Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 35

Scene, Summary, Postcard: 3 Types of Scenes in Commercial, Upmarket, and Literary Fiction

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author, book coach, and developmental editor Lidija Hilje.

It’s often said that scenes are the fundamental building blocks of a story—the smallest units that propel the narrative forward. But what precisely constitutes a scene, and what types of scenes are there?

Typically, when we refer to a scene, we’re talking about it in a classic, strict sense: as a story-relevant event that unfolds in real time. A classic scene contains the smallest piece of the plot and a movement in character arc in response to that plot. The reader follows the protagonist as they move through the scene in real time, and this moment-to-moment development is shown through action, dialogue, description, and internal monologue. Ultimately, the events of the scene challenge the protagonist, leading to a revelation, reaction, or decision that affects the story.

However, especially in literary and upmarket fiction, authors often use other types of scenes. These scenes might not adhere to a strict timeframe and can span months or even years; they might encapsulate the development of a relationship or a character’s personality. This is a summary scene.

Some scenes, on the other hand, don’t necessarily revolve around the protagonist learning something new or making a pivotal decision. Instead, they advance the story by providing deeper insights into the characters and moving the story deeper. This is a postcard scene.

Each type serves a unique purpose. Skilled storytellers use and balance different types of scenes within a single narrative.

Let’s break down each scene type and the best storytelling practices related to them.

Classic scene

A classic scene delves into a story-relevant event, capturing it in real-time and in a specific location. A story-relevant event is a plot point that has the power to push the character’s journey in a positive or negative direction, bringing them closer to or further from their story goal.

As the smallest unit of the story, a scene contains all the essential elements that the overall story should possess: an inciting incident that disrupts the protagonist’s status quo; complications that further challenge the protagonist; a crisis that forces the protagonist to deal with the challenges they’re facing; the climax, when the protagonist finally makes a decision, or reaches a conclusion, or takes a specific course of action; and a resolution which shows us the aftermath of the protagonist’s choice.

The scene moves the story forward by affecting the protagonist: they are faced with new information that has them discovering, unearthing, concluding, deciding.

Let’s say we have a protagonist, June, walking through the park and finding a puppy. The reader follows June closely, and the action unfolds the way it does in real life.

The following is not a full scene, but indicates briefly how a classic scene behaves.

June heard a whimper. It was so quiet she almost missed it. But then, there it was again, clearer, sadder. June neared the bush and knelt. The whimpering stopped. June pushed the branches aside, and two of the most beautiful eyes June had ever seen stared back at her.

“Why, hello there,” June said to the puppy, reaching to scratch its black-and-white head.

The puppy recoiled, and June’s heart twitched. Poor baby, who knew what it’d been through.“It’s okay, little one, I won’t hurt you.”

The puppy couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. It stared at June with its big, black, starry eyes (…)

Notice how contained in terms of time and space this scene is. Let’s say we continued writing this scene, with a clear and externalized resolution: June decides to keep the dog, despite her landlord not allowing pets. A reader can see how this is going to complicate June’s life—and the story’s plot—going forward.

Summary scene

A summary scene doesn’t unfold in a contained time and space. Instead, it condenses events spanning over a longer period of time. It might convey a specific concept, such as character development, the evolution of a relationship, or the passage of time. The story can meander across various settings and times, spanning years or even decades.

The challenge here is obvious. Even when describing events in a linear fashion, it’s easy to slip into the monotonous pattern of “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.” In essence, the information can come across as dry and disjointed, resembling a list of events rather than a cohesive narrative.

To preserve the storytelling feel even while we are conveying events scattered across a longer period of time, it is important to maintain a through-line: the summary needs to focus on a certain idea. Like a classic scene has an arc, a summary has a progression and a clear takeaway, with the ability to move the story forward.

Here’s an example of a summary with June and her dog.

Over the next few months, June did all she could to hide the puppy from her neighbors, and especially the landlord. Every morning she got up and hid the dog—she named her Dolores because the puppy had the big sad eyes of a flamenco dancer—under her coat or in her gym bag, and took her to the nearby park. She made sure Dolores ran as much as she could, and would throw sticks for her to fetch, and chase her down the park to exhaust some of her tireless puppy energy.

Before she went to work, June would put out enough food and water to get Dolores through the day. She hoped, while she worked, that Dolores was behaving herself, but when she would come home, she would see proof of Dolores’s mischief—the curtains pulled, with teeth holes in them, June’s shoes bitten and chewed, the potted plants displaced from the windowsill. Dolores would squeal with joy for seeing her, and June would have to cough loudly to hide the sound until she closed the door behind her.

But as Dolores grew, it became more difficult to hide her under a coat. She became more restless during the day (…)

The through-line here is that June is hiding the dog and she won’t be able to hide Dolores forever.

The other key to writing a good summary is to give as much precise imagery as possible. The more we can see the events unfolding, the easier it becomes to maintain that sense that we are inside the story. In my example, I compared Dolores’s eyes to those of a flamenco dancer; described Dolores playing catch with June; and detailed what she broke around the apartment.

Postcard scene

A postcard scene is typically used in literary and upmarket fiction and moves the story deeper. A postcard scene feels very internal. Nothing happens plot-wise or even character-arc-wise.

If a classic scene moves us from one point in the story to the next, a postcard sinks us deeper inside the same point in the story. The postcard changes the reader by deepening their understanding of the protagonist or their world.

Literary agent and writing instructor Donald Maass, who first coined the term, explained that the postcard is supposed to feel like its postal namesake. When we send postcards to our loved ones from a faraway place, we have limited space, and we will usually write something like: I’m having a wonderful time. The sunsets are incredible. Wish you were here. In other words, we want the recipient to briefly experience the place we’re visiting the way we are experiencing it. Similarly, the point of a postcard scene is to allow the reader to see what it’s like to be the protagonist, to briefly inhabit their shoes.

Let’s get back to June and her dog and see how a postcard might look.

June knew she couldn’t keep the dog. It was infeasible, unimaginable. Her landlord was a horrible, hard man, and June knew that he would enjoy evicting her over Dolores. And it wasn’t like she’d ever made a decision to keep Dolores, it had been a reaction. Upon reaction, upon reaction. She had taken Dolores in, because what else could she have done that day when Dolores almost got run over by a car? And since then, it was more of the same. June could see in Dolores’s sad eyes what she had seen in the mirror so many times, the kind of pain she still carried within herself. When she became someone no one wanted. But now when Dolores curled up to her in what had become their bed, and looked at her with her wide puppy stare, June could feel the same kind of loss she’d experienced all those years ago. In saving Dolores, it felt like who she was really saving was herself.

In this postcard, nothing changes for June. She doesn’t decide on a new course of action, to either get rid of the dog or fight to keep it. The status quo is maintained. She also doesn’t grow as a character—she doesn’t change into someone who is more or less likely to stand up for what she wants. She doesn’t learn anything new, or reach any new conclusion. But the reader’s understanding of June and her motivations deepens. We see why she is so adamant about keeping Dolores.

Using all types of scene

Here are some considerations for scene usage.

1. Know what type of scenes you are writing, and be consistent with the execution. In my editing practice, I often see a scene bleed into a summary and then back into a scene. While you can use a short summary at the very beginning or end of a classic scene, if you choose to display a certain plot event in real time, follow through on it. Time in a classic scene should flow naturally, the way it does in real life. Be strategic about when you start the scene and when you end it; you don’t want the scene to go on for too long.

Using phrases such as ten minutes later or after awhile in the middle of the scene signals that you are summarizing the passage of time mid-scene, which can have a jarring effect on the reader.

2. Consider your genre when choosing the type(s) of scenes you’ll be using in your novel. Readers of commercial fiction usually appreciate the straightforward way one classic scene leads into the next, and the clarity of the time and place, while literary fiction readers will work harder to make connections themselves. Think of scenes as on a spectrum: all genres use classic scenes, but in literary fiction, classic scenes are often interspersed with summaries and postcards.

3. Be mindful of your scene mix. No matter what you write, be consistent with the balance of scenes you’re using. For example, if you’ve been writing exclusively in classic scenes, the reader is going to expect you to continue in that way. If you switch things up mid-narrative and intersperse a variety of summary or postcard scenes, the reader will feel like they’ve stepped into another type of story. If in the opening chapters you offer a mix of all scene types, the reader will expect you to continue doing so.

When—and Why—Reveals Don’t Work

Photo by George Milton

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, March 6, for the online class Secrets, Twists, and Reveals.

Every story is a mystery, the reader seduced by that inexorable pull to know what happens next, and why.

It’s the author’s job to create questions that readers crave the answers to. The more you can delay gratification, the greater the arousal of reader’s desire to know.

At least in theory.

This facet of human nature—our insatiable curiosity—explains the appeal of using secrets, twists, and reveals in stories to arouse it.

And yet if not well constructed, these devices can leave readers with so many questions they disengage. Or the reveal might feel anticlimactic.

Writers must maintain a precarious balance between giving too much information and not enough—between boredom and frustration. But writers also have to entice readers into caring about the unknowns, or even the most shocking reveal will feel hollow.

