Karen S. Wiesner: Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 3 Involving Critique Partners and Setting the Final Draft Aside

Writer's Craft Article

Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 3

Involving Critique Partners and Setting the Final Draft Aside

by Karen S. Wiesner

Based on Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2: 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

In this three month, in-depth series, we're going to go over what could be considered the grunge work in building a cohesive story. Revising, editing, and polishing require a little or a lot of writing elbow grease to finish the job and bring forth a strong and beautiful book.

In Part 2 of this series, we discussed the revision part of the process. This time we'll go over involving critique partners and setting the final draft aside. 

STAGE 2: INVOLVING CRITIQUE PARTNERS

Everyone knows writers can get too close to their own work. It's an occupational hazard. While you may feel that you've got a story beyond compare, it may need a little more work and you simply can't see it. That's why it's so important now to turn your beloved opus over to a trusted spouse, friend, or, preferably, a critique partner (or three) for a critical read. The opinion of others is very important. You're not ready to send that book out to a publisher/editor or agent until you've had enough reader reactions to judge the strength of your accomplishment.

I highly recommend that you give yourself this time to digest the comments a critique partner made about your beloved baby, too. At this stage, your desire may be to haul off and lay her out flat. Don't do it! After you've initially read her comments, send her this note without any embellishments: "Thanks for all the work you put into critiquing my story. I'll get back to you in a few weeks if I have any questions or comments about your evaluation." Then folder-up that project again with her comments. Put it away in your story cupboard and do something else. I guarantee that her comments, if left on a low backburner in your mind, will do their work. When you return for the final editing and polishing, hopefully for the last time before you begin submitting to publishers/editors or agents, you might even agree with your friend on several points. You'll also feel better about everything, and you'll be able to evaluate, unbiased, what needs to be done to shine up that book.

STAGE 3: SETTING THE FINAL DRAFT ASIDE

Letting your projects sit, out of sight and out of mind, for a couple weeks--or even months--in-between stages will provide you with a completely fresh perspective. Distance gives you objectivity and the ability to read your own work so you can progress further with it, adding more and more layers and dimensions to your characters, plots and settings. Another reason for setting projects aside between stages is that writers may reach a point where their motivation runs out, and they want to get away from the story as fast as they can. Sometimes the author may not feel inspired to write a book he's just spent weeks or even months outlining, or revise something he's spent weeks or months writing.

Setting a project aside between the various stages the project goes through also allows your creativity to be at its peak. The process becomes easier, too, and your writing will be the best it can be. Putting a WIP on a back burner for an extended period of time will allow you to see more of the connections that make a story multidimensional.

To set your project aside between stages, return everything to your story folder. For as long as you possibly can, put this book on a shelf and keep it on the backburner in your mind. Get to work on something else so you won’t concentrate too much on this project and it becomes the center of your attention again.

In the introduction to this series, I mentioned that Stephen King calls this a “recuperation time”, and it really is that, considering the blood, sweat and tears you’ve expended thus far (half-done in the writing in stages process!). When you take the manuscript down again to begin revisions, followed by editing and polishing, “you’ll find reading your book over after a…layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours…and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else. …This is the way it should be, the reason you waited…”

As a general rule, every book I write gets a few months between stages, and I really need the break from each project. I can't imagine going through all the steps in finishing a book back-to-back. I get so sick of a story when one stage carries into the next without pause, I can no longer see whether anything I'm doing is improving or ruining. When one stage of a WIP is done, I'm eager to get away from it. Many times I leave a stage certain the whole thing is fit only for burning in the nearest fireplace, but, when I come back to it months later, I discover that all my hard work previously was well-worth the effort. The layers of the story are building up beautifully into something I know will be even better when it's finally done.

The basic reason for any shelf-time for a project is obvious: You just finished one big stage, you’d have to be insane to want to read the book again right after you just finished going over it from start to finish yet again. You’ll have gained no distance from it if you jump directly into the next stage at this point. So give yourself another few weeks or more if your deadlines allow before moving on.

One other thing I alluded to earlier is not wanting to get burned out when it comes to any specific project. When writers say they’re burned out, they mean they’ve been working too much and not taking the time off to refresh themselves and keep their creative energy flowing. (This is completely different from writer’s block, which can stem from situations like a story not ready to be worked on, not enough brainstorming or inspiration, or sheer laziness usually attributed to a fickle muse.) This is especially true if you're working on the same project, doing all these stages back-to-back, without taking a break from the same project specifically or from work in general. You bring back your own love for a project each time you set it aside and then come back to it fresh. Don't underestimate the importance of doing that. You and your stories will suffer for it eventually if back-to-back stages becomes a habit.

