Randy Ingermanson's Blog: Advanced Fiction Writing, page 10

Should You Go Indie?

Should you go indie, or is the traditional route to publishing the right way for you? How do you make that decision? How do you know for sure it’s right?

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

I have been the BIGGEST advocate for traditional publishing, mainly because I thought indie publishing was for writers who either have huge followings/audience or who know in their guts that their work is not high-quality enough to be traditionally published. But I think I’m changing my mind…and considering independently publishing my debut novel. My main hesitation is that I don’t have a huge following (email subscribers/social media/real-life contacts). I have been doing my best to grow my social media followers and have recently written a story that I am serially posting on Wattpad. (I want to accumulate as many email subscribers/Wattpad fans as possible regardless of if I go indie or traditional).

My change of heart has come after querying over 300 agents for three different manuscripts over the course of the last 2-3 years and barely getting anything more than form rejections…the kind where I can tell the agent didn’t fully read my query or get to the sample pages or synopsis. From the query letter to the synopsis to the genre…I just feel like I’ve done months and months of revising, off and on, an still nothing gets me responses from agents. I’ve worked with beta readers, critique partners and hired multiple editors and a couple industry insiders, including a former agent. I get the same response: my book is very well-written, the premise is very interesting, I should just publish it myself since I’m not getting anything from the agents I query. I’ve been extremely stubborn and resistant because I do believe that I could have major success as an author and I don’t want to cheat myself out of anything. But I’m finding that having an agent represent me just might be out of the cards for my particular book/writing style. (By the way, I write thriller/suspense and contemporary romance.) I’ve also been realizing that since nowadays publishers really rely on authors to promote themselves/their books, I might as well publish my book myself and take a higher percentage of the profits since either way I will be doing the promotion myself. Besides distribution (because of my lack of audience) I’ve starting to become convinced that indie publishing is for me. Actually, I think I’ve always sort of known indie publishing would fit my books, but not ME. That’s the main battle I have daily.

A lot of people I come across have the mindset of “just put it out there.” I’m the most impatient person I’ve ever met, but just putting it out there is not my style. I want my book out last year, but if I’m going to do it then I’m going to do it right. So I guess my question to you is how do I know if going the indie route is the right decision?

Randy sez: These are great questions, Amber. I think many of my blog readers will be asking the same questions. Just to make sure everyone’s up to speed on basic definitions, here’s a blog post I wrote awhile back on what we mean by the terms “indie authoring” and “traditional publishing.” (I hope there are no people left on the planet who confuse either of these with “vanity publishing.”)

Making Traditional Publishing Work

I was raised on traditional publishing. I started writing my first novel in the spring of 1988, and finally got a novel published in the spring of 2000. During all that time, traditional publishing was the only game in town, for all practical purposes. Even back then, some entrepreneurial writers were self-publishing their work, but I never considered self-publishing because it just seemed like too much work.

And so I did what you’ve been doing, Amber, which was to write hard, go to critique groups, query agents, and generally work the system, hoping for a break. I also went to writing conferences, and that’s where my break finally came. Amber, you don’t say if you’ve been pitching your work to editors or agents at writing conferences. If you’re trying to make it in traditional publishing, conferences are the way to go.

Yes, conferences are expensive. No, you probably won’t break in right away. Definitely conferences can sometimes be incredibly discouraging, if you go in with the wrong mindset. But conferences are also the place things happen. Most of the published novelists I know got their first break at a conference—usually not their first. And of my twenty closest friends, probably eighteen are novelists, and I met every one of them at a conference.

That’s why I’ve taught at many conferences over the years. Because they connect writers with publishers better than anything else.

Conferences are not cheap. Between the conference fees, travel expenses, food, and housing, you’re looking at a thousand dollars or more for a large multi-day conference. But if you want to go the traditional publishing route, then going to good writing conferences will dramatically boost your odds of getting published.

That’s the path I chose and it worked for me.

Why Some Authors Go Indie

But ultimately I found that traditional publishing really wasn’t working for me. There are some good reasons for that. I write about themes that are mostly of interest to Christian readers. But the traditional publishing Christian industry doesn’t really do well with the kind of books I write. It took me a few years to see clearly that this was a problem.

The solution was to quit writing for that industry and go indie. And that’s been working out very well for me. My first traditionally published novel, Transgression, only sold about 6,000 copies in its trad-pubbed edition. I re-released it in May of 2014 as an indie e-book and made it permanently free on all the major retailers. As of this morning, I’ve now given away 157,632 copies. Books 2 and 3 in that “City of God” series are selling well and earning much better than they did in their first editions as trad-pubbed novels.

So the indie way has been good to me.

Amber, you’re correct when you say that most traditional publishers will expect you to do most of the marketing for your books. And you’re also correct that trad-pubbed authors earn only a fraction of the net revenue for each book sold. Indie authors earn it all. That’s a huge advantage in favor of the indie, and it’s the reason so many indies are earning tens of thousands of dollars per year. At a retail price of $2.99, the indie gets right around $2 per copy, which means that an indie only needs to move about 5,000 copies in a year to earn $10k. And that’s very doable. It’s much harder to earn $100k per year, and it’s very difficult to earn $1 million per year.

Should You Go Indie?

The core question you’ve asked is how to decide whether to go indie. That depends on you and what you want in life. Here are the main diagnostic questions to ask yourself:

How much do you want the validation of being traditionally published? Some writers don’t feel like they’re “real authors” until they’ve been trad-pubbed, and this includes some successful indie friends of mine.
How entrepreneurial are you? As an indie, you and you alone are responsible for making the book happen. The indie way requires you to do four things that your trad-pubbed cousin doesn’t have to do:

Hire a freelance high-level editor to do a “macro edit” of your book. (No author can do this for herself, because you don’t know what you don’t know.)
Hire a graphic designer to create a professional cover for your book. (Very few authors have the graphic design skills PLUS the marketing savvy to create a good cover.)
Hire any copyediting, line-editing, and proofreading services you might need for your book. (Many authors can do some or all of these tasks for themselves. You know if this applies to you.)
Format the book into an e-book. (Almost all authors do this themselves, and it’s an easy task with the right tools, but you can also hire somebody if you need to.)


