Rachel Aaron's Blog, page 10

Amazing Writing Moments: Heartstrikers Fan Art!

Here on Pretentious Title, we talk a lot about the professional, technical, artistic, and financial sides of writing, but while that's all well and good, there's another very important part of being a writer that I have sorely neglected, and that is the all important fandom angle.
Despite our lack of red carpets and endorsement deals, writing is most definitely a glam industry. People dream of being writers just like they dream of being musicians or actors, and the ones who do make it work their butts off to get there. For good reason, too, because things happen for writers that just don't happen for most of humanity, like, for example, fans making amazing fan art for your stories!
!!!
Forget red carpets, this is the best thing ever! I originally found these pictures on the amazing Goodreads reviews for Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Another , and I don't think I stopped smiling for a week. (Don't know what those books are? Check out my Heartstrikers series here!) This art is all by Gergana Hristova. (Check out her site at http://gerganaillustrations.tumblr.com!), and I LOVE IT. 
I genuinely can not express how thrilled it makes me to see someone else's (far more talented) interpretation of my imaginary friends characters. It makes me fangirl about my own stuff. But how can I not?! I mean, just look at Justin and Julius!
Are they not the best?! And just look at Bob (complete with pigeon!)


How can I not look at these and feel like a rockstar?! I know I go on and on about being a professional writer and making a living, but that's all just practical adult stuff. You know, the part of me that has to pay off a house. When I get art like this, though, made by someone who genuinely enjoyed the story I wrote, THAT's when I feel the really giddy joy that makes me remember why I dreamed of being a writer in the first place.

I mean, just look at Marci and Ghost!
Or MARCI AND JULIUS!! ❤

How can I not be delighted? READERS, I CAN NOT NOT. Looking at these makes me squee for years. I mean, check out Bethesda!

And Amelia?! OMG Amelia. (Or should I say, A aaaaaaa-meila)
Mother/daughter issues much?Straight up, I had a different mental image in my head when I wrote her, but the moment I saw this, this became my Amelia. That's the power of good fan art. It was so good, so absolutely what I was trying to do, it changed the story cannon in my head. I mean, damn.
And it's not just major characters, either. Check out Ian! And the Cs, Chelsie and Conrad (all of whom will have big roles in book 3)!

And let's not forget our star villainess, Estella!
SO GOOD. FAN GIRLING REACHING UNCOMFORTABLE LEVELS OF EXCITEMENT!!11one

(deep breaths)

I know, I know, I'm freaking out, but I can't help it! I mean, Gergana, of her own volition, chose and illustrated one of my absolute favorite scenes from One Good Dragon Deserves Another, when Estella confronts Julius in the hallway to draw out Bob.
She even got Bob's bathrobe!! (And Julius's look of unholy terror). Not joke, I legit had heart flutters of happiness when I saw this. All of it, really. It's more cartoony than the covers, but I feel the art really gets the feel of the story and the characters in it, and that makes me happier than words can say.

There are many, many reasons to want to be a writer--fame, money, making a living doing what you love, getting to tell stories all the time--but the best, the best, is stuff like this. When fans read your story and love it so much, they're make their own fanart or fanfic or whatever of your characters and your world, that's amazing. I know it sounds cliche, but my fans truly are the best part of my job, and when I see art or read a gushing review, or see someone I've never met on Twitter talking about my stories like they love them, like they know them inside and out, I feel a happiness no money could ever buy.

Getting to fan out with my fans over these stories that I loved so much, I spent years writing them is one of the true unsung treasures of being a storyteller. It is a joy that is absolutely worth all the work, and I am so so so grateful to all of you for making this possible.

So grateful, in fact, that we decided to something in return!

To thank you all for being so patient waiting for book 3 to come out (which should be this summer!), we commissioned Gergana to draw some custom, high res Julius and Marci art!!But not just any Julius and Marci. We wanted to show Julius as a dragon, something that hasn't been illustrated on the covers yet. Fantastically for us, Gergana was willing, so we worked with her to show the littlest Feathered Serpent in all his glory!

Click the pic to download the full size!
Taaa daaa!!! Isn't he ADORABLE? I loved the feathers and how happy he looks (Enjoy your happiness while it lasts, Julius... BWA HA HA HA ha ha ha AH HA HA HA #evilauthor). Ahem, anyway, this art is for you guys! We're going to be using it on our stuff, of course, but feel free to take it and use it however you want. Make icons! Make backgrounds! Print it out and put it on your wall! Do whatever you want, and then please show me what you did via Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) because, in case you haven't noticed, this stuff makes me really happy!!! XD! 
Again, huge thanks go to Gergana Hristova for making all this possible. If you like her stuff as much as I do, please check out her site, because there's tons of awesome there!
As for Heartstrikers book 3, now titled No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished, there's a lot of big news coming! Seriously, you guys are going to LOVE THIS BOOK! I'll be posting stuff here and on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Google+ as it comes out, so make sure to follow me for all that.
I hope you all enjoyed this post with as much fangirl delight as I had making it!! As always, thank you so so SOOOOOO much for reading my posts and my books. I'll be back on Wednesday with a craft post as always, but until then, enjoy the pretty pictures! 
Yours always,Rachel

Writing Wednesday: How Much Does Your Name Matter?

Today's post was inspired by this awesome question I got in my contact box,

I'm a young, single woman planning to self-publish in the next year or so. I'm also a traditionalist and plan to take my husband's name, if I ever get married. But that's the thing: it's definitely an IF. It's not going to happen anytime soon-- and if it does it will be well after my publication plans. Obviously I am not putting my career off-track over a cosmetic change (last name), especially for only a vague possibility. (I hope it happens, but it may not!) I know you're known as Aaron and Bach (and I'm aware of the reasons re: Devi's story and genre-jumping). 

My question is this: did you initially publish with your maiden name out of necessity (i.e. not being married yet, it was socially/practically easier or kept business things simpler, etc.) or was it a personal choice? And can you expound on your experience a bit? (Do you have regrets? Does it not bother you at all? Do you know of other authors who have struggled with the same issue or am I the only one who cares?)

You are absolutely not the only one who cares! I actually get questions from questions worrying about their names all the time. With good reason, too, because an author's name is how the world knows us.

Writing Wednesday: How Much Does Your Name Matter?
With the exception of mega authors like Stephen King/J.K. Rowling/Neil Gaiman/etc., we're not known by our faces. Our fame, brand, and selling power is entirely tied to the name on the cover of our books, and that makes it well worth your time to carefully consider which name you want to use.

Which name? You mean I get to choose?You absolutely get to choose! Aside from the obvious personal benefits like seeing your name on a cover and having everyone who knows you know you wrote a book, there is no reason at all--trad or self pubbed--you have to use your real name on your book. In fact, if you have a name that is very long or is difficult to spell or pronounce (and your ego can stand it), I would strongly suggest you come up with a pen name because, again, your name is your brand. So, clearly, picking a good writer name is a big freaking deal! What qualifies as a "good" writing name, though, will depend a lot on the audience you're trying to reach. For example, if you identify as a Jewish author and the Jewish experience figures strongly in your stories, then having a very Jewish sounding name would be a real plus to your brand because it would give you authenticity. 
Now, obviously, this is a power you should use responsibly. I'm not encouraging anyone to pretend to be someone they're not just to sell books. Readers are very savvy, and any plan that involves trying to fool them never works in the long run. But you don't have to be trying to trick people to be strategic about your author name.
To cite a personal example (and to actually answer the question), I was already married when I got my first book deal, but it didn't matter because I'd already decided I was going to publish under the name Rachel Aaron back when I was eight. I decided this both because 1) having my name on a book would be really really cool, and 2) Rachel Aaron is actually a pretty strategically awesome author. Not only is it easy to read and remember, my last name starts with 2 As, which means I'll always be at or near the top of whatever bookstore shelf I'm on. 
That last part is not to be underestimated! When you walk into any bookstore that carries SFF and you look at the books, I'm right there on the first shelf, often at eye level. That's the kind of placement publishers pay thousands for, and I get it for free because of my name! XD
As eBooks take over, this sort of alphabetical consideration maters less and less, but so long as print books are still a thing, it's a valid consideration, especially if you're planning on trying the trad publishing route. That said, Rachel Aaron is still a really freaking good author name! 
(And for the record, I kept my maiden name when I got married mostly out of laziness/not caring and the faint hope that someday, someone would look at my ID and ask if I was the Rachel Aaron, famous author. This has yet to actually happen, but I still hold out hope! In the meanwhile, I am legally Rachel Aaron and intend to stay as such for the rest of my life.)
All that said, though, Rachel Aaron is more than just my name. She's also a brand, just as Rachel Bach is a brand. This name change was originally at my publisher's behest, but in 20/20 hindsight, I understand why. 
How Author Name as Brand WorksBrands need to be focused. While I think that readers who love my Rachel Aaron books are going to also love my Rachel Bach books, the truth is that they are very different both in terms of the writing and the genres, and troublesome as it might be to manage two names (and it is very troublesome! Many of my readers still don't understand that I have more books out there under another name), they each serve a critical purpose of defining each cluster of my books under its own label. Rachel Bach writes straight-shooting, badass romantic SciFi, Rachel Aaron writes action packed, character driven Epic and Urban Fantasy with huge complex plots. These things are not the same. They're by the same person, but just as a single cook can produce savory and sweet with equal skill, you wouldn't put both of those plates under the same section of the menu. Like every other vendor, authors use names to brand their different kinds of books into easy to describe (and sell!) packages. If I ever decided to quit SFF and go write a totally different genre like cozy cat mysteries, I'd make up a new name to go with that new brand for the same reasons.
I know all that might sound like a lot of fence building and trouble for no reason. After all, if readers like one of my books, they should like all the others, but the truth is that readers buy by brand. They know what they like, and they want more of it. The entire point of establishing your name as a brand is to make a reader's choice to buy your new title as easy as possible. People know what kind of experience they're going to get when they buy a Rachel Aaron book. If you're constantly jumping genres and switching things up, that confidence get diluted. Readers might like you, but if you go from SF to Westerns and they don't like Westerns, they might not pick up your new title. And once they skip on one series, it becomes that much easier to skip on the next.
But while everyone agrees keeping your brand focused is important, changing your name is not without cost. I have no idea how many readers I lost when I switched my name, or how many of my Rachel Bach readers would have loved my Rachel Aaron stuff and just never realized the two Rachels were the same. This is the risk you take when you pull a change up. Changing your name is also logistically hard. Since my two genres were so similar, I was able to combine my social media accounts, website, and blog, but that wouldn't have been the case if I'd decided to jump from say, Fantasy to Erotica.
The obvious answer is to just write the same genre forever, but most authors don't want to do that. We want to explore and write new stuff that excites us, and to that I say: go for it! Even if it's wildly different, a book you truly love will always do better than a title you're only lukewarm on. But know that the decision of whether to change your name or not is a weighty one that only you can make. There are upsides and downsides to both, and which choice you make will depend on your individual brand, your readership, and just how different your books are.
So What Name Should I Use?When you find yourself wondering what name you should write under, especially if, like the questioner above, you think your name might be changing at some point in the future, my advice to you is to pick whatever name you feel will serve you best in your career and stick to it. Even if you get married later in life, so long as you're writing books in that brand, your author name will never change. 
Putting your name on a book isn't like putting it on a form or a driver's licence. You're not legally saying "I did this," you're showing readers who loved your book what brand to look for when they go to buy the next one. That's it. That's the entire purpose of writing your name on the cover. Everything else--seeing your name on a cover, having people say they found your book in stores, and so forth--is  just for your own private happiness and ego. Which, by the way, is totally cool! I'm not telling you you can't put your real name on your book! But I do think you should carefully consider the sales impact of whatever name you chose to publish under, because so long as you're writing those kind of books, that's the name you're going to be stuck with.
I hope this answers your question, and I hope that everyone else found it informational, or at least entertaining! If you have a question about writing, you can always shoot me a line on my contact form or on Twitter. If you enjoyed the blog, please follow me on the Social Media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) to never miss a post! Thank you, and as always, keep writing!
Yours,Rachel

Writing Wednesday: Reader Investment and the Ticking Time Bomb

I've talked about tension and hooking my reader a LOT on this blog over the years. (Seriously, a lot. Search my blog for tension and you get, like, 20 posts.)

