Randy Ingermanson's Blog: Advanced Fiction Writing, page 9

How to Use The Force to Write Your Novel

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:

Writing your novel.
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:

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:

Decide how long you’ll write every day. Make this ridiculously easy, like 5 minutes per day.
Decide what time you’ll write every day. It’s best to make it the same time every day.
Set an alarm on your phone to go off every day at the time you’re supposed to write.
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.

The post How to Use The Force to Write Your Novel appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

New Snowflake Method Audiobook

I’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!

 

The post New Snowflake Method Audiobook appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How Does a Seat-of-the-Pants Writer Create Story Structure?

What if you don’t like the Snowflake Method? Is there a way to structure your story if you prefer to write by the seat of your pants?

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

I have been reading your book “How to Write a Novel Using the SnowFlake Method” and first I would like to thank you for writing a book that shows how to properly write a story instead of making book that shows me what a story is supposed to be. In my adventures as a writer I have found myself preferring the “fly by the seat of your pants” writing style, but I feel that more structure is needed. However I feel that the Snowflake method stifles the unconditional inspiration that comes with “fly by the seat of your pants” writing. If you can walk in my shoes for a bit, what would you do to structure your story without losing valuable inspiration?

Randy sez: First, let me define some terms so we’re all on the same page:

The process you use to create the first draft of your novel is what I call your “creative paradigm.”

Your “story structure” defines the emotional journey that your reader takes when she reads the final draft of your novel.

So your creative paradigm and your story structure are two very different things. You can have a good story structure for your novel, no matter what creative paradigm you use. But you’ll find your story structure at different points in the writing process, depending on what creative paradigm you go with.

Creative Paradigm Options

You have a number of options in your creative paradigm. Here are some of the common ones:

Writing by the seat of your pants.
Editing as you go.
The Snowflake Method (this is the one that’s made me famous).
Outlining your novel.

It’s possible to write a well-structured novel using any of these creative paradigms.

It’s also possible to write a terribly-structured novel using any of these creative paradigms.

Writers who design their novel before they write it (Snowflakers and Outliners) are in theory supposed to be designing in a good story structure. That’s the main reason they design first. But if they don’t understand story structure, then they probably won’t design a good structure for their novel.

Good story structure is explained in many books, including the one Steven mentioned, my best-selling book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. This how-to book is written as a story, and it’s self-referential—the First Disaster in the story happens in the chapter that explains what a First Disaster is. The chapter on Proactive Scenes is written as a Proactive Scene and the chapter on Reactive Scenes is written as a Reactive Scene. The entire book is an illustration of itself. And of course I wrote the book using the Snowflake Method, and my Snowflake documents are included at the back of the book so you can see how it was done.

But What About That Pesky Story Structure?

Now we can answer Steven’s question. He recognizes that it’s possible to write a novel seat-of-the-pants and end up with good story structure. But his question is how to make that happen.

First, note that your creative paradigm is just a method for getting your first draft down on paper. That’s all. I recommend that you use whatever creative paradigm works best for you. Your brain is wired a certain way, and you shouldn’t try to change your wiring.

Second, you need to remember that your first draft is not your last draft. Only the last draft needs to have good story structure. Your first draft doesn’t. Your first draft is nothing more than a stepping-stone to your last draft.

If you use the Snowflake Method correctly, then your first draft will have good story structure, because you designed in a sound structure from the get-go. But you’re still going to need to do revisions on your novel. You may need three or ten or a hundred more drafts to get your story the way you want it. During those extra drafts, your story structure may evolve, but it probably won’t change radically. Other things will change. That’s why you’re writing multiple drafts.

If you write by the seat of your pants, it’s likely that your first draft won’t have good story structure. That’s okay, because that wasn’t your goal. Your goal was to get the first draft down on paper, and you achieved your goal. So it’s perfectly fine if your first draft has poor structure or no structure. The point is that it’s something, and you can work with something to make it better. You can’t work with nothing.

How to Analyze a Messy First Draft

So what do you do with a messy first draft? Well, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.

First, read through the whole thing and make notes on any problems you see. Don’t fix the problems; just make a note of what they are.

Second, you’re going to need to analyze your story, and this seems like one reasonable way to do it:

Make a list of all the scenes in your novel. You can do this on 3×5 cards or use a spreadsheet or my software Snowflake Pro or whatever tool you like.
From that scene list, make a synopsis of about four pages that summarizes your story. One paragraph for each group of related scenes should do it.
Create a “character bible” that spells out all the details about each character.
Condense your long synopsis down to a one-page synopsis.
Write up the backstories for your characters.
Write a one-paragraph summary of your short synopsis that spells out the Three-Act Structure of your novel.
Write a one-sentence summary of your story that captures its essence.