How much of a self-starter are you? Some writers must have a deadline imposed by a big corporation in order to motivate them to write their book. If that’s you, then the indie way is not for you, because nobody makes you do anything.
How many books can you write in a year? Only a few trad-pubbed writers can publish more than a couple of novels per year, because their publishers don’t want them “competing with themselves”. (Cynics have argued that the trad-publishers actually don’t want the writer competing with the publisher’s other authors.) As an indie, you can write a book every week if you want to, and it’s not uncommon for indies to publish five or six books per year, or more. If you’re hyper-productive, you might want to go indie.
Which way just feels best to you? Your instincts are often right.

Make A Decision And Run With It

I don’t believe there’s any one right answer. The indie way works well for me. The trad way works extremely well for some of my friends. I have other friends who take the hybrid route, publishing with both traditional publishers and as indie authors. It’s possible to succeed all three ways. Please be aware that the odds of great success are against you, no matter which route you take. There are just over a hundred authors of any stripe who earn more than a million dollars per year.

What’s not possible is to be certain that you’re making the right decision. Life is the art of making decisions with incomplete information. Learn all you can about your options. Make the best decision you know how. Pursue your chosen path with all your strength. Then do a reality check every year or two, and give yourself the freedom to change your direction.

Good luck, Amber!

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 post Should You Go Indie? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Creating 3-D Characters For Your Novel

What if the characters in your novel don’t want to do what you want them to do? How do you motivate them to do the right thing? How do you do that believably?

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

Hi Randy! I love the website and all the books, all the information I’ve read has been very helpful. But I need help. I’ve been reading a lot of books (maybe to many) in regards to characters. For endless days and weeks, I have been trying to figure out how to develop a realistic character arc (external conflict, external motivation, but the inner conflict, inner motivation and figuring out the theme is confusing me to no end! I’m in need of a better understanding (more simplified) and guidance to a characters internal NEED and external motivation. I have the beginning of the protagonist arc. Which is a callous lieutenant who fears abandonment which causes him to stray away from relationships of any kind and also provided him the inability to forgive anyone for any kind of wrongs they did to him. I have the WANT which is surviving an invading army by any means necessary (EXAMPLE: avoiding survivors so he doesn’t have to care for them.) I have the main GOAL which is to return home, and a sub-plot GOAL (or maybe this is considered the external motivation) which is my MC wanting to return home to tell a woman that he loves her. I have the ending of the novel where the MC saves a survivor because he’s regretful for not saving anyone else and is willing to sacrifice himself in order to prevent the invading army to further their agenda of world domination.

But I can’t figure out the NEED that will drive my character to the conclusion of sacrificing himself rather than saving himself and what’s the internal conflict that will make him resist the realization.

I also can’t figure out what external motivation is considered. Is the goal of my MC’s wanting to confess his love to the woman the external motivation? Or am I missing a key factor?

As I’m sure you can imagine, since I’m missing key pieces to a beautiful puzzle, I can’t figure out the theme.

Can you help me Randy?

Also, what formula do you use when figuring out the character arc for every character?

Randy sez: Good questions, Kate! It sounds like you’re well on your way to designing a strong novel. You’re very close, in fact.

The problem you’re facing is that your lieutenant really, really wants to get home to the woman he loves, so he can tell her (and hopefully something will come of that). So why in the world would he do anything to jeopardize that Goal? Why would he risk his life right at the end of the story, to save somebody he doesn’t know?

That doesn’t make sense. As a novelist, it’s your job to make it make sense.

Here’s how you do that.

The missing link in your explanation above is something I call “Values.” Values are the magic key to creating 3-D characters. What’s a Value? I’ll give you an example, and then the definition will be clear.

The Godfather is Mario Puzo’s classic novel about a Mafia kingpin, Vito Corleone. Vito is a complicated guy. He runs a small underworld kingdom with ruthless efficiency. Vito rules by helping people. If a poor widow comes to him in tears because she’s being evicted from her apartment, Corleone can make the evil landlord change his mind. All he asks is that the widow gives him honor. Why? Because honor is the currency of his kingdom. A man who has honor has everything. Money, power, happiness, all come from honor. Nothing is more important to Vito Corleone than his honor. He would kill to maintain it.

But Corleone is also a Sicilian, and therefore his family is supreme. He would do anything for his family. Vito has three sons, each with problems. The oldest, Sonny, is impetuous and quick-tempered and insolent. The second, Freddie, is a bit of a sissy. The third, Michael, is bright, intelligent, disciplined—but he scorns the family business and plans to make his own way in the world without his family and without being a criminal. Still, Vito Corleone loves all of his sons. Nothing is more important than family. He would give up his own life for any of his sons.

But that raises a terrible problem early in the novel. A seedy thug named Sollozzo comes to Corleone with a business proposition. Sollozzo wants help in getting police protection for his heroin operation. And long-term, he’ll also need help from the corrupt judges in Corleone’s pocket. Sollozzo offers a generous cut of his profits in exchange for the protection that only Vito Corleone can give him.

Corleone believes that this will endanger all of his other operations. Corleone’s consigliori and his oldest son (Sonny) are at the meeting, but Corleone doesn’t consult them in this decision. He simply refuses Sollozzo’s offer, explaining his reasons—that it would destroy all that he has worked to build.

But Sonny doesn’t like this, and he blurts out a question to Sollozzo that makes it clear that he’s interested. This is a huge mistake. Sonny has just dishonored his father by questioning his judgment.

