Fiction - Write to Done

How To Write a Best Seller – Advice From an Olympic Medal Winner

A guest post by Dr John Yeoman of Writers Village

Tell me, how should I have answered this email?

‘Dear Sir or Mdm
I dremed of being writer since I was litle. I have a realy good story it realy hapened! I need incorrigment. No money just dreme. Will you show me to write my story? Jed’

Was I a coward for not replying? Yes, I was a coward. But how could I have told him the truth? That his chances of writing a publishable story were zero, short of a miracle? It would have been too cruel. Yet surely I could have sent him some words of encouragement? No! But why?

A mid-list author I know well receives emails like that every week. At one time, she replied encouragingly to them all. It opened the floodgates. One crank even turned up, unannounced, on her doorstep.

Yet all of us felt the same as Jed when starting out. We were literate. We had a great story in us. We knew it. It would take us just a few weeks to learn the tricks of creative writing, given encouragement…

An Olympic medal winner, 29 years old, revealed how she had gained her gold. “All it needed was four hours of practice,” she told an interviewer. “Every day, in sickness and health, for 20 years.” Why should creative writing be different?

Author Joanne Harris was once acclaimed for her ‘overnight’ success. Overnight? She had to write and discard five novels before she hit lucky with Chocolat. That took her 15 years. Melville waited 70 years to receive his first decent review for Moby Dick. Lord of the Flies was rejected by twenty publishers across several years. And so it goes.

What’s the answer?

1. Prepare for a long apprenticeship

That’s what I tell my creative writing students at the university where I teach, although none of them want to hear it.

True, you could scamp out a novel in a month, marry a publisher, see your work in print in no time and ride the Amazon Bestseller list within the week. Especially if it’s an ebook. It happens. And people do get struck by lightning three times in a single day. Just don’t count on it.

In the medieval craft guilds, it took an apprentice seven years to become a ‘master’, licensed to set up his own shop. Around 90% dropped out en route. Some married, some died and some became journeymen – hacks for hire. Plan to spend at least seven years to learn your craft, I tell my class, although you might find hack work before then. (For example, you could teach creative writing.)

It’s a miracle that my entire class doesn’t drop out immediately.

2. Earn a good income while you learn – with short stories

Meanwhile, I say, hone your craft skills and make a cash income by writing short stories. Regard each one as a five finger exercise. Explore a different craft technique every time. True, the paying market for short stories is not what it was but there are still enough publishers, off and online, to bring you money while you learn.

An even easier route is to enter short story contests. Of course, I have an interest in saying that as I run a story contest but it’s true. Once your work reaches a standard, and you enter contests systematically, you can be certain of a sideline income.

Look for contests that have been going for some while (they’re reputable) and that offer major cash prizes for an affordable entry fee. Do the math. Could 50 stories entered per year at a total investment of $800, a win rate of 1:5 and an average win of $500 net you a profit of $4200? Suppose you won two in every five contests you entered? Or more?

As you begin to win contests predictably, and your win rate improves, you’ll gain more than money. You’ll acquire the skills to complete a successful novel.

3. Contests offer you fun while you learn

There are other rewards, of course. When you’re a regular contest winner, your stories will be showcased on several contest sites. (A reputable contest will publish the winning stories, if only to flaunt the standard of its entries.) You’re now entitled to call yourself an author.

Promote yourself at conferences and local groups and you might be paid $100+ for two hours work – and earn twice that again by selling your anthologies at the back of the room. You might even go the giddy route of self-publishing and social network your way to fame, if not fortune.

Maybe you’ll never write a best seller but (I ask my students) will you need to? At that point, you won’t need to harass authors with emails: “I have a dream. Will you help me?” You’ll have achieved your dream. You’ll be an author. And folk will be sending those emails to you.

Dr John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, judges the Writers’ Village story competition and is a tutor in creative writing at a UK university. His free course in winning story competitions for profit can be found here.

Categories: Art of Writing, Fiction - Tags: best seller

It’s Time to Start Your Novel: Here’s Why

A Guest Post by Ali Luke of Aliventures.com

You’ve had the seed of a novel in your head for months now.