There's another reason for avoiding burnout whenever you can. The soil in your brain is like the soil farmers sow crops in. It needs rest and rotation (writing in stages, for the author) in order to become fertile and nutrient-rich again. I strong suggested working up yearly goals prior to every new year. On this sheet, you're not only deciding what you’re going to be working on during that year, but you should also be planning your breaks from writing. If taking weekends off doesn’t refresh you, take a week, weeks or even a month off during the year. Read, watch movies, relax, and re-energize your creativity. (This doesn't mean you can't be brainstorming or researching for upcoming projects during this time.) By the time your vacation is up, you’ll be raring to go on your next writing project. Take your scheduled vacations when you’ve planned them unless something wonderful happens (an editor contracts a series from you, you're asked to write a screenplay of your book; you fill in the blank for your own idea of wonderful) in your career or life, and you can’t let the opportunity pass you by. As soon as that thing is finished, take the vacation you planned. Reward yourself by allowing your creative soil to become fertile again.

You might be wondering how many times you can set your book aside before it goes to an editor. I suggest you set it aside for a few months after the outline is complete (before you begin writing the book) as well as after the first draft is done and, of course, before you begin revising. I also suggest you set it aside again after the critical reads and before you complete final editing and polishing and send it off to a publisher/editor or agent. As with a good wine or cheese, the more shelf-time you give each book, the stronger it'll be--and the better for you to see your story clearly, my dears.

Next week, we'll go over Stage 4: Editing and Polishing.

Happy writing!

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 2 Revision

Writer's Craft Article

Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 2

Revision

by Karen S. Wiesner

Based on Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2: 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

In this three month, in-depth series, we're going to go over what could be considered the grunge work in building a cohesive story. Revising, editing, and polishing require a little or a lot of writing elbow grease to finish the job and bring forth a strong and beautiful book.

In the introduction to this series, we discussed the process of entering the revision mindset. In this second installment, we'll go over all things "revision".

STAGE 1: REVISING

Marguerite Smith said, "Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes." Revision can also be aptly described as when your dreams put on work clothes. The process is equivalent to getting on your hands and knees to scrub a filthy floor until it shines. It's the grunge work of being a writer, but it's well worth the effort you put into it. And revision and editing and polishing add a very definite extra layer to your story. Without it, your story probably won't read smoothly, nor will it shine.

What's the best way to revise? Below, we'll discuss ways to go about revision effectively.

Minimizing the Work

Let's first talk about the difference between the revision process and the editing and polishing process, because these, too, are separate jobs that can--but ideally shouldn't--take place at the same time.

These writing processes are similar to what builders face. It's not unusual to make design changes during construction, but builders want to minimize them. Moving a wall, for instance, can be expensive, especially if it's already been framed in and drywalled. During construction, periodic visits are made to the building site in order to monitor the home's progress. This allows the owner and builder to detect problems earlier and therefore take corrective action.

In the same way, in the process of writing a book, you want to minimize major changes to your book, like rewriting an entire story thread, or adding, deleting, or revising multiple chapters--they'll cost you a lot of time and effort (hence the need for an outline, where these kinds of revisions take only a fraction of that time and effort). If you've gone back to your outline often while writing the first draft to make sure your story is progressing the way it needs to, you'll detect problems early and be able take corrective action. This prevents major revisions at the end of a project, when you've already committed hundreds of pages to a solid structure. Terry Brooks said about this: "I believe, especially with long fiction, that an outline keeps you organized and focused over the course of the writing. I am not wedded to an outline once it is in place and will change it to suit the progress of the story and to accommodate new and better ideas, but I like having a blueprint to go back to. Also, having an outline forces you to think your story through and work out the kinks and bad spots. I do a lot less editing and rewriting when I take time to do the outline first."