You’ll note that the above analysis is sort of a reverse version of the Snowflake Method, where you are starting from a large document and reducing it down, bit by bit, to its essence. Along the way, you’re finding the structure of your story.

Once you’ve done all that hard work, you’re ready to write your second draft. It may very well be massively different from your first draft. (Or you might be one of those great geniuses whose first draft is golden stuff, ready to print. If so, tell nobody, because there are hundreds of thousands of writers out there who hate you.)

When you’ve got your second draft done, update your analysis to make sure you’ve now got a sound story structure. (Remember, story structure is essential. It’s what gives your reader emotional satisfaction, and the main goal of writing fiction is to give your reader a powerful emotional experience.) If your story structure is still broken, fix it and then write another draft to get it right. Keep doing this until it’s good. Then you can go on to the next step in revision, which is to make sure all your scenes are working. Then you can polish the novel, and you’re done.

Writing is Hard Work

Sounds like a lot of work? It is. I would be dishonest if I said that writing fiction is easy. Writing fiction is hard, and at some point you have to do the work of designing your story structure. Snowflakers and outliners do this work up front, before writing the first draft. Seat-of-the-pants writers and edit-as-you-go writers do this work on the back end, after writing the first draft. But everybody has to do the same work. It’s just a question of when you do it. In the end, the reader doesn’t care when you did the hard work. The reader just cares that you did the hard work.

Is all that work worth it? That’s for you to decide. If you believe that reading a powerfully emotive story has value, then writing a powerfully emotive story must also have value. And that requires writing a story with a powerfully emotive design.

I’ll say it once more, since this needs repeating. There is no “one right way to write a novel.” There is one right way for YOU to write your novel, based on the way your brain is wired. But the way that works best for you is not necessarily the same as the way that works best for your friend. Seat-of-the-pants writing works for some. So does edit-as-you-go. So does outlining. And of course, Snowflaking works for some. One of the things that makes me happiest in life is knowing that this simple process I created has helped many tens of thousands of writers around the world write their novels. Of course the Snowflake Method is not for everybody. But it’s for a lot of somebodies. And that’s kind of cool.

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 Does a Seat-of-the-Pants Writer Create Story Structure? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How Do You Know When To Start and End a Scene?

How do you know when to start a new scene in your story? And how do you know when to end it? What’s the reasoning you use?

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

when writing a scene in fiction, how do you know when to move to a new scene? Time, place, pov, deleted or added characters, and what, are the reasons for a scene change?

Randy sez: This is a question that vexes most beginning writers, and rightly so, because it’s a hard question.

The key thing is to understand what a scene is, and what a scene is supposed to do.

How Scenes Work—A Review

A scene is the smallest unit of fiction. It’s a story in its own right. The ability to write excellent scenes is arguably your most important skill as a novelist. By that, I mean that if you can write great scenes, you can get away with a mediocre premise, a mediocre plot, a mediocre setting, and mediocre characters.

I don’t mean to say you should cut corners on premise, plot, setting, or characters. I think you should shoot for excellence in everything you do. But my experience as a reader tells me that when the scenes are really strong, I keep reading, even when other aspects of the story are flawed.

It might be helpful right now to read (or reread) my famous article “Writing the Perfect Scene” which is the second most popular article on my entire site.

Here are some of the high points of the article:

Every scene has a “focal character,” which could be any of the characters in your story, not necessarily the “hero.”
A scene is a small, self-contained story about that focal character, with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end.
In most cases, the scene is a “proactive scene” with the structure:

Goal
Conflict
Setback


Occasionally, the scene is a “reactive scene” with the structure:

Reaction
Dilemma
Decision

Typically, a scene takes place over some smallish interval of time. Could be minutes, could be hours. Rarely will it be less than a minute. Rarely will it be more than a few hours (and the longer it is, the more narrative summary you’ll need).

However long the scene takes in story time, most authors have a certain range of word counts they like to use to tell the story for that scene. I like the range of 1000 to 2000 words, strictly for myself. I’ve gone much shorter. I’ve gone a bit longer. Generally, I’m in my 1000-2000 range. But other authors may prefer shorter or longer. This is a personal choice every author makes. It’s also something of a contract with your reader. When you establish a pattern that most of your scenes are in a certain range of word count, it sets the rhythm for your story that your reader expects. Then when you break that rhythm, it should mean something to the reader.

Deciding Where to Start and End Your Scene

Now, on to Yvonne’s question. How do you know when to begin a scene (and therefore when to end the previous one)?