Given all the pixels I've already spilled on the topic, you might think I've already covered every single aspect of writing tension that exists. Well, you'd be wrong! There's always more stuff to say about tension in stories! This is partially because the mechanics of good tension are deep, subtle, and worthy of exploration, but mostly, I talk about tension because tension is really freaking important. More important than characters or plot or any other critical element of writing.

Note that this isn't to say those other things don't matter. They matter a ton! Just try writing a book with cardboard characters and see how far that gets you. It's just that tension matters more, because while you could have the best characters/plot ever committed to paper, no one's ever going to read long enough to see them if your tension sucks. Maintaining good tension is how you keep a reader's attention over the course of your writing, and since 99% of being a successful author is writing shit people want to read, I'm sure you can see how keeping your tension on point is critical to story success.

This is both a great example of narrative tension and a really great book on the subject!
So if you're new to the blog and I've just made you paranoid about your own tension, click here to get caught up! (And if you have no idea what I'm talking about with all this tension stuff, click here for my very first post on the topic to see me work myself into a froth explaining what tension is and why you desperately need it in your life).

For the rest of you old hands (or who just don't want to read back posts), today's tension topic is all about tricks and mechanisms for maintaining tension and reader investment over the course of a scene, chapter, or even an entire book. (And yes, I did just use the word "mechanisms.")

Gird your loins, peeps! It's about to get technical in here!

Writing Wednesday: Reader Investment and the Ticking Time Bomb
So I've already talked about how you can use hooks to grab a reader's attention and yank them into your story like an angler landing a sweet, highly literate fish. (And if you're not sure what a hook is, go read this post.) For maximum effect, most authors use hooks at the very beginning of the story to draw a reader in and then again and again throughout the rest off the text to keep them there. This post is about what happens after the hook has done its job.

Congratulations! Your reader now reading your book! Now: how do you keep them there?

The point of a hook is to make your reader curious enough about your story to read another paragraph, and then another page, and then another chapter, and so forth. Once we’re past those opening pages, though, you've hopefully hooked your reader hard enough that their initial idle curiosity has grown into something greater, a deep caring about this new world they've discovered. This upgraded form of caring is called reader investment, and it’s one of the most precious and useful things you can cultivate as an author.

Unlike hooks, which just have to be cool to work, at least in the beginning, generating true reader investment is a tricky business because it requires actual emotional investment. If you want your reader to stick around for the long haul, you have to give them a reason to care about your characters and your world. To see reader investment in action, just think about the last book you really loved. Chances are, it evoked a real emotional response out of you. Maybe it made you cry, maybe it made you stay up too late, maybe it just made you laugh. Whatever it did, it got to you in some way and dug those hooks in deep--deep enough that they stayed with you even after the story was done.


This is reader investment in action. Most people are naturally empathetic, we care about the stories of those around us. A good writer taps into that to make you get all emotionally involved in people that don't actually exist. The story might be fictional, but the feelings it evokes are real, and those real emotional connections are why people read fiction in the first place.

As you can see, this is some nuclear grade story material, and it's why reader investment is such an important factor for maintaining tension. Any hack can dangle a character off a ledge, but dangle someone your audience REALLY care about, and you're in a whole other ballgame for page turning, white-knuckled-reading, OMG-tell-all-my-friends-about-this readership, which is always our goal.

So how do we go about building this kind of reader investment for ourselves? Well, the biggest part of it is that you have to have characters, a plot, and a world worthy of that kind of reader attention. But assuming you're already working on those things to the best of your ability (and if not, why? Don't you want to give your readers the absolute best?) here are a few tried and true author tricks for rapidly building and holding reader investment.

Character Tension Mechanics: Manipulating SympathyFor the most part, building a reader's emotional investment in a character is all about finding new and interesting ways to evoke and manipulate your audience's sympathy. The cheapest and most blatant way to do this is to make your character something readers will automatically sympathize with, like a puppy or a child. Once you've got a suitably vulnerable character, building instant reader sympathy and investment is as easy as putting your new character in horrible, unfair, possibly dangerous situation that will immediately make the reader want to keep reading if only to make sure everything turns out okay.

That sounds cheesy as hell when you spell it out, but this is exactly what happens in the first Harry Potter novel. From the opening sentence, we’re introduced to a good, likable boy who is horrifically abused by his foster family and who suffers from strange, scary powers. The beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone focuses entirely on building reader investment in Harry specifically so that, when his invitation to Hogwarts finally arrives, we want Harry to escape just as much as he does.

You're a blatant ploy for reader sympathy, Harry!
But J.K. Rowling is a smart cookie. She knows better than to give us our satisfaction too soon. After building all that instant reader sympathy and tension with poor Harry and his horrible family, she could have cashed in right away and sent Harry off to Hogwarts right in the very first chapter, but she doesn’t. Instead, she has Daddy Dursley rip up Harry’s invitations and forbid him to go.

By putting the Dursleys between Harry (whom we are instantly rooting for due to his incredibly unfair circumstances) and his obvious destiny at Hogwarts, J.K. Rowling has us by the throat. By choosing to draw out the situation and force the characters into conflict, she masterfully leverages all the sympathy she just built up for poor Harry as well as our growing hatred for the closed minded, terrible Dursleys. The result is a maelstrom of tension that forces us to keep reading. We have to know if Harry’s going to make it, and even more, if his horrible foster family is going to get their just desserts.

If J.K. Rowling had just let Harry escape to Hogwarts when the first invitation arrived, the story—and our investment in it—would not be nearly as strong. She made a very smart choice in making things so hard on Harry, because even if it makes your job as an author easier, you never want to let your characters take the easy road. The easy road is boring. There’s no tension there, no struggle or conflict. I’m sure J.K. Rowling wanted to get Harry out of the boring muggle world and into the Wizarding one (and the main plot) as fast as possible, but she doesn’t take the short cut. Instead, she makes Harry (and the reader) work and suffer to reach the promised wizarding land, a plot choice that ensures maximum reader investment in Harry as a main character and (when we finally get there) in the new, magical culture she subsequently introduces through Hagrid and Diagon Alley.

By structuring her plot in this way, not only did Rowling give us a highly entertaining opening, she gave us a hero we were practically compelled to love. She blatantly manipulated our innate sympathy for an abused boy and coupled it with the tension created by the conflict surrounding his abusive relatives to build our reader investment as high and tall and fast as possible. All of this work pays off in spades in when we actually reach the wizarding part of the novel. By the time Rowling is ready to start dropping hints about Harry’s parents and the state of the larger plot, we are 100% on board for this ride and gobbling up every word. Our interest in Harry and his future is now so personal and so deep that the Diagon Alley scenes, which otherwise would be a long form description of a boy going to a bank and buying school supplies, feel incredibly exciting. A pretty impressive feat when you think about it.

So as you see, building and then threatening a reader’s investment in your characters and world is a surefire formula for creating tension. But even this is only part of the arsenal of tension mechanics authors have at their fingertips. Another way you can ensure tension—and therefore page turning—in your book is by employing a ticking time bomb.

Plot Tension Mechanic: The Ticking Time BombThere are lots of ways you can use plot mechanics to build reader investment in your world and story, but the ticking time bomb in all its wonderful iterations is my personal favorite. Whenever you include any kind of countdown, time limit, or deadline in your story, tension automatically follows. This trope is especially popular in action books, where heroes are constantly racing against the clock to rescue someone, stop an assassination, or even defuse a literal ticking time-bomb, but (as we'll see) it exists in countless other forms as well.



My favorite literal example of the ticking time-bomb plot mechanic is the action movie Crank . The whole thing opens with the main character—a hitman who’s just failed a job because of an uncharacteristic fit of conscience—learning he’s been injected with a poison that will kill him if his adrenaline drops below a certain level. Armed with this knowledge and burning need for revenge, he then spends the rest of the movie doing progressively crazier and crazier things to keep himself in an adrenaline-soaked fury so that he can live long enough to get back at the people who did this to him. Along the way, the script writers also somehow managed to fit in a surprisingly cute romance with his girlfriend, who didn’t know he was a hitman until this happened, and a solid redemption arc for the main character.

These additional plot elements, which could have slowed a normal movie down, are kept going at a breakneck pace by the constant threat that the main character will die if he lets himself calm down. This ticking time-bomb is the primary source of tension in the story—the crazy spinning wheel that drives everything else—and it works. The whole movie is insane, almost comically over-the-top in places, but the absurdly high tension keeps even the ludicrous scenes from ever feeling goofy or unimportant. And whenever the plot seems like it might be starting to drag, the adrenaline poison mechanic kicks back in, and we’re off to the races again.

But while Crank is an excellently executed example of what happens when you take the ticking time-bomb to its extreme, the same idea works just as well in softer, less intense stories.

Years ago, I watched an anime called Mahoromatic . In this show, the titular main character Maho is a retired battle android who’s no longer fit to fight on the front lines. Burdened by terrible guilt for the horrific things she’d done as a soldier, Maho decides to become a maid working for the son of her former commander as a form of penance. But, of course, things don’t stay that simple as other battle androids show up to continue the war or follow through on old vendettas. but generally speaking the show is a quiet character drama about what happens to weapons when the war is over.The ticking time-bomb part of this comes in at the end of every episode when, since Maho is a retired battle android nearing the end of her usefulness, the show displays how many days of operation she has left.

