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How to Land an Agent for a Graphic Novel

Today’s post is by graphic novelist K. Woodman-Maynard (@woodmanmaynard).

First off, you do not need an agent to get into comics and graphic novels. Comics have a long history of self-publishing and finding readers through conventions and web comics. I personally know many cartoonists who started out by self-publishing and later found an agent more organically through networking or being “discovered” through a convention or anthology.

However, for the sake of this article, I’m going to talk about traditional querying of agents, which is how I’ve found my agents—and I’ve had three (more on that later).

Why have an agent?

Agents have two major roles: they help ensure that your work is seen by publishers, and they handle the business and legal side of the relationship with publishers. In exchange, they take a 15 percent commission of what you earn.

Publishers are overwhelmed by submissions, so there’s no guarantee that they’ll even look at your submission if you send it directly to them. (And some don’t accept unagented material at all.) The advantage to having an agent is that they have existing relationships with editors and publishers, which means they’re more likely to read agents’ submissions. They trust the agents to be sending good work their way. Agents can also help you craft your submissions materials so that they will be appealing to publishers.

On the business side of things, agents handle the contracts and negotiations and understand the market rate for work. I saw firsthand how useful having an agent could be when I got an unimpressive offer from a publisher for a graphic novel. If I’d been negotiating on my own, I’d have asked for 20% more, but my agent told me, “That’s a lowball offer. Let’s ask for double that.” So she asked for 200% of their initial offer and they agreed. And in that one move, she more than covered the cost of her commission.

Who should I query?

You should only query agents who represent graphic novels, which will narrow down the field quite a bit. And you’ll want to find agents who represent graphic novels similar to the one that you are creating. For example, if you’re writing middle-grade fantasy graphic novels, you probably want to see some similar titles already represented by the agent you’re querying.

I used a spreadsheet to keep track of the agents I was thinking of querying. I included things like links to their websites, their submission guidelines, why I thought they’d be a good fit, the date I queried them, and if I ever heard back. Be prepared for querying to require a lot of waiting. Some agents respond within hours, others take months to respond, and others never respond.

If you know other cartoonists, ask them about their experience with their agents and if they’d recommend them. Talking to people is often the best way to get a sense of which agents are well respected.

How many agents should you query?

I recommend querying in batches. I started by querying my top 3–5 agents, waited several weeks to hear back, then moved to the next couple agents on my list. By querying in batches, you give yourself time to edit your query if you get any helpful feedback, and also give your top choices time to respond.

What do you need to pitch?

One of the biggest differences in pitching graphic novels compared to text-only books is that you do not need to have the book done in order to find an agent or sell it to a publisher. Instead you create a proposal that includes samples of the final art and an overview of the project.

All agents seem to ask for something different, but here’s a general overview of what you’ll likely need. When querying, be sure to follow the specific agent’s guidelines. Agents receive so many queries, don’t give them a reason to overlook your work because you didn’t follow their directions.

Query letter: See Jane’s article on querying. That’s how I learned to do it!Specs: I like to include projected page count, trim size, full color or black-and-white printing, genre, target age group, and comparable titles.Synopsis (usually 1–3 pages): See Jane’s excellent article on synopsis writing. I still use this when writing synopses for proposals.Sample art: There isn’t a set amount of art that all agents require, but you want to give them enough finalized art to get an idea of your storytelling style, coloring (if applicable), and character design. I tend to think you should submit sequential pages, working from the start of the book. My goal is to make an agent curious to read more. That said, I have heard of people submitting random pages from different parts of the book, but I don’t think that gives agents a good idea of your sequential storytelling capacity, which is very important with comics making. When I was querying my graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby, I had the first chapter of final art done (22 pages), but most agents only wanted to see 10–15 pages. So in my query letter, I said I was attaching the first 15 pages, and could send an additional 7 upon request.Art file format: If submitting sequential pages, I’d recommend submitting them as a PDF to make sure all the pages are kept together, as opposed to individual JPGs. You don’t need super high resolution (and huge) files for submitting to agents, but you don’t want to send pixelated art either. One thing that threw me when I was querying is that some agents state in their querying guidelines that they don’t want any attachments on emails. In that case, you can link to a page on your website where the art is. If you’re concerned about privacy, you can make it password protected and give the agent the password in your query letter. Or you could link to a Google Drive or Dropbox folder.Script: This isn’t required, and some cartoonists don’t even work from scripts, but if you do, it’s a good thing to share with a potential agent if they request to see more content.
There isn’t a standard script format, so do a little research and see what works for you and stick with the format throughout the script.What if I’m just the writer (not the artist)?

Writers can query on their own and generally the publisher will find an artist to pair them with for that project. Some agents will represent an artist-writer team, but most prefer to represent individuals.

What if I’m just the artist (not the writer)?

It’s my understanding that it’s rare to get an agent as a comic artist not attached to a specific book. Before querying, you should see if the agent will even consider this. Anecdotally, it seems like comic artists (who aren’t also writers) get agents because they also do picture book illustration, or are working in partnership with a writer on a comic, and get introduced that way.

Listen to your gut! 

During my first time querying agents on a YA fantasy graphic novel, I initially sent out queries to my top agents. I got a few requests to read the full script, but my top choices ultimately passed on my story. So I moved on to agents further down the list. Eventually, I got an offer within a few hours of submitting from an agent at a large literary agency. I was ecstatic, but also wary after speaking with him.

Something didn’t sit right with me and I wasn’t sure he’d actually read my book based on a few comments he made. Even though he had a good track record in Publishers Marketplace, I waffled about whether to accept his offer. But I couldn’t find anything negative about him online, and I reached out to a few clients who said he sold their books and they were generally happy with him. Since I didn’t have any other offers, I decided to go with him, despite my reservations.

After a year, he hadn’t sold my first book and he had my second graphic novel out on submission. However, news started coming out about him as being a poor agent and he was asked to resign from the US professional literary agent organization. After talking to various people I knew in the industry and seeing examples of his actual pitches of my work, I decided to break ties with him.

I was demoralized—those two books represented over five years of work, but I was already working on another book that seemed more marketable—a graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby. So I went back to my original list of agents and pitched Gatsby to one of my top choices of agents (who had rejected my earlier book). Within about a day, she offered to represent me.

I felt burned by my first agent and I was still a little wary, so I decided to meet her in person before signing. After meeting her, I felt confident in her and the agency, both of which had a stellar professional reputation. And a few months later, she sold Gatsby to Candlewick Press and helped negotiate a deal that I was happy with.

What if it doesn’t work out with the agent?

You need to be on the same page as your agent and make sure that they’re aligned with your goals, which may change over time. Just like with any relationship, a person may work out for a time, but not be the right fit in the long term, which is what happened with my second agent.

After publishing Gatsby, I was working on a project for a few years that my agent ultimately didn’t think she could sell. I felt compelled to keep working on it and eventually we decided to amicably part ways since I still wanted to try to publish it.

After parting with my agent, I was back looking for an agent for the third time, and feeling demoralized again. However, I’d already published Gatsby, and now had a lot more connections in the graphic novel world.

Since I was co-creating a graphic novel with a writer-friend, my friend reached out to her agent to see if she’d be willing to represent both of us for that specific project. Her agent requested I send along my other work for her to look at. She looked it over and she offered me representation for all of my work. I liked her a lot, she represented several people I knew, had an excellent reputation, and she seemed to understand my work and what I was trying to accomplish, so I signed with her.

And a wonderful postscript with my second agent is that a graphic novel adaptation project came across her desk that she thought I’d be great for, and passed it along to me, even though I was no longer her client. That graphic novel will be coming out in Fall 2025.

Additional resourcesThis page by Nikki Smith has a list of agents who represent graphic novels.Agent Maria Vicente has an excellent article on querying graphic novel agents.

Book Family Tree: A New Way to Think About Your Book

Photo by veeterzy

Today’s post is by author Ilana DeBare.

Choosing good comparable titles can be a brain-busting challenge for many writers. Comps let agents and publishers know where your book fits in the marketplace, and they’re helpful in crafting a publicity strategy. But it can be hard to find books that feel like an exact match, especially if you’re writing fiction and your novel doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories.

That was the case with Shaken Loose, my debut fantasy novel set in an unjust and unraveling Hell. During the long march to its recent publication, I came up with the idea of a Book Family Tree—an exercise that helped me better understand my own book and where it fit in the world.

It was not only enlightening but fun! So I made a free template that allows other writers to easily create family trees for their own books.

But first, some background.

While querying agents and publishers, I spent countless hours brainstorming potential comps while never feeling that any single one was a perfect match. Shaken Loose challenges organized religion like The Golden Compass, but it doesn’t have that book’s epic sweep; it features nuanced characters with existential dilemmas like The Golem and The Jinni but it isn’t historical fantasy. The landscape and backstory of its Hell are modeled on Paradise Lost, but clearly a 350-year-old poem isn’t a useful comp.

My book had an identity crisis. Or maybe the crisis was mine: I didn’t know where it belonged.

I’m a genealogy hobbyist as well as a writer, so I started playing around with the idea of creating a family tree for my book. If Shaken Loose had parents, who would they be? How about its grandparents? Its cousins?

This turned out to be a great deal of fun. It helped me think more broadly about the influences on my book and identify works that might not be an exact match but were still related.