The answer is that you let your scene dictate that. Here’s how:

When you start writing a proactive scene, do it at the point in your story when it’s natural to establish the focal character’s goal for that scene. Quickly establish that goal, and then spend most of the scene working through the conflict of the scene. Eventually, you’ll hit a critical point. This is usually a setback (in which the focal character fails to achieve her goal and is now worse off than before.) Occasionally, it will be a victory (in which the focal character achieves her goal and is now better off than before). Once you’ve hit that critical point, the scene is over. Start a new scene.

When you start writing a reactive scene, it should normally follow closely on the heels of a setback in a proactive scene. The point of a reactive scene is to give the focal character a chance to react emotively to the hit she’s just taken and to switch directions. Start out with that emotive reaction and let it run its course (usually a few paragraphs or a page at most). Then take your character into a dilemma—what to do next. There should be no good options. If there is a good option, it’s not a dilemma. The dilemma may take quite a while to work through. The focal character has only bad options. Explore these and reject them, one by one, until there is only one acceptable course of action. That’s your focal character’s decision and the reactive scene is now over. Start a new scene.

But What if Your Scene Doesn’t Fit the Pattern?

What if your scene is neither proactive nor reactive? What if it’s just there to “set the background” or to “show the character acting in character”?

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if that’s all your scene is doing, it’s a bad scene. Setting the background is fine; so is showing a character acting in character. But neither of these is enough to carry a scene. If that’s all your scene does, you have two choices:

Kill the scene
Fix the scene so it’s either a proactive scene or a reactive scene

I’m not exaggerating here. Those are your two options. If you have a bad scene, kill it or fix it.

Beginning writers often get angry when they hear this stark choice. Getting angry at the messenger is a sign of an amateur. Professional novelists routinely kill bad scenes. Professional novelists routinely fix bad scenes. Professional novelists don’t complain that they don’t want to do what they need to do to delight their reader. Professional novelists do the hard work, over and over, until they get it right. Nothing is more important than getting your scenes right.

Circling back to Yvonne’s question, if your scene has been fixed so that it’s either a proactive scene or a reactive scene, it will be “obvious” when the scene should start and when it should end.

 

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 Do You Know When To Start and End a Scene? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Keeping Your Whiny Characters Likable

How do you handle a whiny character? Nobody likes a whiner, but the truth is that real people whine from time to time. Sometimes they have a reason to whine. If your character is whiny, how do you keep from making readers sick of him?

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

Character question: how do you write some intense character drama (both internally and externally) without the protagonist coming off as mopey or unlikable?

Additional context: I’m writing a YA Science Fiction book for NaNoWriMo. I really enjoy YA because I really like the interpersonal relationships, character growth, etc. that seem to really thrive in books for that audience.

So the characters in my book are currently dealing with a lot of drama. I feel like I’ve made the protagonist sufficiently proactive, talented, and likeable. However, he is currently mourning the loss of his parents and he also became estranged from his best friend after the inciting incident. Yay for conflict, right?

So my question is, how can I allow my character to grieve and grow, experiencing the very real pain that accompanies his life circumstances without him coming off whiny? I really hate main characters who mope.

In this case, my protagonist is still being proactive and pushing the plot forward, but he’s carrying a lot of shame and self-hatred that can accompany intense emotional wounds. This can make his internal dialogue pretty, well, depressing.

Right now, the protagonist and his best friend are both hurt and treating each other somewhat cruelly, hence making decisions that are very believable but may turn off the reader.

I’m loving the conflict that all of this has brought to my novel. However, I also know I’ve read books with interpersonal conflicts that have really annoyed me due to the prolonged nature of them. And the novel was a lot more fun to write when the protagonist and his best friend were on good terms. So the temptation is to just go make everything all better real fast, even though I know that would probably not be wise.

Randy sez: This is a good question. I think it’s important to always ask why your reader reads.

Why Your Reader Reads

Your reader reads to have a Powerful Emotional Experience. Therefore, you write to provide your reader with a Powerful Emotional Experience. But which experience are you going to provide?

Different readers read for different emotive experiences. You get to decide what readers you want to appeal to (your “Target Audience”), which means you get to decide what emotive experience you’re selling. Once you decide that, then your only job is to do a great job providing that emotive experience.

If you decide that you’re selling an emotive experience that includes recovering from deep emotional wounds, then write that kind of story and don’t worry about annoying your Target Audience. Your Target Audience, by definition, wants to read your kind of story. People outside your Target Audience, by definition, don’t want to read your kind of story, but you don’t care.

That’s right, you don’t care about people outside your Target Audience. Because you can’t. You can’t make everyone happy. A decision to make your Target Audience happy is a decision to not even think about people outside your Target Audience.

I hope that gives you a little freedom to write the story you want to write.