What should Vito Corleone do? He loves his son. But his son has just violated his honor. His son should be banished from the organization—immediately. Corleone must make an instant decision. He chooses to make a joke of his son’s rash comment and then repeats his decision—no, he will have nothing to do with narcotics.

That decision drives the entire novel.

Three months later, Sollozzo’s henchmen shoot Vito Corleone in the street, nearly killing him. Their hope is to get Vito out of the way so they can do a deal with Sonny. But Vito survives, barely, and the rest of the novel tells how he claws his way back to power, pulling his youngest son Michael into the family business.

All because of one decision. One very difficult decision. Difficult because of Vito Corleone’s two clashing Values:

Nothing is more important than honor.
Nothing is more important than family.

Those can’t both be the most important thing. When they conflict, Corleone must choose between them. And nobody knows what that decision will be until he makes it.

Now let’s define a Value. A Value is anything that your character would put in the blank in this sentence:

“Nothing is more important than ____________.”

When your character has only one Value, then he’s boring and one-dimensional. When he has two or more Values that can conflict, then the character becomes vastly more interesting.

Kate, you’ve already given me enough information to define two of your lieutenant’s Values:

Nothing is more important than avoiding abandonment.
Nothing is more important than the woman I love.

To that, I’d add a Value that most people have:

Nothing is more important than staying alive.

Note that #1 and #2 are in conflict, so that’s good. But it’s not enough. None of the Values above will explain why your lieutenant would endanger his life to rescue somebody he doesn’t know. If you’re going to explain that, you’ll need to give him a fourth Value that would drive his decision. And then you’ll need to show your reader that Value throughout the novel, giving enough reasons for the reader to believe it’s a strong Value. It’s your choice exactly what that Value should be, and it’s your choice why he should hold it so strongly. The art of fiction is the art of making those choices.

Once you do that, then at the end, when you have multiple conflicting Values, the reader can’t know how your character will decide, but a choice to be altruistic will be believable.

This issue is discussed at some length in my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, in chapter 6, “Nothing Is More Important Than Characters.”

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 post Creating 3-D Characters For Your Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How Should You Start Your Novel?

Do you really have to start your novel with “something happening?” What if your reader desperately needs to know some important backstory? Or some basic facts about your story world? What’s wrong with a little exposition?

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

Hi Randy, you said a scene has to be either a Scene or a Sequel and that anything that isn’t an MRU must be thrown out; but what about opening scenes, set-ups? Don’t you need some plain old exposition for that? E.g.: I’m writing a story in which the opening scene is of my character riding into the woods to hunt a beast, an angry reaction to something nasty his wife said (which I’m only going to reveal at the end of the story and not in detail). As he rides I need to inform readers about the beast; that people have tried to hunt it before but failed, what it’s like, what it’s done, etc. How, if possible, can I get all this information out with MRUs?

Randy sez: This is a great time to answer this question, because National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has just started, and tens of thousands of writers around the world are writing a novel this November. I hope many of my Loyal Blog Readers are taking up the NaNoWriMo challenge, and I wish you great success.

A little context will be useful. A crucial part of my teaching on fiction writing has been about Scenes and Sequels. Here are a few places to read more about them, if you want to know much more than I can cover in this blog post:

My article Writing the Perfect Scene on this Web site.
My book Writing Fiction for Dummies.
My book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method.

As Celine noted, I strong recommend that every scene in your novel should be either a Proactive Scene or a Reactive Scene. (These are my terms. The famous writing teacher Dwight Swain called them “scenes” and “sequels”, but those have always seemed to me to be confusing terms.)

So what are these things? We need a couple of definitions:

A Proactive Scene is a scene with the following three parts, which serve as the beginning, middle, and end:

Goal
Conflict
Setback

A Reactive Scene has the following structure:

Reaction
Dilemma
Decision

Now let’s be one clear on one thing. You don’t HAVE to do anything. There aren’t any scene cops who will delete scenes that don’t fit one of these shapes. I’m told that Herman Melville has an entire chapter of exposition on the biology of whales in his book Moby Dick. Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? That’s what you’d like to read first, isn’t it?

No?

Well then. I’d say you should treat your reader the way you want to be treated. Most readers want the story to start out with something interesting. And the result of the last hundred years of analysis by fiction teachers has shown that the two kinds of scenes that work REALLY well to get readers’ interest are Proactive Scenes and Reactive Scenes.

Your goal as an author is first to entertain your reader. Everything else has a lower priority. Proactive Scenes entertain. So do Reactive Scenes. Because they engage your reader’s emotions, not her intellect.

You entertain your reader by creating a movie in her mind.

Now Celine has a second part to her question, which has to do with MRUs. This is another term that Dwight Swain used. “MRU” stands for “Motivation-Reaction Unit” and you can read all about it in Chapter 3 of his classic book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. I love this book. It’s the book that taught me how to write fiction. I also discuss this at length in Writing Fiction for Dummies.

It’s not easy to boil down Swain’s idea of the MRU, but let me take a stab. There are five basic tools you can use that will help create a movie in your reader’s mind:

Action
Dialogue
Interior Monologue
Interior Emotion
Sensory Description

Dwight Swain’s MRUs just combine these five basic tools in a particular format that alternates between what’s inside the viewpoint character and what’s outside.

There are some other tools you can use: narrative summary, exposition, etc. These cut off the movie that was playing in your reader’s head. Instead of a movie, these things put a piece of an encyclopedia into your reader’s head.

You can do that if you want. But your reader may very well not like it.

One way you can give information to your reader is via dialogue or interior monologue. If you do so, then pass in the information in bits and pieces, and always make sure that they serve the conflict in the scene.

Because fiction is about conflict.

Celine, you might ask yourself the question, “How would James Patterson write this scene about the hunt?”

