There’s a fundamental fact we don’t talk about nearly enough:
Reading is interactive.
Very.
 
To the point where if we don’t take this into account, our writing can end up dead flat.
 
We’ve all heard “Show, don’t tell.” Yes, you should generally show us (i.e. describe the scene in such a way that we feel like we’re there, experiencing it) rather than tell us (using direct exposition) when it comes to important scenes.
 
But… it’s also extremely important not to show us (or tell us) everything. Because of the interactivity inherent in reading. The writer puts words on the page and the reader interprets them according to her background, experiences, and beliefs… and thus creates her own possible reasons for why certain things happened within the story. Which leads to educated guesses about what might be coming next, based on her assessment of the implications of the text so far.
 
We need to understand that all this is happening within the mind of the reader, and not expressly through the words we put on the page. (Sometimes, the best thing we can do is leave words off the page, as we’ll see in a minute.)
 
This “solving the micro-mysteries,” as I call it, is one of the main pleasures people get from reading fiction. This is most obvious with a literal mystery, of course. (Can I figure it out before the book’s detective does?) And SF/F is well-known for having authors hold certain explanations in abeyance, allowing the reader to figure things out largely through contextual clues.
 
But this concept also applies to almost every work of fiction, regardless of genre. Even in a so-called “normal” setting, like a realistic/contemporary novel or a romcom, this still applies.
 
Consider this scene:
It’s our protagonist’s first day on her new job. (Let’s call her Janet.) Her boss introduces her to a co-worker who will be showing her the ropes. (Brad.) Upon seeing Brad, Janet tells us Oh my God… he was the last person I ever wanted to see again. Then she smiles at him, saying, “Hi Brad. Nice to meet you!”
 
Then the scene ends, and we move to another part of the story.
 
Wait… what’s really going on here?
 
The reader doesn’t know for sure, but they’re curious so they start to formulate various possibilities…
 
Did Janet treat Brad poorly when they were younger and now she feels bad about it?
Did Brad crap on Janet at some point in the past and Janet never forgave him?
Did she have a thing for Brad and she showed it publicly, only Brad didn’t reciprocate?
Did something embarrassing happen to Janet in front of Brad and she’s mortified about it?
Or…???
 
And what’s with the subtext in Janet’s reply to Brad? Does Janet actually think that Brad doesn’t remember her? Or do they clearly know each other and Janet’s just doing this so the boss won’t know she already knows Brad? And why would that even matter?
 
The reader will carry this curiosity in the back of their mind as the story goes forward, until the whole truth eventually comes out (ideally in some sort of contextual situation where it adds dimension to the scene, vs. via an info-dump).
 
Now, imagine the book has the same scene as above (Janet being introduced to Brad as her co-worker who’s going to help her get started at her new job.) She thinks, Oh my God… if I never saw Brad again for the rest of my life, that’d be fine by me.
 
BUT… imagine the scene continues (via internal monolog from Janet):
I’d had a thing for Brad through high school, and when we were seniors he finally asked me to the Winter Formal. I was so excited, I bought a new dress and shoes. Then—on the day of—Brad called to tell me he was sick with strep throat. I asked if there was anything I could do for him and he said no, but I should go to the dance and enjoy it. I said I didn’t want to go without him, so I stayed home alone, feeling sorry for both of us.
 
The next morning my friend Sally informed me she’d seen Brad at a party the previous night, whooping it up with some girl she’d never met before. “They seemed mighty cozy,” she said. “Like, ‘get a room’ cozy.” The whole thing absolutely crushed me and I never spoke to Brad again. My self-esteem plummeted and I didn’t go on a single date all through college… I just kept my head down and did my work so I could graduate and get a job…
 
Besides the snooze-fest of telling us this instead of showing it via scenes, the real problem lies in giving us this information at all. At least at this point.
 
How much more intriguing might it be for the reader to formulate their own ideas as they read further into the book, building up their own theories about what happened as you (hopefully) add subtle clues via context as the story progresses, to the point where they feel fully invested in the story… almost like a co-author in a way?
 
The first key to doing this is simply assuming your reader is smart.
 
The second key is to quash the need to explain to the point where everything is crystal clear and there’s absolutely no doubt as to what’s happening. That way lies boredom for the reader, which is the exact opposite of what you want them to feel.
 
The third key is understanding & internalizing that you’re NOT “telling them a story.” You’re PRESENTING certain select scenes and actions and bits of dialog and inner monolog and body language and so on, with the ultimate goal of giving the reader enough nuanced information to figure out what the heck is happening in the story without some sort of deity coming down and simply telling them in no uncertain terms.
 
Which is exactly how real life works. There’s no one explaining everything that’s happening in our lives… we have to figure it out for ourselves, using things we pick up as we go along.
 
(Which is why humans have curiosity in the first place—it goes back a million years, rooted in survival. If we didn’t figure out where the tigers hung out—and avoided that place—we didn’t live long enough to pass along our genes.)
 