Balance, Balance, Balance

Now, having said that, there is such a thing as an unbalanced story. You clearly aren’t writing ONLY about deep emotional wounds. You’re trying to create some unique blend of emotional experiences. You get to decide what that blend is. Then you need to focus on giving exactly that blend to your readers.

Think about The Hunger Games. Is Katniss sometimes whiny and even unlikable? Sure she is. Sometimes. But she’s not ONLY whiny and unlikable. She’s not even MOSTLY whiny and unlikely. She’s just occasionally whiny and unlikable. She has plenty of good in her that overrides those. She’s strong enough to defy the rules and hunt food for her family. She’s got a soft spot in her heart for her sister Prim—she volunteers to face almost certain death in Prim’s place. She’s got a strong survival instinct and she’s tough and resourceful and she has a certain attitude. The world is treating her grossly unfairly. She has a reason to whine. So she whines—for a bit.

Then she fights back. She fights back hard, and sometimes lashes out at people who are trying to help her. But the reader is OK with her whining and her misplaced anger, because it’s believable and it’s in balance and she at least recognizes she has flaws and feels guilty about it. That’s the blend Suzanne Collins chose to provide. That’s the blend a lot of readers wanted. It worked out pretty well.

Derek, your question was a tactical one—how do you write that drama without scaring away readers? The answer is that you salt it in without letting it get out of proportion. Early in your story, you should establish the blend of emotive experiences that you’re going to give your reader. Once your reader gets past the first few scenes, she should know what that blend is. You now have a contract with the reader to continue with that blend for the rest of the story. Keep it in balance. If one scene goes a bit whiny, then the next scene needs to go light on the drama and bring in the other emotive experiences you’re selling.

Balance doesn’t mean that every scene must feel the same, emotively. It means that you alternate through the various emotive experiences that make up your unique blend.

Do that and your reader wins. When your reader wins, you win.

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 Keeping Your Whiny Characters Likable appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

What Are The Rules on Mixing Viewpoints?

Can you write a novel mixing first-person and third-person viewpoints? Is that too stupid for words? How do you decide?

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

I’m trying to write a book with my main character being seen through first person, and my second main character from third person. I separate them distinctly in the book and when they are together the story stays in my main characters first person. Can This Work? I tried writing it with them both in first person and without the second main character being separated that way. Both ways made me feel like it was either too confusing or missing to much information. So I want to write this book from two different points of view.

Also while I call her my second main character I really only want my readers to connect with the Main character.

If you don’t fully understand what I mean email me and I will try to better explain.

Randy sez: This is a good question that I’ve heard several times over the years. Before I can answer it, we’ll need to clarify some terms.

What is a “Main Character?”

When we talk about the “main character” of a novel, we mean that there is one single character who is most important within the story. The novel is this character’s story. The Story Question for the novel is a question about whether this particular character will succeed or fail.

Do you have to have a main character? No, of course not. Some novels don’t have a main character. You can write a novel with several characters that are all important, without any of them being the main character. But I don’t recommend that for beginning writers, because it’s hard enough to make your reader care about your story when you HAVE a main character. It’s much harder when you don’t. That’s my advice—follow it or don’t follow it, as you like.

What is a “Viewpoint Character?”

What Dezaree is talking about here is having two “viewpoint characters.” This is a common strategy.

What’s a viewpoint character? This is explained in great detail in Chapter 7 of my book Writing Fiction for Dummies. I’ll summarize it here briefly. When you put your reader inside the skin of a character for a scene, that character is called the viewpoint character for that scene. The reader sees what the character sees, hears what the character hears, smells what she smells, tastes that she tastes, feels what she feels, and thinks what she thinks.

The viewpoint character is also known as the “point-of-view character” or the “POV character.” These terms all mean the same thing.

Notice that you can have many viewpoint characters in a novel. You can also have none. You can switch viewpoint characters within a scene (this is called “head-hopping” and most writing teachers frown on it.)

Your viewpoint character is not necessarily the main character of your novel. For example, in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock is the main character, but Watson is usually the viewpoint character, with only a few exceptions.

What is “Point of View?”

Now we need to clarify a related term, which is “point of view” and is often just called “viewpoint.” The viewpoint character can be shown in various ways, each of which is called a “point of view:”

First-person point of view:  “I walked to the store and shot a space alien.”
Third-person point of view:  “Luke walked to the store and shot a space alien.”
Second-person point of view:  “You walked to the store and shot a space alien.”

Third person is the most common viewpoint, and first person is the second most common (in most categories). Second person is rare in fiction, although it’s been done. Obviously it’s very common in user manuals.

The Question: Is Mixing Viewpoints OK?

So now we can clarify Dezaree’s question a bit: Is it OK to have a novel with two POV characters, using a different viewpoint for each: first-person for the main character of the novel, and third-person for the other viewpoint character?