Maybe it’s a plot idea (“What if..?”) Maybe it’s a character. Maybe it’s simply the thought of writing something that’d bring other people the same pleasure that you’ve had as a reader.

That seed has been sitting, waiting. And now it’s time to let it grow.

I know you’re not ready. I know you don’t have enough time. I know you don’t want to waste your idea by going for it too soon.

But …

There’s Never Going to be a Perfect Time

For years, I had a novel seed in my head: a group of online roleplayers summon an evil demon into their game … and into the real world.

And for years, I didn’t want to start. I knew this novel was going to be complex, with several viewpoint characters. I knew it wasn’t going to fit easily into one genre. I knew it was going to take more skill than I had.

Perhaps you feel just the same about your novel idea. It could be your first novel: you’ve never tackled anything this big before. You might be reading books and blogs about the craft of writing, hoping that all the pieces will fit together before you sit down to write your first word.

Maybe your life is hectic right now. You’ve got a day job, a family, commitments. But is your life really going to be less busy in a year’s time?

Eventually, I made a start on my novel. My first few words – and chapters – were fumbling. My initial vision changed and came into focus as I wrote. Six drafts and three years later, I published that novel, Lycopolis.

Writing Isn’t Just About the Money

Working on a novel can seem like an extreme act of self-indulgence, especially if you make a part-time or full-time living from your writing. Every hour that you spend on fiction is an hour you could spend on your blog, or your client work, or your non-fiction ebook, or your membership site…

But you didn’t go into writing for the money. You built your work and your life around writing so that you could do what you love, every day.

One of the reasons I wanted to work for myself was so that I had more freedom, more flexibility with my time. If I want to spend a weekday afternoon writing my novel, I can. Sure, I’d have more money in the bank right now if I’d written an extra ebook and a few dozen guest posts, instead of a novel … but I’d have lost out on much of the real richness of my life.

You’ll Learn So Much from the Journey

No-one is ever fully ready to tackle a big, new project. But however many books you read, or courses you take, or experts you consult … you still won’t be ready.

The only way to truly learn how to write a novel is to write one.

You’ll learn about writing. You’ll learn how to make every word count, how to create characters that are real, how to craft scenes that grip the reader, how to use dialogue and description, how to pace your writing effectively. (And a lot of this will apply in other areas of your writing life, not just to future fiction projects.)

You’ll learn about yourself. It’s pretty much a given that your novel will draw on a lot of what interests you personally. Your characters might represent different aspects of you; your hero may be you at your best, and your villain may be you at your worst. You’ll learn that you’re more creative than you realized.

You’ve got a choice. You could let another year, or two, or three, slip by. You could let that novel seed slowly turn to dust inside your head.

Or you can plant that seed. You can decide that today is when you’ll begin.

A year from now, you could have a finished first draft. And in two or three years, your novel could be published.

Today, get a notebook, just for your novel. Write down that idea. Start to explore it. See what starts to grow.

Don’t keep waiting. It’s time to begin.

Ali Luke is currently on a virtual book tour for her novel Lycopolis, a fast-paced supernatural thriller centered on a group of online roleplayers who summon a demon into their game … and into the world. It is available in print and e-book form. Find out more at www.lycopolis.co.uk

Categories: Fiction

Beyond the Cliché: How to Create Characters that Fascinate

By Becca Puglisi of The Bookshelf Muse

How many characters have been created since the first story was told? Thousands? Gajillions?

With so many characters floating around out there, it’s not surprising that many of them have been recycled over time:

Merlin, Dumbledore, Obi-Wan Kenobi
Bilbo Baggins, Han Solo, Katniss Everdeen
Cinderella’s stepmother, The queen from Snow White, Maleficent

If you want to create characters that fascinate, make them likable, relatable, flawed - and unique.

How do we do it?

How do we recreate yet another mentor/reluctant hero/villain without playing into the cliché?