With a family tree, I could list Paradise Lost as a grandparent—part of my book’s DNA, a foundational influence although vastly different in structure, perspective, and style. As parents, I chose an extremely odd couple—The Wizard of Oz and The Road—that expressed the book’s upbeat “quest for home” plot but also its vein of gritty darkness.

The “cousin” part of the tree was where I placed books that were actual comp candidates—recent upmarket fantasy like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. This was a reassuring way for me to think about comps: Cousins share a lot of traits, but no one expects them to be as similar as siblings. Certainly no one expects them to be identical twins.

I came away from this exercise with a better sense of where my book fit into the literary world. It helped me clarify the difference between influences and comps. And when publication day came, I felt like I had good answers if anyone asked me what books and writers had shaped my work.

To be clear: creating a book family tree isn’t a substitute for choosing one or two comps. Don’t try to send a family tree diagram to agents instead of a standard query letter! Nor will a family tree circumvent the task of identifying recent similar books in your genre. But if you’re feeling stymied, it may open up new ways of thinking about your work. And once you’re published, you can use it as a graphic in your marketing.

At the very least, you’ll have a colorful diagram to hang over your desk and remind you that—even if the world hasn’t recognized it yet—you’re a writer in a big, sprawling tradition of other writers.

The Book Family Tree template is available on Canva, a graphic design app with a robust and useful free version. Access it through my website. You’ll be prompted to create a free Canva account if you don’t have one already. Customize the template by uploading cover images of your chosen books, then download your finished diagram. (You can add or subtract “relatives” as you see fit.)

If you share your tree on social media, please tag me: I’d love to meet your family.

How to Deal With Rejection: Celebrate!

Today’s post is excerpted from Stop Waiting for Perfect by L’Oreal Thompson Payton (@ltinthecity), published by BenBella Books.

Throughout the years, I’ve learned that the first step toward many of the Big Hairy Audacious Goals we have “only” requires five seconds of courage. We’ve got only in quotation marks here because, well, as you know, life is never that simple, my friends.

But think about it. Sometimes you’re just one submit button away from a life-changing fellowship. Or one phone call away from a contact that could land you your next gig. The possibilities are endless, but first you have to, ya know, do The Thing. Of course, if you put yourself out there, rejection is inevitable. It’s also subjective, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Case in point, shortly after giving a friend a pep talk about rejection being part of the writing process after an essay she’d pitched was deemed “not a great fit,” I received a rejection myself, this time for a literary retreat for writers of color I so desperately wanted to attend. That one stung.

It was time for me to take my own advice and remind myself that not only is rejection part of the process, it can be a blessing. Or as my Twitter peeps (tweeps?) often share, “Rejection is protection.”

There was definitely a time when I didn’t believe this. The heart wants what it wants, y’all. So it never helped when my mom would try to make me feel better by saying, “What’s meant for you won’t miss you” until I got old enough to understand she was right, as much as it pains me to admit.

When I look back at the jobs and opportunities I’ve lost, it was always God setting me up for something bigger and better. In these instances, my setbacks really were a setup for my comeback. But that doesn’t mean I go running toward rejection with open arms. I’m not that evolved.

One way I’ve learned to reframe rejection is by celebrating it. Yes, you read that right. I know it may seem counterintuitive (we’re conditioned to celebrate wins and shroud our losses in secrecy and shame), but I believe celebrating your rejection is part of how you take your power back.

So without further ado, a quick recap of some of my greatest rejections of all time (in no particular order):

Rejected from Georgetown University for undergradRejected from my dream internship—twiceRejected from University of Maryland for grad schoolRejected from Jet—twiceRejected by four literary agents while querying this bookRejected by an independent feminist media company for an executive director positionRejected from a literary retreat for writers of colorRejected for a staff writer position at an outlet I was already freelancing for (that one still doesn’t quite make sense to me)And rejected by another publisher that passed on this book (their loss).

That’s not even counting all the pitches and book queries I’ve sent into the ether over the years that received no response at all. It feels like … a lot. But then I think back to a post I read about a writer who aims for at least 100 rejections a year because in order to reach that number, you have to put yourself out there, and that’s worth celebrating in its own right.

Another reason I recommend celebrating rejections is because it means you tried. You did a brave thing, a new thing. You took a risk, and it didn’t work out this time. But so many people talk themselves out of even trying. It’s easy to play it safe, play it small, and not put yourself out there. But the real magic—the real good dope stuff—happens outside your comfort zone.

To help you bounce back from your next rejection (because if you keep trying and keep growing, rejection is inevitable, friends), here’s my four-step recovery plan.

Step 1: Throw yourself a pity party

Listen, I’m always one for a good pity party. The more pitiful, the better. I’m talking about eating a pint of Jeni’s ice cream straight from the container while watching The Real Housewives of Potomac reruns with Chinese food on the way via DoorDash and a bottle of rosé nearby. And if you really want to up the pity, consider throwing yourself an actual party complete with party hats and those cute little drink straws. This type of “Go Big and Go Home” mentality works especially well for major rejections, such as failing the LSAT, getting rejected from a fellowship, or breaking up with your partner (even if you’re the one who initiated it).

Give yourself permission to sulk, but set a time limit on it—whether it be two hours, one day, or one week. We must take time to not only acknowledge, but honor our feelings. The crucial part is not letting your pity party morph into a self-loathing spiral. If you don’t trust yourself to get out of said spiral in a timely fashion, enroll the help of a good friend to check in and make sure you’re OK. Your feelings are important, but they do not own you. Reclaim your power.

Step 2: Ask for feedback

I know, I know, you don’t necessarily want to thank the person who rejected you, but it’s important to:

Show gratitude for the time and energy they spent interviewing you/reviewing your application/getting to know you;Not burn any bridges (you never know, their top candidate may not work out); andDetermine what you need to work on or what you want to do differently next time. 

Not everyone is humble (and mature) enough to ask for feedback, so this will automatically make you stand out to the recruiter, hiring manager, editor, etc. Understand, however, that everyone won’t be able to provide thorough feedback and not all feedback is good feedback. You’ll definitely want to take any and all advice with a grain of salt. Take what you need, or what is applicable to your situation, and leave what you don’t.

Step 3: Apply the feedback

Now it’s time to conduct your own assessment. Evaluate what went well and identify areas of opportunity. Not sure where there’s room to grow? Ask a trusted friend or colleague to tell you the truth, and not one who’s going to constantly tell you you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread (OMG, it’s happened! I’ve officially completed the transformation into my mom).

Bookshop • Amazon

This is where an accountability buddy (or accountabilibuddy, as I like to call them) comes in handy because they not only encourage you, they hold you accountable (duh) for your actions, both good and bad. A good accountabilibuddy will hold your hand; a great accountabilibuddy will call you out on your shit (with love). Find yourself a friend who can do both. Then apply your learning to the next application, interview, or whatever you’ve decided to try.

Step 4: Dust yourself off and try again

You tried, you failed, and now it’s time to put yourself back out there. This is the part where so many people get stuck. Will you allow self-doubt to prevail, or will you shake it off, trust your dopeness, and confidently walk back in the ring like the boss that you are? The choice is yours.

An Unconventional Facebook Ads Strategy for Authors

Today’s post is by book advertising consultant Matt Holmes (@MatthewJHolmes1).

From April 2020 through to November 2022, I ran Facebook Ads in a way that ticked all the boxes when it came to best practices. But in December 2022, our Facebook Ads took a nose dive—sales, page reads, bestseller rank, and overall royalties all dropped. We went from earning $17,396 in November 2022, to less than $10,000 in January 2023. That’s a big drop in 2 months.

Something had to change. I tested everything—new audiences, new ad creative, higher daily budgets, different ad placements—but nothing worked. Until that is, at the end of January 2023, I had one last push testing something I’d never tested before. I 100% believed this wasn’t going to work and was incredibly skeptical. But what did I have to lose?

Nothing else has worked, but boy did this new strategy work. It tripled our Facebook Ads conversion rates in the UK, and doubled our Facebook Ads conversion rates in the USA, in comparison to the results I’d been having from Facebook Ads since April 2020.

And this new Facebook Ads strategy I discovered is what I’m going to share with you today, that is responsible for the $17,500 month we had in July 2023, with my wife’s 4 fantasy novels (4 books in the main series, plus 1 companion novel).

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

Why the traditional method of running Facebook Ads is outdated (and is in fact hurting your results, and your bottom line)My exact Facebook Ads strategy (that shouldn’t work, but does)The biggest lever you can (and should) pull when advertising books with Facebook AdsHow I test Facebook Ads that harness the power of Facebook’s machine learningWhy less is more when it comes to optimizing and scaling your Facebook Ads for bigger and better resultsThe problems with following Facebook Ads best practices

If you are a member of one or two Facebook Groups discussing Facebook Ads for authors, you have likely come across best practice strategies. Invariably, these discussions revolve around targeting, specifically using something known as Detailed Targeting with your Facebook Ads. On the surface, Detailed Targeting sounds incredibly exciting, but in practice, it’s destroying your results.

Detailed Targeting allows you, as the advertiser, to pinpoint who you want to show your Facebook Ads to, for example:

Women, in the USA, aged 25–60, who have an interest in Stephen King, Amazon Kindle, and the Kindle Store

What could possibly go wrong? After all, these are your ideal readers who are going to love your book!