On some level, readers want to be allowed to apply this to the stories they read as well. Even young children want the fun of guessing what might be happening beyond the page turn of an engrossing picture book, and then get the satisfying feeling of confirmation (if they’re right) or the thrill of surprise (if it’s other than expected).
 
No one wants to be taken entirely out of the creative part of the equation… which is exactly what we do if we tell the reader everything we think they “need to know” upfront. They don’t “need” to be told anything… they just need to be presented with the right amount of information to permit them the opportunity to figure it out for themselves and get that little “aha!” of a mystery well solved.
 
So—regardless of genre—involve your reader in your work.
You’ll both be better off for it.
 

 
I was asked twice last week about the value of ideas. Specifically, what’s the relative importance of an idea for a book as compared to the writing of it?
 
A good idea is important to the creation of a good story, certainly. And the development of that idea into a series of plot events is also important (whether that happens explicitly on paper as an outline or within the head of the writer as they draft, depending on where they exist on the plotter-pantser continuum).
 
But I also believe both those aspects pale in comparison to the actual execution of the work. (We’ve discussed this earlier,  here .)
 
So… below is how I sometimes get people thinking about the non-trivial delta between (1) an idea, (2) its planning, and (3) its execution… and where each fits within the hierarchy of literary attributes.
 
You can implement this as a thought experiment (i.e. you “do it in your head,” and visualize the outcome) or you can actually do it and weigh the results. Either way, it can be interesting.
 
It’s a simple three step process…
 
1. Think of a scary scene.
 
2. Briefly outline the scene.
 
3. Write the scene in such a way that—even though they know it’s complete fiction—it will still manage to scare the crap out of the reader.
 
3.1 Options:  Or do the same with a scene that will make the reader fall head-over-heels in love with a character, or break their heart, or move them to tears.*
 
[*The critical point is to create within the reader the same thoughts and emotions—with all the attendant dopamine, oxytocin, and/or adrenaline—that occur when these events happen in real life.]
 
That’s the whole thing, about as succinctly as I can put it.
 
The funny thing is, many aspiring writers are taught to put a lot of emphasis on some combination of #1 and/or #2.
 
Because it’s pretty easy to think of story events.
 
And it’s not that difficult to outline them. And some may think that once they have a plan, it’ll be relatively simple to write it in a compelling manner. Which is a trap, because…
 
It turns out it’s really difficult to show those events in such a way that they actually feel real to the reader. (This is why Stephen King is a household name and worth zillions of dollars.)
 
Another possible way to visualize this paradigm, for the musically oriented…
 
1. Think up and hum a short, simple, nursery-rhyme-type tune.
 
2. Go to a keyboard, pick out the notes of the melody, and jot them down.
 
3. Go to an auditorium and play it on a violin such that it leaves the audience in tears.
 
Most people can do #1, in seconds.
Many people can accomplish #2, in a few minutes.
Very few people can accomplish #3. And those that do generally take years to get there.
 
I’m not making the point that writing is hard. Because that’s personal, subjective, and variable… sometimes it feels almost impossible and other times it flows like water.
 
I’m saying that in the hierarchy of writing skills, the execution (the actual writing) is significantly more difficult than either the inception or the planning of the work.
 
And—I would argue—significantly more important to the outcome.
 
Which means that this is where we might want to invest our time, practicing the actual craft that forms the foundation of our art.
 
Happy writing!
 

 
I’ve been thinking about the topic of technology rendering writers redundant* via the use of AI.
 
[*Spoiler alert: My assessment is this isn’t happening anytime soon. BUT… we have to be intelligent about it. Not the “auto-complete on steroids” that so-called artificial intelligence is based on, but actual, creative, self-aware intelligence.]
 
But first, let’s consider an analogous situation…
 
How do brick & mortar bookstores compete with the online behemoth?
 
Not on quantity (i.e. pricing or stock size)—that’s for sure. The Big A can temporarily price their books lower than cost and still stay in business (because books make up a small percentage of their overall business). And of course they can have millions of books in stock. It’s a mistake to even try to compete on quantitative grounds.
 
But on qualitative grounds, indie stores can absolutely compete—and win—against the internet giants. By offering things you can’t get online.
 
Read that last part again. It’s not about a zero-sum competition over a slightly better price or a slightly faster delivery or a bigger selection. It’s about the things they can’t offer. At all.
 
Online can’t offer in-person story time for the kiddos.
 
Or the “quiet book club” option, where people can read in the company of others without the requirement to interact.
 
Or all the traditional in-person book clubs, with some stores offering multiple clubs across several genres.
 
Or “educator nights” where they bring in a slew of local teachers and librarians for special deals and book talks on exciting upcoming releases, and often bring in the authors of those new releases.
 
Or those adorable “read to a dog” programs.
 
Or in-store author visits, where customers can chat with authors about everything from favorite books to writing to the publishing process. And come away with a personalized inscription in their new book, signed in front of them.
 
And most of all… how about the chance to personally interact with passionate booksellers who have deep knowledge of the books they carry (and all the other books they can get for you in a day or so) as well as their customers’ tastes? They can make literary recommendations via a time-honored interactive process (otherwise known as “conversation”) in a way no algorithm can ever come close to, and their in-store stock is typically a carefully curated selection aimed to pique the interests of their local customer base.
 