Expectation: cute moe fluff! Reality: the bitter truth of our own inevitable mortality.
This was an incredibly subtle and powerful use of the countdown tension mechanic. Every episode, we’re watching this former robotic super soldier become more and more human, and every episode, there’s that number reminding us that her life is literally counting down. There’s no bomb, no crisis, just the steady march of time and the inevitability of death. We know there is no escape, that no one gets out of this alive, but we can’t help hoping that Maho will make it. And as the countdown timer sinks lower and lower, the tension and the bittersweet sadness of what would otherwise be a silly show about a battle android robot turned maid who also happens to look like a cute girl becomes almost unbearable.

This is the power of good tension management. It takes characters and situations that might otherwise come across as silly, ridiculous, or boring, and makes them gripping. It makes us care. That’s why it’s so important to always think about tension when you’re considering any sort of plot. You can have the best characters, story, and prose in the world, but if you drop the ball on your tension, if you let that line keeping that reader fish on your fishing pole go slack, then your story is going to come across as uneven, or worse, boring. Boring is what happens when tension fails, and it loses readers faster than any other mistake.

Now, obviously, these are just two examples of tension mechanics in action. There are hundreds more like this, and I'm sure I'll be back to discuss all of them eventually, but what I really wanted to do today was show you how plot is not just plot. The events of a novel aren't just what's happening, they are mechanics, mechanisms powered by tension that drive the highly complex emotional manipulation machine we call story.

MECHANICS!I realize that last bit might have sounded a bit scary, and I hope I haven't put you off of any of this. Contrary to what it might seem like on this blog, you don't actually have to understand all this stuff to tell a good story. Plenty of very successful authors have no idea why they do what they do. It just feels right, just works. And if that's working for you, then by all means, go for it. But if you're like me and you hate driving blind, then digging into these kind of story mechanics is a very good way to make the entire writing process feel less mysterious, frustrating, and generally out of your control. It's also just freaking cool, but that might be my inner story nerd talking :).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the post! If you're not already, please follow me on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) for blog updates, writing links, and general bookish awesome. You can also subscribe to the blog directly via Feedburner if that's your jam. Thank you as always for reading/putting up with my story tech geekdom. I'll see you all next week for more!

Until then, happy writing!!

❤ Rachel

Writing Wednesday: Work for Hire - What It Is, Why You (Might) Want It, and How to Get It

I'M BACK!

As you might have seen on Twitter last night, I finished the book I had to stop writing Heartstrikers to write! WOO!

This book was a new record for me: a complete 95k novel written and first sweep edited (ie, cleaned up enough to be decent for the initial editor/client review) in about 7 weeks. Pretty freaking awesome!!

So what is this book, you might ask? Well...I can't tell you. I'm not just being coy here, either. I mean I signed a contract that legally prevents me from telling anyone anything about this project. Why would I sign up such a thing? Well, friends, let's take an educational journey into the world of what we in the publishing business call Work for Hire!

Writing Wednesday: Work for Hire - What It Is, Why You (Might) Want It, and How to Get It
According to Google, this is writing for money looks like. (Holds out hands to receive cash...still holding...)At the basic level, the publishing world definition of Work for Hire (sometimes known as Contract Work) means hiring a writer to write a specific book. This is backwards from the way publishing normally works (ie, the writer writes a book, makes it as awesome as possible, and then tries to sell that finished book to the publisher). In Work for Hire, a publishing house or individual will come up with an idea/world/series on their own and then go hire a professional author to actually write the thing.

Work for Hire contracts include writing novelizations for film and popular franchises (the Extended Universe Star Wars novels, the book version of every big movie/game, and so forth), Ghost Writing, writing for Book Packagers, etc. All of these have their up sides and down sides for both the client/publisher and the hired writer, but since this is a writing blog, I'm going to focus on the author half of the business agreement.

How Does it Work?Now, sometimes these contracts are a very big deal, like when a major media corporation hires an NYT Bestseller to write a series of novels for a big hit property (again, see Star Wars ). These sort of big name projects are often more like partnerships than normal Work for Hire. All three parties--the major media corporation, the NYT Bestseller author, and the big hit property--have their own name recognition and fanbase, and since bringing all of these together in one novel is a surefire way to produce a hit, every part of the equation is trumpeted as loud as possible for maximum impact. 
All around awesome dude Kevin Hearne working it like a pro!These kind of projects are the Holy Grail of Work for Hire, and they can make a writer's career (Timothy Zahn, anyone?), but not all Contract Work is so good for your career. In fact, most contract projects out there are anonymous Ghost Writing jobs where you're hired to write a novel, give the credit to someone else, get your money, and then never speak of it again. Your name will never be on the book, and if you're a good author and obey your NDA, no one will ever know you were involved. 
This anonymity can be a mixed blessing, especially if the Book That Must Not Be Named goes on to be a critically acclaimed smash hit, hit the NYT, and otherwise achieve all your author dreams without you, but such is the gamble of Work for Hire. 
More on this in a bit. 
So What's it Like to Write One of These?From the writer side of the fence, Work for Hire is a pretty bizarre experience. For me personally, it felt like I went from being God of my own worlds to playing action figures in someone else's, which was a pretty big change for me. If you read this blog regularly, you know I'm a pretty anal control freak when it comes to my work, and I had to let go of a lot of that to write this book.

That said, I actually really enjoyed the experience! To take a page from my Great British Bake Off writing post, Work for Hire is a lot like a technical challenge. You're given a specific recipe (book spec) with predefined ingredients (characters, plot arcs, etc) and, more often than not, a very tight timeline in which to create a specific finished product, but you're not given many (if any) instructions on how to actually get there. You have to use all the experience and skills you've gained through working on your own novels and just figure it out.

The result is a pure execution challenge: how well can you assemble a fun, competent, exciting book given predefined pieces. If that sounds like a fun challenge to you, then working for hire will probably be an enjoyable and lucrative experience. If having to write someone else's characters sounds like hell, then maybe this kind of work isn't for you.

It's not always so dire, of course. How much control you have over the creative details of the narrative will vary from project to project. Sometimes the client will come in with a cast, plot, and narrative arc already laid out, and you're just there to connect the dots into actual, readable prose. Other times, you'll be given something very broad like "write a novel in this world" and the rest--the characters, plot, and so forth--will be left up to you, pending client approval.

That last bit's the kicker, because while all that freedom might sound nice, it can also be enough rope to hang yourself if your client doesn't like any of your ideas. That's the other part of Work for Hire that's really different from writing your own stuff: you're writing for an audience of one. Of course, you're trying to write a good book that will sell well and make you proud, but you're also writing to please the person who hired you, even if that person's ideas aren't what you would normally write. It's a very delicate balancing act, because you were hired specifically for your writing expertise. Yes, you're writing their story, but if you think your client is asking for something that's going to wreck the book, it's your job to tell them. It's a very different dynamic from the normal editor/author, or even reader/author relationship, but it's one you have to learn to manage adroitly if you ever want to do this kind of work. Which brings us to...

Why Would Anyone Do This?There are a lot of reasons authors take on Work for Hire, the simplest of which is that it usually pays pretty well. Anonymous Ghost Writing especially gives you licence to demand ludicrous sums of money since your name will never be associated with this book, which means it's doing nothing for your career and you need to be compensated accordingly. 
On the flip side, if you get a contract from a major property (ie, get hired to write the next Halo novel or a book adaptation of Frozen) to write a book for them under your own name, then Work for Hire is a great way to get your writing in front of a much larger audience. This is especially great if you can land a contract for something really popular (again, Star Wars is the prime example), because that book is then pretty much guaranteed to hit a big Best Seller list, and since you're on the cover as the author, this means you get to call yourself a NYT Best Seller on all your other novels forever! Once a best seller, always a best seller :)
 Finally, Work for Hire is an amazing way to meet legit famous people you'd never get to interact with normally. For example, if you get hired to Ghost Write a celebrity novel, you're going to get to talk to and work with that celebrity. Not to tip my hand on my own secret projects, but this is REALLY COOL. These interactions are a once in a lifetime experience, the sort of thing money just can't buy, and, at least for me, one of the biggest reasons to seriously consider any Work for Hire project that comes my way.
Fair Enough, Rachel, But How Do I Get These Projects in the First Place?Like everything else in the publishing world, what Work for Hire project you have access to depends on your career. What sort of work you're offered will depend largely on your experience (ie, if you're a debut author with only one title to your name, you probably won't get picked to write a novel for a huge name like Star Wars) and what kind of author you are. Part of this is simple genre matches--if you're known for your terrifying Gothic Horror novels, you're probably not going to be approached to write a light-hearted contemporary YA--but part of it also your own professional acumen. 
Publishing clients are like any other employers: they want to work with professionals who will do their job well and on time. If you're a novelist who's chronically late on your manuscripts and who has public artistic melt downs, it doesn't matter how good a writer you are, you're going to have a tough time getting Contract Work. Creative professionals are still professionals. Even if you haven't finished a novel yet, if you want to have a juicy contract offered to you at some point in your career, start projecting that aura of competence and professionalism now. It's all part an parcel of treating your writing like a job.
All that said, of course, the one thing you absolutely will need if you want to break into this kind of writing is an agent. Not only are they the ones who actually know all the other agents/editors offering these contracts in the first place, if you're looking for Work for Hire, a good agent will actively market you as a contract writer to their network. For example, if they hear an editor mentioning they need a writer for such and such project, they'll pop in and say "Hey, I've got the perfect person!" and then mention your name. 
If that sounds like a "You gotta know people to know people" situation, it is, The Self Pub revolution might be in full swing, but Contract Work is firmly an old media/Trad publishing affair. If you want these kind of contracts, you have to be in this world. If that's a deal breaker for you, don't sweat it. If you're a writer who's firmly in the anti-New York publishing camp, chances are you'd hate contract work anyway. You thought normal publishing house contracts were restrictive? Wait until you see these puppies!
For me, Contract Work fills a very specific niche in my professional life, and so long as you accept all the hoops you're going to have to jump through, it can be a unique and rewarding experience. If you're not yet published and you're interested in Contract Work, my advice to you would be to focus on building your own career first. After all, Work for Hire clients are hiring an author specifically for your professional writing experience. If you don't have any of that yet, you have nothing to sell, and anyone who's willing to hire you anyway isn't the kind of client you want to work for.
For example, book packagers hire unpublished writers all the time. Many of the most well known long running series like Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High are written not by a single author, but by an army of freelancers managed by a packager, the company paid by the publisher to reliably produce new entries in these perennially selling IPs. But while there are many good book packagers who offer fair (if low paying) freelance contracts, there are also plenty of shysters who prey on writers' desperation to get people willing to write like slaves for peanuts and zero share of the rights. A perfect example of this is James Frey's YA book packager who paid young, then unpublished author Jobie Hughes a mere $250 to write what became the Best Selling YA hit I Am Number Four published under pseudonym Pitticus Lore. That $250 is all Hughes ever made for his work, despite millions of books sold and a movie deal. His name wouldn't even be known if the scandal about how little he was paid for the title hadn't broken. 
More like "I am Getting Screwed Over"This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME with book packagers. They are the dark underbelly of Write for Hire, and while there are freelance authors who've made a living using them, I can not recommend this kind of work. In my opinion, you are much better off writing your own work. Even if everything flops, at least you won't have to deal being exploited on top of it.
And That's What I Know About Work for Hire!I hope you've found this post useful, or at least entertaining! If you still have questions or if you've had your own experiences with contract work, leave them in the comments below! And for those of you wondering where the hell the next Heartstrikers book is, have no fear. I'm going right back to it right now! Speaking of, it's time to go write. 
Thank you all a million times for reading! If you want more writing info, I do craft posts every Wednesday. Follow me on Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) to never miss a blog and for lots of other book-related fun! And if you're curious about my work for hire...you're just going to have to stay that way for now, I'm afraid. Trust me, though, when I get permission to talk about it, OH GOD, how I will talk about it! You'll wish you'd never asked. ;)
Thank you again as always for reading, and until next time, happy writing!
Yours 4 evs,Rachel

Writing Wednesday: Deadlines, I have them

Welp guys, this week is crunch week, and so today's post is a cop out. Deadlines! They're real!