Give him quirks. What makes a person (and a character) individual are their unique little habits and mannerisms. One good method for coming up with fitting quirks is to look at the people around you. Here are a few true life examples from my inner circle (family therapy will probably follow):
My mother-in-law is an extremely fair person. When her kids were younger, there were always two stack of presents under the tree, one for each child, with the same number of presents in each. One of the stacks also contained an envelope with a random amount of cash–$3.48, or something, because she’d spent that much on the other child and wanted everything to come out fair. Quirky.

My husband’s defining character trait is efficiency, and much of his goofiness comes directly from this. If I’m cooking, he turns off the oven when five minutes are left to save electricity. In the winter, he cracks the oven door after I’ve removed the food so as not to waste the heat. Goofy.
My dad, though a highly intelligent and rational human being, is a complete conspiracy theorist. Wacky.

You don’t have to look far to find more idiosyncrasies than you could ever use in your fiction. But if real life fails you, look at lists for inspiration, such as this one, or this blog post on types of quirks. Regardless of where you find them, it’s usually best to choose a quirk that exemplifies and magnifies a trait of your character’s. Then, he’s not just doing some random weird thing–his habit makes sense, and it will ring true to the reader.

Show your character’s individuality by providing contrast.

Surround your character with people who are different from him, and you’ll emphasize his uniqueness. Take Cinna, for example, in The Hunger Games. The Capitol stylists were all superficial and flamboyant. Cinna was unassuming and deep. Subtle. By clearly showing the norm in his world, Collins highlights Cinna’s uniqueness and makes him stand out as individual.

Ensure uniqueness by giving your character conflicting traits.

We’ve all read about certain kinds of characters: the ambitious co-worker, the brainy honor student, the doting grandmother. To make these characters unique, give them conflicting traits that you don’t normally find in the stereotype.

Many grandmothers are doting, but what if they’re also manipulative and self-serving?

Ambitious co-workers are usually backstabbing and underhanded. How about creating one who’s loyal with a strong sense of right and wrong?

Create multi-dimensional characters by giving them traits that don’t usually go together, and you’ll have a fresh take on an old cliché. (For more ideas on this, check out the character trait thesaurus at The Bookshelf Muse.)

Surprise readers by not giving them what they expect.

As much as we try not to stereotype, we all do it to some degree. We see someone who looks a certain way and we already have an idea what kind of person he is, and how he’ll act. Readers do the same thing. Capitalize on this tendency by making your character look one way but act another.

This technique is used brilliantly in Daughter of Smoke and Bone. In this story, Brimstone is a big-time demon with one foot in the human world. His appearance is as evil and frightening as you’d expect, but Taylor avoids the cliché by making the demon a good guy. Unexpected and intriguing, this twist makes the reader want to read on to find out what the character, and the author, are up to.

The bottom line is that readers like the unexpected–in plot lines, in endings, and in characters.

Surprise them by giving them a brand new, never-before-seen hero or villain, and you’ll gain the reader’s interest and maybe even their attention all the way to your final page.

Becca Puglisi is a YA fantasy and historical fiction writer, SCBWI member, and co-host of The Bookshelf Muse, an on-line resource for writers. She also has a number of magazine publications under her belt. Her book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression is scheduled for release in the spring of 2012.

Categories: Art of Writing, Fiction - Tags: characters, clichés

How to Create a Story Structure to Die for

A guest post by PJ Reece of PjReece.ca

Prose is architecture, not interior decorating.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

A story works because of its architecture. By “works” I mean it stands up. It holds together. It’s true. Structure provides a framework for meaning.

I wish I’d known that when I started writing.

Twenty years ago, nothing stood between me and my Hollywood career except actors Jack Lemmon and Eva Marie Saint. My screenplay had beaten its way through 4000+ scripts to become a finalist in a prestigious L.A. screenwriting competition.

Then, one of the judges—Jack or Eva—killed it. My ending sucked.

The verdict sent me back to my writing hut. I was desperate to know why I failed. After writing ten more screenplays and three novels, it dawned on me. I discovered why fiction flops. And more importantly, I learned how fiction works.
Here’s what I learned:

A conventional story is actually Two Stories.
In the gap between the two lies the Heart of the Story.