Let’s examine the most common reasons reveals fail, and how to address them.

Problem: We don’t know enough.

You know that friend you have (that all of us have), who courts attention by dropping juicy little hints? “Something really big is in the works—but I can’t talk about it yet.” “Oh, believe me, I could tell you some stories about that….” “Wait till you find out about ________.”

Our curiosity might be mildly sparked but we don’t have enough information, so these coy little hints fall flat and we’re likely to feel manipulated and annoyed. That’s how readers feel when an author drops vague hints at some dramatic unknown. In writing it may look like this:

The man in front of her turned to speak to his companion, and her stomach dropped in recognition. How could it be him, after all these years? After everything that happened, how could he dare to show his face in this town? Please don’t turn around, she thought, even as part of her wanted him to, so she could confront him.

Goodness, something exciting is surely going on here, isn’t it?

Or is it? We don’t know, actually. The character seems to feel that way, but readers have to take it on faith because we don’t have enough context to understand what’s happening.

Solution: Ground readers with enough detail to plant their feet in the story, characters, and situation. Instead of “everything that happened,” what if you added a specific detail, like “after he left her standing at the altar at the church around the corner…”

Problem: We know too much.

This issue is like your behind-the-curve friend—the one who may think he’s dropping some shocking intel, but his listeners are already two steps ahead. The result: anticlimax, and a bored audience. It’s the book or movie you put down or stop watching because it feels too predictable; the one that leaves you dissatisfied and feeling cheated because it happened exactly as you expected—the author didn’t surprise and delight.

Solution: Find and address where you’ve telegraphed or tipped your hand and pointed too clearly to what you’re trying to conceal; misdirect the reader.

Problem: We don’t care about the character.

Another friend tells stories and drops tidbits of gossip about folks in his orbit, hoping to hook his audience with the mystery. But if we don’t know or care about these people, then we don’t care about their secrets either. It’s not driving us mad to know the answers—but sure, fine, we’ll smile and nod politely.

Investing readers in your characters is the single most important work of storytelling: They are the vehicle in which we ride into the story, the lens through which we experience it. If we aren’t invested in your characters, it’s hard to invest in what happens to them—including what unknowns may await and impact them.

Solution: Make sure readers have reasons to care about what your characters experience, what they want, and what drives them.

Problem: Stakes are unclear.

This is the friend who drops bombs with great fanfare, but without context. “I walked around the corner and you’ll never guess who I ran smack into—my old boss!”

If we don’t know why the event or information matters, then these are just facts, neutral and unaffecting.

With reveals in story, it may look like this:

She’d known someone was watching her every move, but everyone said it was all in her head, she was just fanning up drama. But there—the steps behind her were quickening along with her heartbeat as she increased her pace, and no one could deny now that she was being followed. 

She was tired of running, tired of being scared. Facing whoever it was couldn’t be any worse than the terror she’d lived under for weeks. She stopped, whirled around—and there he was.

Her uncle. Alive.

This could be a shocking and effective reveal if readers know why the uncle matters, and what it means to her that he’s alive and stalking her.

This is tied in with offering enough context, but more than that, we have to know why that context is relevant to the character—meaning what’s at stake for her. An uncle returning from the dead is a bit unusual, to be sure—but to yield the impact the author seems to want, readers have to know more: What does it mean to the protagonist that he’s alive? Was he a threat she thought long past? A beloved mentor whose loss has gutted her in the story? The benefactor whose inheritance she’s using for a driving purpose of her own, whose return threatens that goal?

When finally pulling back the curtain, authors need to lay enough groundwork for readers to understand the impact the discovery will have on the character.

Solution: Show readers why it matters: Pave sufficient context into the story leading up to the reveal so we can understand what effect it has on the character and what she wants, or offer it immediately afterward to answer our questions.

Diagnosing ineffective reveals

It’s easy to be blind to the weaknesses in your story, and how effective your reveals are. If you’re having trouble, this is where beta readers or critique partners can be invaluable. After their read, ask specific questions about how hooked they felt, whether they were surprised by the reveals, and whether the payoffs felt satisfying.

If your reveals aren’t quite holding together, ask for specifics: Where did your readers figure it out ahead of time, and how? Or where and why did they feel confused or uninvested? What was it exactly about the reveal that didn’t have the impact you intended? Encourage frank feedback—this isn’t the time for kind soft-pedaling.

Once you know what’s not working, you can diagnose the cause from a storytelling perspective using the above pitfalls as a guide.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, March 6 for the online class Secrets, Twists, and Reveals.

Set Up the Perfect Online Press Kit

Photo by cocarinne

Today’s post is by author and website designer Camilla Monk.

How’s your press kit doing these days? Mine was virtually non-existent until I attended an excellent presentation on author press kits hosted by agent Sarah Fisk for the Authors Guild. Sarah’s insightful and actionable advice led me to reflect on what sort of press kits I—and by extension the bloggers and journalists looking to write about authors and their books—see online: mostly downloadable PDFs with low quality images and limited content.

In other words, the very medium we rely on to advertise our books is, more often than not, useless. Journalists and bloggers will find it easier to harvest whatever they can from your website than download your press kit—unless you turn it into an invaluable tool box for the hurried journalist. Here’s how:

1. No PDF

In the name of all faceless interns trying to glue together an online news article at the last minute, please don’t use a PDF.

Copying text from a beautifully designed PDF file can quickly turn into a headache if the pasted contents end up looking like a mangled soup of words.Images in PDF files are compressed and difficult to extract. Should they screen capture, crop, and export? Convert the PDF into a docx file, then export the images? All terrible solutions that will make bloggers and journalists secretly hate you a little as they struggle to snatch a low-quality pic of you.

So, if you’re not doing an online press kit as I recommend in point 2, go for a simple Word document and make everyone’s life marginally easier. You want people to distribute your materials widely: make it easy for them.

2. Have an HTML-based press kit at your website

A well-constructed HTML page at your website is quite simply the easiest way to share both text and images at various resolutions with your visitors. Set up a page where you’ll gather all the information and offer downloads of any relevant materials (sample, photos, and maybe a docx version of your kit’s content for users who simply can’t work any other way.)

Alternatively, or additionally, you can offer a zipped download of your complete kit, with the text content as a Word file, and subfolders where your media content will be organized and clearly labelled, for example: Media/Author pictures/Jane-Doe-High-Res.jpg

Steer clear of advanced design on your press kit page: you want text that’s easy to copy and doesn’t come laden with unnecessary colors and fonts.

Note: Sarah Fisk advises providing journalists with a recording of your name. This is especially useful if you happen to have a foreign name or one that has a counterintuitive pronunciation—like Pete Buttigieg!3. Make your kit exhaustive but not exhausting

Here, I’ll direct you to Sarah’s most excellent and fairly exhaustive Press Kit Checklist. Read it attentively: you might find items you’d never thought of adding, or never even heard about. More than just a checklist, it’s a great introduction to building your marketing platform at large.

Book club questions, games, fun facts, Q&A? Not everything in this list is relevant to you or your title. Try to pick wisely and not overcrowd your press kit with material that might provide very little value to the media.

The first criteria for any piece of your press kit should be: How does this meaningfully relate to my book? And the second is: How does this contribute to building my professional image?

Note the nuance in the latter: The point is not just to talk about yourself, but rather to construct an image of yourself as an author. Say that you’re writing women’s fiction: anecdotes about your family life and career struggles are relevant not only to your books, but also to the image you want to project to your readers, someone women and parents can relate to. If, however, you’re writing a spy thriller or epic fantasy, this information becomes a lot less valuable and may unnecessarily crowd your kit.

4. Build a solid media gallery

You want that book cover and your author headshots to circulate, so help bloggers and journalists do their job!

Include a full gallery of author pictures, cover images, and book mockups. These can be real shots of your books taken by a photographer, or images you generate with online software like Canva, Placeit, or Smartmockups. (This list is not exhaustive.) For each image, make sure you’re offering both medium and high resolution: online journalists may want a lighter image that they can quickly upload, whereas YouTubers or print media will prefer high resolution materials.

Consider a mood board as well: a collection of high-resolution, royalty-free images that paint the atmosphere of your book. Reviewers will love to tap into those to illustrate their social media posts or videos.

As I mentioned earlier, make sure to clearly label each image and describe what it is, and its resolution (low, medium, or high.)

5. Don’t forget samples and ARC links

Whether you’re traditionally or self-published, you probably have samples of your book (and audiobook, if applicable.) Don’t forget to include those, along with links to Advance Reader Copy platforms like Netgalley, if applicable, to encourage any visitor to read and possibly review your book. Again, the name of the game is to make it easy for anyone to click and find more.

6. Lastly, stand out with copy buttons!

It’s such a simple and silly trick and I can’t believe it took me listening to Sarah to think of this. Your press kit targets media who might write about your title on a variety of media platforms: articles, reviews, YouTube videos, etc. They need to work fast and efficiently, and part of their job entails painstakingly copying material from your kit. 