What most writers call revising is actually just editing and polishing. Revision is the larger of the two jobs. We'll talk more about editing and polishing, which should be minor buffing up, later. Revision may or may not be major, especially if you've started with an outline. But it does involve tweaking characters, settings, and plots; and possibly rewriting, adding to, or deleting one or more scenes; and incorporating major research. When you revise, you evaluate (and fix) any of the following:

-Structure

-Character, setting, and plot credibility and the cohesion of these elements

-Depth of conflicts, goals, and motivations

-Scene worthiness

-Pacing

-Effectiveness of hints, tension and suspense, and resolutions

-Transitions

-Emotion and color

-Hooks and cliffhangers

-Character voice

-Consistency

-Adequacy of research

-Properly unfurled, developed, and concluded story threads

-Deepening of character enhancements/contrasts and the symbols of these

Revision is redoing or reshaping in an effort to make what's already there better, stronger, and, of course, utterly cohesive.

Maximizing the Benefits

After you've completed a first draft and allowed the book to sit for a long time, the next step is revision. While I used to do this step off the computer on a hard copy of the book, the work involved after the revision done by my own messy (practically unreadable) hand, having to make all those corrections within the story file on my computer, became too immense. Literally, there was never a single page that didn't have countless changes, additions, or deletions. I now find this job a world easier to do on the computer.

I strongly believe that revision should be done as quickly as possible, with as little interruption from the material as possible. This won't compromise the quality of your revision, I promise--just the opposite, in fact! Ideally, if you can set aside a block of time of about a week (three days is generally the maximum time it takes me, but I always allow for a week) to work exclusively on the revision, you'll find that your story will be more consistent, and you'll remember details much better. In my case, I remember things photographically--I could argue that I memorize the entire book during this time, and any error will jump out at me as I work. During revision days, I may even be woken from sound sleep because a glaring error in some portion of the book will emerge from my subconscious. The whole book is quite literally laid out in my mind, ready to be accessed at a moment's notice during this short revision period. If revision on a project is broken up over a period of days or weeks, especially if you're working on other projects during this time, the book will most certainly suffer from consistency issues, and possibly even structural and cohesion problems. If you can set aside that crucial, uninterrupted block of time to focus on revision, your story will benefit from it immeasurably.

To get started, make a list that organizes the revision items in need of your final attention during this time. Fix firmly in your mind those details you need to attend to while reading your book from start to finish. Check off what you've finished at the end of each work day so you'll know what you need to deal with when you come back to the revision.

Yes, during this time you'll be working on fixing more serious problems, but you probably will be doing some editing and polishing during this stage as well. You're there; it wouldn't make any sense to not clean up something small but not quite right that clearly needs a little elbow grease. However, what you're really looking for during the revision is anything in your story that doesn't work or doesn't make sense.

One way I keep my project consistent is to have a notebook next to me while I'm reading to revise. I jot down the timeline and various other details, including the page number the detail is mentioned on. If I later have a question while revising about, say, when a certain event took place, I can always look in the notebook to make sure I've kept those facts consistent. Whenever and as often as this detail is mentioned in the story, I'll write down the page number for it in the notebook. I might decide to change the fact later, and this way I have a list of all the places affected by the change.

You may have very little left to do to make your book closer to perfect once when you complete this process.

Next week, we'll go over stages 2 and 3: Involving critique partners and setting the final draft aside. 

Happy writing!

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 1 Introduction

 Writer's Craft Article

 Fiction Fundamentals: Writing Elbow Grease, Part 1

Introduction

 by Karen S. Wiesner

 Based on Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2: 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

 

In this three month, in-depth series, we're going to go over what could be considered the grunge work in building a cohesive story. Revising, editing, and polishing require a little or a lot of writing elbow grease to finish the job and bring forth a strong and beautiful book.

Once a builder has completed the house, interior painting, staining, and caulking are done, with carpeting as the last step. At that point, interior design becomes the priority. Room arrangements, color schemes, and window treatments, based on knowledge of what's available in the owner's price range and what's appropriate for each use, become the finishing touches. Everything that's done is a layer in develop the house into a home. It's in the final decorations that a solid house truly becomes a thing of beauty and a source of pride. Most new homeowners are dying to throw a party and show it off.

In writing, we have a similar layering. We can created layers through the creation of story folders, brainstorming, researching, pre-writing, outlining, and writing the first draft. (Imagine if you skip more than one of those steps! Your book is missing all those layers, and you'll definitely notice that it lacks some texture, quality, and strength as a result.)