Once readers realize all the benefits of having a local bookstore, many of them are happy to pay a small amount more for the privilege of having an actual bookstore in their community.
 
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
So—for writers—the same reasoning applies.
 
You’re not going to beat AI on the number of characters or words or pages per day. Not even close. (They can crank out a multi-page “essay” in seconds. If you want to call it that.)
 
So you have to think like a bookstore, and compete on what AI can’t offer. Which isn’t all that complex, if you’re willing to do the work. You just continue doing what you’ve been doing ever since you first became a writer, with an emphasis on two things: (1) writing in a way that feels like actual lived experience to the reader so they make an emotional connection with the character and the book, and (2) making sure your line-level writing craft is at the very best of your abilities.
 
I’ve mentioned these things before (“Connection & Craft”), but they’re more important than ever if you want something that will stand out against the so-called “content” people can quickly crank out using these apps (which is only going to expand in the foreseeable future).
 
Here’s the dirty little secret: Most AI-written “stories” are nothing but synopses, bolstered by the random incursion of what the algorithm thinks is “writerly” writing. It sort of resembles what we think of as writing, but once you start reading, you quickly become aware that it’s horrid… almost to the point of being unreadable.
 
It’s like the app was developed by a drunk non-writer who got the fundamental dictum of fiction writing backwards, and they programmed the AI to “Tell, don’t show!”
 
Reading AI-generated fiction, we’re virtually never in scene. It’s a constant stream of exposition, propped up by the overuse of certain words like “delve,” “endeavor,” tapestry,” “elevate,” “explore,” and “embark.”
 
In other words—in a confluence of two capital writing crimes—AI primarily (1) summarizes the events of a story instead of placing us in the scene via the interiority of the POV character, and (2) over-uses adjectives, adverbs, and “writerly sounding” prose in general, in a poorly disguised attempt to have its prose appear as what some goofy tech-bro apparently thinks is actual professional writing.
 
(To quote the esteemed Elmore Leonard on this topic, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Or, as Stephen King put it, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”)
 
SO… the answer for writers is the same as for book shops – think quality vs. quantity.
 
Keep us in scene.
Keep us engaged.
Make us care… about your character and her story.
Don’t just draft, spellcheck, then “press publish.”
Write the very best story you’re capable of telling, then…
When you’re done: revise/rewrite/edit/polish/beta.
Repeat the above.
And again.
 
In other words, do the exact opposite of what AI does: Make it real. Make it great. Make it unique. Make it compelling.
 
Move us.
 
If you do this, there will always be readers who value your work over the $0.99 robot-produced, meaningless synopses coming down the pike.
 

Happy writing!
[Image credit: the amazing Fritz Lang]

 
I’ve slowly realized something over years of reading…
 
Everything else being equal, there often seems to be an inverse correlation between the length of time over which you read a book and your enjoyment of it.
 
Not the words-per-minute speed at which you typically read, but how many days/weeks/months it takes to finish the book.
 
I don’t think this is rocket science. When we re-open a book we’ve left for several days, it often takes us a while to re-connect with the characters and their situation. Sometimes we have to back up a bit to catch up, sort of like the ubiquitous “recap” most TV series have at the top of a new season. There’s a book I put aside a couple of months ago for admin reasons, even though it’s likely a very good book. (I really like the author, loved his previous book, and the part I did read was engaging.) I’m a few chapters in – 20 or 30 pages. I don’t want to shortchange the book nor my experience of it, so when I re-engage I’m going to have to start back on page 1.
 
I think the real cost is getting the whole vibe of the book back into your head before you can move forward with any serious engagement. This is similar to the “cost of transition” (discussed earlier) where changing POV or location or timeline causes the reader to have to get used to the new paradigm before becoming fully engaged with the story again, and too many of these can cause a reader to lose interest and put the book down.
 
Whereas when I read at least a moderate amount of a book each day, my brain recalls the story aspects from the day before almost instantly and bam, I’m back in the wonderful “movie in my head” feeling the best books can engender. This is significant in increasing a reader’s enjoyment, without a doubt.
 
Well, it works from the other direction also…
 
If “staying fully engaged” is important when reading, it’s an order of magnitude more important when writing. Because if you lose touch with your character’s voice for a while due to an extended lack of engagement with the story, you’re not just going to be a little less interested until you catch back up, but the book itself might suffer from it, perhaps permanently.
 
I’m not a fan of prescriptive advice such as, “You must write every day!” Everyone’s life is different—with different priorities. (And as a practical matter, I don’t know a single writer who writes every day.)
 
But I often do say, “Try to write regularly… whatever that means for you.” Because that’s how you keep the story in your subconscious… the source of much of the really good stuff.
 