So why not make their job ten times easier by dividing your content into sections, each coming with a “copy” button? Want a brief description or tagline to open your review? BAM. It’s done.

This doesn’t require advanced tech capabilities. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

TL;DR: Make it easy for everyone to propagate your press material

This list is not exhaustive, and you might come up with great ideas of your own on how to make it simpler for reviewers and the media to find and use the material they need. Ultimately, that’s all there is to the art of making a press kit—put yourself in the intended user’s shoes and ask yourself:

Is this relevant?Is this easy to find?And is it easy to use and distribute?

Structure: The Safety Net for Your Memoir

Today’s post is by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison. Join her on Wednesday, Feb. 21, for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

A few weeks ago, I geeked out on structure with screenwriter, filmmaker, and budding memoirist Alyson Shelton. During our conversation, she said, “Structure is the safety net readers fall into. Nailing it is the way we hold space for them and let them know that while we might keep them guessing, or stir up challenging emotions, we’re taking them somewhere important.”

Structure is a safety net for writers too. When it’s missing, they send anxious emails to me and other writing coaches asking what to do. As a writer, I know what it’s like to hang from the trapeze bar of an idea and wonder if I can hold on long enough to find both a point and a satisfying ending.

Writers need to cultivate two types of structure: process and project. Process structure sustains you while you’re drafting and revising. Project structure is what you employ to give your work shape.

Many great writing books teach processes you can follow, but I want to offer you a framework you can use to support yourself regardless of the guidebook you use.

Enter the Circle of Security, a parenting model I encountered during graduate school.

The Circle of Security was created by Robert Marvin, Glen Cooper, Kent Hoffman, and Bert Powell to help parents attend to their child’s needs as they learn to explore the world. Picture an ellipse with a caregiver on one end and images of children at various plot points either moving away from the caregiver as they explore, or reaching back as they seek comfort and reassurance. The caregiver’s job is to pull back as they explore and lean in when they’re feeling unsafe or troubled.

Toddlers need to be able to venture off and investigate the unknown, secure in the knowledge that a parent is there to catch and comfort them if they fall. While writers aren’t toddlers, they also need to venture off, play, meander, and delight in their work while knowing something is there to catch them when doubts emerge, a project veers toward collapse, or the work feels overly emotional or just plain too much.

So how can writers apply this theory to their work?

Build a secure process 

Your first task is to choose a process to follow. Better yet, form a group that can do this work with you. That way, you’ve got a posse to lean on when the predictable struggles follow.

It doesn’t matter if you select the model Allison K Williams shares in Seven Drafts, the experimental invitations of Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, the journey Sue William Silverman takes you on in Acetylene Torch Songs, or the first-draft guidelines I offer in this post. Pick one. Use the content as your safety net—at least for your next draft—but don’t be afraid to wander off on your own.

When the inevitable doubts creep in, refer back to your safety net. Bask in its comfort and fall into its guidance. If you’re still lost, explore what’s going on with your writing group. When you’re feeling more grounded, wander off again.

Build your memoir’s structure

Once you understand what your story is about, you’re ready to tackle your project’s structure. Some of you will know exactly what this should be. If you don’t, consider whether a simple or complex structure is best for your book. Some structures, like the three-act, will feel like their own safety net, because they deliver a certain level of predictability. The more experimental you are, the more you must serve as that safety net for your reader by truly understanding the story you’re trying to tell and ensuring that the structure you’ve chosen leads them in the direction you’re hoping for.

After you’ve chosen a structure, learn both the basics and nuances of working with it as well as the skills needed to successfully execute it. As you do this, identify one or two exemplar texts to study, and feel free to pick something everyone’s raving about (it needn’t be a comp title for your work). As you mull over which structure might be the best fit, read reviews for these books to see what resonates with readers. Attend to the things people say about how the book is structured or how the story unfolds.

Now, pick it apart. Map the major turning points on note cards. Analyze the thematic threads woven through the narrative. Find the beats where inner change occurs. Do everything you can to understand its construction.

In your next revision, emulate this text’s structure. At this point, don’t worry if it’s a perfect fit. Just see if you can mold your content into it using note cards. After completing this exercise, see if you can expand, fracture, or break free of this constraint to make it your own. If you get lost, or it feels like you’ve broken your book, go back to the map you’ve created for the original text and look at what you might have missed. Once you’ve regained your footing, try again.

If it still fails to work, or it feels like you’re trying to strong arm your story into a structure that simply doesn’t fit, stop. This is a sign that you’ve chosen the wrong structure.

While this might seem like extra work, this process will allow you to truly understand your story and why a specific structure works. The more faith you have in your story’s structure, the more you’ll become the safety net your reader is hoping for.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, Feb. 21 for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

3 Ways to Experiment with Memoir Structure to Improve Your Narrative Arc

Today’s post is by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison. Join her on Wednesday, Feb. 21, for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

Most memoir first drafts consist of stories writers have told themselves or everyone else. Some of those tales have great punchlines or stab the reader’s heart so deeply they lose their breath. In the beginning, many of us are convinced our only job is to find the words that make those stories sparkle.

But revision teaches us how malleable the truth is. So much depends not on the events themselves, but on how we perceive them. Letting go of capital T “Truth,” we create draft after draft, hoping to at least create something authentic, and maybe beautiful.

Anxieties often spike during this messy middle part of the revision process. One way to calm them—and maybe even have some fun—is to stop searching for The One Perfect Structure and instead spend a few drafts playing around. Experimenting with different forms can teach you important skills and give you the mental flexibility needed to build your narrative arc.

Best of all, it’s possible to do this without hacking your project to pieces—that is, unless you want to.

1. Story draft

Memoirs might deal with true events, but they’re closely aligned with fiction. In a story draft, you’ll learn how to employ the elements of storytelling by crafting well-written, engaging scenes that use dialogue, sensory details, and action to bring your story to life. As you string scenes together, you’ll learn how to manage pacing and time.

If you’re a new writer, one of the best ways to learn these skills is to apply a linear, three-act structure to your manuscript. Using this structure as a starting point can teach you how stories work and what’s required to turn your very interesting circumstances into a great book, no matter what structure you ultimately decide on.

To do this without breaking your manuscript, consider writing the key “beat” scenes for your memoir, something Suzette Mullen advocates for in Why Preparing a TED Talk Makes You a Better Memoirist.

2. Letter or epistolary draft 

Perhaps you’ll finish a story draft and decide that’s all you need to explore. But if the voice is drab, you’re still not sure what your story is about, or you haven’t identified your audience, consider writing at least a portion of your book in letter form.

Epistolary memoirs are written as one, or a series, of letters addressed to a specific person. This structure has a long history in the world of fiction, and includes novels like The Color Purple, Dracula, and Frankenstein. Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me and Mary Karr’s Lit are two well-known epistolary memoirs addressed to their sons.

Letters are intimate. They take you inside a special relationship. Choosing to write your memoir as a letter to a singular audience can help you hone your voice and decide which scenes truly belong. You can also use this draft to understand your characters.

Gayle Brandeis’s braided memoir, The Art of Misdiagnosis: Surviving My Mother’s Suicide, explores the tangled web of her grief, her mother’s mental illness, and the ways illness and mental illness intersect within this mother/daughter relationship. Gayle’s earliest draft was a straight-forward grief narrative that dealt solely with the aftermath of her mother’s death. But as she began to explore the deeper aspects of her story, she decided to write a draft as a letter to her dead mother. After completing it, she realized her mother needed to have a voice in her memoir. This gave rise to the second arc around her mother’s unfinished documentary, The Art of Misdiagnosis, and the third arc around illness that twines the two women together.

During an interview for the Writing Your Resilience podcast, Laura Davis, author of The Burning Light of Two Stars, talked about how her use of letters evolved over several drafts and why she kept excerpts from certain ones in her published memoir.

To see if this is a good fit, write a single letter to a key character in your memoir, a younger version of yourself, or the reader who most needs your book, and see what you discover. If this work energizes you, consider writing a chunk of your book in this format.

3. Essay draft

Essays provide you with an opportunity to build an argument around your topic that can ultimately lead to platform-building bylines and a leaner, more focused narrative arc. They have also been the impetus for several well-known and acclaimed memoirs. Cheryl Strayed’s essay, The Love of My Life, served as the impetus for her memoir Wild. Debra Gwartney’s 2002 radio essay for This American Life led her to write Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters. Stephanie Land’s essay for Vox led to her book deal for Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.

Writing an essay draft that convinces readers of something can help sharpen your book’s essential argument and become part of the conversation happening around your topic. But sometimes letters, traditional essays, and story drafts aren’t enough—you may still not understand what you’re writing about. If that’s the case, toy around with a hermit crab or braided essay.

Braids allow you to juxtapose items. Take this Brevity essay, The Once Wife by Heidi Fettig Parton, which threads the death of her husband around a trip she took to Germany before the destruction of the Berlin Wall, or Jo Ann Beard’s The Fourth State of Matter. Even if you decide against a braided structure, juxtaposing scenes or events on note cards can lead to new and interesting connections with your material.