Now we'll talk about the layers of strength and beauty that are added to a story through revising, editing, and polishing the first draft of the book. During this time, we rearrange, punch up the word colors of the book, clarify and beautify with the finishing touches that make it shine. Once you've finished this step, you'll be dying to send it out to those brave readers willing to take on the assessment of an unpublished work--those who will hopefully love it as much as you do. Even if they don't, they may help you see the strengths and weaknesses more clearly, and you can make the necessary changes before you begin submitting to publishers and agents. 

The stages involved with this layer include:

1.               Revising

2.               Involving critique partners

3.               Setting the final draft aside

4.               Final editing and polishing

By this point, you may have already completed an outline (hopefully, a cohesive one) that you've utilizing in writing the first draft of the book. Between these steps, you've hopefully let your story rest quietly on a shelf, ideally for a month or more each time. Stephen King calls this a "recuperation time", and it really is, considering the blood, sweat, and tears you've expended. When you take the manuscript down again to begin revisions, followed by editing and polishing, "you'll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It's yours, you'll recognize it as yours...and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else...This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. ..."

Writing and revision are two completely separate processes that require different mind-sets, and therefore shouldn't be done at the same time. While writing a book, a simple need to polish words, sentences, or paragraphs can become a complete rewrite. This isn't a productive way to work when you're attempting to finish the first draft of the book. An unfortunate side effect of revising, editing, and polishing your story while you're still writing it is that you don't get the necessary distance from it in order to be able to revise effectively. You need to enter the revision phase with fresh, objective eyes once the first draft of the book is finished. Only then can you see the story as it really is. I love what Stephen King says about this process: "I'm rediscovering my own book, and usually liking it. That changes. By the time a book is actually in print, I've been over it a dozen times or more, can quote whole passages, and only wish the damned old smelly thing would go away. That's later, though; the first read-through is usually pretty fine." 

If you're building a house, you wouldn't start painting before all the walls were up. You wouldn't put in carpet before the plumbing and wiring were done because you'd end up having to tear out the carpeting in order to get the necessary plumbing and wiring in where they should be. Paint and carpet are the polish of a completed room; they're final steps in dressing it up. In the same way, writers should concentrate on finishing a full draft of the book before endeavoring to do any revision, editing, or polishing. 

Next week, we'll start the process of applying writing elbow grease with Stage 1: Revising.

Happy writing! 

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Cohesive Story Building, Volume 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Setting Brain Boundaries

Here's an article by Stephanie Vozza about avoiding "self-inflicted stress" so we aren't "just reacting in panic mode all day long." Learning to "manage" our thoughts can help us work more efficiently because we won't feel overwhelmed. This essay, outlining principles set forth by Joe Robinson, author of WORK SMARTER, LIVE BETTER, addresses that "where did the day go?" feeling we often experience when we don't check off the items on our to-do list. If I'm at all typical, this sense of time running away, leaving the day's goals unaccomplished, is a predicament writers often face. The daily word count target isn't reached or the designated time set aside for writing drifts by without much to show for it.

The 4 Boundaries Your Brain Needs to Feel Less Overwhelmed

Small warning note: The above website apparently lets you read a page only once before insisting that you register. So, if you decide to read this article, finish it all at once. (I first encountered it in this past Sunday's newspaper.)

The four kinds of "management" to set boundaries for your brain: (1) Attention management, concerned with improving the performance of your working memory so you won't lose focus. (2) Interruption management, which is connected to impulse control. One point under this category suggests setting aside periods of time to be e-mail-free and phone-free, thus disposing of two big interruption sources right away. (3) "Barking" management, contrasting the brain with a barking dog. Dogs bark at disturbances such as another dog going by, but when the triggering incident stops, the dog stops barking. Our brains often keep reacting long after the stimulus ends. In other words, we get mired in "rumination." (4) Refueling management, giving your brain "a break so it can rest and refuel." Production goes up after twenty-minute breaks and even ten-minute breaks. This last precept feels counterintuitive to me. Granted, a few minutes of rest are welcome, but how can they increase production if you happen to be one of those people (like me) who takes a long time to get back into the flow after a lull? Marion Zimmer Bradley used to say that housekeeping was the perfect job for a writer, because it involves a lot of stopping and starting, and you can use the stopping bits for a few minutes of writing. Suppose you have ten minutes waiting for the oven to preheat, and you need most of those minutes just to re-start your writing brain? As important as refueling may be, this advice seems to contradict the second point.

One incisive quote from Joe Robinson: "We think because something's in our head, we've got to pay attention to it. We don't." Words to live by in dealing with both interruptions and pointless rumination.