My guess is that James would start it out with the beast charging wildly at our hero. He’d have our hero fire twice and miss. Then his gun would jam, and he’d frantically try to clear the jam. Then the beast would be on him, and he’d whip out his knife and stab at the beast’s eyes. The beast would claw him, writhing in agony. A pitched battle would go on for a few pages. After a ferocious struggle, our hero would kill the beast–and then collapse because the beast nicked his artery. As the scene ends, our hero realizes he’s got about twenty seconds before he bleeds out. Then the next scene would be back at home, where the wife is still mad at our hero. Maybe she’s gossiping with her friends. Maybe she’s poisoning hubby’s underwear. Maybe she’s seducing the butler. Or whatever. You get to choose. Whatever she’s doing has CONFLICT in it. Meanwhile, the reader is dying to know what’s going on out in the woods where our hero is BLEEDING TO DEATH.

Celine, here’s one question to think hard about: Exactly how much information does your reader need to know before she can enjoy these two scenes? My advice, and the advice of most fiction teachers, is to give the reader just that information.

Now you might choose to be a bit more restrained than James Patterson and that’s fine. But there’s a reason James is the best-selling author in the world. Because he plays a movie in your mind.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you get to decide. Nobody can force you to not start your novel with exposition and backstory. But nobody can force the reader to read your work, either. The reader decides what to read based on what she likes. So it seems like good advice to write what readers like.

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 post How Should You Start Your Novel? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Four Act Structure Or Three?

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, thanks to a very long research trip to Israel this summer, where I worked on a couple of archaeological digs and generally ignored all my responsibilities. After getting home, I’ve been catching up for what seems like months. In fact, it HAS been months.

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

Hi Randy,

I’ve been struggling with a particular plot line for quite some time and I had a crazy idea about adding a fourth act to the structure to make things flow more smoothly. I have always been committed to the three act structure prior to this particular dilemma and I was interested to find a fairly significant number of writers who have shared articles about a four act structure and the idea of splitting the second act in two parts.

Naturally I wondered, what would Randy think about this?

Can you share some thoughts?

Thanks!

Kaitlyn

Randy sez: The second act of the Three Act Structure naturally splits into two halves. The dividing line between them comes at just about the exact midpoint of the story.

James Scott Bell calls this “the midpoint moment” in his recent book Write Your Novel From the Middle. It’s a good book, highly recommended.

Stan Williams has a book called The Moral Premise, in which the midpoint of the story is the point where the protagonist stops working from a false moral premise and starts working from a true moral premise. This is also a good book, well worth reading.

In my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method I spend a whole chapter talking about this midpoint of the story. (Chapter 9, “Your Second Disaster and Your Moral Premise.”) And of course this chapter comes at the midpoint of the story of Goldilocks, who is trying to write a novel. And of course Goldilocks has a crisis that forces her to stop working from a false moral premise and start working from a true one. Very meta.

In my mind, it’s just a matter of convention whether you say your story has three acts or four. So far as I can tell, in the Three Act Structure, the second act is just Acts 2 and 3 of the Four Act Structure.

So to my way of thinking, it’s not all that important what you call these large pieces of your story. What matters is how well you execute them. Which means how well you give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience.

Do that, and your reader won’t care what you called your story structure.

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

The post Four Act Structure Or Three? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Getting Serious About Series

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

Randy,

In your last newsletter you talked about giving away the first book in a series as a way to find your readers and get them hooked on your stories.

I was wondering if, while planning out the “first book”, an author should also plan the sequels as well? Wouldn’t that make the series better and allow for nuggets of foreshadowing? Or is it enough work to write the first story that one shouldn’t worry about future stories?

Randy sez: That’s an excellent question, John.

First, let’s review why writing a series makes sense. There are several reasons:

Readers like series. You are in the business of selling readers what they want.


Once you’ve done the research for the story world of the first book in the series, you’ve done most or all of the research for all the books in the series.  This is good use of your time. The less time it takes to write each book, the more books you can write and the more you’ll sell.
Once you’ve created the characters for the first book in your series, you can reuse those characters in later books, and you’ve already done most of the work on those characters. They will probably grow a bit and you may want to add some new characters, but a lot of your work is already done.


Once you’ve sold a reader on the first book in the series, they know that the rest of the books will be “just like the first one, only different.” If they love the first, they’ll buy all the rest, with very little extra marketing work. (You just have to let them know the new book is available.)

Now to John’s question: Should you plan your whole series out in advance? There’s no simple answer here.

Some authors write each novel by the seat of their pants. This is an effective way to write a novel, and if this is how you work, then you probably won’t be planning out your series because you like surprises and you “think by typing.” That’s fine. Trust yourself to come up with more novels in the series and get to work!

Some authors like to plan each novel. They may write a long, detailed synopsis or they may use my popular Snowflake Method or they may use some other method of planning. But they feel most comfortable writing when they have a plan. This is also an effective way to write a novel. If this is how you work, then it very much makes sense to plan out the rest of the books. And yes, this gives you a chance to write a more coherent story, foreshadowing things to come.

You may also be somewhere in the middle, where you have a rough idea on how you want the series to go, but you’re willing to play it by ear, planning out each book in detail only when it comes time to write it.

It’s all a question of what makes you the most effective writer. There isn’t any method that’s best for everybody. We’re all different. We can learn what works for others and try out methods that sound good. If they work out, then we’re ahead of the game. If they don’t work out, then there’s nothing lost except a little time.

Having said that, there’s also the question of how closely the books in the series are related to each other. Is this a series of books that could each stand alone, or nearly alone? If so, then no planning is necessary for the series. The Jack Reacher series by Lee Child is like this. If you removed any of the books in the series, there would be little or no impact on the others.

However, some series have an overarching story that ties them all together. For example, the Harry Potter series has a tightly connected narrative that carries on for all seven books. Writing a series like this probably needs quite a lot of advance planning to make it work. If you’re a pure seat-of-the-pants writer, this kind of series might be tough for you to write.