Hermit crab essays impose a structure like a syllabus, rejection letter, or body wash instructions onto your material, which forces you to distill your message. This compression, like coal in a cave, can help you create the diamond-like narrative arc you’re looking for. Your essay could encompass your entire book, or a portion of your material. It could even inspire you to write an experimental book, like the Pushcart-Prize nominated memoir, Places We Left Behind by Jennifer Lang.

However you choose to play, note what works, what feels stilted, and what cracks lightning inside you. Those sparks of inspiration are signals that you’re on the way to creating something that’s not just beautiful but authentic and personally true.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, Feb. 21 for the online class Find the Memoir Structure That Works for You.

What Taylor Swift’s Vault Tracks Can Teach You About Not Killing Your Darlings

Today’s post is by writer and editor Sarah Welch.

I write a lot about killing your darlings. Or, rather, not killing your darlings but saving them for later. These scraps that say something beautiful or important to you, but don’t ultimately fit in your current work-in-progress, can still have serious value for another project down the road. That might be snippets of dialogue, a catchy turn of phrase, or a full-fledged character or plot line.

Not buying it? Let me offer you a little concrete evidence: Taylor Swift’s vault tracks.

Swifties (and I’m one of them) will jump on any chance to listen to new/new-to-them music from Swift, and the vault tracks that come with each album re-record have been gold in so many ways. But what I love about them, as an author, is the peek they give us into a prolific and talented writer’s process. Specifically, they show us what it can look like to save “scraps” for later projects.

Now, before I move on, let me give two disclaimers:

I’m operating under the assumption that, as Swift has said, the vault tracks were written as she worked on each album for the first time. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but with no way to know, I’m choosing to believe her.I’m making conjectures about process based on textual evidence—in this case, lyrics. I have not talked to Swift herself about how she uses her uncut songs to fuel future work. Maybe someday.

With that said, here goes.

Vault tracks as scraps

If the vault tracks are tracks that didn’t make the original albums, then they’re a variation of the “scraps” I tell authors to save from their drafts. They’re scenes, storylines, characters, images, and just pretty combinations of words that don’t fit in the current work in progress for one reason or another.

Let’s look at the Red vault tracks: “Better Man” is a great one to study here, because it’s pretty clear why it was cut from the 2012 album. It’s an amazing country song, but she was transitioning to a poppier sound, and in terms of her evolving image, it held her back rather than moving her forward.

But did she trash the song? No, she turned it over to Little Big Town, who recorded it in 2016, and then she re-recorded it herself for Red (TV). She saw that it was a valuable song, but rather than force it onto an album it didn’t fit, she saved it for the right project, where it thrived.

We can make conjectures about all the vault tracks—maybe some were cut from the original albums to create an emotional balance and avoid too many track-five contenders, while others were cut simply for word count—or, in the case of music pre-Spotify, CD space limitations. Whatever the reasoning, the key is that (thank God) she saved the songs for later instead of tossing them.

Giving scraps new life

Obviously, the mere fact that the songs existed to re-record in the first place is evidence of why saving those scraps is a good move. But if we look more closely at the vault tracks, we can see pieces and fragments of them appear in music she wrote later—images and turns of phrase she set aside for future songs. Let’s look at a few examples.

Castles Crumbling, Speak Now (TV)

Swift originally wrote “Castles Crumbling” for her 2010 album, Speak Now, but when it didn’t make the cut, she found opportunities to use the same imagery in future songs, like “Call It What You Want” (Reputation, 2017). The entire context of the song is completely different, of course (with Reputation, she’s turned that crumbling castle into a thing of splendor), but the same image kicks the whole thing off: “My castle crumbled overnight…”

Suburban Legends, 1989 (TV)

In “Suburban Legends,” a scrap from 1989, the narrator laments that, “I broke my own heart ’cause you were too polite to do it.” When that song didn’t make the cut in 2014, she held onto the idea, and she used it at least twice in future songs:

“I pushed you to the edge / but you were too polite to leave me” (“coney island,” evermore, 2020)“I broke his heart ’cause he was nice” (“Midnight Rain,” Midnights, 2022)Timeless, Speak Now (TV)

I’ve heard this Speak Now vault track called “hilarious,” and I’ll fight anyone else who wants to denigrate it in my presence because I think it’s gorgeous.

I also think it’s Swift’s first time playing with nostalgia in a way that we see happen over and over again in later albums. The vintage photos she finds in the antique shop in 2010 set the stage for plenty of future material:

The sepia-toned account of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s relationship in “Starlight” (Red)Her Rebekah Harkness exposé in “the last great american dynasty” (folklore)The blending of her grandfather’s experience in WWII with the realities of COVID-19 in “epiphany” (folklore)Her ode to her grandmother in “marjorie” (evermore)We even see a little bit of it in the vintage feel—and, of course, the 1950s sh!t—of “Lavender Haze” (Midnights)Mr. Perfectly Fine, Fearless (TV)

I could write a thesis on how “Mr. Perfectly Fine” sends me right back to 17 years old (my age when Fearless first came out), cruising around in my red Jeep Liberty with my high school besties, but that’s for another blog and another day. (A scrap, you might say, that I should save for later instead of leaving here.)

This breakup bop contains a tiny scrap that you could almost overlook as you scream sing from behind the wheel. In the chorus, Swift refers to her mystery ex as “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” “Mr. Always at the right place at the right time,” and…wait for it…“Mr. Casually Cruel.”

And there it is, a direct path from the boppiest of breakup songs to the most devastating of track fives, “All Too Well” (Red), in which Swift accuses another mystery ex of being “casually cruel in the name of being honest.”

The turn of phrase hits different in each song, but thank goodness she saved it when “Mr. Perfectly Fine” didn’t make Fearless, because there’s no denying it cuts deep in “All Too Well.” (And in the ten-minute version? Forget about it. We’re sobbing.)

Long story short

(See what I did there?)

Next time you find yourself making the difficult choice to excise a scene or a character or even a single sentence that you love for the greater good of your novel, think of those cuts as your very own vault tracks. Sure, you could ball them up and trash them (like “crumpled up piece[s] of paper lying here…”), but I encourage you to save them. Stick them in a folder on your hard drive, in a journal, or in a shoebox in the closet—wherever you need to stash them so that, down the road, they can become inspiration for your next masterpiece.

I want to hear from you! How do you save your scraps? Which vault track “scraps” have you been delighted to hear show up in later songs? Email me to talk about your writing, Swift’s writing, or both!

Hybrid Publishers and Paid Publishing Services: Red Flags to Watch For

Photo by C. G. on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author Joel Pitney, founder of Launch My Book.

“It takes them weeks to get back to me.”

“I have no idea where my book is published.”

“Royalties? What royalties? I haven’t seen a penny come my way and it’s been over a year.”

“The cover is fine, I guess. I didn’t have much control over the final product.”

“I wish I had talked to you months ago.”

These are just a few of the comments I’ve heard from authors sharing their experiences with the hybrid publishing companies they’ve chosen to work with. Sadly, I’ve noticed that these conversations have become more frequent in recent years. So if you’re an author starting out on your publishing journey, it’s important to know what to look out for.

In this article, I draw upon the experiences of the many authors I’ve worked with to present common red flags to watch out for.

It’s a confusing landscape for everyone.

Alongside the explosion in self-publishing has come a proliferation of companies that help authors publish. These range from freelancers who do the necessary work of self-publishing (cover design, interior layout, and more) to hybrid publishers who publish your book under their name for pay. And like other explosive industries throughout history (think gold rush or the dot-com boom), some of these companies are extremely opportunistic, offering aspiring authors the rainbow (bestsellers, a living wage, overnight success) and delivering something far less.

Unfortunately, many authors find they’ve paid a bunch of money to a company who made them big promises, and whose delivery is far worse than expected.

It’s understandable that many authors end up being scammed in this way. Book publishing is confusing, especially if you have little to no experience with it. When you google something like “find publishing help” or “self-publishing company,” you’re likely to get hundreds of results from a wide variety of companies and experts telling you which way to go. You’ll then get a whole slew of subsequent emails and social media ads perfectly targeted to you. Many of these companies are REALLY good at marketing their services to you. They know what motivates authors and what frustrates them; they make offers that promise to address those core needs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against hybrid publishing, or other professional companies that help with self-publishing. I think this is a wonderful option for many people, and there are plenty of solid companies out there. What I am against is the dishonesty and and expectation-inflation I’ve encountered through the experiences of my clients in recent years.

Every time I hear another bad publishing story, I go check out the company for myself. I’ve started to notice common patterns in how such companies present themselves, and I’ve put together a list of tips to help you avoid the bad actors. I’d love to hear your experiences, thoughts, or disagreements in the comments section!

Avoid companies that use hype-filled language.

The number one warning sign to look out for is hyperbolic language and big promises on the company’s website or in their advertisements. I’m sure you’re familiar with this kind of thing. Many services use phrases like “bestseller,” “sell your first 10k copies,” or “achieve your dream of being an independent author” to reel you in. One site I visited added the following language to the top of their contact form: “Talk to a bestseller consultant today.” They want to sell you on the dramatic success of your book.