I wish I could say that I had a fool proof plan to always hit my goals in a non-panicked rush, but I'm still working on that one. Best laid plans of mice and authors, etc. etc. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I did this to myself. Self employment means being your own hell boss!

Anywho, I'm headed back down to the writing cave to knock this out like a boss (or haul my carcass over the finish line, whichever comes first). I hope you all have a much less stressful week ahead of you! Happy writing!

Yours in a panicked rush,
Rachel

Writing Wednesday: Flavor vs. Bake

First up, if you're at all interested in the self publishing business, go and check out the latest Author Earnings Report. It's one of their better ones and paints an amazing picture of the current Amazon book market (which is pretty much the #1 most important market for most indie authors currently). In addition to mapping out the market share of indie books as compared to small and large publishers, they also take a pretty comprehensive stab at figuring out just how much money Amazon itself makes per day from the indie marketplace, and damn. Let's just say I'm not worried about Amazon giving up the indie ghost anytime soon!

Okay, okay, enough business, let's talk craft! Delicious, delicious craft...

Writing Wednesday: Flavor vs. Bake
If you follow me on Twitter (and if no, why not? Come hang out!! Let's be cool kids!), you've probably picked up that I'm a pretty big fan of a certain reality cooking show from across the pond. That's right, I'm talking about my addiction du jour, The Great British Bake Off!!
Tell it like it is, Mary!Before I begin...OMG WHY ISN'T ALL OF THIS SHOW AVAILABLE IN AMERICA? Do you not like money in England? Because I would pay--oh God, how I would pay--to own all six seasons of this amazing show in glorious HD. BUT NO. All I get is one measly season on Netflix and scraps of the others through, um, methods I'm not going to talk about on the blog >.> 
Moving on!
My love of reality television competition shows for creative endeavors is well documented on this blog. But while I loved the shit out of Project Runway, I think I love the Great British Bake Off even more for the following reasons:The hosts (but mostly Mary Berry).The food.The accents! (Particularly the excessive use of the word "chuffed")I learn a ton about baking every episode.EVERYONE IS SO GOD DAMN NICE! (No cast drama, everyone seems genuinely happy just to be there, just a super pleasant and positive watching experience all around!)Sue's terrible puns.Mary Berry, again.All that said, I think what I love most about this show (and the part that actually pertains to writing, which we'll get to in just a second) is the focus on the perfect marriage of technical skill and creative brilliance required to win.In Project Runway, all that mattered to win was "does the dress look good?" Because of this single requirement, it wasn't uncommon to see models going down the runway in dresses held together with hot glue and staples. Yes, technical skill was praised, but at the end of the day, no one was ever expected to wear those outfits again. They only had to look good for the thirty seconds it took the model to walk down the runway. Technical sewing skills were valued (and vitally important to actually finishing your garment), but at the end of the day, creativity and aesthetics were everything. It didn't matter if the dress was falling off the model so long as the idea behind it was amazing and innovative. As the hosts liked to say, this is Project Runway, not Project Seamstress.
The Great British Bake Off takes a very different approach. If you're trying to win over the GBBO judges (Paul Hollywood, professional baker, and Mary Berry, cook book writer and immortal baking goddess) it's not just to have creative flavors or lovely decorations. The bake itself--how you actually make your food--must be perfect to its form. Cakes must be moist, bread must be well risen, pies must have crust that's perfect and flaky on the top and bottom, custards must be properly set, and so forth. Whatever you are making, it has to look good, it has to taste good, and it has to be well executed. 
This total package is really important, because unlike the clothes on Project Runway (which only have to look good, and then only for as long as it takes for them to get down the runway) the produce of The Great British Bake Off must be consumed in order to be judged. You can't just look at a cake and say "Oh, it's good." You have to eat that sucker, and if the middle of that beautiful cake is raw or the bottom is burned, that's a problem. It doesn't matter how amazing your creative flavors were or how beautifully you piped your icing if your cake is inedible because you didn't take the time or have the technical skills to bake it properly.
And this is where my love of the GBBO merges into my profession, because all the points I made in the paragraph above also apply to writing. To steal the language of the GBBO, a properly executed book is all about balancing your creative elements and flourishes--the flavor--with proper technical execution--the bake. 

Just like in cooking, flavor in a book is what makes the story uniquely interesting. It's the author's own creative flare. The hooks and flourishes and fantastic characters and unique setting and all that stuff that we can only get from this novel. When we say "I loved this!" flavor is often what we're talking about: the unique feeling and flare that brings us back to a certain world or series or writer again and again. 
This is SUPER important. Just as a good chef is known for the amazing flavors she creates, a good writer is known for their incredible creativity. Food has to taste delicious and books need to be interesting. Both of these come down to flavor, the creative flourish, but in books and cooking, flavor alone is not enough.
If I had to create a GBBO drinking game, I'd get everyone hammered by having people take a shot every time Paul or Mary bemoaned the shame of a bake with wonderful flavor but terrible execution. Every challenge, there's always someone with a dish that sounds heavenly and ends up a plate of slop because they failed to execute the technical aspects of their idea properly. It sounded so good in theory, but in practice, it was only half baked. Sometimes literally.
As someone who reads a LOT of books--NY published, self published, and as yet to be published--this is the single most common problem I encounter. Writers with great ideas, good flavor, and no idea how to execute them properly. I can't tell you how many times I've read the blurb for a book, gotten super excited because it sounded amazing, only to put the thing down five pages in because the writer messed up some basic technical aspect such as pacing or characterization.
Just as in baking, a lot of this comes down to experience. Fresh strawberries in your cake might sound like a fantastic idea, but in practice those strawberries are just going to turn to liquid the second the heat hits them and your bake will end up a soggy mess. The experienced baker knows this and takes precautions, or avoids fresh strawberries all together, but unless the amateur has read this advice previously, they can only learn from the mistake and move on. This is how amateurs become experienced, and it's why practicing the technical side of craft is every bit as important as creativity. One simply can not fly without the other.
But, of course, there's a flip side to this as well. On the GBBO, many contestants try to play it safe by baking simple recipes; tried and true favorites they're confident they won't mess up. When this happens, the inevitable warning from Paul and Mary is that the simpler you go, the more perfect you have to be in your technical execution. Without the creative flare and risks of bold flavoring, there's nothing to excuse technical missteps, and even when you bake it perfectly, you still run the risk of being boring. Even perfection might not be enough when you don't bring anything new to the party.
This is the second most common problem I encounter with the books I read. I can't tell you how many times writers have come to me a finished, polished book and asked me why it isn't selling. When I look at the book, it might have minor technical flaws, but most of the time the plot, characters, and setting are perfectly serviceable. It's a fine book--a good bake--but it's just not interesting. The flavor is bland, and so readers aren't interested.
This is by far the more frustrating problem to deal with. Technical problems are fixable, but how do you have better ideas? You can nurture your creativity by reading good books, watching great movies, looking at inspiring art, and otherwise consuming other people's amazing ideas, but if you can't generate amazing ideas of your own, no amount of technical expertise or perfection is going to save you. 

This isn't to say success is guaranteed. It's not. You can have an amazing story perfectly told and still fall flat. That said, success is much easier and far more likely if you do everything in your power to achieve the total package every time. This is not easy, or even achievable with every project. Every baker on the GBBO inevitably has a disaster somewhere along the line, but the contestants who make it to the finals are inevitably the bakers who have consistently produced good bakes that look and taste great. Likewise, the authors you see who are doing well are not necessarily artists who produce perfection every time, but rather, writers who can consistently deliver interesting, exciting stories that are well told and well presented with good covers and hooky blurb.
All of this is, of course, nothing new, but too often I run into writers who get their panties in a bunch over one element of this balance while ignoring the rest. Self publishing folks especially like to hem and haw and wring their hands over their marketing or covers while completely ignoring the fact that their opening pages are boring, or their ending sucks. I've seen amazingly creative works with killer ideas dissolve into giant messes because the writer didn't know how to properly handle their plot and character arcs and technically fine books that fizzled because the author got hold of some incredibly stupid idea and refused to let it go. 
Obviously, all of these are big problems, but the most frustrating part for me is that, unlike baking a cake on the GBBO, publishing a book is not a performance art. You have plenty of time to address and correct all of these mistakes before you give your book to your audience, and failing to do so is, to me, the greatest sin a writer can commit. Your book doesn't have to be perfect, no one's book is, but like a cake in a bakery case, it should be well flavored, well baked, and well presented. This is the bare minimum for a professional product. Anything less is an insult to your customer/reader irregardless of whether you're self publishing or trying to sell your novel to a publishing house.
So if you're a writer, and you're having problems getting people to bite on your book, the best thing you can do is step back and look at your novel objectively as a whole. Ideally, what you want is a uniquely interesting product that is also technically well done and well packaged. Just as you wouldn't buy a cake that didn't look good, taste good, and was well baked, readers aren't going to but a book that's a mess in any of these areas. But that's just the minimum. If you want to create a real hit or bestseller, then you can't just tick the boxes. You have to make the cronut of fiction, something amazing and unique and perfectly executed and so insanely delicious and addictive people will line up around the block to get their hands on it. 
The pastry that brought a nation to its knees...Now, obviously, you can't pull perfection like that out of your hat every time, but that level of amazing--not mere "good enough"--should always be the goal you aim for. That way, if you fall short, you'll probably still land well past the finish line. And if the worst happens and you fail utterly, at least you did so while daring greatly, which is both noble and highly educational. As every creative reality competition (GBBO included) will teach you: boring is the ultimate sin. You always learn more and get more credit from taking creative risks than you do by playing it safe.