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 post Getting Serious About Series appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How Often Should Indie Authors Publish?

If you’re an indie author, how often should you publish? Is there such a thing as publishing too often? Can you “compete with yourself?”

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

Hi, Randy,

Using the Snowflake design process, I have completed a YA fantasy novel and am in the last stages of structuring its sequel. I am not yet published and plan to do so independently. I can comfortably write and polish a full-length novel in four months, but I realize that four months is quite a narrow schedule for systematically releasing new novels. How closely together do you think is reasonable to release novels in the YA fantasy genre?

Thanks,

Victoria

Randy sez: If you’re an indie author, four months between releases is fine. Many indies publish more often that that, and it doesn’t hurt them. Most indies, in fact, think it helps.

This is the opposite of what most traditional publishers believe, at least those whose focus is getting paper editions into bookstores. In that case, they’re fighting with the problem of limited bookshelf space, and it’s certainly true that bookstores will have a problem with authors who publish very frequently.

So traditionally published authors have to worry about competing with themselves. Bookstores just don’t want to order copies of different books that are produced at the same time by the same author.

You can argue that this isn’t rational, because you aren’t really competing with yourself–you’re competing with the million other authors out there. Doesn’t matter. This is reality.

But most indies aren’t in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Most indies only sell online, and for them, the more often they publish, the better. Indies don’t worry about competing with themselves, because the online stores have unlimited shelf space.

If you read the January issue of my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, you’ll remember my “Success Equation”, which goes like this:

Success = (Target Audience Size) x Quality x Discoverability x Production

You multiply the four terms on the right to determine your success.

That last term on the right, “Production,” is the number of books you publish per year.

All other things being equal, the higher your Production, the better.

So 3 books per year is excellent. If you can maintain the same Quality and produce 4 or 5 or 10 books per year, then all the better.

Good luck, Victoria! I’m glad the Snowflake Method has been helpful to you and I hope you have fun in your writing and build an audience who loves your work.

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

 

The post How Often Should Indie Authors Publish? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Want to Take a Thrill Ride With Me?

Do you like thrillers? I love them. Thrillers are the main category I read, and suspense is a major element of every book I write.

My suspense novel Double Vision has just been packaged up in a HUGE boxed set e-book with 7 other thrillers. The boxed set is titled “Thrill Ride” and it’s priced to fly.

99 cents for THOUSANDS of pages of oh-my-gosh white-knuckle entertainment.

If you’re a scaredy cat, this is where you stop reading and just walk away.

But if you like thrills and chills, come along with me on a rip-roaring Thrill Ride, because it’s pretty darn likely that several of these books are going to light your fire and keep you up into the wee hours.

 

Here’s a little about my comrades on the Thrill Ride and the books we’ve contributed:

 

Blind Justice, a legal thriller by James Scott Bell, normally $4.99:  Did the devil kill Howie Patino’s wife? Howie thinks so. Jake Denney is Howie’s lawyer, and he’s got a problem. Because Howie told the cops the devil made him do it. And now Jake’s going to have a devil of a time winning this case—but first he’s got to escape his own inner demons.

 

 

 

Sidetracked, a mystery-suspense by Brandilyn Collins, normally $4.99: Delanie Miller’s friend has been murdered, and the cops know who did it—the town simpleton. But Delanie knows they’re wrong and all she has to do to clear the innocent guy is to admit the lie she’s been hiding that will massively screw up her life if anyone finds out. Oh yeah, an easy choice—damned if you tell the truth, going to hell if you don’t.

 

 

 

Double Vision, a quantum suspense novel by Randy Ingermanson, normally $3.99:  Dillon Richard is a straight-arrow genius with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s never told a lie; never been kissed; never had a badass quantum computer that can break codes even the NSA can’t touch. Until now. Once he gets the computer working, everybody’s going to want a piece of Dillon: The mafia. The NSA. And his two beautiful co-workers, Rachel and Keryn. Who’ll get him first?

 

 

 

 

The Blade, a terrorism thriller by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore, normally $3.99:  Las Vegas is going to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb unless the casinos pay a king’s ransom to the terrorist holding Sin City hostage. A wild and crazy mix of Biblical artifacts, Nazi caves, a delusional televangelist, and nukes. This is suspense on speed.

 

 

 

The Roswell Conspiracy, a conspiracy thriller by Boyd Morrison, normally $4.99: And you thought you knew what happened at Roswell. In this lightning-fast thriller with over 170 5-star reviews on Amazon, Boyd Morrison unveils the truth about the mysterious alien object that’s the missing link in a doomsday weapon pointed at the heart of America. The action just never stops. Can you believe this author has a Ph.D.  in engineering, goes bungee jumping to relax, and is a Jeopardy! Champion?

 

 

 

The Killing Rain, a serial killer novel, by P.J. Parrish. Florida detective Louis Kincaid’s date goes slightly awry when his lady friend’s ex-husband and son go missing. Detective Kincaid soon finds himself hip-deep in murder, mayhem, and a human trafficking scheme.

 

 

 

 

Desecration, a psychic murder suspense, by J.F. Penn, normally $2.99: It’s not every day that a young, beautiful pregnant London aristocrat gets murdered and ritually mutilated upstairs during a swanky party at the Royal College of Surgeons. Detective Sergeant Jamie Brooke is called in on the case, and she reluctantly teams up with a sexy psychic named Blake Daniel. The killer is going to strike again and the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. This is the book I’m reading right now and I’m loving it.

 

 

 

The Call, a supernatural thriller, by Kat Covelle, normally $4.99: So you’re a geeky loser and you’re driving on the Golden Gate Bridge and you spot a beautiful woman about to jump to her death. Naturally, you stop and try to save her. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to find out she’s a demon intent on tossing you off the bridge. That ought to be the end of your miserable existence, but just before you die, you make a deal with your guardian angel to save your life in exchange for going on a supernatural quest to save the world. Heard this one before? I didn’t think so.