Another article I happened to come across this past weekend offered suggestions for increasing efficiency by reordering the work day's priorities. To begin with, the author advises against checking e-mail and/or social media first thing in the morning. We can easily get caught up in the message stream, lose track of time, and glance up to discover prime working time has been frittered away. Another piece of advice, maybe counterintuitive for many of us, is to resist the impulse to "warm up" with easy tasks. I know I often take that approach. Instead, he says we should tackle the day's tougher agenda items first, while we're fresh. There's also a sense of accomplishment in getting them out of the way.

I find that if I put off writing in order to "clear the decks" of niggling little stuff first, I often don't get around to the current WIP until late in the day. In line with that article's advice, I do produce more words when I force myself to spend at least a few minutes writing (whether fiction, blog posts, or my monthly newsletter) before opening e-mail or checking off a list of routine, "easy" chores. Also, composing in fifteen- or twenty-minute chunks two or three times a day makes the process less arduous. Unlike the lucky writers who actually enjoy writing (such as Isaac Asimov), I find the first-draft stage slow and difficult, so any device to "trick" myself into generating prose helps.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Karen S. Wiesner: The Pick-up-the-Pace Ploy for Writers

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Pick-up-the-Pace Ploy for Writers

Based on COHESIVE STORY BUILDING (formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FICTION NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building}) 

While at one time in writing, it was popular to have long scenes. These days, shorter scenes are in fashion, and I feel there's good reason for that. If you want your book to be read swiftly, with pages flying, you can write one scene per chapter and keep those scenes short, with a single theme or purpose—this is an effective way to keep your readers from noticing they’re sitting in the real world with a book in their hands. In fact, your readers probably won’t even notice you're doing these things on a conscious level.

Short scenes accomplish several things:

Ø  In the most obvious sense, fairly short chapters allow the book to move along swiftly from one chapter to the next. Try reading a James Patterson thriller (and possibly his stories in other genres) if you want to see how this works in an almost shocking way. I won't deny that the brevity in these stories at times compromises dimensionality a little or a lot. However, if you want to see how pages can fly, you'll get that with his stories.

Ø  When chapters are short, there's generally a single focus. In other words, the scene has a singular purpose, a goal to achieve. The complication to the reader is minimal. He absorbs the premise easily and is ready to move on from that point when it's time. In the ideal that an author should continually be striving for, he'll get a hint of "future dimension" that will provide him with the eagerness to keep going.

Ø  Your reader is likely to read more in one sitting, since many will glance ahead to the next chapter when considering whether or not to stop reading for the time being. If the next chapter is short, he'll be much more inclined to read “just one more” chapter. Frequently, he won’t put the book down for several more short chapters.

Ø  Short scenes may produce more reviews that are likely to include comments like “page-turner,” “nail-bitter,” and “couldn’t put it down.” Who doesn't want that?

For example, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with the Pearl Earring has no specific chapters or scenes. However, the book is divided into four parts, each based on a year in the life of Griet, the main character. Each scene within those parts is very short—in most cases, no more than a page or two—and scenes are divided with a fancy curlicue rather than numbered sequentially. I read the book in one sitting, in less than seven hours. The short scenes flew, always leaving me panting for more from one to the next. The singular focus was within each of these unspecified scenes, along with a whisper of what was to.

The only book I've ever read that does the opposite of "short, focused scenes" and yet has the same effect is The Ruins by Scott Smith. There are absolutely no chapters and almost nothing to interrupt the flow. When a scene ends, he skips one line and moves directly into the next without actual chapter breaks or even asterisks to break things up. Somehow this makes for a book that I read from start to finish in a single sitting whenever I take it off my keeper shelf. I literally cannot put it down once I start it.

If you want to pick up the pace of your book, try this simple method.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Cohesive Story Building

Volume 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: Advice for New Authors

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Advice for New Authors

From CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

First, I don’t believe there are absolutes in writing. There are so many writing trends, no-no’s, and must-do’s. I admit I find most of them silly. The only rules are the ones you enforce yourself. Don’t let anyone else tell you differently. Here are seven pieces of advice for becoming a professional author:

1) Do your homework in learning to successfully navigate the extremely treacherous waters of trying to book writing and publishing. Don’t rely on anyone else to give you all the answers. Figuring out how all this works is your job and it’s vital that you learn all you can because you’re at the helm of your own career. Do you really want someone else who may or may not be trustworthy floating your boat? 