Well, there are a few things that could and most likely, will, go wrong with Detailed Targeting:

The performance of your Ads is going to get worse and worse over timeYou’re restricting the Facebook Ads algorithm from performing at its bestThe Detailed Targeting audience you choose could be removed at any time (without warning)You will pay more to use Detailed Targeting audiencesPerformance will be volatileIt will be difficult to scale Ads (i.e. spend more) that use Detailed TargetingMany people who are in a Detailed Targeting audience don’t actually belong there

To top it off, your Ads aren’t even reaching the people who would most likely resonate with your book(s). This is because you are throttling the algorithm too much to be able to do the job it was designed and engineered to do in the first place.

In essence, when you use Detailed Targeting, you are investing in a depreciating asset, that will only become worse and worse over time. How do I know this? Because I used to use Detailed Targeting myself, and I’ve seen all of the scenarios above play out with my own Facebook Ads.

So, if Detailed Targeting is so bad, what do I use? I use a strategy I call Unrestricted Targeting, which we’ll dive into right now.

Here’s my Exact Facebook Ads strategy

If you want to see your Facebook Ads performance skyrocket, you need to use this incredibly powerful tool as it was designed to be used.

You see, what many advertisers don’t realize is that the Facebook Ads you run (i.e. the ads people see on their Facebook feed) create their own audiences, based on the content of those ads. As soon as you publish an ad, the Facebook Ads algorithm is going to analyze that ad and look at elements such as:

The words you use in your adThe style of image in your adThe content of your image (e.g. gender of person, emotions, age, landscape, object, etc.)It’s even going to look at the landing page you’re sending people to from your adAnd many more data points besides

Based on the data the algorithm collects from its analysis, it’s going to start building an audience of people it believes will resonate with this specific ad, and start showing it to those people. As it learns which of these people do and don’t like the ad, it will find more people who have similar characteristics to people that did like the ad, and stop showing it to people who have similar characteristics to those who didn’t like the ad.

And over time, the performance of the ads just becomes better and better, as the algorithm starts learning who does and doesn’t like the ad. You can see from the diagram below just how much restriction you are placing on the algorithm when you follow best practice and use Detailed Targeting with your Facebook Ads.

With this in mind, as I alluded to a little earlier, I want to give the Facebook Ads algorithm free rein to find the ideal audience for my ads, and I achieve this through Unrestricted Targeting.

With Unrestricted Targeting, the only targeting I’m using is:

LocationGenderAge

I am using zero Detailed Targeting—yes, I’m going against all the best practice advice out there for authors, and have been doing so since the beginning of 2023.

You can see my targeting setup illustrated in the screenshot below of one of my Facebook Ads:

As you can see, I’m targeting:

Women, aged 35–65+, who live in the United States

The red arrow in the image above is demonstrating that I’m using zero Detailed Targeting. I use this targeting approach for every single Facebook Ad I run. The results, compared to Detailed Targeting:

Doubled our Facebook Ads conversion rates in the USATripled our Facebook Ads conversion rates in the UKCheaper costsMore scalableMore stable (less volatility)More profitable Facebook Ads (because I’m not spending money testing audiences)

The Facebook Ads algorithm loves account simplification because it can work freely, without being restricted everywhere it turns—which is the common scenario it faces with most advertisers. So, I have simplified my Facebook Ads Account Structure in a way that takes full advantage of Facebook’s incredible machine-learning and AI capabilities.

Here’s how it works:I use ONE Campaign per book, per country.All my testing and scaling is performed inside this one Campaign.Within this one Campaign, I have up to 3 active Ad Sets at any one time:1 x Ad Set that contains my winning (proven) Ads1–2 Ad Sets that are testing Ads for me (more on this coming up)

Ad Sets are where you define the targeting for your Facebook Ads, as well as where you want your Ads to show across Facebook’s (Meta’s—as this is now the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) ecosystem.

The diagram below shows a visual representation of my account structure:

N.B. “DCT”, as shown in the diagram above will become clear very shortly! 

Finally, I set my budget at the Campaign level, not the Ad Set level (another best practice I don’t follow). I do this using something called Advantage Campaign Budget.

This setting will tell Facebook to spend the daily budget you determine (I’d recommend $20 per day at a minimum), on the Ad Sets that contain the ads driving the most engagement—and usually, these ads are the ones delivering most of the sales and/or page reads.

The result of this incredibly simple account structure means that you’ll spend far less time in your Facebook Ads account, allow the algorithm to work to its full potential, and produce more profitable results because you’re showing your ads to people who actually want to see them, and not wasting money testing Detailed Targeting audiences. And on top of all of that, this strategy is going to provide you with more time for writing!

If you’re feeling skeptical about putting so much trust and faith into the Facebook Ads algorithm, I completely understand, as I felt exactly the same when I first started dabbling with this strategy. It feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does. To the tune of $300+ per day in profitable, Facebook Ads spend for myself, with a 2x return on investment.

But it’s not just me this strategy works for, if that’s what you’re thinking. I have shared this exact strategy with countless authors inside my FREE Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass video series, and I hear success stories multiple times per week.

With the strategy covered, let’s now move onto what is often considered an afterthought by many authors running Facebook Ads (myself included in the beginning), but is in fact the single biggest driving factor of your success.

The biggest Facebook Ads lever you can pull

The easiest thing to do with your Facebook Ads is to change the targeting—i.e. change who you are showing your ads to, using Detailed Targeting. As we’ve already discussed though, using Detailed Targeting is the same as investing in a financial stock or share that will forever tumble downwards.

A more difficult thing to do with your Facebook Ads is work on your skills as an advertiser, creating better and better ad creative—i.e. the ads people are seeing on their Facebook Feed. Focus on this, and your results will explode. Ignore it, and watch your Facebook Ads crash and burn.

Yes, creating better ads is hard, but with the advancement of AI tools such as Google Bard, ChatGPT and MidJourney, creating assets for your ads has in fact never been more simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple.

If your Facebook Ads aren’t working, best practice will tell you to show your ads to a different Detailed Targeting audience. I’m here to tell you that this is the wrong approach. Sure, the ads might work for a short amount of time, but after a few weeks, or months if you’re lucky, you’ll be back in the exact same position.

By committing to working on your craft as an advertiser, and creating better and better ads based on your research and analyzing the data of your own ads, in 3–6 months time you will be so far ahead of where you are today, you will surprise even yourself.

Personally, I have created and launched over 1,500 Facebook Ads for Book 1 of my wife’s fantasy fiction series. That’s a lot of ads. But if you compare the results of my first ads to my latest ads, the difference in quality, professionalism, performance and results is night and day.

If you want to improve your skills at anything in life, you need to commit to doing that thing regularly, analyzing the results, and iterating based on those results. This is partly why I test new Facebook Ads every single week.

The other reason I test Facebook Ads weekly is because I want to provide the Facebook Ads algorithm with plenty of assets and opportunities to find new readers day in, day out, and discover ads that perform well which I can scale up to reach a bigger and bigger audience.

Let’s now jump into my Facebook Ads testing process and I’ll explain how I test Facebook Ads so regularly and the strategy I use to do so.

How I test Facebook Ads (without doing any of the heavy lifting)

As I’ve already mentioned (on several occasions), the Facebook Ads algorithm is incredibly powerful and knows more about its user base than we can comprehend. Not only can we harness the power of the algorithm to find our ideal audience through unrestricted targeting, but we can also use it to test our Facebook Ads creative for us. By this, I mean the ads that people are seeing on their Facebook feed, Instagram feed, etc. The method of testing Facebook Ads creative I’m soon going to share with you is another cornerstone of my Facebook Ads strategy, that allows you, as the advertiser, to do much less of the heavy-lifting that is usually required.

The traditional way of testing Facebook Ads is to test ads individually, like this:

As you can see from the diagram above, there are multiple ads within a single Ad Set. This is how I used to test Facebook Ads too. The difficulty and challenge with this approach is that you are essentially forcing certain ads onto people who may not like what you’re showing them, which drives up costs and reduces performance.

Fortunately, there is a solution: it’s called Dynamic Creative. And here’s how the account structure looks when using Dynamic Creative:

As the diagram above shows, with Dynamic Creative, you only have ONE ad within an Ad Set, keeping things much more streamlined and simple.

Here’s the beauty of this strategy though. Within this Dynamic Creative Ad, there are multiple assets:

Multiple imagesMultiple headlinesMultiple primary textsMultiple descriptionsMultiple call-to-action buttons

What Facebook will do with Dynamic Creative, is test combinations of all the assets within the ad, and, after a few days, you will know the winning:

ImageHeadlinePrimary textDescriptionCall-to-action button

This results in far less guesswork from you, trying to figure out which are the best pieces of a Facebook Ad! You’re letting Facebook do all the testing on your behalf. Once you know what the winning assets are, after Facebook has tested them for you, you can then take those winners and create a “standard” ad (i.e. a Non-Dynamic Creative Ad), and scale it up, with the confidence behind you that every part of this Ad is proven to perform.

I call these Dynamic Creative Ads, DCTs, standing for Dynamic Creative Tests, and, as we covered earlier on in this article, they can be seen in my very simple, but very effective account structure.

So, if you’re not yet using Dynamic Creative, I would urge you to start. It has been an absolute game-changer for not only my own Facebook Ads but also the authors who I have shared this strategy with.