The Short Answer

The short answer is “yes it’s OK.” As an example, Diana Gabaldon did exactly this in her novel Dragonfly in Amber. It worked great.

The Long Answer

The long answer is that you can do anything you want in a novel, as long as it works. What do we mean that it “works?” A little review is in order.

I have always taught that the reason readers read is to have a Powerful Emotional Experience. Different categories will deliver different kinds of emotive experiences, obviously. A romance novel is punching different emotive buttons than a horror novel or science fiction or a murder mystery.

You, the author, get to decide what emotive experience you want to give your reader.

Your reader gets to decide what emotive experience she’s looking for in a book.

If a reader is looking for the kind of emotive experience that you’re trying to deliver, then that reader is in your Target Audience. Your book is designed for her. That’s all great, except …

Except that trying to deliver an emotional experience and actually delivering it are two different things.

When I say that a novel “works,” I mean that it’s actually delivering the Powerful Emotional Experience that its author intended.

I believe that all issues of craft in fiction ultimately come down to this: does it “work?” Does it deliver emotively?

So while I think it’s perfectly fine to mix first-person and third-person POV characters in a novel, the larger question is whether you can deliver the emotive goods using both techniques. Writing first-person fiction is slightly different from writing third-person fiction. If you can’t do both of them well, then mixing them is going to be a problem. But if you can, then it’s not a problem.

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 What Are The Rules on Mixing Viewpoints? appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

More Than Mere Dialogue

So you’re writing a novel and you want your dialogue to be more than mere dialogue. You want actions. You want thoughts. You want the scene to feel natural. How do you do that?

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

I have been writing for a few months, and I am still in the beginning stages of my hobby. I try to integrate actions, gestures, and thoughts with my dialogue, but I am having a great deal of difficulty. I normally have to look at Books I read and copy ideas from there. Is there an easy way to find list of different ideas or better yet examples of this kind of information? If I actually knew the technical term for what I was asking for it would be a big help too. Thanks!

Randy sez: Good question, Andrew. It’s not a bad idea to read books and see how they’ve done it. That’s a great way to learn things, because it’s fun to read fiction. What I’ll do here is to summarize all the core ideas for showing your story. Take these ideas and see how your favorite authors put them into practice.

Let’s remember what our goal is in writing fiction: We want to create a movie in our reader’s head. We want to “show” the reader our story, not merely “tell” the story.

That wasn’t the goal of writers 150 years ago. But we’re competing with movies, so that’s our goal.

First, you asked for the right terminology. Here are the terms I use, which are fairly standard. You have five tools for “showing” your reader your story:

Action
Dialogue
Interior Monologue
Interior Emotion
Sensory Description

Yes, there are other tools you can use, such as Narrative Summary or Exposition. There’s a place for these in every novel, but these are called “telling” your story, rather than “showing” your story, and generally it’s a good idea to use “showing” as much as possible—for all the exciting stuff. You can use “telling” for the boring things that have to be told, but need to be told efficiently.

I could write fifty pages on exactly how you use Action, Dialogue, Interior Monologue, Interior Emotion, and Sensory Description in a novel. In fact, I have written  just about that many pages already in my book Writing Fiction for Dummies. It would be a stretch to put that much detail in this blog post. But here are a few guidelines that will help you get rolling:

Each scene can have as many characters as you want, but your scene will typically happen in one place and cover just a short period of time.
In every scene, there is one character that’s special—you are going to take the reader inside that character’s skin. This character is called the Point of View character, often abbreviated POV character. Your goal is to show only what the POV character can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, or think. You are trying to create the illusion that your reader is your POV character.
You can switch POV characters when you switch to a new scene, or you can keep the same POV character if you like. It’s up to you. But don’t change POV characters inside the same scene.
Each paragraph should focus either on one character or on the environment.
If a paragraph is focusing on the POV character, then you can show that character’s Actions, Dialogue, Interior Monologue, and Interior Emotion. You can use as many or as few of these tools as you like in the paragraph.
If a paragraph is focusing on some other character, then you can show that character’s Actions and Dialogue and possibly some Sensory Description. But you should only show things that your POV character can see or hear or smell or taste or touch.
If a paragraph is focusing on the environment, then you can show Action and Sensory Description of the environment. Again, only show the things your POV character can see or hear or smell or taste or touch.
If you need a paragraph or two of Narrative Summary or Exposition, put them in, but make them as interesting as you can, because they’re interrupting the movie in your reader’s head.

These are not “Rules.” There aren’t any Rules in fiction. These are rules of thumb that guide you. You can violate any of them that you want, as long as you think it makes the story better. Usually, violating these rules of thumb makes the story worse. Part of the art of fiction is learning when to use the rules of thumb and when to break 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 the ones I can, but no guarantees. There are only so many hours in the day.