I know I'm setting a pretty high standard here, but honestly, if your goal is to write professionally, that's the bar. That's where other professional writers are working, it's what readers expect, and it's what you need to be aiming for in your work. One of the highest praises the judges on the GBBO can offer is calling something professional, because in baking as in writing, professional is expected to be the top level of quality: a perfect balance of technical expertise, creativity, and presentation. Is it easy? Of course not. Is it doable? Absolutely! But like any creative skill performed at a high level, it's going to take practice and a refusal to accept mediocrity in any element of your work. Like Mary Berry always says, you need to strive for absolute perfection. You might not get it, but simply by setting the bar that high, you should achieve a level of professional quality that you otherwise might not have pushed hard enough to grasp, and that's what it's all about.

Let's make something wonderful!
And thus concludes another Writing Wednesday! I hope you enjoyed this attempt to justify my obsessive GBBO fandom in my professional life. If you'd like more writing posts (including actual How Tos that aren't just excuses to talk about my favorite shows) click on the Writing label or just check in here every Wednesday. I post new craft blogs every week with writing business posts in between, so check me out! If you don't feel like checking in all the time, though (and really, who does?) you can follow me on the social media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) for live updates on all new content as well as useful links and other writerly stuff!
Thank you as always for reading, and I wish you the very best of luck in all your writing (and baking!) endeavors.
Yours always,Rachel

Writing Wednesday: WTF are Subplots and Do I Need One?

Warning! Today's post is going to be both technical and opinionated. If you disagree with how I treat subplots in my work, that is entirely your right. You do you! But if you're interested in seeing how I think about/manage/plan the subplots in my books, stick with me, 'cause shit's about to get specific!
Ready? Let's go!
Writing Wednesday: How to Write a Subplot
It doesn't have to be this complicated, but it can be if that's your jam...
(All credits to XKCD! See the original graph in all its high resolution glory here.)
“Subplot” is one of those writing vocab words that a lot of people toss around, but I’m not sure many writers actually know what it means.
Technically, a subplot is any storyline that happens in a book that is not the main plot. These can include romantic subplots, which are love stories in books that aren’t actually Romances (where the romance is the main plot). Character subplots, which happen when a secondary character is having their own plot line in addition to the novel’s main plot, (like Marci’s gangster problems in Nice Dragons Finish Last ). Also popular are setting subplots, which are story lines that run simultaneous to the main plot in the wider setting of the novel, but are not (or, at least, not in the beginning) actually part of the main story. A good example of a setting subplot would be a Fantasy novel where where the protagonist is ostensibly doing his own thing, but the author keeps mentioning a brewing war or political struggle in the background. These mentions are often disguised as exposition or worldbuiling until, all of a sudden, the budding war/political conflict bursts into the main plot with a vengeance, forcing the main characters to deal with new problems.
These are just a few examples of common subplots you find in genre fiction, but really, any story thread that exists on its own merit outside of the book's main plot can be a subplot. Note that “outside” here doesn’t mean the subplot is isolated from the main plot, because a good subplot always comes back around to be an important factor in the main plot or the novel or the series.
Why is this? Well, I try never to set down hard rules in my writing, mostly because the moment I say “X is always true,” I’ll instantly find five books that fly in the face of whatever I just said. But speaking practically for the vast majority of successful novels, it’s pretty much impossible to have a subplot that exists purely its own sake and never ties into the main plot without the storyline in question feeling disconnected and superfluous. Because, you know, it is.
So if subplots must reconnect with the main plot as a general rule, why bother with them at all? Why not just wrap everything into the main plot from the start and call it a day? Well, you can definitely do that, and many authors do, but ignoring the subplot mechanic in writing cuts you off from an enormous world of complexity in your stories. This is because, while the purpose of the subplot isn’t to stand on its own, the introduction of plots outside of your main story opens up new avenues that you as a writer can use to show viewpoints and events your main story might otherwise never touch.

When you cut it down to the bare bones, a main plot standing by itself is often relatively simple. Even if you're dealing with a very complex plot or world, there’s only so much a main character can get their hands into before things just get too complicated and the plot turns to soup. Subplots are a way to get around this limitation. By introducing a new story thread that runs parallel with your main plot, you are free to introduce all kinds of new situations, events, threats, world building, and other extremely interesting story stuff that might otherwise be beyond the realistic limits of your central story. 
Of course, once I did that, I then had to then figure out how to wrap this new subplot into my main story, but these kind of connections are surprisingly easy to make when you’ve got solid worldbuilding. One of my big big rules for everything in my books is that nothing happens for no reason. Everyone and everything is always working toward their own goals, and all of these actions and interactions have logical and realistic reactions. With that in mind, all I had to do to tie this new subplot to my main plot was figure out how these lofty important characters (and the big decisions they were making) were related to my main crew. Once I had that connection, the way forward became clear. All I needed was the link and a little creative thinking, and it was easy to figure out how to tie this new subplot (which I initially created purely to solve my POV problem) into my main story.
Now this kind of thing might sound like one of those experienced writer moments, but trust me. If you've built a world that makes sense and filled it with realistic people with lives that realistically intersect, these kind of connections when you're in the text. It's just the way our brains work. We as a species live to make connections and find order in the chaos. You just have to make sure you've built a firm foundation. Once you've got that, you'll be amazed at how much else will fall into place.
But that's a whole other worldbuilding post (which I'm probably going to write next)! For now, back to subplots.
So that was an example of how subplots can solve writerly woes, but the truth is that a good subplot is so much more than a handy narrative problem solver. When done well, a good subplot plot will add depth, character drama, and a whole new viewpoint to the story that could not have achieved otherwise. You can use them to set in motion ticking timebombs your main characters know nothing about, heightening your reader's tension to the max as you force them to watch beloved characters blithely going about their plots completely ignorant of the anvil that's about to fall on their heads. A villain subplot can add humanity to a character who might otherwise be forced by the plot into coming across as two dimensional or shallow. Likewise, a romantic subplot can add poignancy and human weakness to a kickass hero who might otherwise be a slave to his/her own badass action plot. 
The possibilities for a good subplot are as wide and varied as your imagination, and they don't have to be complicated either. Subplots can be as simple as a few key interactions between the villain and his forbidden, doomed lover, or so big that you practically have two (or more) main plots running that eventually crash together. Both styles are excellent strategies that authors can use to great effect. The key, though, is to always remember that subplots are sub, as in below, the main plot. If you have a subplot that’s taking over your novel, you might want to stop and ask yourself if that’s not actually your main plot.
How to Differentiate a Subplot from a Main Plot
This is not as obvious as it might sound.
As we saw above, subplots can get very big, even to the point of practically being a main plot in and of themselves. Game of Thrones is an excellent example of a book where it is extremely hard to say which plot is the main plot. Now, clearly, this is working for GRRM, but he's the exception that proves the rule, because there are plenty of readers (myself included) who absolutely hate this kind of multi-thread story telling where you're forced to go back over the same events from multiple points of view. 
Now, obviously, you can do what you want with your book. But since you're here reading my blog, which (I hope) means you care about my advice, I would strongly suggest you pick one main plot and stick to it. Again, this is my opinion. I’m sure there are authors who’ll say that the whole idea of a main plot is just an outdated conceit. For my money, though, picking one plot as your main plot is the critical element to keeping your narrative focused, tense, and properly dramatic. It’s lovely to have a good, meaty subplot, but forcing readers to split their attention and interest too far is playing with fire.
Readers instinctively want to know what a story is actually about. When we read a plot, we’re always looking for Who’s important? What events should I be focusing on? What details do I need to remember? Part of being a good writer is being aware of these questions and answering them in clever, creative ways, deftly focusing reader attention on the important details without resorting to heavy handed “this is important” exposition tricks. Or, as I like to call them, two-by-foreshadowing.
To pull off these delicate slight-of-narrative-hand tricks, though, we authors have to know ourselves what is actually important in our stories, and that means knowing for sure which of our many plots is the main player. Again, this isn’t to say subplots can’t carry vital plot elements. They absolutely can, and are actually better when they do, but your main plot should always be the one that carries the main oomph of the story. It’s the common thread, the central axis that holds all the other subplots and character arcs together. If someone wrote a one paragraph book report about your novel, the main plot is the story they would tell.
So if you're writing a story and you feel confused about where the plot is going, one of the best things you can do is stop and figure out which plot is your main plot and which are subplots. Who are the main actors in your climax? What is the central conflict that defines your turning points? What story is most important to you? That's the one that should be your main plot. If it's not, then you could have a subplot trying to take over, and that's going to cause a lot of narrative confusion for you and your readers. If you find this happening, step back and refocus on your main plot.
Alternatively, if you feel that your story is too simple/short, or if you're having a really hard time working in parts of your worldbuilding or higher level magic/politics to your main story, you might want to try working in a subplot specifically designed to show these off. Creating a new view point character who lives in a vastly different part of your world than your primary cast (for example, if your MC is a nobleman, work in a plantation slave girl, or if your MC is a plantation slave girl, work in a noble man, and so forth). 
Now, of COURSE this new viewpoint character should be narratively important and relevant. We're not just adding story lines for the sake of story lines. Whatever subplot you choose should always hook back into the main story in some important way. Maybe the slave girl is the key to helping the nobleman escape to go on his adventure? Maybe they become unlikely friends? Whatever. You get the idea. The point here is subplots let you hop your reader to vastly different points in your narrative landscape that they would not otherwise get to see if you kept them stuck in the tunnel of your main plot. How exactly this will work depends on the needs and flexibility of your individual story, but so long as you weave all your subplots back into your main narrative before the ending (and, most importantly, make sure all those sub stories happened for a reason that makes sense/is important in the larger scale of the plot), you should be A-OK!
If all of this sounds a bit daunting, don't fret. If you don't want to include a subplot or you can't think of how to link a new view point back into your main story, don't bother. Or, alternately, if you want to tell your story through dozens of subplots, that's fine, too. This is your book. So long as you do whatever it is you're doing well, everything else is just details. All that really matters here is that you stay consistent and keep your focus on the characters and story you've chosen to tell. Otherwise, if you drift off and let the subplots run wild, you're going to end up with a tangled mess. And while some authors definitely can make that messy plot thing work, it's not an easy path or one you should take on by accident. Messy or straight, though, you always have to know what story you're trying to tell, because if you don't know, how is your reader ever going to figure it out?
I hope all of this has given you a new perspective on the insanely powerful writing tool that is the subplot. While they can be enough rope to hang yourself if done poorly, a well executed subplot will add depth and complexity to your book that simply can not be matched. Plus, they're a great way of showing showing events, character development, and information that just won’t fit into your main plotline without having to resort to silly tricks. It's a win/win all around! You just have to make sure you're keeping a firm hand on the rudder and don't let them run wild. But if you keep a hold on things and make sure to work all your subplots neatly back into your main one before the final climax, the sky's the limit on what they can do! 
So if you haven't thought much about your subplots before now, I really hope you'll give them another look. They are brilliant and wonderful and absolutely worth your effort. Oh, and they can eat you if you ignore them, so pay attention! The book you save might just be your own.
And thus ends today's Writing Wednesday! I hope you enjoyed it! I do writing posts every week, so if you're not already, follow me on the Social Media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) to get the new material as soon as it goes up plus lots of other awesome writerly stuff! 
As always, thank you as always for reading! If you're new to my blog, you can always click the Writing tag to see more posts like this one. You can also visit www.rachelaaron.net for samples of all my novels and my bestselling non-fic writing book, 2k to 10k.
Thanks again, and happy writing!❤ Rachel

Writing Wednesday: The Long Tail -- What Happens When Nothing Happens?