I’m not a pessimistic person, and I’m not against being ambitious about sales and shooting for bestsellers. But it’s important to acknowledge the reality that it’s very rare for self-published books, especially by first-time authors, to achieve the level of success that many companies imply. Hitting a bestseller list (beyond the easily hackable Amazon sub-category bestsellers) is a herculean task. And I believe it should be. So is achieving profitability on your first book.

Like any business, it takes time to build a successful platform for your book. You’ve got to invest time, money, and effort in your platform, experiment with many marketing techniques, and engage and grow your audience over time. It simply doesn’t happen overnight. And yet many of these companies prey upon the ill-informed expectation that it could. So if you see big promises to deliver amazing, super-awesome results in record time, be very wary.

Don’t be fooled by the publisher’s seeming selectivity.

Some companies present the air of selectivity, to make the authors they “choose” to publish feel special. By this, I mean that they use a gimmick: authors are required to submit their manuscript for review, making it seem as if your book needs to meet a certain standard threshold. They tell you that they’ll review it and determine whether or not they want to publish it. In this way, they make themselves appear to be more like a traditional publisher. 

But the truth of the matter is that few companies are actually as selective as they make themselves out to be. They will generally accept anyone who’s willing to pay for their services. There’s nothing wrong with that! But they should be honest about it.

A similar dynamic is often at play with hybrid publishers associated with traditional publishers. They often tell prospective clients that the “main” publisher they’re associated with will choose the bestselling self-published titles each year and give them traditional deals. While this may be true, it’s oversold; a tiny number ever receive such an offer.

If you see a live chat, run away!

Many companies have found the right balance between price and volume to maximize their profits. I’ve certainly done a lot of that analysis with my own business. But scaling up can come at the expense of quality and customer service. Large publishing service companies churn out hundreds of books a year and often find the cheapest workforce to deliver on their services.

This leads to poor design (we’ve all seen plenty of covers, for example, that clearly look self-published) and poor customer service. Account managers are assigned too many authors for them to handle, and have poor response times, overlook important details, and aren’t in touch with the unique needs of their clients. And this leads to the kinds of negative experiences I hear about.

So what do live chats have to do with this? Well, if a company has a live chat option on their website (probably delivered by a bot instead of a real person), they’ve likely scaled to a point that their delivery is going to suffer from low quality and poor customer service. These are all signs that a company is too big to provide the kind of service you deserve. It’s not a 1-to-1 equation, of course, and there are probably some good companies out there who offer live chat. But having that kind of functionality, or other indications of scale, is definitely an indication that you should be careful.

Do your homework. Ask questions about what kind of service you can expect. Ask how many books they publish each year and how many other clients your account manager will be working with. And, of course, check their work, which we’ll cover later.

Bargain prices aren’t in your favor.

I’m really sorry to say this, but when it comes to book publishing, you really do get what you pay for. You don’t have to pay premium prices, but in my experience, if you’re on the discount end of the spectrum, the quality of the finished product will also look cheap, and your customer service will likely be poor. So when you’re assessing a company (or freelancer), beware of low prices. Additionally, avoid companies offering limited time offers and 50% off discounts as if you were at a used furniture store.

Take it from someone who publishes books for a living: there’s a reason these companies are offering their services for cheap. Their delivery is going to be second- or third-rate. It’s just not possible to do high quality work at discounted prices in this industry.

So what should you expect to pay? I’ve done a lot of research on this topic, surveying different company websites and comparing prices. At the high end, you’ll likely pay $10,000–$15,000 for the basic services you need to get your book published (copy editing, cover design, interior formatting, and distribution setup). That doesn’t include high-level editing, book marketing or publicity, or paying for a print run, which some services recommend or sell.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some discount companies charge in the realm of $1,000 to $2,500 to do the same work. And for those prices, it’s likely the work will be low quality.

Don’t get me wrong, paying a lot doesn’t guarantee better quality. Middle and higher tier companies can also deliver low quality work with poor customer service—you’ll just pay more for it. For example, in the past year alone, I’ve worked with two different authors who originally published their books with one of the most popular self-publishing companies (I don’t want to mention their name). The company charges upper to middle tier prices, but their work was of such poor quality and their customer services so unfriendly that these authors decided to break their contracts and re-publish their books, at a high expense to them. Sadly, this kind of experience is more common than you’d expect.

So how do you protect yourself from these kinds of experiences? Check their work.

Beware of shoddy work.

One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of a book publishing company is to check out the books they’ve published in the past. This may seem simple on the surface. For example, many companies will simply list some of their clients right on the website. But I suggest digging a little deeper to get the most accurate picture possible. Here are a few tips.

What do their covers look like?

This is the most obvious sign of a company’s quality. The vast majority of publishing companies will include covers of books they have published right on their website, and these will give you a quick and easy sense of the quality of work they do. You can also dig deeper than the covers they’re showing you on the site. Go search on Amazon—enter the publisher name into the search window to get a broader list of the titles they’ve published.

How do you perceive quality in cover design? Even to the untrained eye, a good, professional cover should stand out from one that is unprofessional and sloppy. To get a benchmark, take a look at covers of similar genres from big name traditional publishers. One thing I tend to focus on is the relationship between the background images and text on a cover. Pro designers integrate these elements elegantly, whereas lower end cover designs tend to have a lot of awkward contrast between the two.

Check out the book interiors

Interior layout design is as much of an art as cover design. The interior layout is essentially how the book looks on the page, including fonts, headers, page numbers, spacing, and more. And like other design elements, there’s a spectrum of quality among publishers. The best way to review the work of a publisher is to look up their titles on Amazon and use the “Look Inside” function on the book detail page. You can then scroll through a sample of the interior and get a sense of the quality of the work they do.

Did they actually publish the work they are listing?

The other day I took a call from an author who wanted to know what I thought of a particular hybrid publishing company that he was considering working. I went to their website and saw all the red flags listed in this article, so my hackles were up. When I started scrolling through the books they claimed to have published, something caught my eye—a very famous book, which I knew for a fact had been published by one of the big traditional publishers. I did a little searching to see if I could find any connection between this company and the book, and there was nothing.

Unfortunately, this is more common than you’d expect. I don’t know how they get away with it, but many companies list books they did not work on. So if something seems a little too good to be true, do some digging to see if their claims can be backed up.

What do their Amazon listings look like?

One of the often overlooked signals of a book’s quality is how it’s represented on Amazon. The publishing company, whether traditional or hybrid, is generally the one responsible for setting up a title on Amazon and will have control over the appearance of its detail page. And you can tell a lot from how good a job they do. Here are a few things to watch out for on the page:

The descriptive copy: Is it compelling? Are there formatting errors?Is the “Search Inside” functionality set up for the book?How many categories is the book listed in? Good publishers will make sure the book is listed in at least three.Have they added professional endorsements and testimonials to the listing?Have they set up an Amazon Author Central profile for the author?Does the company’s website appear professional and elegant?

This is a big one. It’s my conviction that if a company can’t put together a beautiful website, they definitely won’t do a good job on producing your book. A website reflects a company’s aesthetic sense, attention to detail, and level of visual care, and all three of these elements are crucial to producing a high-quality book. So if the website makes a bad impression, pay attention. There’s likely a strong correlation there.

Your personal calculus

At the end of the day, everyone is going to make their own decisions about which company to hire. And given the wide variety of options available, there’s definitely no one-size-fits-all rule for choosing a company to publish your book. Each one will have strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll need to decide which of those strengths are most important to you. You might even, for example, decide that quality is less important to you than money and choose a lower tier company, and that’s okay.

I just want to make sure that every author is as informed as possible when making such a significant decision as choosing a publishing partner. Whichever company you choose to work with should sincerely value the hard work you put into writing your book, so that your final product is one you can be truly proud of.

I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments here. Have you worked with a publishing service company or hybrid publisher? And how did it go?

Writing Rules That Beg to Be Broken

Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted from Ten Easy Steps to Becoming a Writer by Randall Silvis.

I despise rules. Always have. Rules are for accountants and architects, assembly line workers and neurosurgeons. In order to be successful in those professions, there are procedures that must always be followed, variations that must never be employed. The word creative, however, as in the phrase creative writing, demands, at the very least, an imaginative interpretation of the rules.

Thanks to a degree of success over the years, I am asked again and again to lay out a prescription of rules for aspiring writers. This is one request I will not honor. No writer living or dead has discovered a universally foolproof method of churning out successful fiction, and none ever will. How can you discover what does not exist? If success as a writer depended upon nothing but following a list of rules, why are there so many aspiring writers who can’t get published?

The following are some of the so-called rules of writing fiction that I take a special delight in breaking. Creative writing is about possibilities, not about restrictions and limitations.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

In 1962, in a letter to a young writer, John Steinbeck added six tips for writing well. The above was one of those tips. Its error lies again, as all rules do, with its use of the absolute never. I frequently will not, because I cannot, begin a story or novel until I have crafted the perfect first paragraph. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect sentence, but the temporary confidence instilled by thinking that I have crafted one is what allows me to tackle a project that will consume my waking and sleeping hours for the next year or more. Stopping now and then to polish a faulty phrase or image is like taking another hit of confidence.