The post More Than Mere Dialogue appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Writing a Series Using the Snowflake Method

Can you use the Snowflake Method to write a series of novels? Or does it only make sense to use it for each individual book in the series?

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

Randy,

Can the Snowflake method be extended to tie together a series of philosophical message/romantic literature novels?

My motivation: Self-interest to save me and those that I care about from the evils of Gov Goliath and coming economic, political and social collapse.

My Goal: Write a series of romantic literature novels starting with a controversial break-through that sells in sufficient numbers to be an efficient education tool, inspires readers to yearn for more and prompts readers to action to save themselves and those they care about by replacing compulsory territorial majority rule government with non-compulsory, non-territorial spontaneous order voluntary free market societies based on the actionable Golden Rule social contract and the non-aggression principle (NAP) that prohibits the initiation for force except in self-defense.

Target Audience: 20-year-old’s who are inspired by Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and enjoy romantic literature like “The Godfather” but yearn for more.

Word-of-mouth Audience: Same as above except those of any age.

Comment: The Snowflake method looks like the tool of choice for the individual novels in the series but the question is: Can the Snowflake method be used to tie the individual novels together into a coherent series that continues to build suspense by leveraging the backstory in previous sequels.

Randy sez: This is a good question, David, and people have asked me this several times in the past. I’ve also asked myself the question, because I’m currently working on a series.

For those just joining us on this blog, a little context might be helpful: What is the Snowflake Method? The Snowflake Method is a series of steps I created years ago for helping set up a roadmap for a novel. The purpose of the Snowflake Method is to make it easier to write the first draft of the novel. Some of the steps ask you to develop the plot; some ask you to develop the characters. Many people around the world are using the Snowflake Method, and my article on it has been viewed over 5 million times, and has been translated into several languages. For those who want to know more, I have a book out on the Snowflake Method, written as a fairy-tale business parable.

It should be clear that the work you put into character development using the Snowflake Method will be useful for all the books in your series. Since a big part of your character development is finding the backstory of each character, this won’t change from book to book.

But what about the plotting work? Are there elements of the Snowflake Method that you can use for the series? And will that save you work when plotting each book?

Yes and no.

Yes, you can use some elements of the Snowflake Method to help you define the overall plot of the series, as long as the series actually has an overall plot. I’d say the main element you’ll want to use is the Three-Act Structure. A series can often be divided into this structure, at least approximately. I think you can argue that the Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series both fit the structure well. I suspect that the Twilight series also roughly fits the three-act structure, although it’s been a while since I read it, so I’ve forgotten most of the details.

Note that some series don’t really have an overall plot—they’re just a sequence of books without much structure. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series is an example of a set of novels with no overall plot. Likewise Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series has no macro structure. This is neither right nor wrong. It’s just a decision on how you want the series to be, and authors typically make this decision early.

But no, it won’t save you any work on plot development for the series, because each book needs to stand alone as its own story. This means that the plotting aspects of the Snowflake Method need to be worked through for each book. And then you still have to work through the overall story arc for the series, which adds more work. But the main extra work you have to do is to define a Three-Act Structure, and this isn’t an unreasonable burden.

One final comment, David: You’re writing a series of message novels. These can do fantastically well in the market, if they’re done well. Ayn Rand’s novels were all message novels. So were the Left Behind series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. So are Dan Brown’s recent works. William Paul Young’s book The Shack was a message novel. And it’s easy to find more examples of megahit message novels. But it’s also easy to find examples of message novels that are poorly done, where the message overwhelms the story. Anyone who’s ever taught at a writing conference has seen plenty of these, and they’ll tell you that when a message novel is bad, it’s awful.

So be wary here. Make sure that your story is strong and that the message serves the story. When the story is forced to serve the message, things don’t work out so well. Work hard, and 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 Writing a Series Using the Snowflake Method appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

Backstory From the Remote Past

In your novel, how do you include backstory from the remote past? Is that even legit? If so, how do you do it? And is that called a flashback or something else?

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

Hi Randy, I’m trying to learn how to word flashbacks for a fiction, mystery and adventure novel I am writing. There is a woman that inherits a castle/estate in England which has a long history dating back to the 14th century. The story takes place in 2016. In chapter two she starts to explore the estate and one of the places she goes into is one of the remaining towers of the castle remains. I wrote a great chapter more than a year ago which describes a fictitious battle that takes place in a real place of a real battle between England and France.

I have been advised by writers not to use it as my first chapter but use it to show the reader flashbacks to indicate backstory and in the end of the book have the main character find an ancient document describing the battle.

So my question is: how to word it? How do I word transitioning the reader temporarily to talk about the 14th century of this place then bring them back to the present?