Let’s now move onto the final piece of the Facebook Ads puzzle: optimization and scaling.

Optimizing and scaling Facebook Ads by doing less, not more

Optimization and scaling may sound a little overwhelming, but they are in fact very simple, and we’ll cover what both of these are here. Optimization is simply doing less of what is working and more of what is working. That’s all it comes down to. You’re just making your Facebook Ads more efficient by allowing your budget to be spent on the ads that are working. Once you know how a Facebook Ad is performing (i.e. how many sales it’s generating), if it’s not up to scratch, you simply turn that ad off. This will allow your budget to be spent on ads that are working and converting at an acceptable conversion rate, rather than being “wasted” on ads that aren’t generating many or any sales for you.

If you’re using Facebook Ads to advertise your books that are listed on Amazon, you should 100% be using a free tool provided by Amazon, called Amazon Attribution, which allows you to see how many sales and page reads an individual Facebook Ad is generating for you. This is critical information to understand because, without it, you wouldn’t know which Ads were converting and which weren’t, making optimization very difficult.

I’ve recorded a free video on how to set up and use Amazon Attribution, which includes a full video walkthrough. Click here to watch the Amazon Attribution Setup Video.

I used to “optimize” my Facebook Ads on a daily basis. This was a big mistake, as I never allowed the algorithm to work its magic. I now block out 60–90 minutes per week (on a Monday afternoon) to optimize my Facebook Ads. That’s all it has to take. Over-optimizing your Facebook Ads is a thing, and it will destroy your results. Less is more.

When you’ve optimized your Facebook Ads, you can then think about scaling. Scaling Facebook Ads is also very simple and takes mere seconds.

With the strategy I have shown you in this article, as we are setting the budget at the Campaign level, using Advantage Campaign Budget, the only thing you need to do to scale your ads is increase the budget—which takes all of about 6 seconds! Providing you know your Facebook Ads are converting well, scaling will allow your ads to reach more people. And because you’ve optimized your Ads already, you know you’re putting more money behind Ads that have been proven to convert.

What I will say about scaling is that you shouldn’t go too hard, too soon. Be respectful of your budget and don’t go in too heavy-handed, as this will only halt the momentum and traction you’ve built up with your Facebook Ads.

Instead, what I recommend is that you increase your budget by 10%–20% per week, if you’re profitable. If you’re not profitable, either leave the budget as it is for another week, and let the optimizations you’ve done take effect. Or, drop the budget by 10%–20% and allow that to run for a week.

If you increased your budget from $20 to $100 per day in one hit, Facebook’s algorithm wouldn’t know what to do with such a huge budget increase, and it would likely find poor-quality people to show your ads to, just so it can spend your entire budget each day. By gradually scaling your budget up on a weekly basis, you’re allowing the algorithm the opportunity to learn who your ideal readers are and find more people like them to show your ads to.

Parting thoughts

You’re now equipped with the knowledge and understanding to start running Facebook Ads for your books in as little as 60–90 minutes per week, using a proven blueprint and strategy, leaving you more time for writing.

Before we wrap up here though, I want to share one big lesson with you that I’ve learned after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook Ads.

Always look at the big picture

Looking at your Facebook Ads in isolation is a mistake I see many authors making. This is especially true when you are sending traffic from your Facebook Ads to your book(s) on Amazon.

Amazon has their own algorithm (that is perhaps even more difficult to fathom than Facebook’s algorithm!), and if you can show this algorithm that your books are selling well, Amazon will be more inclined to give your book more visibility. This enhanced visibility allows you to generate what are commonly known as organic sales. In short, organic sales are sales that are “free”, because you haven’t paid for them directly through ads. You will likely have seen your Best Sellers Rank on your book product pages on Amazon.

The lower the number of your Best Sellers Rank, the more visibility (and more marketing) Amazon will give you. Amazon may even start emailing their customers about your books.

To put this into perspective, with my wife’s books, only around 20% of our total sales come from our Facebook Ads. The remaining 80% are organic sales. But without the Facebook Ads driving those sales, our Best Sellers Rank wouldn’t be where it is and we wouldn’t be driving anywhere near that number of organic sales.

The other thing to keep in mind regarding the big picture is that you may only be advertising one book with your Facebook Ads, but if you have multiple books published, a good percentage of readers will go on to read those. And sales of these other books need to be accounted for. It’s not all about the book you’re advertising with Facebook Ads. It’s about all the other books that readers who bought Book 1 will buy over their lifetime.

On a final note…

Facebook Ads are not a magic bullet.

They are simply a cog in a machine. A very important cog, but a cog nonetheless. Facebook Ads are an amplification tool that you use to position your books in front of your ideal readers and drive traffic to those books. It’s your book itself and the book product page that has to sell your book.

So don’t neglect honing your craft as an author, because no amount of advertising is going to sell a poor-quality book. Your book sells your book.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article; I truly hope you found it of value and that you can start transforming both your Facebook Ads results and your career as an author.

First Page Critique: How to Better Establish the Tone in Your Opening

Photo by Sonia Dauer on Unsplash

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Deadline August 20th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top lit agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

A summary of the work being critiqued

Title: The Walking Ladies
Genre: mainstream/upmarket fiction

Four women set off on their weekly suburban walk expecting no more than a little cardio and the usual banter about kids and husbands. Instead, they discover a severed arm. The newcomer, Corinne Wilder, is a former war-correspondent with a drinking problem who decides to report on the case to escape her personal problems. Recent empty nester Jorie Eckholm becomes Corinne’s reluctant sidekick, flirting with repressed childhood memories of her best friend, who died after losing her arm in a shark attack. Only plunging into their past traumas can save the women from turning into people they never intended to become—and maybe even from death at the hands of a depraved killer.

THE WALKING LADIES is a complex relationship drama embedded in a murder mystery… with a side of body parts. The book has comedic undertones—think: Janelle Brown’s unlikely character pairings meet Shirley Jackson’s creepy gothic—and will appeal to readers who like character-driven fiction with a serving of suspense.

First page of  The Walking Ladies

The sun surfaces behind the eucalyptus trees, spilling rose-colored light onto the street. Jorie can’t will herself to walk faster. She’ll be late, as usual, but she didn’t sleep well again and her feet refuse to hurry.

Turning right onto Sea Breeze and left onto St. John, she spots her friends at the edge of the empty school parking lot. Pegeen’s hands are shoved in the pockets of her warm-up jacket. Melanie is untangling Winkie’s leash from a wooden post. A third figure stands a few yards away, a tall, sculpted-looking woman with a ponytail, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a boxer. The stranger wears three-quarter-length tights that show off her calves and look good on women of Jorie’s age only if they exercise obsessively or are born lucky. Or both.

The Shih Tzu yips as Jorie approaches, anticipating their regular Saturday walk.

“Sorry!” Jorie waves and the women turn. “Were you waiting long?” Jorie has always been the unpunctual one, rushing to beat the bell on those long-past middle-school drop-off days with Steph scurrying alongside trying to eat a waffle folded inside a paper napkin.

“It’s fine.” Pegeen answers automatically. “We were talking about how energetic we’re feeling. I mean, whether we’re feeling energetic.” She backbends and digs her thumbs into the fleshy fold above her waistband, tilting her neck so her frosted blond hair brushes her shoulder. “This is Corinne, by the way. My new neighbor.”

“Pleasure.” The ponytailed woman extends her hand as if they’re at a business breakfast.

Corinne has a tall voice to go with her tall, sculpted body. Her grip is cool and her hand is almost as large as Victor’s. She doesn’t squeeze hard, but Jorie feels she won’t be able to extricate herself until Corinne decides to let go. The handshake’s firmness and formality surprise her. She can’t remember ever shaking hands with Pegeen or Melanie, not even when they first met, over greasy muffins and bitter coffee at the sixth-grade volunteer meeting on the first day of school.

“Nice to meet you.” Jorie says the expected words, although the stranger’s presence unsettles her.

Their group, which they’ve come to refer to as the Walking Ladies, has been just the three of them since they began these weekend walks to fill the void left when their kids started high school. This unexpected presence sends the ground shifting a little, as if an earthquake might be starting. She lets the newcomer pump her arm. Corinne is some years younger than she first thought, with hair that lies sleekly against her skull in a manner Jorie’s red-blond curls never do.

Continue reading the first pages.

Dear Audrey,

Thank you for submitting your work for critique. Your opening pages read very smoothly, and your imagery—from the greasy muffins at the volunteer meeting to Corinne’s hair “swishing like a horse tail”—is so much fun. Jorie’s character comes across as smart and perceptive, namely when she realizes why Pegeen walks ahead with Corinne and away from her and Melanie: “Perhaps, having invited her without telling them in advance, Pegeen feels a responsibility to keep Corinne entertained.” The fact that Jorie is an empty nester is another plus: As The Guardian reports, women in this age group and older are “a hugely important demographic and increasingly, want to see themselves represented in books.”

What concerns me, however, is that it doesn’t seem dark enough to be considered a murder mystery, at least not so far. Granted, the group of friends will discover a severed arm, as explained by the summary, but there’s little in the tone or the wording of the novel—besides the brief mentions of Jorie’s anxiety and Corinne’s skull—that indicates the story is about the search for a depraved killer. To lay the groundwork for this plot point, perhaps …

Jorie can have read about a missing person in the paper that morning, assuming the arm belongs to this person? Or maybe, rather than notice Pegeen’s frosted blond hair, Jorie can notice how pale she suddenly looks? Should the rose-colored light of the novel’s first line, though lovely, be replaced with an eerie glow?