And I also say, “Try to make contact with your story most days, if you can.” Which doesn’t mean “write every day.” It means if you can’t write that day, maybe go back and line edit your last chapter. Or perhaps read through your last few chapters. Or have a little “ponder, plan, and plot” session. Or, if none of this is possible, maybe you can simply think about your story as you do other low-concentration activities (commute to work, wash the dishes, walk the dog, mow the lawn, take a shower, etc.). All of these—even just day-dreaming about it for ten minutes as you lay in bed prior to falling asleep—will help keep your story in your brain, keeping you in touch with not only the plot events, but your character and her voice… perhaps the most important aspect of all when it comes to creating compelling stories that connect with readers.
 
And as a bonus, I think you may find your subconscious rewarding you for this “constant feeding of the brain” with some really interesting, compelling, emotionally-evocative ideas for your work.
 
Take care of your muse, and it will take care of you.

 
Among people training to run a marathon (especially those attempting to run one for the first time) there is a saying that carries a lot of wisdom: Respect the distance. (See here for a post about me literally applying this to a group of first-time marathoners… as well as to writers.)
 
And all the clichés around this are true: A novel is a marathon, not a sprint. Take it one step at a time. Don’t think about the whole thing, focus on the work in front of you at the moment. Etc.
 
But… “Respect the distance” also applies to the writing life in general.
 
Which is funny in light of how “Get Published Now!” is also the flavor-of-the-month when it comes to hot aspirations these days… both IRL and on social.
 
The irony is that if ever there was a long game, writing is it. It almost seems like the world’s worst activity to decide to “just do.” Right up there with “I think I’ll just buy a bassoon and be playing for the symphony this summer.”
 
First off, there are all the years of pre-writing training you’ll need to do to avoid (a) reinventing the wheel, and (b) writing badly. This pre-writing regimen is sometimes known by its technical term: reading. (Writing without a steady diet of reading behind you is analogous to aspiring to be a musician when you’ve never listened to music.) Besides a background of reading broadly and deeply, you’ll also want to read pretty extensively in your chosen genre (which—if you’re smart—is also your favorite genre, so you may have a leg up on this).
 
Then there is the small matter of learning the craft. I know we all learned how to put words on the page in grade school, but learning to write effective fiction is a completely different pursuit, similar to learning to play the violin or paint portraits or sculpt a figure from a block of marble. There is typically a lot of “student work” that comes before the work people will actually pay you for, and (if you’re like me or any other writer I know) you’ll likely end up writing a bunch of stuff that probably won’t see the light of day before you finally get a “yes” from an editor at a publishing imprint. All of which is fine, because that’s how we learn the craft—it’s our practice. But if we’re pinning our hopes on our first student-level efforts making publishers climb over each other for the chance to put us into print, we might end up a little disappointed.
 
“Respect the distance” means respect the craft, respect the practice, respect the artform, respect the journey.
 
And the best way to do that is to love the practice. Love the craft, the journey, the artform. Even love the distance.
 
Imagine a young couple, getting married. They (hopefully) aren’t thinking, I can’t wait until we’re retired and we can do whatever we want. No, they should enjoy every day they’re together and view it as a gift.
 
So don’t just focus on the destination. If we want to get there in one piece, with our artistic vision (and mental health) intact, we should do our best to enjoy every step along the way.
 
Yes, it’s a long game. And it’s dead serious—at least at times—and hard work. But it’s also play… it’s art… it should be something we love.
 
Being a writer isn’t something you do.
It’s something you are.
For the long term.
 
Respect the distance.

 
So just this morning I listened to a podcast where a well-published novelist told a story we’ve heard variations of before… her last few books hadn’t sold very well, her editor thought the latest book she’d turned in (under contract) wasn’t very good, and they wouldn’t be publishing it. And when asked by the distraught author about what could be done to make it better, the editor basically said, “Nothing.”
 
The author was understandably devastated, but after a lot of stress, depression, and tears, she heard about a young editor at another house who might be looking for something like what she’d written. So she submitted it there, and the new editor acquired it. At some point during the process the author told her new editor that her old house didn’t think it would sell. The editor laughed and said, “Oh, it’ll sell!”
 
The punchline: It came out and was an instant NYT Bestseller. (Yay!)
 
The follow-up: The original publisher then contacted the author’s agent and asked if the author wanted to come back. (The agent politely responded in the negative… duh.)
 
The dirty little secret: This has happened to more authors than you might think.
 
Part of it’s that even people working at major houses aren’t immune to the problem of conflating sales with talent. Part of it’s that being able to do a good job of editing a book—on a craft level—is very different from being able to prognosticate whether or not a given book will succeed in the market. (The ones I know of who can do both are typically very successful in their careers.) And finally, editorial acquisitions are sometimes influenced by the editor’s personal likes and dislikes as much as craft-centric factors.
 
The main point: This stuff is very subjective, so—for good mental health if nothing else—we should try to separate our feelings about our work (and ourselves) from the vagaries of the acquisition process. Easier said than done, but there are a few ways to re-cast it that may help…
 
[The sub-point: editors matter! Having someone who truly gets your work and what you’re trying to say with it is so important… not just in getting a book deal, but in having a successful book once it’s out in the world.]
 