 

By my calculation, that adds up to more than $30 worth of e-books, packed into one giant package for 99 cents.

If that’s not a deal, I’m a munchkin.

I like buying 99 cent boxed sets because I figure I can’t lose. I’m bound to like several of the books, and I’m certain to discover some new talent I never heard of before. I always assume going in that not all the books will be my cup of tea. Doesn’t matter. Even if ONLY ONE of them lights my fire, at 99 cents that’s still a bargain.

Where To Get Thrill Ride

Tragically, this deal is only available in the US and Canada. You know the drill—this sort of thing is outside my control.

Here is a list of the online retailers. When you buy, if there’s a little “Share on Facebook” button after you make the purchase, please click that button and tell the world what you just bought. It’ll help get the word out to all your thrill-seeking friends. They’ll thank you later after they’ve been up all night reading.

Get it at Amazon:   99 cents

Get it at B&N:  99 cents

Get it at the Apple iBookStore:   99 cents

Get it at Kobo:   99 cents

Get it at Google Play:  99 cents

 

 

The post Want to Take a Thrill Ride With Me? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

My New Book on the Snowflake Method

Why are so many writers around the world using my Snowflake Method to write their first drafts?

Because it works!

Let’s be clear that different writers are different.

Some writers thrive on the “seat-of-the-pants” method. Stephen King is a pantser. So is Anne Lamott.  They write great fiction and SOTP works for them.

Some writers work from a highly detailed outline—a synopsis that may be 50 to 100 pages. Robert Ludlum was famous for his long outlines.  He was a great writer and outlining worked marvelously for him.

But some writers love the Snowflake Method—a series of steps in which you start with the germ of a story idea and build it out bit by bit.  Some writers’ brains are wired to work this way.  And many of them write great fiction.

About the Snowflake Method

The Snowflake Method doesn’t make you more creative. You already are incredibly creative.

The Snowflake Method just suggests where to apply your creativity next.  It makes Snowflakers more efficient in writing their first draft.

There is no one method that works for everybody.  The Snowflake is the method that has worked Xtremely well for me.  And it’s been thrilling to hear from so many writers around the world who say that the Snowflake works for them too.  The Snowflake page on this web site has been viewed more than 4 million times.  Every month, it gets about 50,000 more page views.

Several years ago, I heard from a writer in Nigeria who had visited my site that January and got inspired. By July she had written her manuscript (about Nigerian scammers), got an agent, and sold her novel to Hyperion. A couple of years later, that novel won the Africa Commonwealth Prize.

Your mileage will vary, of course. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani brought a ton of talent, drive, and creativity to the table. The Snowflake Method gave her a simple path to follow to get her story written. But she had to walk that path.  You have to walk your own path, and it won’t be easy.  But the Snowflake Method is designed to guide you along the way, to shorten the path.

My New E-Book

I’ve been working really hard for months on a new e-book solely dedicated to the Snowflake Method, and I did something different this time.

I wrote the e-book as a story—about a young writer with a dream to write a novel.

All her life, she’s been doing what other people tell her to do, putting off her dream and being practical.

Now she’s tired of doing what other people want.

She wants to follow her dream.

But she doesn’t know how to get started.

She needs a little direction, so she decides to go to a writing conference.

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 1. You’ll see right away that this story is quirky, zany, and over the top.  As you get into it, I hope you’ll find that it goes deep into the art of story.

You’ll see that the story itself practices what it preaches.  In the chapter on Disasters, there’s a disaster.  In the chapter on the Moral Premise, there’s a Moral Premise.  The chapter on Reactive Scenes is a Reactive Scene.

My goal is to make learning simple and easy, by showing you a real live example of how it’s done.

Excerpt from “How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method”:

Chapter 1:  The Impractical Dream

Goldilocks had always wanted to write a novel.

She learned to read before she went to kindergarten.

In grade school, she always had her nose in a book.

In junior high, the other kids thought she was weird, because she actually liked reading those dusty old novels in literature class.

All through high school, Goldilocks dreamed of writing a book of her own someday.

But when she went to college, her parents persuaded her to study something practical.

Goldilocks hated practical, and secretly she kept reading novels. But she was a very obedient girl, so she did what her parents told her. She got a very practical degree in marketing.

After college, she got a job that bored her to tears—but at least it was practical.

Then she got married, and within a few years, she had two children, a girl and then a boy. She quit her job to devote full time to them.

As the children grew, Goldilocks took great joy in introducing them to the stories she had loved as a child.

When her son went off to kindergarten, Goldilocks thought about looking for a job. But her resume now had a seven-year hole in it, and her practical skills were long out of date.

The only jobs Goldilocks could qualify for were minimum wage.

She suddenly realized that being practical had made her horribly unhappy.

On a whim, Goldilocks decided to do the one thing she had always wanted more than anything else—she was finally going to write a novel.

She didn’t care if it was impractical.

She didn’t care if nobody would ever read her novel.

She was going to do it just because she wanted to.

For the first time in years, she was going to do something just for herself.

And nobody was going to stop her.

* * *

About the Book

The first 18 chapters of the book are the story of how Goldilocks takes her dream from a wispy idea all the way to a very concrete plan for her story that she can write right now.

The 19th chapter is a quick summary of the Snowflake Method.

Chapter 20 shows the complete Snowflake document  which I used to write the book. A Snowflake about the Snowflake! Very meta.

I’ve just released this e-book on all the major retailers.

Amazon has a cool new tool that suggests the price that will earn me the most money. They suggested that I price the book at $5.49. But I rejected that suggestion.

My goal right now is to get my book into the hands of lots of writers, so I’ve slashed the introductory price to $2.99.

