the Book is About

If you don’t know what the book is about, here’s the long version:

A number of years ago, I developed a simple and easy 10-step process that walks you through the development of a novel and gives you a roadmap to write your first draft. This “Snowflake Method” works wonderfully well for people who like to have some idea where they’re going before they go there.

The Snowflake Method page on my web site has now been viewed more than six million times over the years, and the Snowflake Method is used by tens of thousands of writers around the world. I use it for writing my own novels, and it works well for me.

In 2014, I released a book titled How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. The book has sold extremely well and continues to move loads of copies every month. In the book, I don’t just tell you how to design a novel. I SHOW you how—in a story. I do that because I believe that’s how people learn best—by living it, rather than being told about it. A story lets you live what you’re learning.

So my book is a story about a young woman who dreams of writing a novel someday, but doesn’t know how to get started.

Our heroine goes to a writing conference, where she meets a novelist and an agent. During the conference, they help her create the blueprint she needs to write her novel. But there’s trouble afoot—one of her mentors is shot. And the other mentor faces an even worse fate. Can our heroine stay on course, map out her story—and possibly right a deep wrong? (Or at least bring in World Peace?)

Just for fun, I gave the characters some crazy names. Our heroine is named Goldilocks (yes, the famous one, all grown up now with a husband and kids). Her mentor at the conference is Baby Bear, who doesn’t seem to remember that one unfortunate day when he met her long ago. The agent who’s interested in Goldilocks is The Big Bad Wolf—and you might wonder exactly why he’s so interested in her. There’s an annoying, know-it-all writer named Little Pig who wants to hire Goldilocks for his own pet project. And there’s a loony guy named Robin Hood who keeps asking Goldilocks to come visit his hideaway in Sherwood Forest.

As you can guess, I designed the story for the book using the Snowflake Method. At the end of the book, you’ll see the entire Snowflake design document that I used to write the story.

Even If You’re Not a Snowflaker, You Still Need One Thing…

Now not everybody wants to plan their novel before they write it. Some people prefer to write by the seat of their pants, and that’s a perfectly good way to write a novel. But in the end, all novelists use the same basic theory of story. So a big part of my book is given to explaining that theory. Showing that theory in action. Because everybody needs to know how story works.

In the chapter that talks about the First Disaster, for example, there’s a major disaster. In fact, it’s the First Disaster of the book, and it happens at exactly the point in the story where a First Disaster should happen. Likewise, the chapter on the Second Disaster explains why you need a Second Disaster, and does it with a disaster placed exactly where it should be—right smack at the midpoint of the story. The chapter that teaches on Proactive Scenes is written as a Proactive Scene. The chapter on Reactive Scenes is written as a Reactive Scene. It’s all very meta.

As a bonus for my readers, I’ve decided to change my discount coupon policy for my wildly popular Snowflake Pro software. If you buy any version of my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, you now get a 50% discount on Snowflake Pro. This is a change of my long-standing policy, and I think it’s way overdue.

You can get all the details on the discount coupon here on this page.

Once Again, the Audiobook Links…

If you’re interested in the audiobook, those links once again are:

  • Amazon (The audiobook is FREE if you start a trial subscription with Audible.)
  • Audible (The audiobook is FREE if you start a trial subscription with Audible.)
  • iTunes

Have fun!

 

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