Can you provide an example? Once I get the hang of it I can proceed. Hard to find how to word these things online.

Randy sez: The immediate question is a “how-to” question, which I can answer pretty quickly. You want to show a scene from the remote past (before any of the characters in your main story were alive). You can easily do this using a “dateline”. This tells the year and possibly the calendar date of the story, and also might include the location. Typically, you put a dateline at the very beginning of a scene, usually centered or right-justified.

Here are some example datelines:

Oxford, September 16, 1325
June 21, 2035, 13:05 Mars Local Time
Friday, April 3, AD 33
Captain’s Log, Star Date 31.41.59
18 years earlier

A dateline is simple and clear and quickly puts the reader exactly where and when you want. Some novels have a dateline for every single scene. Most novels don’t use any datelines at all. You get to decide which scenes, if any, need a dateline, and how you’ll format them. There aren’t a lot of rules here. I recommend you keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

It’s not uncommon for novels to begin with a prologue set much earlier than the main story. In this case, the chapter is explicitly labeled “Prologue” and the author may include a dateline.

Eric, if you really want your battle scene at the beginning of your book, a Prologue would be a simple and effective way to do it. Then Chapter 1 could use a dateline (which might be as simple as “Present day”), or you might choose to not use a dateline because the way your characters act and talk makes it clear that they’re in the present day. You really have a lot of latitude here.

There are a couple of other issues to discuss here.

About Flashbacks

First is the meaning of the word “flashback.” I don’t know if this has an official definition, but I’ve always understood this word to mean a scene or partial scene written in the point of view of one of your main characters but set in an earlier time.

Usually, the way you handle a flashback is that your character is in the middle of a scene in the main story. Then something triggers a memory from some earlier period. You show this trigger, then write a transitional phrase or sentence or paragraph that indicates that the character is about to experience a memory from the past. Then you show the flashback using all the immediate-scene techniques that you normally would—the flashback happens in real-time, and the reader lives it through the eyes, ears, mind, etc. of the point-of-view character. At the end of the flashback, you write another transitional phrase or sentence or paragraph to show that the point-of-view character is coming back to the main story. Then you just continue on.

The Harry Potter series used a number of flashbacks with a slight modification of this technique. Professor Dumbledore had a “Pensieve” in his office that allowed Harry to experience a flashback using the memories of some other character.

Flashbacks are a valuable method of giving the reader essential backstory by “showing” rather than “telling.” It’s possible to misuse flashbacks or overuse them, but they’re a powerful technique that should be in every writer’s arsenal.

So for your example, I wouldn’t use the term “flashback” because it’s not experienced by any of your point-of-view characters in your main story. It’s just a scene written in an earlier time period.

Showing Versus Narrative Summary

The second issue is the advice you’re getting from other writers. I don’t have enough information to know if I agree with their advice. You’re proposing to show an exciting battle in real-time. They’re proposing that you tell this in narrative summary in an ancient document at the end of the book.

I don’t see the reason for this advice. It might be based on good reasons that I don’t know. I don’t have much information about your story. But let me spell out the issues for making a decision.

Narrative summary is boring. It has its place in your toolkit, because narrative summary is efficient. But it’s boring.

Showing a scene in real-time is exciting. It’s not an efficient way to give the reader information, but it’s still exciting.

So your decision of whether to show this battle as a scene or to tell it as narrative summary in a document comes down to questions like these:

How essential is that information to your readers?
How important is that ancient battle within the story?
In giving that information, is it more important to be efficient or to be entertaining?

I can’t answer these questions because I don’t know your story. But you do, so the decision is on you.

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 Backstory From the Remote Past appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.

How To Choose Your Author Name

How do you choose your official author name? What if somebody else is already writing under your name? And then how does that affect your Twitter handle and your Web site domain name?

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

I in the middle of the first draft my novel that I plan to get out through indie publishing in the next year. I am trying to build up my social media users through my blog and twitter with the user name timrgreenebooks for both. Making it easy to find me. Here’s the problem, there is already a published author using Tim Greene. His website is timgreenebooks.com.

From what I have gather, from his site he writes for younger readers while my target audience is YA. I prefer to use Timothy R. Greene as my writing name, but couldn’t use timothyrgreenebooks as twitter name since it is too long, which is why I shortened to timrgreene. What should I do? Should I think about using a pen name, or maybe go by T.R. Greene. I prefer not to go by T.R. as I think too many authors lately have been doing this to copy J.K. Rowling. Though I know she isn’t the first to do that. I want to settle this now, so everything matches up and establish my brand. What are your thoughts?