Could the severed arm be described in an ominous way, especially considering that opening a mystery/suspense novel with a severed body part is a common trope? Novels published this year alone that begin as such include Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce, in which a severed hand washes ashore; City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita, in which both a severed hand and a foot wash ashore; and Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, which “opens with a startling image: a severed crow’s head in someone’s hand.”

It’s unlikely that the arm found by this group of friends—or more specifically, by Melanie’s dog Winkie—belongs to Jorie’s childhood best friend, who, per the summary, died after losing her arm in a shark attack, but perhaps the two victims can have something in common, such as the same tattoo or a watch, if this isn’t already the case? Creating a link between Jorie’s childhood friend and the murder victim should help make the novel’s premise more haunting and memorable.

Of course, this work is intended to be as humorous as it is dark, but somehow the comedic undertones referenced in the summary aren’t quite coming through. Granted, Melanie is described as a “frustrated stand-up comic,” but right now, though she’s said to “delight in putting a spin on mundane conversations,” she isn’t actually shown to do this. Instead, Jorie only imagines Melanie asking her how “the peach tree [is] shakin,’” for example. To make Melanie’s character funnier, perhaps she can mock Corinne’s “tall, sculpted body” and the “tights that show off her calves” to comfort Jorie, who seems conscientious about her appearance? Alternatively, maybe Melanie, rather than Jorie, should make the comment about how Corinne is “bouncing like a restrained racehorse”? This way, instead of repeating the image of the horse, you can position Melanie’s observation so that it complements Jorie’s, and the two friends can then share a laugh about how they think alike. Alternatively, perhaps Melanie can smell alcohol on Corinne’s breath or clothing (since the summary indicates that Corinne has a drinking problem) and make a joke about early morning drinking?

I’d introduce a conflict for Jorie—who appears to be the principal protagonist and sole narrator of the novel—that is separate from the mystery surrounding the murder. Currently, Jorie mentions several times that she hasn’t been sleeping well, but she doesn’t say why. If her insomnia has to do with Victor or Steph, she might touch on the tension she is experiencing with her husband or daughter. If Jorie is having trouble sleeping because of her career, she might reflect on how the real estate market is in decline. Perhaps this is why, as the summary reveals, she decides to become Corinne’s “reluctant sidekick” as Corinne reports on the murder? It’s possible that the reason Jorie can’t sleep has nothing to do with family or career. Instead, maybe she is haunted by sudden and unexpected nightmares about her childhood friend? If this is her situation, it should fit nicely with the main plot about the discovery of the severed arm. Just be sure to mention Jorie’s childhood friend before or at the same time as the murder victim.

One more suggestion is that you provide additional context about where the story takes place. It’s clear that the main characters live in a hilly neighborhood close to a school, and in some ways, this information is sufficient. But what’s puzzling here is that at least three streets are named, and Jorie is curious about where Corinne moved from. This brings up the question about where Corinne moved to—or where the characters currently live. Given that Jorie walks down a street called “Sea Breeze,” that a shark attack claimed the life of her childhood friend, and that she references earthquakes, it sounds like the story takes place near the coast, specifically the California coast. If so, can Jorie feel the ocean breeze as she walks? Think about how she never cared for the ocean because of what happened to her friend? Then, as the story progresses, she or another character can provide more details about the city or region where it takes place.

I hope this feedback is helpful. Rest assured that The Walking Ladies reads beautifully as is. You might just check that your vision for it matches the content and style. Might I suggest that you have a look at the work of bestselling author Carolyn Brown, in addition to that of Janelle Brown and Shirley Jackson? Carolyn Brown’s novels include The Empty Nesters and The Ladies’ Room, which might be relevant. Best wishes to you!

—Sangeeta Mehta

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Deadline August 20th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top lit agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)

Update: Hours after this post was published, my Goodreads profile was cleaned of the offending titles. However, the garbage books remain available for sale at Amazon with my name attached.

I did file a report with Amazon, complaining that these books were using my name and reputation without my consent. Amazon’s response: “Please provide us with any trademark registration numbers that relate to your claim.” When I replied that I did not have a trademark for my name, they closed the case and said the books would not be removed from sale.

There’s not much that makes me angry these days about writing and publishing. I’ve seen it all. I know what to expect from Amazon and Goodreads. Meaning: I don’t expect much, and I assume I will be continually disappointed. Nor do I have the power to change how they operate. My energy-saving strategy: move on and focus on what you can control.

That’s going to become much harder to do if Amazon and Goodreads don’t start defending against the absolute garbage now being spread across their sites.

I know my work gets pirated and frankly I don’t care. (I’m not saying other authors shouldn’t care, but that’s not a battle worth my time today.)

But here’s what does rankle me: garbage books getting uploaded to Amazon where my name is credited as the author. (Here’s but one example.) Whoever’s doing this is obviously preying on writers who trust my name and think I’ve actually written these books. I have not. Most likely they’ve been generated by AI.

It might be possible to ignore this nonsense on some level since these books aren’t receiving customer reviews (so far), and mostly they sink to the bottom of search results (although not always). At the very least, if you look at my author profile on Amazon, these junk books don’t appear. A reader who applies some critical thinking might think twice before accepting these books as mine.

Still, it’s not great. And it falls on me, the author—the one with a reputation at stake—to get these misleading books removed from Amazon. I’m not even sure it’s possible. I don’t own the copyright to these junk books. I don’t exactly “own” my name either—lots of other people who are also legit authors share my name, after all. So on what grounds can I successfully demand this stop, at least in Amazon’s eyes? I’m not sure.

To add insult to injury, these sham books are getting added to my official Goodreads profile. A reasonable person might think I control what books are shown on my Goodreads profile, or that I approve them, or at the very least I could have them easily removed. Not so.

If you need to have your Goodreads profile corrected—as far as the books credited to you—you have to reach out to volunteer “librarians” on Goodreads, which requires joining a group, then posting in a comment thread that you want illegitimate books removed from your profile.

When I complained about this on Twitter/X, an author responded that she had to report 29 illegitimate books in just the last week alone. 29!

With the flood of AI content now published at Amazon, sometimes attributed to authors in a misleading or fraudulent manner, how can anyone reasonably expect working authors to spend every week for the rest of their lives policing this? And if authors don’t police it, they will certainly hear about it, from readers concerned about these garbage books, and from readers who credulously bought this crap and have complaints. Or authors might not hear any thing at all, and lose a potential reader forever.

We desperately need guardrails on this landslide of misattribution and misinformation. Amazon and Goodreads, I beg you to create a way to verify authorship, or for authors to easily block fraudulent books credited to them. Do it now, do it quickly.

Unfortunately, even if and when you get these insane books removed from your official profiles, they will still be floating around out there, with your name, on two major sites that gets millions of visitors, just waiting to be “discovered.” And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Wattpad Authors Who’ve Gone From Page to Screen

This summer, Wattpad is running their 14th annual Watty Awards, the company’s annual global writing competition. It’s open to writers in nine languages across 11 genres. In addition to cash prizes, one winner will receive a book deal from the Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group, and nine winners will receive adaptation opportunities with Wattpad WEBTOON Studios. (Judging closes on August 8, 2023.)

I asked three past winners about their experience of seeing their work adapted for the major streaming services. They are:

Ariana Godoy, best known for Through My Window, which has more than 350 million reads on Wattpad and has been adapted into a hit film from Netflix and Wattpad WEBTOON Studios. The film is one of the top five most viewed non-English films of all time on the platform. Ariana is a Latina immigrant from Venezuela who was an elementary school teacher before leaving her job to write full time. From Malaysia, Claudia Tan is a new adult romance writer, graduating from Lancaster University with a BA in English Literature and History. Her Perfect series on Wattpad has accumulated over 163 million reads, and nabbed the People’s Choice Award in the Wattys Awards in 2015 and 2016. The series has also been published in French by Hachette Romans and Perfect Addiction (86 million reads on Wattpad) was adapted into a feature film from Wattpad WEBTOON Studios and Constantin Film. The movie was released internationally on Amazon Prime in March 2023 and debuted in the top 10 most-watched movies all over the world, according to Flixpatrol.Beth Reekles is the author of The Kissing Booth, which she first published on Wattpad in 2010, when she was 15 years old. The story won a Watty Award in 2011 and went on to accumulate almost 20 million reads before being published. Reekles signed a three-book deal with Penguin Random House and was named one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential Teenagers in 2013. Produced by Netflix and Komixx Entertainment, The Kissing Booth went on to become one of the most watched films in the world when it was released on Netflix, according to the streamer.

Jane: What was your initial motivation for writing and publishing on Wattpad?

Ariana Godoy (AG): I’ve loved reading since I was a kid. Growing up, I didn’t have money to buy books so I would read the few stories that I had over and over. When I found Wattpad and realized it was free, I was thrilled because it had thousands of stories for me to enjoy, and I was even more excited when I realized anyone could post their work. Seeing other authors achieve success motivated me to post my first story in 2009.