2) Learn how to use a critique. Get used to having your work picked apart ruthlessly by your peers now because I guarantee that even an editor who loves your work can rip it to shreds. And let's not even get into readers who live to destroy not only one book by an author by conceivably a whole career with their trolling. Develop a thick, tough skin before you get published, so you can handle it professionally when the time comes. But also keep in mind that an edit who’s rewriting your story the way he or she wants it isn’t helping you at all.

3) Even if--or more aptly, especially if--you're choosing the self-publishing route, good editors will make your books better, even if it feels like they’re destroying them in the process. Don’t assume a heavy edit makes you a bad author (and vice versa—a light edit doesn’t necessarily make you a good one either). One way or another, editing is part of the process.

 4) Don’t try to write what’s popular, what’s expected or what’s selling. How many more teenage vampire books do we need? Write what moves and inspires you, regardless of trends. In the same vein, don’t limit yourself to writing what you know. Honestly, I know nothing about what it's like to be a werewolf—but I love writing about them! Write the book of your heart. Be true to your story first. 

5) Develop self-discipline now, before your book is published. When you’re first starting out, it might work to write by the seat of your pants. A professional author knows the more efficient you are in the process of writing each book, the more momentum you build in your career because you can offer more high-quality books in less time. While not everyone can use a full-blown outline, some kind of a blueprint, however loose, is crucial. You can’t be a productive writer if you’re constantly going on blind treasure hunts, hoping that a story will eventually immerse from hundreds or thousands of pages of the written word (and may not). Be disciplined. Use a guideline instead of writing blindly and set goals for your writing so you're always moving forward with continuous momentum.

6) Be responsible for yourself as an author in as many aspects of your career as you can. I realized early on in my career that there was little a publisher could do for me that I couldn’t do just as well for myself. I try to make sure every book I turn in to an editor is of the highest quality (and ensure that my editors hardly have to do anything at all for me) so in that way I’m my own editor as well the author of the material. I can’t blame anyone else if I’m not disciplined or subpar. I’m responsible for my own success (or failure) in that way. Authors are also capable of designing quality covers with software and utilizing cover designer services available all over the internet.

7) There's a growing trend, especially with traditional publishers, for the author to "prove their worth" and become a social media star, if they aren't already, by doing all the promotion for every book they sell--in fact, often there's a requirement for the author to detail their aggressive marketing plans before a contract will even be offered. All of this means that most publisher don't do a whit of promotion for their authors (though, in my case, I got lucky with a publisher who's all over the social media blitz). Maybe it's true that authors can market their own books better than anyone else, but publishers need to do their part as well. In the treacherous waters the book industry has become these days, publishers have almost exclusively placed the weight of promotion solely on the author's shoulders in order to stay afloat in the shrinking marketplace. Many contracts signed these days force authors to promote in ways that may not be financially feasible for them (in that case, they probably had to forgo a contract altogether). Publishers have traditionally been the ones to make sure a book is available in all the formats readers use and to list the books at distributor websites. But publishers these days no longer want to be the ones to make the books move in those channels--and the publishers are the ones who can provide the biggest push and momentum. Without them, that means authors swim upstream right from the get-go. Because of this, it's not at all surprising that so many writers choose to self-publish or "indie publish" rather than deal with the drama and bad contracts that give them little or nothing in return for a piece of their soul and the absolute limits of their blood, sweat, and tears.

Make the rules for your own career as much as possible, but remember your first priority is to provide the best quality book you can that readers will not only want to pay to read but will feel is worth every penny they spent after they read it.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Karen S. Wiesner: Arrested Development

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Arrested Development 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner 

Character Plot Relationship Developmental Signs of Life 

Animated

Evidence of functionality, breathing, heartbeat, the spark of life. 

Living

Not simply existing and going through the motions but possessing fully developed external and internal conflicts. 

Interacting

Dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. 

Vitality and Voice

Three-dimensional character attributes. 

Engaged

Definable objective and purpose of being along with goals and motivations. 

"I misjudged you. You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development." ~Harvey to Cohn in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 

In the field of medicine and psychology, the term "arrested development" means a premature stoppage of physical or psychological development, or the cessation of one or more phases of the developmental process resulting in a lack of completion that may produce potential anomalies. Arrested development can be applied to many situations, including writing. It's something that happens often in fiction with the three core elements of every story--Characters, Plots, and Relationships (CPR)--becoming arrested in their development.