Randy sez: A quick comment first on privacy. Normally, I prefer to only use the first names of people who ask questions for this blog, so as to respect their privacy. In this case, that isn’t possible, because Tim’s question fundamentally involves his last name. But Tim is clearly OK with that. In order to post his question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page, he checked a box giving permission for me to quote him here on this blog.

Now, on to Tim’s question.

This is a general problem for authors. I’ve faced it and many of my author friends have faced it. I suspect there isn’t any one best answer. But I think it helps to at least make a list of all the available options, along with potential pluses and minuses for each option.

There are actually several decisions to make. They’re related, but they’re also distinct.

Question 1: What author name should you use for your published books?

Question 2: What handle should you use for social media?

Question 3: What domain name should you use for your Web site?

Tim lists a few options for his answer to question #1 as follows:

Timothy R. Greene
T.R. Greene (which he doesn’t care for)
A pen name (unspecified)

And Tim’s listed options for question #2 are:

TimothyRGreeneBooks (which he says is too long)
TimRGreeneBooks

And for question #3, Tim lists only one option:

TimRGreeneBooks.com (but he fears this conflicts with TimGreeneBooks.com)

Let me make a few comments, first:

Authors who have common first AND last names are very likely to have a name collision with other authors. This happens quite often, and readers will not be surprised if they have to do a little searching to find the right Twitter handle or domain name for such an author. (You might imagine that someone like me with a very uncommon last name would be safe. However, a friend pointed me years ago to the NSFW Web site of a woman named Randi Ingerman, which is remarkably close to my name. Randi has worked as an actor, model, director, and writer. I don’t think anyone will confuse me with her.)
It’s usually not a huge problem to be writing under the exact same name as another author. There are a few exceptions. If your real name is “Stephen King,” it seems wise to choose a different author name. If you’re writing in the exact same category as the other author, it’s a good idea to use a different name than they do. And if the other author writes in a category that might offend your readers, you’re ill-advised to use the same name as they do.


It’s perfectly OK to use a slightly different version for your author name, your Twitter handle, your Facebook name, and your Web site domain name. Everybody knows that it’s almost impossible to make all these names line up exactly. If somebody knows your author name and wants to find you on Twitter, on Facebook, or on the Web, they can do it with a minimal amount of searching.
There are many reasons for using initials. C.S. Lewis probably used his initials because “Clive Staples” isn’t all that exciting or memorable. I’ve known female suspense writers who used their initials because they were concerned that readers might think suspense is a man’s category. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some male romance writers have used their initials for a similar reason. I’ve switched to using my initials for my time-travel City of God series, so as to create a little branding separation between those books and my futuristic science-based novels.
It’s a good idea to always think about the “radio test”: If you’re doing a radio interview and you’re asked for your Web site address, how easy is it for a listener to get it correctly without you having to spell it out? By this test, “RSIngermanson.com” is a bad domain, because that middle initial “S” is too easy to confuse with “F”. This is one reason I changed my domain for my personal Web site years ago to “Ingermanson.com”. It’s still not ideal, but it’s better than it was. In Tim’s case, “Greene” is a problem, because anyone who hears it on the radio will think “Green.” This suggests that Tim might consider using “Green” as his author name to make it more radio-friendly (and it might possibly solve his name-collision problem). I know at least one author who tweaked the spelling of her name to make it easier on her readers.

With those points in mind, let me suggest a fuller set of options for Tim. I don’t have enough information to know which of these is best. That’s going to be Tim’s call. And there are probably other options I haven’t thought of. But these spring easily to my mind:

Author name options:

Timothy R. Greene
Timothy Greene
Tim R. Greene
Tim Green
T.R. Greene
Timothy R. Green
Timothy Green
Tim R. Green
Tim Green
T.R. Green

Twitter handle options:

TimothyRGreene
TimothyGreene
TimRGreene
TimGreene
TRGreene
TimothyRGreen
TimothyGreen
TimRGreen
TimGreen
TRGreen
Any of the above with “Books” or “Author” appended.

Web site domain options:

TimothyRGreene.com
TimothyGreene.com
TimRGreene.com
TimGreene.com
TRGreene.com
TimothyRGreen.com
TimothyGreen.com
TimRGreen.com
TimGreen.com
TRGreen.com
Any of the above with “Books” or “Author” appended, except “TimGreeneBooks.com, which is taken already.

In my opinion, any of the above choices would be acceptable to readers, with the proviso that Tim should stick with one spelling for the last name—either “Greene” or “Green”.

But I think it would be fine to use different variants of the first name. So Tim might use “Timothy” as his author name but shorten it to “Tim” in his Twitter handle and/or his Web site domain. Readers are smart enough to figure out these kind of minor variations. If somebody really wants to find you, they will.

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 appeared first on Advanced Fiction Writing.