It’s not all luck, but the “fortune factor” certainly plays a part. Mostly in getting your work to the right person at the right time. Which is why (a) being aware of the industry, and (b) long-term persistence are both important factors in achieving success (along with the actual writing, of course).
 
When someone passes on your work, it may simply be that she’s not the right person for it at that time. You rolled the dice on her and you crapped out. So what? If you were at a casino-night fundraiser and you got snake eyes instead of a 7 or 11 at your first table, would you say, “I must be a terrible gambler! I’m quitting!”…? No, you’d likely recognize the randomness of the outcome and move on to the next game.
 
I’m not saying it’s always a case of “It’s not us, it’s them.” Sometimes there may be a fundamental craft issue with our writing (and there are ways to tell, but that’s another post). But it’s helpful to understand and internalize the truth that even when our writing is well-crafted, pro-quality work, there are going to be agents and editors who will pass on it. Lots of them. Most of them, most of the time, to be honest. For all the reasons discussed above, and because what they’re looking for may change as the market changes… and as they change. If you peruse enough #MSWL listings, you’ll see some pretty arbitrary criteria at times. (“Occasionally looking for books featuring large felines. Stories about panthers or tigers are okay. But no leopards.”)
 
What if someone told you: “A poorly-written manuscript will very likely never get published, whereas a really well-written one probably will… assuming you’re smart about where/when to query it, work diligently at the process, and have ten truckloads of persistence.”
 
Would this change your approach?
 
If you internalize the above belief, and if you have good reason to believe you have a strong manuscript (emotive, well-crafted, voicey, with unforgettable characters), then the outcome of any single query or submission becomes significantly less perilous. Because your plan is simply to keep at it—working as smart and as hard as you can—until you achieve the desired result.
 
I once heard an agent say, speaking about her view on publishers, “They can tell me no, but they can’t tell me I’m wrong…”
 
There’s a lot of wisdom there. Yes, they can pass on your manuscript. But they can’t tell you your book will never succeed, or that you’re wrong to try, or that you shouldn’t believe in it. And they can’t keep you from turning around and submitting that same manuscript to their competitors.
 
One of whom may smile knowingly and say, “Oh, it’ll sell!”
 
 
Happy persisting!

 
Writing a novel is sitting down and telling yourself a story you really need to hear.
 
It’s that simple. Not to be conflated with ‘easy’ - two different things entirely. But yes, simple.
 
Simple because it takes a lot of the “industry research” aspect out of what should be a personal, creative, emotion-driven decision.
 
Instead of trying to discern what’s currently ‘hot’—and then performing some sort of magical thinking to determine what’s still going to be hot in three or four years—you simply use the north star of: What do I really want to write next?
 
And then do that.
 
I’ve made up a lot of bedtime stories (like, a thousand or so, as discussed here). Writing a novel is a similar process only at a much bigger and more complex scale, over a much longer period of time. But the commonality is that the emotional driver as you go through the process—whether a 10-minute story or a 500 page novel—is basically: If I were in the middle of this what would I want the next move to be, as an engaged reader?
 
As implied in the opening line, the real goal is to write in such a way that you—as the author—are totally wrapped up in the story, heart and soul.
 
I firmly believe there are massive benefits to this level of emotional engagement for the writer.
 
When it’s going well, writing a novel feels like very much like reading a really good book. When you’re really immersed in a great book, you think about it when you’re away from it and you can’t wait to get back to it because you can’t wait to see what happens next.
 
It’s the “Can’t wait to see what happens next!” part that drives the writing of good fiction. In a sense, you really are telling yourself a story… a story in which you’re totally immersed.
 
And it’s the “Tell yourself a story” that I think might just be the key to the whole thing. I see a fair amount of people who seem to be driven by the belief that they “need to write something the market wants.” As we’ve discussed before, trying to follow a trend in publishing is problematic in the extreme, for temporal reasons among others*.
 
[*TL;DR: The books currently splashed across endcaps at B&N were acquired two years ago. It’ll take you a year to write/revise/polish something similar; months to query; more months on sub to get it acquired; 18 to 24 months from acquisition to pub day. Do the math.]
 
BUT… if you instead tell yourself a story that you truly want & need to hear, you’ll be fully invested… not just plot-wise, but emotionally… to the point where the characters become real and you actually, deeply care about them… which is the only way to get agents and editors and readers to care about them… which, ultimately, is the only way to get your book splashed across those coveted endcaps.
 
It's like perusing the stacks at your favorite indie bookshop, thinking, Hmm… what am I craving? What am I in the mood for? What do I really want to read? Except you’re browsing your own imagination, and you’re transposing the object of that sentence from read to write. But artistically, the process is almost identical.
 
You’re window shopping in your mind’s eye. And you shouldn’t be concerned with buying what’s on sale—you should buy what you really want!
 
Happy shopping!
 

 
The Pages
 
As we discussed last time, the sole purpose of a query letter is to get the agent (or editor) to read your pages.
 
And once they’ve moved on to your sample, their decision on whether or not to move forward will depend solely on their perception of said pages*.
 
[*Assuming you’re a debut novelist—things change a little when you have a track record, and the process is different with nonfiction.]
 