Hey guys, I'm sick as a dog today, so I'm turning the blog over to my incredible husband and business partner Travis Bach (aka, the one who actually does all the non-writing work in this house). As always, he came through in spades and wrote an incredible post. It's almost enough to make me wish I was sick more often! (THAT'S A JOKE, UNIVERSE. DON'T DO IT.)

Anyway, the tissue pile is getting dangerously high, so without further ado, here's Travis to talk about the Long Tail and why it matters for authors.

***

Hi Folks!

Its low tide time here, so I thought that I'd take advantage of the sleepy sales days to talk about a term we hear about all the time, but seldom get a clear definition of: The Long Tail

This was the most graph-like lemur I could findI've mentioned the Long Tail Effect on the blog before, but every time I try to find a good link that explains how the Long Tail works for publishing, I struggle to find one. SO! Today I'm going to explain what the Long Tail means for authors, how it works, why you want it, how to get it, and so on.

(Surprisingly, this will not be a super-graph heavy post, despite the mathyness of it all. You're welcome!)
What is the Long Tail?
And now for a graph...
This graph is from the Wikipedia article on the Long Tail.I've seen this graph many, many times before. I've seen it in the sales numbers chart for every book/new format launch Rachel has ever had plus the many other data sets authors have shown me. This shape, the spike followed by steep drop off, is the shape of book launches.

Imagine, if you will, that the area in Green is the total number books sold during the first 3 months a book is out. The area in yellow is then the rest of the book's life; going right on toward infinity or until the book goes out of print.

(What's really weird is that you can see this shape at most levels of 'zoom'. As in it often looks like this if you are looking at daily, weekly, monthly, and, I theorize, yearly sales data.)

The area in yellow tends to be asymptotic - approaching zero at an ever slowing rate, but (theoretically at least) never getting there. For any given book on a long enough time line, sales will eventually drop below 1 per day. It'll be 1 sale per 2 days, then per 3 days, eventually 1 sale per month, and so on.

The core idea of the Long Tail is to show just how much that yellow area amounts to in terms of sales. Sure it's not a giant spike like the green bit, but it goes on for far, far, longer, and it accounts for more sales than you would think.

How this works in the real worldFor authors, there's two concepts that the Long Tail brings to the table.
Most (if not all) books sell more copies over their Long Tail than during the first three months of their launch.The long-term royalty income that creates stability for your career comes from the Long Tail of your sales, not from new releases.Let's talk about that first concept first. Just how much does the Long Tail really matter? Launches are exciting, sure, but when it comes to actually making a living at this stuff, steady and stable performance is what really counts. Take Nice Dragons Finish Last for example. 
Units sold in first 3 months (launch) = 12,400Units sold in the following 14 months = 39,600
To be fair, there's been a lot of sales days and other boosts to help keep those Long Tail sales up. But even removing those promos, the sum from the normal sales days (ie, when nothing is happening and the book is just sitting there on Amazon) is greater than the launch window's sales (though not by much!). That number is just going to climb as time ticks on. Time is actually a great salesman in a way.
Point is, all those small sales days, even as the bumps they generate decrease in size, still really add up over time. Which brings me to concept #2:

The Long Tail of Author IncomeWriting is a creative endeavor. While there are many methods authors can to learn to tame, corral, and dial up their creativity, its pretty hard even for pros to pump out books on a reliable schedule. Some books are easy and some are hard, and the hard ones just take longer. Taking longer means the book goes on sale later, and thus one gets the royalties later, creating gaps in the author's income schedule.
When this happens dramatically, (like how One Good Dragon took Rachel over a year to write), the thing that will hopefully keep the professional author afloat are those Long Tail sales from other, completed books. For example, we've had nothing noteworthy happening sales-wise on any of our titles since the Daily Deal a few months ago. Here's what our holiday sales looked like,
Last 60 days' sales for all self-published titles (NDFL, OGGDA, 2kto10k)
That's roughly $5,000 in sales. Nothing to brag about, but also nothing to sneeze at. These small, steady numbers are the bread and butter earnings that keep us fed between books and sales events. This is why the Long Tail matters. When a book takes longer to complete than you planned, or even bombs out all together, the Long Tail is there to help you get through. This is why managing your backlist and the Long Tail income those titles create is so so important, which leads my to my next point...
How to Get a Good Long Tail Going This tail could use some work! Wait, did this metaphor just get weird?So how do you get to the point of enjoying solid Long Tail sales even when you're not constantly launching new books/running promos? This list is going to surprise you all I'm sure,Write good booksMarket them and yourself
As always, good, well reviewed, reader beloved books are the key to writing success. This is because the most important source of Long Tail sales are all effectively referrals.

Referrals from all the amazing fans and readers out there. (#1 by far)Referrals from book review sites.Referrals from the Amazon engine.Referrals from your other books. (Always make sure you have something in the back matter to let readers know you've got more titles!)
But as an authors, you're not just promoting your books. You're also promoting yourself as a trusted source of entertainment. Authors do this with interviews, podcasts, social media, blog posts, anywhere they can get the word out. Chances are, none of these will have a real impact on your fame individually, but all together, they really work to lift your profile as a writer. Plus, these events have a Long Tail of their own as new readers keep discovering these guest posts and interviews months, even years after they first came out.

The point of all these things is to focus on building momentum and discoverability for yourself and your books. In many ways, the Long Tail is the reflection of how many people are passively finding and buying our books without any real direct effort on our part. It's all the people who read an old interview by chance, think it's cool, and then later see the book on their Amazon recs page and decide on a whim to try it out. We didn't market directly for that reader. They simply drifted in as a net result of the cumulative effect of all the work we've been doing both with promotion and with quality control. Good books really do sell themselves.

This is where the cheap sales gimmicks and strategies that involve cranking out shoddy, crap novels as fast as possible fall down, because these novels are often not as good as they could have been by definition. To be clear: this way of writing can and does make people a lot of money, but the moment you stop cranking books out, it all goes away, because these authors (GENERALLY SPEAKING! Don't send us hate mail!) never focused on building their reputation or their fanbase. It was always new releases.

Again, this is not to disparage any author in particular. There are obviously many authors out there who write fast AND well and kudos to them. But there are also lots and lots of people out there whose career plan is to crank out copies of whatever is popular. This is especially true in the self publishing world, where there is a lot of common advice and pressure to publish publish publish as fast as humanly possible. A strategy that we at Casa de Aaron/Bach strongly disagree with, especially in the long term. This is not because we hate fun, fast, commercial books, but because when the only reason you're publishing a book is because you need a new release to pay the bills, that's never a good place to be.

It sucks to be caught in a publish-or-perish cycle. Its unavoidable when just starting out (even with a good long tail, it's tough to make a living off one book) but that kind of write-or-die pressure gets old fast. This is why we think it's always worth the extra time to create books you're really proud of, not just to sell. Creating true value and getting it to the right customers creates something more far more stable than mere release day sales and ultimately, for the author, more liberating.

Though, since its pretty hard to 'write good books' faster than you already are, lets talk about how to affect your Long Tail by getting the most from your books.

Marking Matters, Distribution Matters, Formats MatterThough the entire idea of the Long Tail is selling over time, there's actually a lot you can do to hustle the process along. Some things produce immediate, measurable rewards and others help build your Long Tail in more subtle ways.
1. Publish in as many formats as you can. Every format has its own devotees. To reach them all, you want to make sure your book is out in as many as possible, but the most important are audio books and print editions. Not only do these two formats sell pretty well on their own, they also lend credibility and professionalism to your brand, widening the number of people your story can reach. Additionally, each new format is like a mini-launch of the book, providing a bonus to you in terms of sales and attention (that coveted bump to your Long Tail).
I'd love to list hardcover editions here as well, but I just don't have enough first hand information or experience to say anything about them one way or the other. I dream of Kickstarting a line of Heartstrikers hardcovers when the series is finished, though. 
2. Choose your distribution wisely. It's pretty obvious we're huge fans of Kindle Unlimited here, but you may not be, and that's okay. All authors target different readers, and while our readers seem to love KU, yours might be somewhere else. Multiple distributors can be great for Long Tail because they represent multiple different income streams for the same work.

Now, obviously this advice applies mostly to indie authors since Trad Pubbed peeps get zero say in where they're distributed, but one of the best things about being indie is that you get to make these kinds of marketing choices for your own work. You can try all the various distribution methods out there, experiment, and then pick the one that works for you. Also, just like with new formats, launching on new platforms is a way to get attention, especially if you're reaching outside of the Amazon reader bubble for the first time. The important thing is to do your research and/or experiments and decide what works best for you. 
3. Put your book and yourself out there. Sales sites like Bookbub absolutely can get you a lot of sales, and sometimes even a lot of readers (note: these are not always the same thing. To find out why, check out this post). Facebook ads can also be great if you have the time and are methodical enough to hone them (though IMO, stay away from AdWords). 
Traditional marketing aside, what you really want to do is put yourself out there. Get on every place under the sun that will review your book and/or interview you. This is really tough at first, especially if you're self published. Trad authors with the weight of their publishers behind them will have a much easier time, but even if it's just you, getting yourself onto blogs and podcasts is not impossible. Just remember: if you are small, start small. Aim for small blogs and venues, people who are more likely to take a chance on an unknown. As you grow more famous, start trying for the next tier up. Repeat this process until you get where you want to go. Also, don't be afraid to try for the big stuff even if you're pretty sure you're going to get turned down, because sometimes they say yes! Good luck does happen, and all it takes is one big site giving you a positive review to give you a TON of exposure. Rachel still gets a considerable amount of traffic from when Ilona Andrews recced Fortune's Pawn.
Again, any of these three things alone might not make much of a difference. If there was a magic button for long term sales, you know we'd be smashing that sucker as hard as we could. But the combined efforts of many smaller things--building your reputation, getting your books out there in as many ways as possible, keeping your books visible--has a huge effect on your Long Tail, and as you build your backlist, you'll find that all this work pays off by creating a stable writing income that pays out completely separate to your release schedule. That might not sound like much, but when you're running a household off your writing, this will be a huge deal, because...

Your Long Tail is Your CareerThe last thing I'd like to talk about is how powerful the Long Tail effect is over time. Theoretical graphs aside, keeping up the pace of launches and promotions is how you build a successful author career. Now that you know what it looks like usually, let's see how the Long Tail behaves for an active author, specifically Rachel since her's is the data I have.
Legend of Eli Monpress Omnibus - Lifetime Amazon Rank data
Its pretty easy to look at this graph and see the cumulative effect of continual writing, publishing, and all the other things Rachel does and I help with. Its kind of her career in a nutshell since most of those spikes are book releases. That effect has kept a nearly 5-year old book well above 100,000 sales rank.