That’s structure, that’s architecture. And one more thing:

In that dark heart of the story, the hero will experience a death.

If Hemingway said so, would you believe me?

“All stories, if continued far enough, end in death. And he is no true story teller who would keep that from you.”

Desire destroys the protagonist.

Stories depict heroes striving but failing. And failure is just the start of a hero’s demise. In good stories, protagonists suffer clear through to emptiness and despair. The best heroes—the ones with staying power—are driven to a loss of faith in themselves.

Protagonists will lose faith in who they are.

Why would anyone want to read anything so depressing? Hemingway asked the same question:

“Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?”

Except that Hem was being facetious. The Old Man and the Sea won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hemingway was saying that failure and disappointment are integral to fiction. As they are in life.

Failure and Story Structure

I discovered that loss and disenchantment are central to a good story:

Story One comprises all the action leading to the hero’s disillusionment.
Story Two consists of everything on the other side of his waking up.
Between the failure and redemption lies the dark night known as the Story Heart.

How simple is that!

His super-simple story overview isn’t an invention. It’s an observation. I studied fiction to see how the best stories work. Then I drew some conclusions. About, for instance…

Character and Story Structure

A character doesn’t wander through the plot. The protagonist is the plot. The protagonist is inseparable from what he or she wants. Story One concerns the character’s desire for something. Because of this desire, she is an accident (story) waiting to happen. For example:

The Oscar-winner, “The Artist”

A silent movie star watches in dismay as talking pictures become all the rage. George Valentin finds himself with no job, no girl, no more adoring fans. He takes up the bottle and slips into oblivion. Most protagonists would straightaway fall into the dark heart of the story and wake-up to the facts of life.

But not George.

Our hero continues to believe in yesteryear, which lays himself open to more punishment. The screenwriter pushes George to rage and all the way to self-loathing. His beliefs are literally killing him. It looks like George might actually commit suicide.

That’s a story!

In a conventional story, this is the time for the protagonist to release his grip on his way of seeing the world. When forced by fate to surrender, a character sinks into the Heart of the Story. Here, he glimpses his higher nature. Welcome to Story Two.

Once again, here’s story structure to die for:

Story One—the chain of events that brings a hero to his knees.
Heart of the Story—death of the old belief system accompanied by insights into one’s higher nature.
Story Two—the far side of the crisis, where the hero demonstrates a new worldview.

Structure—who needs it?

Does every writer need a story theory to guide them? No. William Shakespeare, for example. Or Haruki Murakami. But then I suspect that they are geniuses.

Do the rest of us need laws of fiction to write by? No. A story will take shape on its own. Structure will eventually have its way. After enough rewrites, critiques, editors (and how many years?) we’ll wind up with a story that looks like a conventional story should.

A story works because of its architecture.

Story structure ensures that our heroes suffer enough to discover the truth about themselves. That truth may lie at the heart of why readers read. And why writers write!

(That’s another idea I’m working on.)

Good stories may prove to be more than just “food for thought”. Truth, even in fiction, may be real nourishment. Perhaps that’s why Hemingway once said:

“All good books have one thing in common—they are truer than if they had really happened.”

A story seeks structure in order to arrive at the truth.

That’s the art of fiction.

What are your thoughts on story structure? How do you get a bird’s-eye view of your story? Or maybe you’ve got more great quotes from the masters about “what makes a good story”. Please share them in the “comments”.

PJ Reece has been a full-time writer for twenty years. He has just released a free eBook called, “Story Structure to Die for”. You can download your copy here.

Categories: Art of Writing, Fiction

The Chicken-Egg Paradox of Storytelling

A Guest Post By Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com

One day a chicken was standing on the side of the road. Actually, he was staring at the road, a little lost, when someone stopped and asked him this question:

Speaking as a chicken, which came first… you, or the egg?”

To which the chicken, after pondering for a moment, replied, “Who cares. I’m just trying to figure out why I’d want to cross this thing in the first place.”

Which is a different question, equally cliché. Consider yourself foreshadowed here, because the punchline is your fate as a writer.