Claudia Tan (CT): I mostly wanted to use it as a training ground to hone my writing skills. I was also keen to find a home for the types of stories I wanted to write, but before Wattpad, had no audience.

Beth Reekles (BR): I thought—why not! I was already on the platform as a reader and enjoyed writing, so figured I had nothing to lose. The ability to be anonymous also really appealed to me.

How much were you involved in the adaptation of your work to the screen?

AG: I was quite involved. It was a bittersweet process because as an author, that first time you see the script, it kind of shocks you and it takes time for you to adapt and understand that movies are just a different format, a different way to tell your story. Working with the team and the amazing cast has been incredible, they really pour their heart out to represent the story and I think they did a great job.

CT: I was asked to review the early versions of the script, but changes were up to the studio and the director to implement.

BR: I got to meet with the scriptwriter/director, Vince Marcello, early in the process and give feedback on the script. It was clear that he really understood the characters and the story and I knew I could trust him with The Kissing Booth.

Was there anything that surprised you about the effects of having your work available on a major streaming service?

AG: Oh, definitely. I didn’t expect the movie to get to the top 10 in so many countries and it was amazing to see how many messages I received from fans. I was shocked that my little Spanish story was discovered and enjoyed by people from all over the world!

CT: To be able to capture a wider audience for my writing has been really rewarding. As an author from Malaysia this was a major achievement, and an opportunity that not many people from here have.

BR: Only that I wasn’t able to get a DVD/physical copy (I’m a big fan of keeping DVDs of my favorite movies)! That said, seeing my work on Netflix felt like a natural progression as I started my writing career online.

Has the experience changed how you develop and/or write your stories, especially at Wattpad?

AG: I don’t think it has changed the way I write. I’ve been on Wattpad for 13 years now, so I’m very seasoned on the site and I have built a strong structure around creating new stories.

CT: I don’t think so. I didn’t write these stories to get them made into movies; I just wanted to have fun with it, and Wattpad allowed me to express myself in a way that you might not see on another  platform. I think that is what makes my work special, and that’s probably what attracted the studio in the first place. To change it now would feel inauthentic to my audience.

BR: Not for me—I always write the kind of book I want to read, and that’s my priority when I’m working on a new story. I’m definitely not afraid to try something new if it feels right for the book, like my multi-POV adult novel, Lockdown on London Lane, which also started on Wattpad. I’d love to see another of my works adapted to screen, though!

Learn more about the Watty Awards and how to enter.

Pay Yourself to Write

Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author, editor and coach Jessica Conoley.

If you want to be the person who supports yourself with your writing career, then it’s time to take a good look at money and how you are going to harness the inherent power of your creative work via your financial habits. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t made a cent for your creative work thus far. How you start looking at money now is going to determine how soon creative paychecks start rolling in.

Writers tell me, “I don’t want anything to do with the money part. I just want to create and leave money to my agent/manager/team/anyone else but me.”

This is a common sentiment for an Uninitiated Writer. I said the same thing back when I took over as managing editor of a magazine. My one caveat to accepting the role was, “I’ll do it, but I want nothing to do with the money.”

A combination of issues make us hesitant to deal with the financial part of our creative career.

The deeply internalized acceptance of the starving artist myth.The belief that accepting money for our art compromises our status as real artists and makes us sell-outs.The conditioning that writers are bad with money and therefore must rely on other people to manage it.The overwhelm at the thought of learning money management skills.The personal money baggage that has to do with how you grew up and saw money being used around you.

Delegating your financial responsibilities puts your ability to support yourself through your creative work in other peoples’ hands. This delegation allows others the opportunity to profit from and exploit your talents and body of creative work.

By saying “I don’t want to deal with my money,” you are saying, “I don’t want to deal with the power and freedom that comes with the money I can earn from my creativity.”

When you turn a blind eye to money, you are turning a blind eye to your power. And, when you avoid money from the start of your career, you impede your ability to call the shots in every other aspect of your life.

Let me repeat for those of you who have been force-fed the myth of the starving artist. YOU CAN EARN MONEY LIVING A CREATIVE LIFE.

Financially successful writers do not sell one great masterpiece and live off that windfall for the rest of their lives. Creativity is not a lottery ticket, but rather a building block of a long-term sustainable business. You build financial independence one baby step at a time—the exact same way you build your writing portfolio.

Today is the day you start building financial habits to acknowledge and validate the inherent monetary worth of your creations. To become the creative who has money in the bank for their creative work, here’s how you start:

Get out a pen and paper, or your phone with the notes/voice-memo app. As you read the next four steps, note every immediate reaction you have to the following instructions. Note both physical and intellectual reactions. i.e., clenched jaw and “This author is out of her mind,” etc. Set up a SAVINGS account specifically for your creative income. Make sure there are NO fees or minimum balance requirements.Log in to your online banking and go to settings.Rename the account. I recommend names that remind you that your creative career is fueling this balance. Titles like: $ MY ART MADE or MY BOOKS PAY BILLS or CREATIVE CASH.Go to the visibility setting and turn it off. Make the account invisible, so you don’t see it on the main screen when you log in to the bank.Decide how much and how often you’re going to pay yourself. Start with what you can afford:1¢ for each finished blog post50¢ for each new recipe$1 for a recorded song$2 per hour of practice/studio/writing time, paid every Friday.Pay yourself according to the wage and timeline you set for yourself.

What physical reactions did you have? Stomach knot? Tension in the neck? Balled fists? Note those personal physical indicators you are expanding beyond your comfort zone. Your body wants to keep you safe and you’re moving into unknown territory, which makes your body anxious. Take a deep breath and roll out your shoulders. Tell your body out loud, “We’re safe. This is a healthy, safe, new space we’re entering. I’ve got you. Thank you for keeping us safe.”

Physical symptoms are the first indicator that you are experiencing mental dissonance as you level up your identity from Uninitiated to Initiated Creative. By addressing your physical safety first, your mind is more receptive to exploring new ideas and identities.

What intellectual reactions did you have? “You want me to pay myself? That’s cheating. Plus, I’m broke. I haven’t even shared my stuff publicly. Bank accounts are for REAL writers. Besides what good will 30¢ for thirty whole blog posts do me?! I can’t live on that.” What other opinions do you have about opening a savings account and paying yourself every time you create?

Add those to the list and buckle up, because those excuses are places for you to dig into the money mindset issues that keep you from accepting payment for your work. Variations will pop up continuously throughout your creative career.

Identify, acknowledge, dismantle, and act upon your money mindset issues now, so you have the confidence to ask for your full worth when the opportunity presents itself.

By completing steps 2–5 you quiet those dream assassins. Here’s how acting starts an energetic tsunami in the transition from unpaid to paid creative.

Setting up that savings account establishes the intention that you will make and retain money from your creative work.Turning off visibility jump-starts relying solely on your internalized self-trust and self-worth. You are establishing the identity of a creative who has money in the bank as a result of their creative efforts. (Hiding it also lessens the likelihood you will spend the money. Banks want to give you money when you have money. You are setting up a financial power reserve to fuel and sustain you.)You are telling yourself that your creative time, effort, and products have inherent worth. I deserve to be paid. You are practicing: setting prices, expecting compensation, and being a good steward of your money. (For those of you still balking at the idea, remember founders of multi-billion-dollar companies pay themselves a salary.)Every time you pay yourself, you reinforce the habits of billing for completed projects and accepting payment for your work. You are building the identity of “I am a PAID creative.”

Now open a new browser, go to your bank’s website, and fill out the form for your new savings account. Pay yourself. You’ve earned it.

Building Your Brand on TikTok Isn’t Curation, It’s Authenticity

“To Thine Own Self Be True” by futureshape is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Today’s post is by author Kerry Chaput.

Social media algorithms often feel like a rigged game, with authors standing on the sidelines yelling “Pick me!” Fortunately, my relationship with social media changed the moment I decided to create my own space and let readers come to me.

When I joined TikTok in December 2021, I was prepared to hate every second. Young, witty creators and BookTok accounts were killing it at book marketing, and I was a middle-aged mom struggling with anxiety, whose preferred topic of conversation is Eleanor Roosevelt’s contributions to history. 

But I quickly discovered that I ended up right where I belonged. And you belong there too. TikTok, unlike Instagram’s aesthetic values or Twitter’s expectations for witty virality or negativity, is exactly for someone like me.

People crave honesty. So much of our lives is spent pretending to have it all together, when inside we’re crying out for someone to get us. When I shed the idea of “curating” content and started to discuss the things I cared about, my views went up and so did my book sales.

My first viral video was one minute, forty seconds, and put my history nerd status on full display. I discussed the background of my historical fiction series Defying the Crown, and why I cared about the women it highlighted. What I translated to viewers (and readers) was a love for women’s history from a lens of power and success, rather than stories of women’s misery and pain.

It was then I realized the power TikTok holds.

I could shout my beliefs and interests from the rooftops, and find my people, my readers. I could bring attention to the kind of things I write about and value in my young adult novels, and books like them. Fat positivity, inclusivity, sex-positive relationships for young women, self-acceptance, and mental health awareness.

I was inspired to begin a series: Badass Women in History. These are stories of powerful young women who pushed past every barrier to follow their dreams. The videos exist to remind people that history is full of diverse, interesting women who have yet to gain recognition for their incredible lives—and not all their stories are steeped in pain. My second viral video discussed Mileva Einstein’s contributions to science, and my top video celebrates the eccentric Alice Roosevelt, still climbing toward one million views.