See the e-book on Amazon:  $2.99

See the e-book on Barnes & Noble:  $2.99

See the e-book on Apple iTunes:  $2.99

See the e-book on Kobo:  $2.99

See the e-book on Smashwords:  $2.99 (any electronic format, including PDF)

Please note:  Prices outside the US may not be exactly $2.99, but I’ve done all in my power to get them as close as possible to that price on as many retailers as possible.

Will There Be A Paper Edition?

Yes, there will be a paper edition very soon. I’ve submitted it to Amazon’s CreateSpace service and I’ve jumped through all the hoops. I’ve ordered the proofs of the paper edition, and they should be arriving shortly. It will take me a day or two to check through them, and then there’ll be a short delay to complete the process. I hope the paper version will be done within about a week. Paper costs more than electrons. At 233 pages, the book will have to be priced at $9.99. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

The post My New Book on the Snowflake Method appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The Death of “Self-Publishing”

It’s time to just say it. “Self-publishing” is dead. I’m not talking about the act of self-publishing a book. I’m talking about the phrase itself. “Self-publishing” now means two different things that are miles apart. It’s time to kill this useless phrase.

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

I am confused by all the different terms in current publishing. Like “indie publishers,” “traditional publishers,” “ebooks,” “ebook indie publications,” “small presses” “small publishers,” “independent publishers,” “print on demand,” “hybrid authors” and whatever it is that Amazon does.

I am former Washington, DC newspaper reporter writing a novel about the newspaper business. Though I have finished a first draft and am working one revisions, I am not quite ready to submit a manuscript yet. But I need to know what all these terms mean and how to go about deciding where I belong. Thanks always for your great blog and for answering my question.

Randy sez: Let’s start with the most confusing term of all—“self publishing.” This used to have a single meaning. But in recent years, it’s come to mean two massively different things:

Vanity publishing
Indie publishing

Let’s look at these and define them clearly.

Vanity Publishing

“Vanity publishing” means that you pay somebody to publish your work. You typically pay them a flat fee and with that money, they then hire editors, proofreaders, typesetters, graphic designers, marketers, and whatever else. They take care of the printing, warehousing, shipping, distribution, sales, etc. If there are any profits, they distribute them to you, usually taking a cut.

In vanity publishing, you do the writing and you take all the financial risk. The vanity publisher does all the other work and takes none of the risk. The profits can be divided up various ways.

It should be obvious that vanity publishing is wide open to abuse. When you are fronting the money and taking all the financial risk, the vanity publisher has little incentive to keep costs down or do a good job or give you a fair shake.

It is possible for a vanity publisher to give you a fair deal, but most professional authors, editors, and agents will tell you that vanity publishing is almost always a terrible deal for an author. David Gaughran does a great job of explaining why on his blog, so I’m just going to refer you to him. Here’s one of his articles to get you started.

Indie Publishing

“Indie publishing” means that you act as your own independent publisher. You write your book. Then you do all the tasks that a publisher would typically do, or else you find a specialist who can do the ones you can’t. These tasks are:

Editing
Proofreading
Cover design
Typesetting (for print books) or formatting (for e-books)

Indie authors often do all of the above themselves. Then they upload their finished book files to the various online retailers—Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play, etc. Or they may work with a distributor, such as Smashwords, who will deal with some or all of the retailers.

The key thing here is that the author gets a large percentage of the money—typically between 35% and 70% of the retail price of the book. The indie author takes all the financial risk and gets most of the rewards, so she has a high incentive to keep costs down and do a good job.

As it turns out, indie publishing can be a great deal for authors. The very best-paid indie authors are earning millions of dollars per year, and a surprising number are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. For a superb analysis of how much indie authors can earn, see the Author Earnings web site run by Hugh Howey.

Why “Self-Publishing” is Useless

“Self-publishing” used to mean essentially the same thing as “vanity publishing” and very few professional authors would have anything to do with it.

In recent years, “self-publishing” has also come to mean “indie publishing,” and a great many professional authors are doing it very successfully.

It ought to be obvious that “self-publishing” is a term that is too ambiguous to be useful. It needs to be thrown away.

We have two other perfectly good terms we can use instead: “vanity publishing” and “indie publishing.” So use whichever is appropriate, and nobody will be confused.

Let’s remember that there are some other publishing options. Let’s look at those.

Traditional Publishing

“Traditional publishing” means that you work with a publishing company that puts up all of the money to publish your book. They pay you some money upfront as an “advance” in exchange for the rights to publish your book for a certain length of time. They also pay for all the editing, proofreading, typesetting or formatting, printing, warehousing, sales, and distribution. They collect all the money earned and pay you a percentage as royalties.

In traditional publishing, you do all the writing and the publisher does all the other work and takes all the financial risk. You split the rewards with them.

What’s not to like with this arrangement?

Let’s be clear that this can be a great deal for authors. Until very recently, most of the really famous authors worked with traditional publishers and made great boatloads of money. There are a couple of thousand authors currently doing very well under this system.

The problem is that in recent years, the deal has gotten substantially worse for authors. Here are some of the friction points that authors have:

Advances have gotten smaller.
Authors are expected to do all or most of the marketing.
Royalties on e-books are low—typically 25% of the wholesale price of the book, which works out to about 12.5% of the retail price. This is very much lower than the 35% to 70% earned by indie authors.
Many publishers require option clauses that lock in an author to working with the publisher on the next book.
Many publishers require no-compete clauses that prevent an author from working with another publisher (or from indie-publishing) during a certain window of time.
Traditional publishing takes a long time to move a book from concept to final published book. It may take a year or two or longer.
Traditional publishers often can’t handle all the books that an author can write, and this is a huge problem if there are option clauses or no-compete clauses in place.
Traditional publishers decide what will be published and what won’t, and this often feels arbitrary and unfair to authors.
Traditional publishers hold all the high cards in negotiating.