Five or six hits every morning keep me flying through the hours. But if I cannot fix a weakness within a minute or two, I will not allow my momentum to stall out with fretting and hand-wringing. Placing parentheses around the offending phrase, or highlighting the entire scene, will call my attention to it during the first rewrite.

I do not believe, as some practitioners apparently do, that a morning’s work is like a fast-moving stream through which one must dare not stop paddling, not even for a moment. Go ahead and stop if you want to. Pull ashore. Have lunch. Creep up as close as you can to that egret in the tree. Take a nap if you feel like it. In short, do whatever works for you. The imagination is resilient and flexible, and your routine should be too. But only if that works for you. I am most productive when I adhere, albeit loosely, to the discipline of beginning the morning with a bit of meditation, followed by four to six hours at my desk, followed by a good workout or hike. That’s my routine. It doesn’t have to be yours.

Write what you know. 

In the days of Thoreau and earlier, when it was necessary to walk several miles to consult with someone more knowledgeable than you, Ernest Hemingway’s write what you know might have been sound advice. Hemingway also said that every writer needs a friend in every profession, someone whose expertise can be accessed—a statement that appears to contradict the earlier statement.

In order to do my research back in the 1970s and 80s, I had to visit a small-town library every week to order another load of books on interlibrary loan, which made the librarian my best friend. Today, a writer’s best friend is the internet.

I feel certain that Hemingway’s write what you know admonition was not intended to be an absolute. A clearer rendition of that advice would be to write what you know after you’ve done a ton of research and before you forget it all. And always remember that you are writing fiction. Fiction is stuff you make up. You can do that too. You can make stuff up.

Back at the turn of the millennium, I signed a contract, based on a single opening scene, to write two historical mysteries featuring Edgar Allan Poe for Thomas Dunne Books. I had never before written a historical novel and was not confident I could create a convincing New York City of 1840. In one scene it was necessary for me to get Poe across the East River in short order so that he could hotfoot it to Manhattan. I spent weeks trying to find a bridge he could cross or a ferry that would convey him in the allotted time. No such luck. I was stuck. I moaned about this impasse to a friend of mine who was also a writer, and he said, “It’s fiction, Silvis. Make up a bridge.”

Frequently it is the not knowing that brings a story alive, the writer’s desire to know what he does not, which then leads to the character’s discovery of what she did not know, and then the reader’s delight in participating in that discovery.

Show, don’t tell.

A favorite admonition among writing teachers all over the world. This admonition is only half false. The true part is that good fiction is built on dramatic scenes comprised of action, dialogue, description, and conflict—i.e. showing through visual and other sensory details and strong, active verbs. But a certain amount of telling is necessary too. Summary and exposition hold the scenes together. Telling bridges the time gap between scenes and between relevant beats. A little bit of telling, even if it’s something as simple as “Two weeks later,” opens nearly every new scene and every chapter.

So, once again, the problem with the rule is not that it is wholly false but that it is stated too rigidly. Summarization complements dramatization in every novel. In some, it shoulders the narrative load. Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, for example, is a brilliant novel that is almost wholly told rather than shown.

In general, the more “literary” a novel is, the more it relies on reflection, speculation, and summaries of events. That is why a literary novel is so hard to adapt for the screen; so much of the momentum of the story is interior, taking place only in the characters’ heads.

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ran into this very problem when attempting to adapt Susan Orlean’s nonfiction The Orchid Thief for film. The problem was so infuriating that he finally seized upon introducing himself into the story as twins, one of whom was being driven mad by attempting to write the adaptation without sacrificing the book’s artistic integrity, and the other as a hack only too ready to pander to Hollywood’s lack of artistic integrity by changing the story willy-nilly. “Show, don’t tell” is fine advice if you are aiming for a quick sale of movie rights, or if you are fifteen years old and learning how to write in scenes, but the proper amendment of the phrase for the rest of us should be “show when you can, but tell whenever showing isn’t necessary.”

The writing life is mostly a lonely, miserable life.

A common refrain among self-pitying writers. This concept is a form of the romantic allure of the suffering artist. Trust me; there is nothing romantic about suffering. If you haven’t done much suffering yet, you will after you have children, and then you will understand how unromantic it is to be a miserable wretch who can’t stop worrying. In David Foster Wallace’s essay “The Nature of the Fun,” he addresses the reader as you and delineates for her the psyche-strangling process she will undergo from aspiring writer to acclaimed author, except at the beginning. “In the beginning,” he writes, “when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun. You don’t expect anybody else to read it. You’re writing almost wholly to get yourself off.”

I disagree. I expected all of my early stories to be published. (Only a few were.) Nearly every student I taught over a lifetime of teaching fully expected their early work to be published. So when Wallace says you don’t expect anybody else to read it, he’s speaking for himself.

Then comes success, Wallace says. What he should have said is, If you work very hard and are very lucky and talented, then comes success, depending on how you define success, because in most cases it is a very minor success resulting in few readers and little money.

After which, he says, “Things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary. Now you feel like you’re writing for other people,” and the enjoyment you once found in writing “is offset by a terrible fear of rejection,” until you soon discover that “90 percent of the stuff you’re writing is motivated and informed by an overwhelming need to be liked. This results in shitty fiction.”

Eventually, he says, you might somehow shovel your way back to the fun of writing and discover that writing fiction is “a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.”

Yeah, well, Mr. Wallace had himself some issues. It is a bleak journey he chronicles, no less so because it was one he was unable to see through to completion, which eventually led to his suicide. But it is not, despite the second-person address he employed, the journey you must take. It was his journey, the one he plotted for himself, but one tragically tainted by his need to be liked. There is absolutely no reason why any of that bleakness has to be part of your journey.

I have never thought of the writing life as fun or scary or complicated or as a way to be liked. It is sometimes easy, sometimes magical, sometimes maddening, demanding, and exhausting, yet frequently very satisfying. I do it principally for the magic and the mystery and the sense of satisfaction it can elicit. I love words and I love stories, and I take great pleasure from being able to indulge myself in those pleasures every single day. Storytelling is not a way to work out who I am or why I exist; being a father answered most of those questions for me.

Storytelling allows me to share my passion with others and to get paid for it.

David Foster Wallace was a fine but very troubled writer who confused what he was with what he did. This is a common affliction. Do not fall prey to it, because it usually won’t end pretty. If you don’t believe me, have a séance and ask Hemingway, Virginia Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Sylvia Plath, and John Kennedy Toole.

No matter how authoritative and confident a writer sounds, and no matter how much you admire that writer’s work, he or she is capable of detailing only his or her truth, derived as it was from his or her own idiosyncratic journey. Your journey might be similar or it might be vastly different; it will never be exactly the same as any other writer’s journey.

Yet many writers, in an attempt to be helpful, create lists of rules for aspiring writers. The honest writers speak only in generalities: Write every day. Read voraciously. Write what you want to read. The less honest, or merely less humble, get specific and adamantine: Avoid all adverbs. Never start with the weather. Write short sentences. The more specific a writer’s rule, the less trustworthy it is, and the sooner you should find the nearest exit.

Amazon

By all means go ahead and read the rules, if you wish. Give them a try. And if one of them works for you, use it until it stops working, then dump it in the trash heap with all the other useless rules that have been crammed down your throat since your first hour in daycare. Writing is creative, so don’t look to prescriptions or those who preach them. Sit down and create.

Stick with it, and you will figure out the rest along the way. That has always been and will always be the only true way to learn.

My favorite piece of writing advice comes from Margaret Atwood: Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. That is the only rule you will ever need to post over your desk: Stop whining and write!

Author Platform Is Not a Requirement to Sell Your Novel or Children’s Book

Recently an article was published at Vox titled “Everyone’s a sellout now.” The subtitle: “So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?”

The dour conclusion, probably the writer’s predetermined conclusion when she began her research: more or less.

This article makes the classic mistake of conflating all kinds of artists and creative industries and painting them all with the same brush. But specifically, for writers and book publishing, it spreads so many myths and misconceptions about the business of authorship that I’ll be undoing the damage for years. (My inbox last week: Did you see this article!) However, I hope this post helps reduce the length of that battle. So let’s get straight to it.

Vox: With any book, but especially nonfiction ones, publishers want a guarantee that a writer comes with a built-in audience of people who already read and support their work…

Agents and big publishers seek authors with platform for adult nonfiction work.

If a debut novelist or debut children’s author seeks a book deal with a big New York publisher, then agents and editors make their decision based on the story premise, the manuscript, and/or whether the project fits with their theory of what sells in today’s market. That theory may be driven by pop culture, by what else is selling well among their clients or at their publishing house, by trends on TikTok—you get the idea.