That's no small feat for any book, but it's especially impressive considering Eli was never a huge hit or a best seller with a big marketing campaign. It was just a good book people liked, and thanks to fans spreading the word and our own efforts to keep Rachel and her books constantly out there, especially her older titles, Eli is still bringing in respectable royalty checks long after the series finished.

This is the power of the Long Tail. A book's life doesn't end with its release day blitz, or even with the end of a series. So long as your audience is less than the total population of the Earth, there will always be new readers out there for you to reach, people for whom your books might just be what they always wanted. Finding those people can be rough, but if you spread your net wide and keep yourself and your books out there with promos, interviews, blogs, social media, and quality new releases, you'll find that your megaphone will continue to bet bigger and bigger, sending out ripples that reach more and more people, even when you're not doing anything at all.

***Rachel here again! Thank you as always to Travis for writing up this amazing post. Isn't he the best?!

I hope you enjoyed the post as much as I did, and thank you as always for reading. You can find more writing business posts like this by clicking on the Business tag, I also post about writing craft and a whole bunch of other stuff, so be sure to follow me on the social media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+). I swear to keep you up to date! And if you're looking for a good book to read, you can always find all my novels, read sample chapters and reviews, or write me an email directly at www.rachelaaon.net.

Thank you again, and as always, best of luck in all you do!

Yours 4 eva,
Rachel (& Travis!) 

Writing Wednesday: The 3 Things You Need for Killer Dialogue

A while back when I asked y'all what you wanted to see in a craft post, I saw at least two requests for a post on dialogue. I initially didn't want to write about this topic because, to be honest, dialogue has always come naturally to me. It's the one bit of writing that I've never struggled with, and thus is the one bit of writing where I don't actually understand exactly what I'm doing because I've never had to dig in and fix a problem.

Ironically, that was the realization that bugged the hell out of me. I hate not knowing why things work. Whenever I have a problem with my writing, the first thing I do is stop and look at the parts--plot, characters, tension, etc.-- to see what's wrong. And then there's the issue where you can't use a tool to its fullest potential if you don't actually know what it's doing or how it works. True mastery only comes from inside out knowledge, you can't have that if your answer to "Why does this dialogue work?" or "Why did you write it this way?" is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

These are the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head over the last few months, and during that time, I've really tried to pay more attention to what I'm doing when I write dialogue. What are the forces that shape the words that pop out of my character's mouths? How do I keep conversations on track? Likewise, how do I know when a conversation has gone on too long? These are the questions I wanted to answer, and after a lot of poking, I think I've found what I was looking for.

Disclaimer. Up until this point, I've written all my dialog--10 published novels worth--just by going with what felt right to me, so obviously winging things is a perfectly valid strategy! If going with your instincts is working for you, too, that's great. Stick with that! This isn't meant to make you feel like you're doing something wrong. Everyone writes differently, and if you're having success with whatever you're doing (even if you don't quite know why) there's absolutely no need to change your method.

But if you're struggling with putting words in your character's mouths (or if you're just interested in the invisible forces that drive character interaction), then these are some things to think about that will hopefully make your dialogue writing a lot easier and more enjoyable. Either way, I hope you'll find the conversation interesting!

Allons-y!

Writing Wednesday: The 3 Things You Need for Killer DialogueDialogue in a novel happens any time a character talks to someone/thing. Characters talking to each other, characters talking to voices in their heads, characters typing text messages, characters talking to glowing lights in the sky, characters giving speeches to huge crowds--are all forms of dialogue. There are even times when characters talking to themselves can be dialogue, though unless the self talking takes the form of a conversation, I'm more inclined to call this a rumination, because reciprocity--talking to someone/thing and having it talk/react back--is the defining aspect of dialogue. 
That reaction, that reason to speak instead of just thinking, is why dialogue exists. It's also the key element to the tension and drama of any dialogue scene. When Character A expresses his/her/its opinion/beliefs, Character B is going to have an opinion/beliefs of their own, and the interaction of these (along with all the other outside factors created by the rest of the plot/setting) is the alchemy of good dialogue. Set those scenes up well, and you can turn a few seconds of dialogue into the pivotal interaction of your story (see "No, I am your father.")


So, obviously, good dialogue is powerful and important! How do we write it? How do you actually get characters to talk? (Or, more importantly, talk about what you want them to talk about.) Well, not surprisingly, you get characters to talk the same way you get them to do anything else--you harness their motivation and history.
Great Dialogue Tip #1 - Understand Your Characters"Duh, Rachel," you might be saying. "I thought you were going to tell us something new?"
"Just because something seems obvious doesn't mean it's easy," I'd reply. "Just hear me out."Since novels have no visual element, how a character speaks is a huge part of both we as authors and our audience perceives them. I don't just mean things like dialect, either. We're talking about a character's actual voice, which goes way beyond just dialogue. Voice in a character is how they express themselves. It's how we as authors show readers how these fictional people think, their personality, and what they value. 
For example, Eli Monpress, the main character of my series of the same name, is a charming rogue with a dark past, big ambitions, one hell of an ego, and a deep longing to be loved and accepted. These are all aspects of his character that I've known from the beginning, but you can't just tell a reader "Eli Monpress is a charming rogue with a dark past, big ambitions, one hell of an ego, and a deep longing to be loved and accepted," You have to show them all these things, and you do that through a character's actions (what they do and how they react to problems) and voice in dialogue. How does this character interact with others?
If you're having problems with that last bit (the dialogue), you're probably also having problems with the first (knowing how a character reacts to problems). If this is the case, then the solution is to work on your character. Get in their head, figure out how they react to situations and people given their history, personality, and motivations. What does this character want? Why? What are they willing to do to get it? All of these things together create your character, and once your character is fully created, you should find that they have a voice and opinions of their own, which should come out naturally when other characters start talking to them.
But what if you do know all this stuff and you're still having trouble coming up with stuff for your characters? Maybe all the dialogue you write sounds stupid or isn't what you want or is lacking for whatever reason. To this, I would say you're probably being too hard on yourself. In the first draft, just let your characters talk. Don't worry about making them sound like the most amazingly witty/awesome people on the planet--that comes later. Unlike in real life conversations, novels let you edit your come backs to perfection and always make sure you're saying the right thing. 
So if your characters are talking, and you just don't like what they're saying, relax. Until it's time to let outsiders read your manuscript, you have plenty of time to fix things. Unless, of course, your characters are constantly saying things/acting in ways you hate or find boring, in which case it might be time to replace the character in question with a new version that you can stand and who says betting shit. 
Either way, the key to generating dialogue always and forever starts with the character doing the talking. If you don't know that person--what they want, their history, how they talk--then your dialogue is never going to be anything but stilted, because it's not actual dialogue. It's you as the author putting words in their mouths, not characters speaking for themselves, and that's no good. If you don't know your character well enough to hear their voice in your head, then writing their dialogue is always going to feel like pulling teeth. So if you're having problems with dialogue in general, go spend some time with your characters, and I think you'll find your problems straighten themselves out.
So that's trouble shooting for dialogue problems in general, but what about specific scenes? How do you go from characters just shooting the breeze to characters talking in a dramatic fashion about things you need to communicate to the reader? Well, fortunately, once you get your characters talking, getting them on task is simply a matter of knowing what you want them to say.
Great Dialogue Tip #2 - Always Have A GoalIf you've ever done any writing with talkative characters, you know keeping them on target can be a chore. Fictional conversations, just like real ones, are subject to tangents and going off track and even collapsing completely. But while these wobbles from the main topic aren't a problem for casual conversations IRL, they're a giant problem in novels where any drop in tension can mean lost readers. 
I can not stress that last bit enough. You always want your dialogue to feel natural and spontaneous, like this is what these people would say in real life. But a novel by definition is not reality. It's a carefully constructed experience meant to tell a story, not narrate the second to second reality of your people. For the same reason you don't dedicate a paragraph to describing your hero's morning poop (please God I hope you're not doing that), you don't want to let your character's idle conversation drift off course and away from relevant plot events. Yes, both of these thing would happen in real life, but even the most realistic novels are not actually real. We're not writing transcripts. We're writing books meant to entertain and captivate, and the events and dialogue we choose to show is a huge part of that.
So how do you balance letting your characters talk naturally vs. keeping them from having a five page conversation about which kind of powered armor is the best? (Cause believe me, if I'd let Devi control her conversations, that's what would have happened: a nine hour lecture about guns and powered armor battle tactics). Well, this is where the authorial control part of things comes into play, because while you want your characters to have their own voice, they're not real people. You are the one who is actually in control of the situation, and it's your job as the author to make sure the show stays on track. 
At the same time, though, you don't want to be too didactic in your control, because your characters still have to sound natural for your novel to be immersive. These secret here is striking a balance between letting your characters be themselves in their conversations and making sure you stay on topic, and I've found the best way to achieve that is to go into the dialogue with a goal.
One of my fundamental beliefs as a writer is that every word that goes into my novel should have a purpose. Letting your characters talk so the readers can get to know them is great, but you never want to have dialogue just for dialogue's sake. There's a reason novels are measured by wordcount. Every word you put in is a step you're asking your readers to take with you, and if you don't reward them for that--if you're constantly making do extra reading work for no reward--then you're being a bad author. Words that have no meaning are dead weight, and our readers deserve better than that. 
So when you write your dialogue, you always want to make sure you know what you're trying to say in this scene. You want to make sure this dialogue has a point, and you need to shape the conversation to keep your characters on that point. This isn't to say you have to be iron fisted about it. Obviously, you don't want to end up with something like "There is the castle of our great enemy. Let's attack it through that obvious weak point!" because that's just dumb. But at the same time, if you have two characters sneaking up to check out the enemy's castle, you don't want to let them go off on a tangent about what they ate last night. 
If your goal is to have them see that castle and plot how they're going to get inside, stick to that. Let them do it in their own fashion, of course, but keep that dialogue on task. Try to make everything they say relevant to that point in the novel both in terms of what's actually happening and in terms of where you want the reader's attention to focus (for example, if you're building up your tension to a big fight, now's probably not the time to have a character start talking about their tragic backstory unless that backstory is relevant to the scene.) 
In the end, this step is all about staying on target for the reader experience you're trying to create. Even if you don't stay perfectly on track, so long as you enter your dialogue with a goal in mind (revealing backstory, coming up with a plan, checking out a castle, confessing their feelings), your dialogue is naturally going to be more focused, more on topic, more relevant, and therefore more enjoyable and easier to follow for your reader, which is the entire point. 
So if you find yourself meandering through dialogue, step back and figure out where you're actual trying to go with this scene. It can be multiple places! One scene of dialogue can expand a character's backstory, reveal their plot, deepen a relationship, and explain a plot element all at the same time. That said, every extra job you pile on your dialogue makes the scene more complicated. So if you're having problems, try focusing on just one or two goals. Any dialogue that doesn't forward those goals gets cut. If you do that, your scene will be focused. It might be too focused, but you can always go back and fluff it out later. But if you're just trying to get this shit said without having characters ramble for five pages, your best bet is to pick a goal for that scene and focus focus focus. Keep your conversation on task, and you'll find dialogue gets much easier to write.