There are probably other friction points, but these are the most glaring. These are the reasons why so any professional authors have simply walked away from traditional publishing and gone indie—they believe they’re better off on their own. These are the reasons why so many indie authors have refused contracts offered by traditional publishers.

Some authors use the term “legacy publishing” to refer to traditional publishing.

Hybrid Authors

“Hybrid author” is a term coined by Bob Mayer. It means an author who chooses to publish some books with traditional publishers and some books as an indie author.

Hybrid authors are looking for the best of both worlds, and this can be a reasonable choice. I’m a hybrid author, because I have some books still in print with traditional publishers, while all my current projects are in indie publishing.

Small Publishers

“Small publishers” are traditional publishers that are small—typically just a few employees. Small publishers often give better royalties on e-books. They may give more attention to new authors. I’ve worked with a small publisher, and it can be a sensible option.

Small publishers seem to be fading as more authors go indie.

E-books and Print-On-Demand

E-books are electronic books that are sold and delivered electronically. In some categories of fiction, most of the books sold are e-books.

“Print-on-demand” books are paper books that are printed and sold only when a customer orders a copy. Traditionally, publishers printed thousands of books in a large print run and then warehoused the books. This kept the cost per copy low, but if the books didn’t sell, that was a problem. The unit cost of a print-on-demand book is fairly high, but the risk is zero because you don’t print it until you’ve sold it.

Amazon has made it easy for indie authors to create and sell e-books and print-on-demand books. You can upload your e-book at kdp.amazon.com. You can upload your print-on-demand book at createspace.com.

Numerous other online retailers let you upload and sell e-books, including Barnes & Noble (at nookpress.com), Smashwords (at Smashwords.com), Apple (at itunesconnect.apple.com), Kobo (at kobobooks.com).

The publishing world is changing fast. Traditional publishing used to be the only game in town for authors who wanted a fair shake financially. Now indie publishing is an exciting option. Indie publishing gives authors some negotiating power with traditional publishers, because now they have the power to walk away.

Barbara, I hope that answers your questions. I won’t tell you what you should do, because every author is different. But now you know what your major options are. 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 the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

 

The post The Death of “Self-Publishing” appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

The Unsafe Road to Writing Fiction

So you’re writing a story and you know it’s a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, except that … it isn’t. In fact, it’s bad. But the reason it’s bad is NOT that you’re a bad writer. The reason it’s bad is because you’re using a technique that’s not familiar to you. What do you do?

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

Hello!

Ben reading your blog for around two years now, it has helped me greatly, thank you!

My question is this: I love first person, I despise third person. I love the knowledge of a single character, knowing them like the back of my hand, creating them however I want. I love being able to make my reader feel! Which, is something I’ve found I can’t do in Third Person.

This, however, is where I run into a problem. The stories I want to write my ‘staggeringly heartbreaking work of genius’ is best written in third person.

The real problem is that, when I write in Third Person I feels if my writing is poor of quality, and I hate it. So, how do I overcome this? When my story i best suited to third person? But, I myself am dismal when writing third person?

Apologies if this is a question asked many times.

Thanks.

Randy sez: Well, now, there’s a dilemma. You’ve got a story that’s screaming to be written in third person, but you are better at first-person than third-person. What do you do?

Tough question, and there’s no easy answer. This is why we call it a dilemma. This is a judgment call, so I’ll give you my judgment, even though I can’t prove it’s correct.

Let’s look at your options.

The Safe Road

You can take the safe road and write it in first person. This is what you’re familiar with. You believe you’ll do your best work in first person. The only problem is that you think the story would work better in third person.

There’s a possibility you might actually be wrong. It might be that this story would work just fine in first person. You could probably find that out by writing a few scenes or chapters and see how it’s working.

But let’s assume that you’re right—that the story would best be told in third person. If you take the “safe road,” what’s going to happen is that you won’t do this story justice because you’re using the wrong tool for the job. And that’s just not acceptable, at least not to me. I don’t want to work on a story unless I can do my best. So this is not the road I’d take.

The Unsafe Road

The unsafe road is to write the story in third person, even though you believe that you can’t do it well.

I suspect that if you give it a chance, you might find that third-person isn’t any harder than first-person. It’s different, but it’s not harder. You can give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience in third-person just as well as you can in first-person.

Writing in third-person is not harder. It’s just less familiar to you, Hamish. Which means that at first, it won’t feel right. But I’d bet that if you try it for a few scenes, you might start getting more comfortable with it.

Third-person lets you do interior monologue and interior emotion just as effectively as you could do them in first-person. (These are two of the five standard techniques novelists use in writing fiction. All five techniques are explained in great detail in my book Writing Fiction for Dummies, so I’m not going to try to repeat all of that here.)

But in third-person, your interior monologue can be indirect—it doesn’t have to be an exact verbatim transcript of the character’s thoughts. Instead, it can be a summary of those thoughts, which is sometimes an advantage.

Third-person also has another slight advantage over first-person. In third person, your narrative voice can be different from the voice of the point-of-view character. This lets you, the author, use your own narrative voice when you need to. You don’t have to. You can write a whole novel in which your narrative voice is always the voice of the point-of-view character. In first-person, you have to do this. But in third-person, if you want to, you can pull back a bit from the point-of-view character and inject your own voice.

Hamish, it’s not my job to tell you what to do. But here’s what I’d do if I were you. I’d try this story in third-person and see if I can grow into feeling comfortable writing that way. Every writer needs all sorts of tools in his toolbox. One of the most useful is the third-person point of view. If you don’t develop this skill, you’ll be limiting yourself. In fact, you’re limiting yourself right now.

Try it. See how well it works. Study the works of other authors to see what tricks they’re using to make it work. Keep trying.

That’s how you learn in this business—by trying things. Whether it works or doesn’t, send me an e-mail in a few months to let me know.

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.

 

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