Ever had a great omelet made from bad eggs? Or a bad omelet made from perfectly good eggs? Ever smelled a bad egg? Ever had an egg that started out fine, but you played around with it for so long that it went bad?

Have you ever not been completely sure what to do with an egg? Hard boiled, scrambled, diced into a salad? Deep fried?

What then? Do you keep cooking? Or do you begin anew with a fresh egg, one you haven’t mucked up, perhaps leading to a different dish altogether?

And if you, the cook, don’t know what to do with the egg, especially a bad egg, where does that leave your hungry guest?

Of course I’m talking about storytelling here.

Our initial story ideas are very much like eggs. Precious, yet completely worthless until you do something with them. Not healthy or delicious until they’re cooked, seasoned and, if you consider yourself a chef, added to other ingredients and all gussied up, because presentation is everything.

How can something be precious and worthless at the same time?

Because it’s a paradox.

As is storytelling.

We evolve our eggs – the initial spark of inspiration – into something wonderful, called stories. When we do it right, our little cell of a story grows into something akin to a fully glorified banquet of dramatic possibilities… one that we, as the cooks in this literary kitchen, are obliged to bring forth. That is, if they are ever to be fit to consume. Otherwise the egg just sits there, getting old, until it smells up the joint.

Which brings us full circle. Because if the egg isn’t good, the meal will suffer for it. Which means, whether we begin with the egg (an idea), or we begin with the recipe (characters, setting and theme) and start mixing with the hope than an egg will soon appear… either way, which came first – chicken or egg – is no longer the point.

That’s why the chicken was staring at that road. He was squaring off with a different question altogether, caught in the paradox.

The paradox is why manuscripts go unpublished and dreams die. Because writers sometimes try to cook up bland ideas, stories with no compelling conceptual centerpiece. Bad eggs. Even when presented on fine china, the meal will be less than satisfying if the egg has gone bad.

Equally fatal is when the writer has a killer initial idea but doesn’t execute it well. Up to professional expectations and standards. Bad cooking. Or at least not enough cheese and oregano to go with that egg.A great idea does not a great story make.

Which comes first doesn’t matter.

It’s the wrong question.

We need both the chicken (all the moving parts) and the egg (a killer idea), and we are allowed to get to them in no particular order. As long as we get to both.

The good news is that this is only truly a paradox when the writer doesn’t completely understand the relationship between the egg and the chicken of your story. Or – analogy free for a moment – doesn’t juxtapose the weight of an idea in context to the balance and flavor and nourishment of the surrounding story elements.

Ever heard the term “all style, no substance” applied to a story? That’s a story without an egg somewhere in the mix. Vice versa, too: that’s a story that doesn’t live up to its inherent potential.The truth is that a successful story must have both an egg, and a recipe that stirs in all sorts of other goodness.

And therein resides the pothole in the road you, the chicken-wrangler in this analogy, need to cross. If you don’t recognize the duality of the necessity for both a strong conceptual egg and a delicious storytelling recipe, you’ll tumble keyboard-first into it.

And you likely won’t make it to the other side.

What kind of cook are you?

You can hatch an idea and begin to develop it into a story using a plan. Or, you can create a shell for an idea and go looking for it by drafting. Or a little of both.

Either way, it’s all the search for story. A base you must cover in writing any successful story.

As writers, we live and die by our ability to circle back and make sure our stories aren’t all broth and spice with no evidence of an egg anywhere in the mix. Our goal is to stir all the ingredients – egg and other goodies – into something that becomes a feast in excess of its independent parts.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side, of course. Duh. That cliché answer remains a paradox.

Writers, however, need a better answer. We need to get beyond the paradox. For us, here’s the real answer: on the other side, where the readers are, awaits the full meal deal.

That’s where the egg was all along. Waiting to be found. Waiting to be given wings so it can turn into… a chicken.

The other side of the road is where the story is. Just watch out for those potholes.
Because however you get there, nobody gets to eat until you do.

Larry Brooks is the author of “Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling.” His website, Storyfix.com, is a leading resource for novelists and screenwriters at all levels. His latest book is “Warm Hugs for Writers,” with a free ebook offer available through his website.
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