If you’re a debut novelist with a platform, great! But it’s not going to make up for a lackluster story or premise that’s unappealing to today’s readers. The agent or publisher has to have genuine enthusiasm for the story or writing itself. They tend to trust their instincts on story quality or story marketability, and if they don’t love it, they’ll have trouble convincing anyone else of the same. The general hope is that word of mouth and consistent recommendations by readers and influencers will fuel the book’s success—not the debut author’s platform/following. Most bestsellers occur because of readers saying to their friends and family: you must read this.

Let me be absolutely clear: Agents and publishers don’t read a novel or children’s manuscript, fall in love with it and/or think it will sell in today’s market, then check to see if it’s safe to represent or acquire based on the author’s online following. (However, I have seen such a thing happen with nonfiction. I’ve also seen it happen when an author has a poor sales track record.)

Side note: I’m adding children’s authors into the mix here because, I hope for obvious reasons, it can be problematic to expect children’s writers to build an online following among children (their readers), although some children’s writers do have strong connections in the children’s community—with librarians, educators, teachers, and so on. Children’s books often must meet considerable requirements related to format, word count, education level, curriculum expectations or standards, etc—and platform is usually low on the list of concerns even for nonfiction.

Having an online presence or following is mostly a bonus for the agent or publisher if you’re an unpublished or untested fiction writer. Think it through: if you’re an unpublished novelist who’s building a following, why are others following you exactly? It’s not for your novel, because that’s not published yet. Is it for your short fiction in literary journals? Congratulations! You have a rarefied audience of people who actually read short fiction in literary journals.

Certainly publishing credentials that impress or show you’ve been selected/vetted or validated can help you get the consideration you deserve, or make you more visible to agents or decision makers at publishing houses. And social media will do wonders for building relationships with others in the writing and publishing community. To the extent that being on social media helps you be seen by gatekeepers, sure—this is part of platform, and it can lower some barriers and lead to more connections that help you get published. But we’re not talking about a following of existing readers on social media. We’re talking about relationships and visibility to specific, influential people. You can be visible to such people with a tiny following.

None of this is to say social media doesn’t sell books—it can and it does—but it’s rarely in the way that any writer thinks. It’s not going to sell a novel that readers aren’t motivated to go and tell all their friends about, whether that’s online or offline. And that’s the quality that agents/publishers are looking for when they receive your submission. Authors will find it challenging to support word of mouth on social without having readers’ own enthusiasm for their work present at the same time.

Now, if you’re a TikTok sensation or a self-published author who’s driving tons of views and conversation about your work, that’s when agents and editors approach you. You don’t even have to query. But if your following isn’t enough to proactively attract agent or publisher attention to your door, then I don’t think it plays a meaningful role when you’re going on submission or submitting a query. Does it hurt? No.

In the debut novel deal announcements at Publishers Marketplace, it’s rare to see any mention of platform. But occasionally writing/publishing credentials or occupations are mentioned. Here are some descriptors in early 2024, if any are given at all—the majority have no credentials listed.

Software engineer and contributor to the Drunken Canal and HobartPushcart Prize winningElizabeth George grantee and Warren Wilson MFA graduateManaging editor of fiction for Foglifter Journal and creative writing teacher2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp FellowYaddo and Macdowell fellowPreviously published in Slate and The Bellevue Literary Review and heard on NPRLambda Literary fellowBook criticRona Jaffe Scholar and Oregon Literary Fellow

These credentials mainly testify to the quality of existing writing or involvement in the writing community. This is a critical part of platform that doesn’t require social media activity or self-promotion. Unfortunately, the writer at Vox seems fairly obsessed with TikTok, which is understandable—it’s driving book sales for the likes of Colleen Hoover. But that doesn’t mean debut novelists must now launch themselves into a short-form video career. And it doesn’t mean that for nonfiction authors either.

You can still get a book deal for nonfiction without a platform.

Platform is most often a concern for literary agents who are looking for the easiest path to a big deal with one of the conglomerate New York publishers. Telling an author “you don’t have a platform” is one of the easiest and most non-offensive ways to get rid of a project they don’t want to represent. But reasons for rejection tend to be multi-faceted and writers rarely receive the real reasons behind it—especially not “your trauma memoir is derivative and boring” or “your writing lacks anything fresh or exciting.”

Small and independent publishers—who can be equivalent to or better than the biggest New York houses—accept books all the time where the author does not have a platform. (Here’s how to research them.) Authors can approach such publishers directly without an agent. Here’s how to evaluate publishers on your own without the help of an agent.

You can get a book deal for memoir without a platform.

Memoir gets acquired all the time without the author having a platform. At the same time, the number-one reason memoir gets rejected is because the author does not have a platform. There’s a lot of memoir being submitted these days, and very little of it is deserving of a nationwide audience. Sometimes, the agent is outright lying about why they’re rejecting the project; it’s easier to say “no platform” than “bad writing” or “boring story” or “won’t sell.” Other times, the agent or publisher is only interested in memoirs by authors with platforms. So how can you tell which is which? One clue is what the agent or publisher asks authors to submit. If they want a proposal, they’re definitely interested in your platform and probably sell memoir based on platform (at least in part). If they want a query and the full manuscript, they probably acquire memoir on the basis of the story and the quality of the writing. But in the end, they may still reject on the basis of platform because they think that’s the kinder way out. Too often, it’s an unkind rejection, because authors get misled into trying to build platform when that’s not really the problem.

In 2022, I researched memoir book deals and found that about 25% were with authors who did not have any identifiable platform.

OK, moving on to the next problematic claim in the Vox article.

Vox: We like to think of it as the work of singular geniuses whose motivations are purely creative and untainted by the market — this, despite the fact that music, publishing, and film have always been for-profit industries where formulaic, churned-out work is what often sells best. These days, the jig is up.

… Even when corporations did enter the picture, artists working with publishing houses or record companies, for example, had little contact with the business side of things.

There has been no time in publishing history when writers were unaffected by the market—or didn’t have to think about it.

In the literary community especially, there’s a persistent and dangerous myth of the starving artist, and the belief that “real art” doesn’t earn money or that “real artists” don’t consider commerce. In fact, art and business can inform each other, and successful writers throughout history have proven themselves savvy at making their art pay.

Mark Twain’s work was sold direct to reader by door-to-door salesmen, which was not considered high status at the time. (Respectable people sold their book in bookstores.) But it was direct to reader that led to the best success and sales for Twain. Little Women was borne out of financial desperation by Louisa May Alcott, who wrote it on assignment, for the market. George Eliot, the great moral novelist, left the publisher she had been loyal to for many years, to work with a publisher offering a higher advance. Etc. The examples are legion. What’s insufferable are the scolds who continually try to make artists and writers feel lesser than if they consider the market or avidly market and promote. T.S. Eliot was such a scold; he called poet Amy Lowell a demon saleswoman of poetry.

I believe there is a productive tension to be found between art and commerce. Richard Nash, who has written eloquently about the business of literature, once told me, “Business and marketing are about understanding networks and patterns of influence and behavior. Writers can handle that.” Meaning: This is not some catastrophe that writers need to be rescued from. See Make Art Make Money by Elizabeth Stevens, which is essentially a biography of Jim Henson, showing how he played art and commerce off each other to magnificent success. (She also wrote about Borges and his day job, and why working a day job was good for his creativity.)

I’m on Andy Warhol’s side when he said, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Next:

Vox: Self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. 

Yes, it does suck if you define self-promotion or platform building as selling out or being on TikTok/social media. This is a simplistic and follow-the-trends perspective that writers get sucked into all the time, to their detriment. Tara McMullin has already written a terrific response about self-promotion that everyone should go and read: Sorry (Not Sorry): Self-Promotion Doesn’t Work.

In this post, I’d like to expand on the idea of platform.

Platform should not be conflated with “social media following” or self-promotion.

Platform building is an unwieldy topic to address for authors; no two platforms are alike and building an effective one depends on your resources, strengths, connections. What I can say is that platform should not be equated to “social media following” or self-promotion. It’s just as much about showing that you have connections and belong to networks that can help spread the word about what you do. You might have a sufficient enough platform already to land a book deal, especially if you’re regularly publishing in outlets that your target audience reads. For further inspiration, read this post.

Fortunately, a meaningful and sustainable platform flourishes out of the work itself and is not divorced from what you as an author want to talk about, ordinarily and enthusiastically. However, if you want to sit in a remote garret for the rest of your life and bestow your genius unto the world without ever interacting with a single soul, well, yes—that is going to be quite problematic for your future as a bestselling author.

It’s foolhardy to expect you can just write and publish, and that good things will happen without you playing a proactive role in somehow being visible. And that’s what platform is all about: visibility. You want your work to be seen and most writers want to grow their readership, which typically leads to more earnings or earnings opportunities. Platform is important to the extent that you want or expect to earn a living from your writing and publishing activities. But treating platform as a series of self-promotional tasks, isolated from your own values and strengths, will be a waste of your time and energy.

While platform gives you the power to market effectively, it’s not something you develop by engaging in self-promotional activities. It is not about hard selling, being an extrovert, or pleading “Look at me!” Platform isn’t about who yells the loudest or markets the best. It’s about putting in consistent effort over the course of a career, and making incremental improvements in how you reach readers and extend your network. It’s about making waves that attract other people to you. Ultimately, your platform-building process will become as much a creative exercise as the work you produce.