There are principles I live by when it comes to TikTok. The most important thing is to always be real. Here is how I honor that realness, and you can too:

1. Focus less on your genre space and more on what stories you identify with.

Hashtags are great to identify genre and age category, so let your video speak to your ideals and the things you care about. Your content should connect viewers with universal experiences. Maybe it’s the struggle of parenthood, or the humor you find in the mundane. Perhaps you have a love for calligraphy or ghost hunting, soap making or watermelon carving. Can you show your hobby while discussing writing? Can you connect your unique interests to the reason you write stories? Discover the meaning of your words outside of genre and tropes. There is something personal attached to your stories. Find it and share it with your viewers.

2. Examine what themes find their way into your writing. What aspects of the human condition baffle and intrigue you?

We tend to lean into the big questions in our lives through books, and I believe that happens for both readers and writers. Look closely, and you’ll probably find something you’ve struggled to understand popping up in your work. It’s okay to ask questions on TikTok, to build community through shared intrigue or discovering new knowledge.

3. Employ the power of a series.

Ask yourself: what can you talk about endlessly, or better yet, what are your obsessions? For me, I honor women in a way history books have failed to do—success, power, bravery. I care immensely about the women I research. My series gives me a chance to celebrate topics I love. You’ll find that if you care about it, other people will too.

4. People want authenticity above all else and TikTok allows us to showcase the messy side of life.

A lifelong struggle with generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and panic disorder has left me committed to breaking stereotypes around this disease. I make a point to highlight mental health in my videos. From author check-ins to vulnerable posts about panic attacks, I stay open about mental health—a topic that finds its way into my stories in one way or another. 

Not everyone needs to be this vulnerable, but are there struggles or quirks that are inherent to you? In other words, our power often lies in the parts we hide from the world. Find a comfort level in the cringe side of life. There’s a reason social media has created so much stress for people. Often, we see perfectly clean houses, success stories, celebrations, and expensive vacations. Our author journey isn’t all agent representation announcements and book deals. Sometimes, it’s crying in your car in the Target parking lot.

5. Discover why you care about your stories.

I want young women to know their voice matters. This one outlook carries me through all my stories and every social media video. Find your mantra. Define your core belief that thumps in the background like a heartbeat, and infuse that into your TikTok. Let viewers know what you stand for. It’s a great introduction to the kind of books your readers can expect.

Passion and authenticity will take you farther than any perfectly scripted monologue. On TikTok, quirkiness and honesty are celebrated. I find that quite refreshing. This is an app that allows you to be perfectly, uniquely you. Here, conformity is out, and individuality is in. Contrary to how it might appear, TikTok success isn’t dependent on age, genre, or physical appearance. You don’t need to be young and beautiful and brilliant. People want to be inspired, and nothing does that more effectively than accepting yourself just as you are, without an ounce of apology.

Decide Where You’re Standing in Time as You Write Your Memoir

Photo by Donald Wu on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted from Blueprint for a Memoir by Jennie Nash, founder of Author Accelerator.

Two temporal elements—the time frame of the story and where you are standing in time while you tell your tale—are central to the idea of structure in memoir.

But they are tricky to determine because you are still living the life you are writing about in your memoir, and you existed at all the points in time throughout the story you are telling. It’s easy to think that you are just you and the story is just the story, and to believe that you don’t have to make any decisions around time the way a novelist does. But if you neglect to make conscious choices about time, you risk getting tangled up and writing a convoluted story.

The first decision: choose a time frame for your story

What time period will your story cover? Don’t think about flashbacks to your younger self or memories of times gone by; all stories have that kind of backstory and it doesn’t count when answering this question.

Also don’t think about whether you are going to write your story chronologically or present the story in some other way (such as backward or in a braid); these are questions about form that get sorted out later.

For now, just think about what is known as “story present”: the primary period of time that the reader will experience as they are reading the story.

Here are some examples of story present from well-known memoirs:

The several weeks I spent hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (Wild by Cheryl Strayed)The year I planted my first garden (Second Nature by Michael Pollan)The three years I was in an abusive relationship (In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado)The three years consumed by the trial of my rapist (Know My Name by Chanel Miller)The four years when I was a dominatrix (Whip Smart by Melissa Febos)My childhood in Ireland (Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt)The 18 years following the accidental death of my high school classmate (Half a Life by Darin Strauss)The 30-something years of my marriage (Hourglass by Dani Shapiro)My whole life (I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell)

If you find yourself considering a time period that covers your whole life or a big chunk of time like the last two examples in my list, make sure that you actually need to include the entire period of time to effectively tell your story.

Dani Shapiro’s Hourglass doesn’t cover her whole life, but it covers many decades. That’s because her topic is itself time—the way it moves and flows in a long marriage, the impact it has on the relationship. Even her title cues us into this truth: She is making a point about the passage of time. The time frame she uses fits her point.

Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: 17 Brushes with Death, starts in her childhood and covers the entirety of her life up until the moment she is writing the book. It is a beautiful and effective story. But note that the intention of this book is not to tell her life story; it’s to discuss the specific ways that she is mortal and the reality that we are all mortal, and to remind us that every moment is a gift. She imposes a concept onto the material—a form or structure to unify or organize the material so that it’s not just a bunch of things that happened but a very specific and highly curated progression of things that happened. The story presents her whole life, but she only chooses to tell 17 stories. The time frame she uses fits her point as well.

The second decision: where you are standing in time as you tell your tale

While you are thinking about the time frame of your story, you also must decide where you are standing in time when you tell your story. There are two logical choices:

1. Narrating the story as you look back on it

The first option is that the story has already happened, and you are looking back on it with the knowledge and wisdom gained from having lived through those events. You are standing in time at a fixed moment that is not “today” (because today is always changing). It’s a specific day when the story has happened in the past and the future life you are living has not yet happened. This choice has to do with what we call authorial distance, or how far from the story the narrator is standing. In fiction, a first-person point of view often feels closer to the story than a third-person point of view. In memoir, if you are telling the story from a specific day that is just after the events that unfolded, you will be closer to the story than if you were telling the story from a specific day three decades later.

I wrote my breast cancer memoir just months after my treatment had ended and the friend who inspired me to get an (unusually early) mammogram had died. Her recent death was the reason for the story and part of the framing of it. She died young and I did not; the point I was making was about getting an early glimpse at the random and miraculous nature of life—a lesson that most people don’t really metabolize until they are much older. I wanted to preserve the close distance to the events of the story. If I told that story now, I would be telling it with the wisdom of having lived well into middle age—a very different distance from the story and a very different perspective.

I once worked with a client who had been a college admissions officer at an elite private high school. The pressure of the work, the outrageous expectations of the kids and parents, and the whole weight of the dog-eat-dog competitive culture contributed to him having a nervous breakdown. He wrote a memoir in which he answered college application questions from the perspective of a wounded and reflective adult. It was brilliant, and part of its brilliance was the wink and nod of doing something in his forties that so many people do at age seventeen.

We are talking here about authorial distance related to time, but there is also the concept of authorial distance related to self-awareness. I know that sounds a little like an Escher staircase circling back on itself—and it kind of is. The narrator of a memoir (the “you” who is standing at a certain moment in time) has some level of self-awareness about the events and what they mean. One of the reasons that coming-of-age stories are so beloved is that, by definition, the narrator is awakening to themselves and the world for the first time. There is very little distance (temporal or emotional) between who they were and who they became and there is a purity and poignancy to that transformation. It’s as if they are awakening to the very concept of self-awareness.

It is entirely possible for an adult to write a memoir and not bring much self-awareness to what they are writing about; it’s unfortunately quite common. A narrator who is simply reciting what happened—“this happened to me and then this happened and then this other thing happened”— is not exhibiting self-awareness about their life. They are not stepping back emotionally from it, so they don’t have any perspective to offer no matter how far away they are from it in time. They are just telling us what happened. These kinds of stories tend to feel flat and self-absorbed. They make no room for the reader. They don’t offer any sort of reflection or meaning-making, don’t offer any emotional resonance, and don’t ultimately give us the transformation experience we are looking for when we turn to memoir.

Laurel Braitman, author of What Looks Like Bravery, explains it like this: “I tell this to my students now: You can only write at the speed of your own self-awareness. You do not want the reader to have a realization or insight about your life that you haven’t had already or they will lose respect for you.”

If you are telling your story as you are looking back on it, make a clear decision about exactly where you are standing in time and make sure you have enough self-awareness to guide the reader with authority through the events you are recounting.

2. Narrating the story as it unfolds

The second logical option in terms of where the narrator stands in time is to tell the story as though you are experiencing it for the first time. There is no temporal distance from the events you are writing about. You narrate the story as the story unfolds, which means that you narrate it without the knowledge of how it all turned out. In this kind of story, the self-awareness that is necessary for an effective memoir is unfolding as the story unfolds as well.

I wrote a memoir about getting married and the structure of it was a “countdown” to the wedding. In this format, the concept is that events were unfolding as I was living them. This wasn’t technically true—I wrote the book after the wedding had taken place—but I had taken extensive notes and was able to preserve the concept of not knowing how people would behave or how I would feel. (This book embarrasses me now—the whole idea of it. I was 25 when I wrote it, so what can I say? I am grateful for its role in my career and here it is being useful as an example.)

In Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, she wrote about the year after her husband dropped dead at the dinner table, and of the difficulty that the human mind has grasping that kind of catastrophic change. In the first pages of the book, she writes, “It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004. Nine months and five days ago, at approximately nine o’clock….” What she is doing here is signaling to us that there is not a whole lot of authorial distance or self-awareness to what she is sharing. She is figuring it all out—this tendency to think magical thoughts about the dead not really being dead—as she writes. But the key thing is that she knows that she is figuring it out, and she invites us into the process. She has self-awareness about her own lack of self-awareness. She is not just telling us about the dinner and the table and the call to 911.

In Bomb Shelter, Mary Laura Philpott places her narrator self at a point in time when the story is still unfolding; she has perspective and self-awareness, but those elements are still clearly in flux. The New York Times reviewer Judith Warner called this out in her rave review of the book. Warner said, “I want to say something negative about this book. To be this positive is, I fear, to sound like a nitwit. So, to nitpick: There’s some unevenness to the quality of the sentences in the final chapter. But there’s no fun in pointing that out; Philpott already knows. ‘I’m telling this story now in present tense,’ she writes. ‘I’m still in it, not yet able to shape it from the future’s perspective.’” Like Didion, Philpott was well aware of the choice she made around narration and time, and those choices perfectly serve her story.

Can a narrator stand in two different places in time?

Writers often get into trouble when they try to combine two narrative stances: They write one scene about their childhood with the innocent voice of a young person and then write another scene with the wisdom and jaded voice of their current self. The trouble comes when they don’t do this on purpose; they do it because they haven’t thought about these questions of time. The result is like head-hopping in fiction: When the writer bounces from character to character, the reader has to struggle to follow the emotional thread of the story, and odds are good that they won’t stick around to struggle for long.

Maintaining narrative distance from your childhood self doesn’t mean that you have to give everything away. Your adult self who is the narrator doesn’t have to be a know-it-all. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy writes about brutal experiences she had as a child actor. The adult McCurdy recalls how she experienced those events and what she felt about them, but she doesn’t give us the conclusion of those events—the realization that her mother was abusive—until later in the book. She tells us what happened when she was a child and why she hated it and how she reacted (she chronicles her descent into disordered eating), but she doesn’t figure out exactly what it all meant until she grows up a bit. So as a reader, we experience this arc of change alongside her. We experience the transformation. What she did not do is give us a child-like experience of the childhood scenes or a flat recitation of the facts.

There are, of course, always exceptions. My book coach Barbara Boyd told me that one of her proudest moments as a coach involved a memoir in which the author, Lorenzo Gomez III, wrote about his experience in middle school using his adolescent point of view and ended each chapter with a letter from his adult self to the adolescent self, using his adult point of view. That book, Tafolla Toro: Three Years of Fear, was turned into a play that high school drama clubs perform. But Gomez did not land on that structure by accident; he made a conscious choice about how to shape his story—and so must you.

As you answer these two questions about time, look back at your why and your point, the super simple version of your story, and your ideal reader. All of those answers will inform your choices about time.

Chronological time versus fractured time

Everything I have written about time, above, has assumed that your memoir is going to be told chronologically. The vast majority of memoirs are stories told in this way. For example:

Know My Name by Chanel MillerWild by Cheryl StrayedMaybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori GottliebWhen Breath Becomes Air by Paul KalanithiHunger by Roxane GayBetween the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi CoatesLost and Found by Kathryn ShulzBossypants by Tina FeyI’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Chronological order means that the tale is told from beginning to end the way that it happened in your life. Again, flashbacks and memories don’t count here; including them doesn’t mean that a story isn’t being told chronologically. In a straightforward chronological narrative, there will almost certainly be flashbacks—moments in a narrative when the writer recalls something about their past in order to make sense of what is happening in story present, so they go back in time in order to move forward with more insight—but the story the author is telling still moves through a distinct period of time (story present) in chronological order.

The other thing that doesn’t negate the straightforward chronological structure is the choice to use a flashback as a framing device. In Wild, for example, there is a prologue in which the author has just lost a hiking boot over the side of a canyon, and she throws the other one after it. It’s a scene that appears again about three quarters of the way through the book. Starting her story with that scene sets the stage for what is to come, adds a whole lot of tension, and is a fantastic place to begin. The rest of the story follows Strayed’s preparation for the hike and the hike itself and proceeds in a straightforward chronological way (with a whole lot of flashbacks as Strayed is figuring out her relationship with her mother and to loss and to herself). Despite that prologue, the structure of Wild is still a straightforward chronological narrative.

Choosing a straightforward chronological narrative is a good choice for most memoirs. It’s how we live our lives, after all, and how we tell most stories in real life. There is a naturalness and a comfort to this structure.

But what if you want to tell your story with a timeline that is fractured or deliberately presented out of order? A fractured narrative is different from a story that includes flashbacks because the author leaps around to different time periods and doesn’t “return” to a chronological story present. In a fractured chronology, story present itself is out of order. Story present still exists, because the reader is still experiencing the story within a particular frame, it just doesn’t proceed chronologically.

Sound confusing? It can be. A fractured narrative can be far more difficult to write than a straightforward chronological narrative but, for the right story, it can be a powerful choice to make, especially if you are using fractured time to reflect an experience that was itself somewhat chaotic as you lived it. It gives the reader a sense of being unsettled; although the best fractured narratives also give a sense of safety or authority—we know that the writer is in charge of the journey and taking us on a winding path that will end up where they want us to go. We trust them and we’re happy to follow them. A fractured narrative can also work very well if you are writing about an idea or a concept that permeates a life, like how often we come close to dying (I Am, I Am, I Am) or how a human being copes with the terrible and endless anxiety of loving other people (Bomb Shelter).

My niece Caroline has been teaching herself the art of quilt design. She recently began to design a quilt for a new baby coming into our family. She explained to me that there is a visual language for quilting. Before you get to decide what colors to use, the first consideration for a quilt is the grid: Will it be a traditional grid, a deconstructed (or fractured) grid, or will there be no grid at all (a choice that leads to a freeform style)? Once you decide on the grid, you can decide on scale: Will you zoom way in on your grid to highlight one element of it? Will you zoom way out to show the ebb and flow of the grid? Once those questions are answered, you can finally look at color, and how tone and contrast will function in your quilt.

As she was outlining this visual language, I kept thinking that this process was exactly like the choices surrounding time in memoir. Before you can look at the chapter outline or select the stories you will use to tell your tale, you have to select the underlining structure. If you make the decision to use a fractured chronology, you are choosing to upend the traditional narrative structure in order to tell the story in a way that is less predictable or rigid. Both can result in a pleasing design, but they will have very different underpinnings.

In a story told with a fractured chronology, the narrator is almost always standing in time at the end of the story, looking back at all the events and recalling them in a way that has its own internal logic. A story with a fractured chronology is not random; the writer has deliberately deconstructed the grid and imposed a different kind of order on the disorder.

Two of the books I’ve just mentioned use this tactic: In Bomb Shelter, Mary Laura Philpott is writing about the anxiety and fear she feels as a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a grown-up human, but she begins the story with a scene from her childhood involving stingrays. She then leaps around in time: to that one Christmas when that terrifying thing happened to one of her children, to that time when she was in grade school, to that time when her kids were in grade school, to the time in college when her dad casually mentioned the secret underground bunker that gives the book its name, to that time her child headed off to college himself.

The progression is not in any way random. Mary Laura is a friend, and I had the chance to read an early draft of her manuscript. She was deep in the process of figuring out the order of her stories. Should the story about the terrifying thing (her son’s first epileptic seizure) go first? It’s a dramatic story and a riveting piece of writing. The decision to put it first might have skewed her book to seem like a story about epilepsy, but that was never Mary Laura’s intention. She wanted to write about the larger idea of what it means to be a fragile human who loves other fragile humans, and how difficult it is. Her clarity about her point and purpose—and how each story was serving it—were part of what led her to arrange the stories the way she did. If you are considering writing a fractured chronology, or really any memoir, read this book. The New York Times reviewer whom I quoted earlier called it “genius,” “a masterwork,” and “a spot-on portrait of the complex melancholy of early middle age.”

I Am, I Am, I Am, Maggie O’Farrell’s tale about her 17 brushes with death, does not unfold chronologically. The opening chapter is entitled “Neck (1990).” Chapter 2 is “Lungs (1988).” Later in the book, there is “Cerebellum (1980).” The flow of material from one chapter to the next has its own internal motion separate from chronology. The stories bump up against each other in provocative ways, one sometimes leading to a memory from childhood, another leaping forward in time to a similar scare. There’s something very powerful about this deconstructed presentation: As a reader, we feel unsettled by each event, by the overarching point of the book, and by the way the events are ordered. Everything about it is nerve-racking, and yet that feeling is mitigated by the authority and clarity with which O’Farrell writes. The structure perfectly serves the story.

If you are going to choose to fracture the time in your memoir, make sure you know why you are doing it and consider how you will do it. What will guide you in your choice of how to present the material? You may not have a sense of this yet, which is fine. Sometimes it’s not entirely clear until you start looking at the whole story. But continuing to think about your use of time will eventually lead you to a decision.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read Blueprint for a Memoir by Jennie Nash.