We live in a publishing era that can easily be viewed with growing concern given that the absolute requirement of developing CPR in a story is being sorely neglected in books made available for purchase. In the ideal, a reader wants to immerse himself in a glorious story that pulls him into a fictional world so realistic and populated with three-dimensional characters, plots, and relationships he never wants to leave. He's paid for that, after all, so why shouldn't he get it? Instead, he's saddled with a story that starts bad and only seems to be getting worse. Why would anyone keep reading? The author obviously didn't care to do it right. Despite the time and money invested in this endeavor, it's just easier to walk away. Whether subpar writing is done out of laziness, a lack of skill in crafting, or simple ignorance, having a reader drop a bad book and never come back to it (or to the creator) is the last thing an author should want or allow.

USING CPR {DEVELOPMENT} ON DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION 

Deep, multifaceted development of characters, plots, and relationships can only be achieved through three-dimensional writing, something I've written in-depth about in my writing reference Three-Dimensional Fiction Writing (formerly titled Bring Your Fiction to Life: Crafting Three-Dimensional Stories with Depth and Complexity). All of those concepts are crucial to character, plot, and relationship (which I'll call CPR often from this point on) development.

What makes a person alive? According to WebMD, the three organs that are so crucial to life that you'll die if they stop working are the lungs (breath), heart (blood and oxygen), and brain (functionality). The three work together and without them (or life support), a person is either comatose or deceased.

I would add a fourth component that may not bring around true death to live without: A person needs a soul to live and do more than simply exist--and that means there's an objective or purpose in being. Arguably, a lack of soul can steal all the joy out of living and/or never provide the "spark" that exemplifies life.

If you noticed the CPR Signs of Life Acronym Chart I included at the beginning of this article, we can certainly say that it's possible to see the animation in a character that provides evidence of functionality, breathing, heartbeat, and the spark of life. To truly be living, characters aren't simply existing and going through the motions. They possess fully developed external and internal conflicts. They're interacting in dynamic, realistic, and believable relationships. They have three-dimensional character attributes that give them both vitality and voice. Finally, they're engaged in what makes life worthwhile with definable goals and motivations.

Characters, plots, and relationships need to be breathing, blood and oxygen flowing through their veins in order to function, or they're in a vegetative state or just plain dead. The soul of the character is what turns an ordinary paper doll into a vibrant, memorable personality.

In fiction, the potential for zombies is only too common, and I don't simply mean zombie characters. Plots and relationships can be just as zombie-like. Who wants to read about something that's alive (i.e., not dead) but not really living either? Even in books about zombies, it's the heart-beating, breathing, functional characters, plots, and relationships that make the story come to life. (By the way, if your zombie is living--as in iZombie style--and not simply alive, it's not a true zombie by definition.) As we said, a soul--providing unforgettable character traits, conflicts, and interactions with a very definite "life spark" that makes a reader care and immerse himself in a story--is imperative to make the characters, plots, and relationships compelling.

CPR development is a two-step process:

1) Establishing: Foundation begins in plotting and planting the seeds of development for the CPR process right from the very first scene in a book. You wouldn't just plunk down a plant you want to flourish in an area where it won't get sun, rain, or the nutrients it needs to survive, would you? Plotting and planting are all about properly setting up before setting out, anchoring and orienting readers before leading them with purpose through your story landscape. That's something that needs to be done in every single scene of a book with the basic grasp of setup. The longer it takes for a reader to figure out where he is and what he's doing there, the less chance he'll engage with the story and agree to go along for the journey.

2) Progressing: The one thing a story can't and should never be is static. Development isn't something that stops with the foundational introduction or establishment of threads. Development keeps happening throughout a story. Every single scene that follows the first must show a strong purpose in developing, revealing and advancing characters, plots and relationships in a wide variety of facets. Progress must be made to push past the point of plotting and planting seeds to cultivating the core element "blooms" that pop up into the landscape in every scene. The only way to achieve three-dimensional development of characters, plots, and relationships is to actively take each opportunity to establish and advance the elements that--if properly sketched--should appear in an organic way along the path to telling the story. 

If your characters, plots, and relationships that make up each scene in your story are truly three-dimensional and properly developed and advanced, your book will be so vivid, readers will be haunted by the unforgettable, vibrant world conveyed through your words even after they finish reading.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html 

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor