Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success)

by Sean Platt

You haven’t lived until you’ve been writing a scene you thought you were in control of, and something happened you never saw coming. Almost every writer who’s been at it for a while has had that experience. It’s delightful; it’s surprising; it gives you an odd feeling of confidence because the story almost seems to be breathing on its own. If you allow it, it happens because your characters are taking over. Our contention is that good storytelling is good because the characters — not the author — are in charge.

Author interference is what makes you shake your head and say, “Why would X character do that?” What follows often feels artificial and contrived.

Dynamic characters shake things up. They cause chaos. They act autonomously without permission. This is very, very good, because it means that readers will be less likely to predict what’s coming. If you as the author don’t know what exactly will happen, how can a reader?

Some writers create full character profiles, complete with a character’s entire physical appearance, their background and education, their likes and dislikes, significant events in their childhood, and so on. We don’t usually go that

journey across Eurasia with only the clothes on his back, a small pouch of food, and a crossbow, to escape the famine. Surviving bandits, floods, and hurricanes, he arrives at America’s border in 2034, starving. Desperate for food, he pushes his way to front of the queue. He is refused entry but articulates his way in anyway, using the same skill set that kept him alive throughout his journey to America. He is the last person allowed across the border. At the border, Nicolai is interviewed by Isaac Ryan, who is struck by his quiet intellect and superb articulation. A friendship is formed, and as Isaac moves forward in his political career, Nicolai becomes his speechwriter and right-hand man, helping him to quickly rise through the ranks of the Directorate. I would cast Johnny Depp.

including her age. Though she looks to be in her early 20s, she pours a tremendous amount of time and attention into looking and staying that way. It’s possible she’s as old as 60. She is one of Doc’s best clients, though she rarely pays with credits. Kai is a high-class escort, servicing only the elite. She is also an occasional assassin. She would be amazing at what she does anyway, but with her add-ons, many tailor made, Kai’s never had a client who didn’t feel she was worth every credit. Escorts are one of the few jobs that can straddle both

sides of the parties, and Kai services both Enterprise and Directorate clients. Kai is fascinated by the Wild East and dreams of traveling the world. She’s a collector of experiences, and secrets. With clients spanning the highest levels of power, Kai is the keeper of many, though her only true love is held for Nicolai. I would totally cast Mila Kunis.

every character, but it’s amazing how

many have a real-life doppelgänger. Having someone to compare the character to works well for a few reasons. For one, we don’t need to remember their physical attributes (like the color of their eyes) because we can always look to the real person. And second, it gives us a shorthand

All you need is a jump-start. After that, once in situations,

In real life, no one can be described with a one-sentence tagline. Kai is not just “the hooker with the heart of gold,” and Nicolai is not just “the rich kid from the East.” That’d be stuffing them in a box and sitting on the lid. They both have desires that conflict with each other, and although both would probably be considered “good” characters in the story, they sometimes do bad things. They’re human, like the rest of us, and even good guys are never perfect. (On the flip side, letting your “bad” characters have redeeming moments will also make them much more believable.)

Profiles aren’t intended for publication. They exist for the writer and only the writer, so that the writer can know the character as if he or she were a real person, which helps them to predict how a character would react to a given situation. This makes the act of writing very natural. It starts to feel as if you’re an observer to the scene, and that instead of creating it, you’re recording what happens as it unspools before you.

unique and require as much exploration and understanding on the part of the writer as the characters who live inside it.

droughts that ravage nearly a third of the globe, mostly throughout Eurasia, Africa, and the Middle East. The melting of Siberian permafrost vents massive amounts of methane into the air. The unprecedented technological advances of the previous decade mean nothing as quickly decaying environmental conditions lead to a substantial population die-off, with millions of deaths in the first few years ballooning to billions over the coming decade. Entire regions of the world, previously populated, are quickly abandoned and surrendered to ruin. Once-mighty rivers run bone dry, and wildfires swallow thousands of square miles. Desalination technology is able to save some countries, but for the most part fails to meet demand. Efforts to reverse climate change

on a global scale are insufficient.

2031: While landlocked and arid areas of the world are dying of drought, many of the world's cities lie partially submerged due to rising sea levels. With over 10 percent of the world's population living on coastlines, hundreds of millions are forced to migrate. Despite attempts to build flood defenses, main global arteries such as New York, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Sydney are affected. Those worst-hit countries are plunged into anarchy. There is widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure. Vast uninhabitable wastelands blanket the equatorial regions, as desperate streams of refugees flee from city to city, fighting over scraps. 2036: A gradual stagnation of the white population, simultaneous growth of Hispanics, and a globally unique economic boom in Canada all pave the way to a North American Union slowly taking shape. The same soaring global temperatures that ravaged much of the world cleared access to a treasure trove of natural resources, previously buried in the frozen north. North American citizens are now flocking to Canada’s cheap, wide, green lands. With Europe in Chaos, the Middle East and Africa mostly wasteland, Asia unifying itself beneath a single umbrella, and South America in ruins, the USA initiates early talks with Canada and Mexico. The three presidents step down, a temporary constitution is drafted, and the NAU is formed. 2042: The first version of The BEAM is complete and is launched by the companies West and Quark, slightly ahead of sch...

And hell, the above is just a tiny sliver of the NAU’s chronology — there was the rest of the world (flooded and in chaos) to think about, too! It was a ton of information,

and at first I almost tried to memorize it. But the world document didn’t exist for me to narrate; it existed as background. It was something I had to understand as part of our story’s collective psyche. Our characters never discussed that the NAU was cut off; they simply lived in a world where it was. But

Sean has said he would have been happy to write Plugged even if we sold zero copies. I agree. We not only feel that the narrative is fantastic, but it helped us to understand our own world more than we otherwise would have. The richer our understanding, the better our story. The better our story, the happier our readers. The happier our readers, the more likely they are to want to stay with us forever.

Force yourself to make fantasy worlds real, and you may find ways to articulate them as if they were.

Among fiction writers, there are two main groups: “plotters” and “pantsers.” Plotters like to create plots for their novels in advance. Pantsers like to fly by the seat of their pants, never knowing what comes next until it happens on the page. The

The reason I say that last is because story beats, for us, are merely a starting point. The beats are the plotting part of our mid-range writing style, but the story always, always grows beyond the beats, and that process is very “pantsing-like.”

together, we come up with a vague idea

for a story. For Unicorn Western, that vague idea was born on our Better Off Undead podcast. Sean wanted to write a western with Dave; Dave grumbled that westerns took too much research. Sean and I both balked that you don’t need research; you need a gunslinger, horses, a love interest, and a man in a black hat. Dave continued to bluster, saying that we didn’t even know what color smoke came out of guns in those days. He said we’d screw it up, and end up with unicorns. I said that was a great idea. If we put a unicorn in the story, we could point to that unicorn whenever someone suggested that the story seemed unrealistic.

will write story beats. He breaks them down by chapter, and we always decide in advance how long the book should be, so we therefore know how long the chapters should be. In the case of Unicorn Western, Sean gave me 12 short paragraphs that I was supposed to grow into chapters of 2,000 to 2,500 words each.

I started deviating all over the place, going down rabbit holes that appeared during writing, chasing ideas that Sean couldn’t have seen coming because he wasn’t the one discovering the increasingly complex draft as he went. Still, beats are always worth doing for us. We always sort of follow them, at least at the beginning, and they give us a framework to work within.

They also allow us to discuss in the middle of stories, because we both know what’s going on — more or less, anyway.

(smart, friendly, mischievous twins whose best intentions always collapsed into something horrible)

Gladwell’s books, as a kind of casual narrative covering the years leading up to the “current” state of technology and connectivity in 2097. Our goal was to give Beam fans more about the world, but we also wanted to talk about the changes that technology might soon make (and is already making) to the way humans think and interact. So yes, it was a work of imagination and speculation. But it was also written as if that world truly existed, and it contained a lot of true facts about today’s world — stuff that really existed — right up to the day we wrote it. (For

Als Sourcebook anfragen

Chapter One: Covers the earliest events. Gibson argues that the world of 2097 started on July 21, 2019 when the first lunar base and telescope were established to prepare for eventual and permanent human habitation. This bonded the world in a way that wasn’t possible before, and wouldn’t have been possible before the Internet. This is the first bridging chapter, so I’m thinking it needs a lot of stuff to instantly familiarize the reader. Talk about Twitter and FB and how all the early social networks and blogging started to connect us in new ways. For the supposed reader of this book (in 2097) this would read like history. To most, a world before Twitter is horse and buggy.

1. The company who designed the moon base is led by a Richard Branson-type maverick — Clive Spooner. Spooner consulted with an Apple style company for usability and stuff like that. What made this project so revolutionary was that it really was “for the people,” all along. (It was a “team effort.” He wanted people to rally, like a country’s soccer team or

Russia vs. The U.S. in the space race … everyone can rally, and he can use that momentum to make it work better and faster. Looking at open source … everyone can participate, nothing is secret, etc.) You didn’t have to be on the moon to experience it. 2. Tell the story of the team that “appified”

the experience. Spooner commissioned a dream development team — the best the world had ever seen — to create an “experience.” The LunarLife app was HUGE. It enabled people to see all the designs (nothing was secret), play games, participate, and most importantly, access the telescope. Here is this private enterprise that is made totally public, and enjoyed around the world. ...

The outlines Malcolm Gladwell uses for his books might look very much like the one above because he tells his nonfiction through stories. Which style of nonfiction you write will determine how you outline, but the structure is always the same: major points with examples and explanations underneath, nested as deeply as seems necessary to deliver the information you want to teach.

The other major difference for nonfiction is research. You may need to look things up to support your points (I did a shocking amount of research for Plugged, despite its being fiction), but lucky you: You have the Internet.

If you’re making a persuasive point, you’ll want to back it up with opinions beyond your own. If you’re teaching how-to, make sure you know your stuff, and that what you aren’t 110 percent sure of, you look up and verify.

First draft: Write for yourself with the door closed. Say it. Second draft: Revise for readers with the door open. Say what you mean. Third draft: Polish. Say it well. Both Austin and Haley will try to write

The first draft is your “vomit onto the keyboard”

draft, wherein your task is to simply keep moving and outrun your doubts. Try not to pause f...

already, whether you realize it or not). Just go....

is action in the scene, just say what’s going on. Don’t try to choreograph everything perfectly

at the expense of not getting it out. The

best way to get blocked as a writer is to start second-guessing yourself, and the best way to do that is to pause and think too much about what you’re writing. Everyone has an overly-developed internal critic, and if you give that critic a quiet moment to speak, he will crap all over whatever you’re writing. Don’t let him. Bulldoze forward. Vomit those words onto that keyboard....

Keep your metaphorical door closed: Don’t let anyone see your first draft until it’s finished, so they won’t be able to i...

you. Most writers and instructors will tell you to rewrite that draft until it flows well (the dictum for the second draft, as stated above, is “Say what you mean” as opposed to the first draft’s simple imperative, “Say it”),

Sean usually spends longer on his second draft than he does on the first. Once you have your draft flowing like you want (once it “says what you meant” instead of simply “saying it”), we recommend a third draft where you polish it up, fine-tuning points and really making your story’s language and clarity sparkle.

We strongly believe you should write your first drafts as fast as you can. Now, note that we said “as you can.” Emphasis on you.

We disagree. Vehemently. In our opinions, slow is the domain of the internal critic, whereas fast is the domain of pure creativity. When you go slow, you’re allowing yourself to focus on phrasing and grammar and possibly even theme. The first draft is an absolutely horrible time to focus on any of those things, and giving your critical mind quiet space to ask whether you’re doing good work or hack work is a mistake.

Keep telling the story and telling the story. Don’t stop to think. Vomit onto that keyboard. Keep things moving. Don’t worry about getting it right. Go faster. Faster. Faster.

Writing fast helps you to capture your most natural voice. Done well, it also leaves you wit...