And to that point, at a recent conference three agents on a panel were asked, “How long does it typically take you to determine if you’re going to pass on a manuscript?” The answers were, respectively, “around one paragraph,” “maybe two paragraphs,” and “usually one page.”
 
All of which might lead one to ask, “How can they even tell what the book’s about by reading the first page?” And the answer, of course, is that they can’t. They use this methodology because to them, the overall plot* is immaterial if the manuscript doesn’t also have (1) an interesting/engaging/compelling voice which makes a connection with the reader, and (2) sentence-level writing craft that makes the story feel like real, lived experience to the reader. (IOW, the top priority is emotional connection, requiring both voice and craft.)
 
[*Don’t misread me--plot is super important, and if the writing and voice are both up to snuff they will of course read the whole thing – multiple times - and gain a deeper understanding of the scaffold behind the story. But #1 and #2, above, have to be there before they consider #3.]
 
So… this gives us some good guidelines about what should and should not be in our opening pages (and in the rest of our pages, for the most part). Some thoughts on how to implement this…
 
 
*Stay in scene. (This is the overall thing to keep in mind, and the next five or six bullets will augment this concept.) Try to have your character doing something. It doesn’t need to be running from a monster. It could be having a conversation with her best friend about their weekend plans. But we need to see it, not be told about it in a summary way… which means it’s best if she isn’t sitting by herself ruminating for ten pages. Related to that…
 
*Voice and Pace are paramount. To that end…
 
*Avoid over-explaining. Many newer writers feel the reader needs to know all the backstory before moving forward, when the exact opposite is true*. Instead, plant “curiosity seeds”… those little things that make the reader think, “Now, what does that mean?” and compels them to keep reading.
 
[*Andrew Karre, executive editor at Dutton/Penguin, says: “Valuing information over intrigue, especially in first chapters, is a rookie mistake. Where the beginnings of novels are concerned, I value intrigue over information, feeling over knowing, magical confusion over mundane clarity.”]
 
*Avoid flashbacks in the early pages. We’ve discussed the nuances of flashbacks earlier, as well as mentioning their danger, especially in your early pages. (In brief, if the flashback is for explain-y reasons, probably better to let the info come about organically - in small bites - instead. Or put the flashback later, when the reader is more familiar with the character and setting.)
 
*Avoid head-hopping early on. We’ve talked before about what I call the ‘cost of transition.’ Much like with flashbacks, it costs in terms of reader engagement every time you ask them to transition to another time or place or into a different character’s point-of-view. Remember--you know your character and their entire story, but at this point in the book the reader is still trying to get to know them… so give them a chance to do that before you suddenly change things.
 
*Avoid excess exposition. I hate saying ‘Show, don’t tell’ because it’s too reductive, but a significant part of ‘staying in scene’ is that we feel like we’re there with the character, going through whatever she’s going through. And telling us all about the situation (i.e. excess exposition) is so much less immediate than experiencing it with the character. Most of what you want to tell us should be available through context, or you can feed it to us in small bites later.
 
*And especially, avoid expository dialog. Giving the reader info through dialog (often via having two characters talk about something they both know… or should know) throws the reader out of the story. (“As you know, Bob, our estranged father was a paleontologist who was trying to bring back pterodactyls for personal transportation…”)
 
*Avoid clunky clichés. Unless you’re writing a parody of a bad 80’s romance novel, avoid having your character look in the mirror and tell us what she sees as a way of describing herself. Avoid beginning with your character waking up after a questionable night with the sunlight “stabbing through her eyelids like the talons of a million flaming vultures.” (Avoid starting your novel with your character waking up, period, unless necessary.)
 
*Avoid purposely using fancy “writerly” writing to try and make an impression on the agent/editor. It’ll make an impression, but probably the wrong one. It’s generally less transparent and less immediate—making the reader feel further from the scene—than using declarative sentences. As Elmore Leonard said, If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
 
*Same with blocky conversations. Harlan Ellison once looked at a manuscript for all of two seconds and said, “The dialog’s off.” He pointed to a sample page—which had large, solid blocks of one person speaking and then another person replying—and said, “That’s not how people talk. They don’t make long speeches to each other, it’s a back-and-forth thing, with plenty of white space.” If you want the agent or editor to gobble up your early pages, I’d advise leaving the lengthy pontificating for the op/ed pieces.
 
*Transparency is your friend. Just as with overusing metaphors and similes, using a lot of adjectives and adverbs will generally weaken the sentence-level writing. The whole goal is to not throw the reader out of the scene, and anything that distances the reader from the character and the scene is contrary to that goal.
 
*Beware the wild attribution. Seriously. There are very few instances where the best/most transparent choice of attribution is something other than “said*.” There is nothing that will throw someone out of a story quicker than having a character “exclaim” or “utter” or—in a double sin—“utter angrily.” Yes, there are cases where we don’t want to use the same word twice in close proximity, but “said” is transparent to the reader, almost like a period at the end of a sentence.
 
[*Elmore Leonard again: Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue, and never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.]
 