Great Dialogue Tip #3 - Don't Forget the ColorUp until this point, my dialogue tips have entirely about honing down--knowing what your characters' going to say and keeping them on target. But while these two elements will indeed get you perfectly functional, plot moving dialogue, the secret to really good, rich, character revealing, addictive interactions is in the details. How a character speaks is every bit as important as what she says, and how creatively we as authors reveal that--how we weave in details of character and setting and worlbuilding into what's actually being said--is the artistic part of good dialogue.
For example, let's say we have two characters in a Fantasy setting. Character A grew up in the royal court, while Character B grew up in the slums. Given that enormous difference in background, the interaction between these two characters will be entirely colored by their respective experiences. Even if Character A is trying their darnedest to be a good, understanding, unprejudiced person, their life of privilege colors their interaction with the world. They're going to make assumptions. Maybe they see Character B as a poor urchin who needs their help, or maybe they assume Character B is shady because of their shabby clothes and low class accent. Likewise, Character B is going to be making assumptions about Character A. Maybe they think Character A is a snobby noble because they're dressed nicely. Maybe they see Character A as a meddler, or an easy mark. 
Whatever the case may be, a huge part of the interaction between these two characters is established before a single word of dialogue is spoken simply because of the world they live in. But, of course, we authors can't explain all of this vast social inequity and prejudice right out the gate without resorting resorting to the dreaded info dump. But that's okay, because we can show all of this through color in our dialogue. Even if the dialogue itself is as simple as Character A asking Character B for directions, the way those words are spoken--the dialect, the relative politeness, veiled insults, assumptions, body language--can show you reader an enormous amount about your world. This is because dialogue is far more than just words. It's human interaction in all its complex nuances.
This is why I said at the beginning that dialogue is defined by reciprocity. When Character A talks, it's not just about the words coming out of their mouth. It's how they're said and how they're received, or misunderstood. It's all about how these two people with their own motivations and prejudices and place in the fictional world that creates their reality (ie, all that stuff that goes into knowing your character we talked about up in step one) spark against each other. If you've done your job and created really good characters with a solid foodhold in your well created world, this should be explosive. If your people are real people with their own thoughts and feelings, then they can not help but interact with each other, and part of making that interaction feel real is by filling it with all the little details and color that occur in actual human interactions. 
This is what it means to enrich your dialogue with color. If you want to have really great dialogue, don't just have your people talk. Have them feel and react in a way that's appropriate to their background, personality, and motivations within the scene, and then show all of that reaction in the details. If you have a street urchin, they're going to talk differently than someone who was raised in a court. They're going to react to threats differently. Their body language is going to be different. Their social cues, what they find rude, how they show affection, the kind of jokes they make--these are all going to be different from the character who was born to a higher social status. Ditto for a character who was raised as a warrior, or a character who was perhaps raised to be polite, but is actively rebelling against that by refusing to take anything seriously. The sky's the limit here! Whatever kind of character you think up is going to have their own views and assumptions and personality, and the more details of that you can fit into your dialogue through body language or misunderstandings or insulting assumptions or jokes that fall flat, the more colorful, realistic, and interesting that dialogue is going to be. 
I know that sounds like a pretty high bar, but remember: writing is not a performance art. You have as many edits as you need to get this dialogue write. Just speaking from my own experience, I'll often go through conversations four to five times (or more) just trying to get everything to hit the right pitch and go the right direction at the right pace. It's not a simple task. There's a lot going on, but if you focus on knowing your characters, staying on target, and filling your dialogue with colorful, interesting details that nudge your reader further into your world, I think you'll find that you can't help but write some pretty damn good dialogue. 
And that's that!I hope you enjoyed this post on dialogue! If there's another writing topic you'd like me to cover, just leave it in the comments below. If you liked this post and want more like it, click here to see a list of all my Writing Wednesday posts. As the name suggest, I put up craft essays every Wednesday along with writing business posts and general fiction updates in between, so please subscribe to the blog via RSS or follow me on the social media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) to never miss a post again! You can also find all my books, read sample chapters and reviews, or write me an email directly at www.rachelaaon.net.
Until next time, thank you for reading! Again, if you liked the post, please let me know. Until next time, have a great week, and write something awesome!
Yours with ♥,Rachel

Writing Wednesday, Throwback Edition: If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory

So today's blog post is a bit of a cop out since the dentist took way longer than I thought it would. But first, an update...which is sadly also a cop out. #winning at life today, guys. -_-

SO, I've got good news and bad news. The good news has to do with contract work. As the name would suggest, contract work is writing you're hired and paid to do. This kind of writing includes everything from ghost writing (where you write a book and let someone else, generally famous, have the credit while you take the paycheck) to writing your own story in a popular franchise, like the authors who write the Star Wars novels.

Now, traditionally, I've stayed away from contract work because I know I don't play well inside other people's ideas. I have to be freeeeee! This time, though, a contract fell into my lap that was so unique, so once-in-a-lifetime-awesome, I couldn't say no. I can't share this contract yet (but oh god, when I can, it will be ALL I TALK ABOUT), but trust me when I say it's very good news...and also kind of sucky, because taking the contract means accepting other people's deadlines whether they fit with your plans or not.

All of this is a fancy way of saying the third Heartstriker novel, (originally titled A Dragon of a Different Color, but now changed to No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished for reasons that will be very obvious upon reading), won't be out until Summer, hopefully in July. I'd really really hoped that I could have it out in March, but in order to meet my contractually obligated deadlines for this new project, the Heartstriker manuscript had to be done and out the door by the end of December, and it wasn't. This was entirely my fault. I was on schedule, but then my plot fell through (as plots sometimes do) and everything got thrown off schedule. Normally I'd just keep writing, but since I signed a contract, I have to put my own book aside and honor that.

This really sucks and I'm really sorry. I hate making you guys wait, but I swear I will make the book worth it! Heartstriker fans will not be disappointed, but you will have to wait just a little longer. Again, mea culpa, but hopefully when finally I'm cleared to announce this contract project, you'll all agree it was worth being a few months late on Heartstriker Family Drama!

And speaking of late, my entire morning blog time got eaten up by the dentist (don't forget to floss, kids!), and since my schedule is already stupid, possibly inhumanly tight this month, I'm coping out and doing a blast-from-the-past repost of a blog I wrote long ago for the now dead Magic District group blog. If you've never looked around, this was a super cool blog I did with lots of then new, now pretty famous authors including N.K. Jemisin and Diana Rowland. Definitely worth a look!

So without further ado, let's set the Wayback Machine to 2010 and have a look at important writing lessons as learned by Rachel Aaron, baby author. Enjoy!

Writing Wednesday, Throwback Edition: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory." This fantastic pic of Judge Judy becomes relevant in a few paragraphs, but is always awesome.
Originally posted on The Magic District, 2010

So my series, starting with The Spirit Thief, comes out on October 1, followed by The Spirit Rebellion in November and The Spirit Eater in December. So many books! But don’t they make such a lovely little set? Anyway, while all this is going on, I am busy at work on Book 4 in The Legend of Eli Monpress (The Spirit War), and I am running into some interesting situations.

See, way back when I wrote The Spirit Thief, I knew it was going to be the first in a series, but I didn’t actually know much about that series other than how it ended, which was very far from where it began. Over the course of three books, I’ve had to get a lot more specific and detailed. This has caused more than a few problems because I’ve never written a series before and I was wholly unprepared for the level and amount of detail I ended up having to keep track of. Thousands of little decisions made over years of writing that have to be kept in mind because, in the world of the books, they are now history, irrefutable, and completely un-fudge-able should I find them inconvenient later down the line.

Some of this was alleviated by keeping a wiki for my dry, bookkeeping kinds of details, but more and more as I dig into book 4, I find myself face to face with decisions I made about my characters months or even years ago. Some of these were well thought out, and some were decisions I made in the heat of the moment and now don’t actually remember making.

I remember hearing a story about J.K. Rowling writing her later HP books and having to go into bookstores to buy the earlier ones to check things because she didn’t remember what she’d written. The first time I heard this, I thought it was stupid. What kind of author doesn’t remember what she writes? But I owe Ms. Rowling an apology, because I’m now in the same boat (albeit a far smaller, less grand boat). I have an ARC of The Spirit Thief on my desk at all times that I use to constantly check things, and search is my favorite feature in MS Word. But as my story grows, the process of self checking gets trickier and trickier. How does one search for a motivation? How do you fact check a personality or way of thinking?

This is a question I've had to get very good at answering. But even though I do try to check everything I'm remotely unsure about, what I've discovered in the process is that my first intuition about whatever I don't remember usually turns out to be right. I’ve been wondering lately why this is. Does some deep part of me remember writing this paragraph two years ago? Am I clairvoyant? That would be nice, but I think the actual reason if far simpler and, by extension, more reliable.

One of my favorite ladies ever, Judge Judy, always says that if you tell the truth, you don’t have to have a good memory. Tuns out, this is equally applicable whether you’re suing your neighbor or writing fiction. My characters are the most interesting part of writing for me, and I put a great deal of thought and consideration into keeping them true to themselves. Sometimes this has the unfortunate side effect of characters bucking the plot when it asks them to do something they wouldn’t do, but while that can be annoying (and feel catastrophic while it’s happening), I think my books have always been better for it. But another lovely, unforeseen side effect is that by staying true to my characters--telling the truth of my people, as it were--I don’t actually have to have a good memory about what they’ve done in the novels. I just think of the situation in question and I know how they would have reacted, even if I can’t remember exactly how I wrote it.

I still check, of course. I'm not that confident! But other than a few dropped details, I've yet to find a situation where my instinct for the character was wrong. But this whole thing has taught me a really valuable lesson about writing, which is that it is totally worth the time to get to know your characters inside and out for practical reasons as well as artistic ones. Because sometimes miracles happen, ahnd you end up writing a fourth book when you only really expected to write one, and when that happens, you'll be really glad you took the time to build a firm foundation. Especially if you’re like me and Diet Coke has eaten your memory and you need all the help you can get.

Mmmmm… diet coke…

***
Poor baby author Rachel! I swear it gets better!

Thank you all for putting up with me today. I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past, and I swear I'll be back soon with actual new content and, hopefully, news about my Super Secret Project of Unstoppable Awesome (TM). Until then, please follow me on the social media of your choice (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+) for more book stuff and practical writing advice. As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope your day is going better than mine!

Yours always,
Rachel