Author platform has become more important over the years because it is not impressive or meaningful to publish something in the digital era. Many of us now publish and distribute with the click of a button on a daily basis—on social media especially, but also on all kinds of platforms. The difficult work lies in getting attention in an era of “cognitive surplus.” Cognitive surplus is a term coined by author Clay Shirky that refers to the societal phenomenon where we now have free time to pursue all sorts of creative and collaborative activities, including writing. Arianna Huffington once said, “Self-expression is the new form of entertainment,” and author George Packer wrote in 1991, “Writing has become one of the higher forms of recreation in a leisure society.” And even more so now. A writer today is competing against many more would-be writers than even a couple of decades ago. 

Still, committed writers succeed in the industry every single day, especially those who can adopt a long-term view and recognize that most careers are launched, not with a single fabulous manuscript, but through a series of small successes that builds the writer’s network and visibility, step by step.

Some people have an easier time building platform than others. If you hold a high-profile position or have a powerful network; if you have friends in high places or are associated with powerful communities; if you have prestigious degrees or posts, then you play the field at an advantage. This is why it’s so easy for celebrities to get book deals. They have built-in platform. That doesn’t always equate to sales, though; plenty of celebrity books have bombed.

I often advise writers: start with your strengths and don’t worry about what you don’t have. Most of us excel in one or two areas of platform-building and leverage that repeatedly to grow our careers. Speaking for myself, I excel at email newsletters and blogging and have used these mediums for my entire freelance career to fuel my business. The hardest and also most exciting thing about any creative life is figuring out your own path. Don’t get tricked into thinking there’s a formula or some platform that you absolutely must use or otherwise you’ll get left behind. It has never been true.

Last but not least:

Vox: Fewer publishers means heavier competition for well-paying advances, and fewer booksellers thanks to consolidation by Amazon and big box stores means that authors aren’t making what they used to on royalties, despite the fact that book sales are relatively strong. The problem isn’t that people aren’t buying books, it’s that less of the money is going to writers.

There is no evidence to suggest publishers are paying authors less than before.

There are, of course, author earnings surveys conducted by the Authors Guild and other organizations that try to show that author income is declining, but these reports are seriously problematic and moreover they do not prove that publishers are paying less than before. Consider:

Advances from Penguin Random House (PRH) for the average author (not a top-earning author, which is someone in the top 2%) either stayed the same or increased in the decade after the 2013 merger between Penguin and Random House. This was revealed during the Dept. of Justice antitrust trial against PRH in 2022.During that same trial, PRH CEO Markus Dohle said that PRH in the US committed an “all-time high” of around $650 million in author advances in 2021.In 2021, here’s the CEO of HarperCollins on the publisher’s performance: “Outgoing funds to authors and advances and royalties is continuing to grow, growing faster than revenues.”If the sizes of book deals were declining, Publishers Marketplace deal reports would likely reflect that. No alarm has been raised.

Do publishers have unfavorable terms for authors? Of course they do. Ebook royalty payments are too low and it can be impossible for authors to retain ebook or audiobook rights when working with big houses, just to name a couple areas of frustration. But to say publishers are paying less than before would really require advances or royalty rates to be declining, and I have not seen evidence of that. (Anecdotal evidence from a single author does not count; I’m talking about actual industry data.)

I did have the good fortune to look at the granular data collected by the Authors Guild from its latest author income survey. Authors most likely to report their income decreasing over the last five years? Traditionally published authors and those age 65 and up, which isn’t all that surprising if they’re producing fewer works or coasting on backlist. And who is most likely to report their income increasing? Authors publishing serializations and authors 25–44 years old. Overall, self-published authors were slightly more likely to report increased rather than decreased earnings; they were also far more likely to have published a book in the last year.

And this points to a very important dynamic for every author’s income and whether you can make a living from book sales alone: It matters how much you write and publish, not least what category or genre you’re publishing into. It does not matter how much you use TikTok. Publishers and literary agents know this, even if they pretend otherwise to conveniently reject you and your work.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to receive fact-based, researched information about the book publishing industry—not anecdotal evidence or opinions to make you feel hopeless—consider subscribing to my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet.

Why You Need a Press Release in the Digital Age

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Today’s guest post is by public relations expert Claire McKinney. It serves as an update to her 2017 post, The Difference Between a Pitch and a Press Release.

If you’re wondering whether press releases are still relevant or important, I’m here to convince you that they are.

Why send out a press release?

Media relations departments from all types of companies—Fortune 500 to startups—use press releases to communicate with the media. Why do billion-dollar businesses bother to send them out? Because this is still how you send information to the media. A press release is a tool that is considered “approved” copy for any media organization, online or traditional, to use to discuss an outside entity.

Here is a simple example in the book world: It is very likely that someone will review or feature your book and lift copy straight from your release, which is exactly what you want. If a media outlet decides to run a story about your book with a price or on-sale date that’s inaccurate, you can cite information in the press release and ask to have it corrected. If there are factual errors in coverage tied to your release, you can easily point to the problem and ask for a change. 

If you want to include a blurb or endorsement, or include a quote from an expert cited in your nonfiction book, a media outlet understands they can use it. If Michelle Obama endorses your book, wouldn’t you want to have her name and her words in your press release? This is an extreme situation, but it illustrates my point. 

However, before you email one sentence to a journalist, there are direct benefits you get from writing your own release.

Why am I writing press materials?

You are writing this document because it will help you figure out what your core message is.

The core message is the newsworthy or unique aspect(s) you, your book, and your ideas can offer to a target audience—an audience that is most likely to spread word of mouth and/or purchase your book or services. The core message is ultimately part of your elevator pitch. 

Creating a release also forces you to think about your competition and how you are offering something different than what every other mystery, romance, literary fiction, self-help guru, history buff, academic author, etc. is writing about. In an online world, this is incredibly important, because most likely, the first place you are going to make your mark is online and with search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for press releases

Having the release available on your website, your publicist’s website, publisher’s website, etc., will help with you or your book appearing in response to search queries. If you Google your book title, you will probably notice Amazon and other big retailers first; your publisher and your own website can appear later. Having a press release can boost this rank in search queries.

Because the competition for ranking is much more competitive these days, you should do some extra work to enhance your release: include keywords or keyword phrases in the text. You can research which ones to use by using Google to search for terms related to your work such as “books about WWII,” “self-help divorce books,” “books about good habits”, “books about joining the circus,” etc. See what comes up in the search window and consider what phrases or keywords will help your press materials rank better in results.

I don’t think paid services like PR Newswire (that publish and distribute your press release) are worthwhile for most books. If you have an amazing news peg, that could be one reason to invest, but there are thousands of releases posted at such PR websites.

For help with SEO, here are some additional resources:

Google Trends is a free tool that lets you see how high a term is ranked in a specific area. If there is no data available for a search term, it means there aren’t enough people looking for it and it isn’t worth using.Ubersuggest is run by Neil Patel, a marketing guru. Free membership gives you access to a limited number of keyword searches. I thought the free version was fine when I was experimenting.Press release structure

This structure is based on how much interesting or provocative information you can share, without overhyping your message. When you introduce the book in the opening paragraphs, you will need to identify it using the entire title with the subtitl; in parentheses include the publication date, imprint, format, price, and ISBN, like this:

The Great Book: A Novel  by Bobbie Bobs (imprint name, publication date, format, ISBN, price).

The first paragraph should tell the reader of the release why your story is compelling and what its relevance is to the audience. You will also want to explain why you wrote the book and how your personal story is connected to it.

The next one or two paragraphs should be a short synopsis of the plot if you are promoting a novel, and a list of the main facts or talking points if you are working on nonfiction. You can also include a more in-depth section on yourself and your story as it relates to the content if you believe it will enhance the core message.

Within the release, you will want to mention the book’s title at least two times. In the final paragraph, you need to develop an action statement “Call to Action” (CTA) that will tie up everything and encourage the reader to pick up the book and open it.

Add your short bio under “About the Author” and the specs of the book (the ISBN, etc) below that. Finish it off with the traditional # # # centered on the bottom, which indicates to the media person that all the words preceding the hashtags are approved for the press. To read some examples of releases, go to my website and look under campaigns.

Hire a helper or write your own release

Writing your own materials gives you the opportunity to figure out what differentiates you and your work from others. This is a cardinal rule in marketing. However, if you are planning to hire a publicist to work on a promotion campaign, then by all means let that person write your materials. I always have a meeting with clients upfront to discuss themes and target audiences, which helps my team craft an effective release. If you’re working on your own to write the release, you can meet with an expert to get some coaching.

Paying someone to write your press materials could cost anywhere from $1,000–2,000, similar to what a resume writer charges. Anyone charging less is not reading your book and working with you to emphasize what makes you unique.

Note from Jane: To learn how to put together a press release and press kit—and learn other book marketing skills—Claire offers online education at courses.clairemckinneypr.com.