*Don’t over attribute. There are some mechanics which will help with this:

• If you’re going to have dialog between two people, get them alone in the scene. (If you have more than two, you have to identify each speaker for virtually every line.)
• Stick with “said” as an attribution, but…
• Feel free to use a character action instead. [She took a sip of coffee. “He didn’t get home until midnight.”] Pretty clear the coffee drinker is making the statement. It’s clunky to add “she said” after the statement, and even worse to add “she said, agitatedly.”
• Speaking of the above, don’t use the name of the emotion to describe a character with that emotion. Instead of “she said, angrily,” you should show us her demeanor with actions/observations.
• When writing a back-and-forth dialog, you only need to attribute every three or four lines (so we don’t lose track of who’s who within the exchange) but this can be aided by action beats, or even better, by clues from the context of the dialog.

 
If you take care of these mechanics, your dialog will read better, the pace will feel brighter, and the exchange will (hopefully) feel real and not throw the reader out of the story. Speaking of mechanics…
 
*Pay attention to nuts and bolts. A typo on pg. 3 isn’t going to sink you, but three typos and a grammatical blunder on the first page very well may. You want them to feel like they’re in the confident hands of someone who understands the craft. This doesn’t mean you have to have perfect SPG (Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar), but you have to know when you’re solid and when you’re on shaky ground, and if you’re unsure you have to get it checked by someone who does know.
 
*Follow the submission rules. If they ask for the first five pages, don’t give them nine pages because “that’s where the scene ends.” If they ask for the first ten pages, don’t give them pages 50 through 60 because you think that’s the strongest chapter. But use common sense. If you think your epilog is too slow, start your sample with pg. 1 of chapter 1. (No worries—if she asks for a full, send her the whole thing. She won’t ding you for it. But maybe that’s a sign the epilog could be cut after all…?) I’d recommend having samples of common request lengths (5/10/20) all polished and edited for maximum value at their given length, lined up and ready to go.
 
Remember, the goal of the early pages isn’t to get them (agent/editor) to understand your entire book (or your character’s background or the details of your worldbuilding). It’s to get them hooked on your character, her voice, and her journey—all via the quality of your sentence-level writing—to the point where they’re dying to read further.
 
Just as the singular task of the query is to get them to turn to your pages, the job of your sample pages is to NOT give them a reason to put it down, but to compel them to want more.
 
Happy submitting!
 

 
The query.
 
It’s important. But…
 
No one ever got a book deal from a query.
 
Seriously. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement but with today’s focus on “the query” as the be-all and end-all of becoming published, it might take a few by surprise. But I stand by it—no agent or editor ever read a query letter and said, “This is such a great letter! Let’s send them a contract, this minute!”
 
So as a follow-up to our previous post I thought it might be worth discussing the concept of: What does a query actually do?
 
There is one primary job, but first let’s break it into a few sub-tasks…
 
1. It lets them know the meta-data around your book, so they can quickly assess if they even want to consider it. If an agent’s MSWL clearly states “No kidlit” and your query starts with “My middle-grade novel is…” they’ll delete it on the spot and move on to someone who can follow basic instructions.
 
2. It lets them know if—at a minimum—you possess the basic writing skills to construct a common-sense, readable, compelling cover letter. (As one newer agent recently said, “If you can write a coherent query letter it automatically puts you ahead of 90% of the other querying writers.” And as agent Erik Hane [from the ‘Print Run’ podcast] has said more than once, “A query letter is just a business email.”) Because if you can’t, there’s no point in looking at your pages even if all the meta-data is on point, right?
 
3. Besides giving them the pitch for your manuscript, it lets them know if you know the important highlights of your book… the character, the setup, the central conflict, and the stakes. If you can clearly delineate these things to them, it gives them reassurance you know something about crafting fiction, and…
 
4. It lets them know if what you’re offering is in their wheelhouse. If they’re interested in book club fiction about family drama and your pitch starts with “My 80,000 word upmarket women’s novel follows our thirty-year old protagonist who left home the day she graduated from high school but now has to return to her wildly dysfunctional family because she just got word that…”, then the agent is likely to think: This sounds like my jam, and turn to your pages.
 
With the above in mind, there are a few simple ways to concoct your query. A common one is some version of the “Hook, Book, Cook” format, which basically goes as follows…
 

• Open with why you’re querying this particular agent. What connects you to her? (Perhaps her MSWL listed something like your manuscript? Perhaps she represented a book you loved, and you think your new work is in a similar vein? Perhaps you heard her speak at a conference and something she said clicked with you?)

 

• Give the metadata around your book. (Genre; sub-genre; word count; etc.)

 

• Give comps for your work. (Two is fine, three max. They should be recent-ish. They should be somewhat known, but not crazy-popular. No “It’s Harry Potter meets Twilight!” It’s okay if one is a film or TV property, if it’s in the current zeitgeist. Do not tell her how good your book is, how funny it is, how literary it is, etc. That’s her job to decide that.) Then…

 

• Give the hook. (A brief line that will sum up what it is about the book that makes it compelling. A sentence or two.)

 

• Pitch the book. (A pitch--not a synopsis—outlining the central character, her main conflict, and the stakes involved. Do not list every character and outline all the plot points. A couple of paragraphs is fine here. Pro tip: Read the pitches on the back covers of similar books to get an idea of how these are worded.)

 

• Tell them about the cook. (A very brief bio, listing any relevant publishing credits. If you have none, that’s fine but no need to mention it. Also list any relevant experience… if the book is about capturing wild zebras and you were a pro zebra wrangler in Kenya, she’ll want to hear about it! But otherwise, no need to mention your education or professional accolades if they don’t relate to the book.)

 
The entire query should be the equivalent of a one-page business letter. (Shoot for under 400 words, shorter being better. If you can cut something and it doesn’t detract from the desired outcome then by all means trim it!)
 
About that desired outcome, always keep in mind the singular objective of your query letter:
It leads to the agent/editor reading your sample pages.
 
That’s all. But assuming you’ve done your job with crafting your story, that’s enough.
 
No matter how great your query is or how much time you spent poring over it, if they turn to your pages and they don’t fall in love with (a) the voice, and (b) the actual writing itself, it’s almost certainly going to be a pass. But a straight-forward query (as long as it tells them enough to get them to read your pages) can absolutely lead to what you’re looking for.
 
As I’ve mentioned before, the query is the taxi or rideshare that took you to an important job interview. Yes, it’s important to get to the interview on time and in one piece, but once you’re in the room with the panel, the vehicle that got you there is immaterial.
 
So by all means, have a good query that places you and your work in the best light. But don’t spend an inordinate amount of time and anxiety trying to concoct the perfect query. There is no such thing. Put most of your efforts into what really matters, the thing they will ultimately say yes or no to… the pages.
​Which we will discuss next time.
 
Happy querying!
 

 
…so let’s not make it worse.
 
Let's talk process.

​Emerging writers are stressing out in record numbers, often needlessly.
 
We’ve talked before about the whole “ Theory vs. Practice ” dichotomy, and how there can be a difference between how the conventional wisdom assumes things are and how they really are. In my observation this gap is getting wider almost daily, largely due to social media.
 
If one were to get their writing/publishing info from places emerging writers hangout online (I’m looking at you, Writer Twitter) then they’d likely have a warped view of how all this works.
 
(There’s a similar disconnect between what the online CW would have us believe the query process is and what it really is. But that’s a post for next time…)
 
The reason I mention all this is I’m assuming you’re a writer who loves the craft, who writes from your core, who pours your soul into your work, and who wants to find a process (both for writing and for publishing) that gets you where you want to go… ideally without a lot of dead ends and wasted time.
 
One irony is that the ideas you see being promoted online almost universally promise to save you time… when in fact the majority of people I know—or know of—who try to use these methods seem to take longer to actually arrive at a submission-worthy manuscript, let alone have their work published.
 
And the sad part—when you look at the gap between what people think authors do and what most working authors actually do—is that the methodologies that many authors use are generally much simpler and have fewer variables than the so-called ‘online conventional wisdom.’
 
So let’s compare and contrast. (Keeping in mind that there is no ‘one true way,’ and I’m not saying that these ‘real world’ methods represent every working writer. Just that many authors I know use something analogous to them. IRL this stuff is on a continuum, of course.)
 
Starting with the writing itself… Social media would have you believe that before you begin writing you need to have a formula or system or structure, containing all the required story beats. (These are available as books, or on websites, or in seminars, or in video form. Lots of this is scattered about the interwebs, but there are plenty of people who will be happy to take your money in exchange for compiling the information for you.)
 
Then you construct an outline, making sure you have all the approved beats in all the approved locations. And you build this whole thing using writing-specific software that will help you ‘structure your story’ and let you move big chunks of story around in wholesale fashion until you finally arrive at an order of events that theoretically has all the right stuff in all the right places.
 
Then you take your “draft zero” and dig into it, turning your roughly-filled-in outline into readable prose after you’ve done a major structural overhaul (using the story-centric software, which you may have studied via an online workshop since the learning curve is pretty steep).
 
Then you track and save all the various revs you end up with as you make revisions, each stored as a separate doc. Because you never know when you might want to go back to a previous version and cut/paste a specific chunk into your current rev. And of course each chapter is a separate document, and you also keep a file on each chapter (also a separate doc) delineating what happens therein, as well as what each character either did or learned in order to further the plot. All of these are numbered in a coherent fashion (i.e. Ch.7.rev.3.2.notes) so that you can access any of them at any time, should it be necessary.
 
Then when you finally feel like you might have all the scenes in your story arranged in the correct order, you compile all the separate chapter docs into one uber-document and export it to a Word doc so you can have it available for beta readers or to send out to an agent if/when you get the much-sought-after, vague-tweet-worthy event: the legendary full request. (Although if your betas have structural suggestions you may find yourself ungrouping the manuscript back into its original components and re-juggling things all over again, then re-compiling it into another full manuscript for Round 2, etc.)
 
On the other hand…
 
For the most part, many working authors I know or know of basically do something resembling this: They get (and develop in their minds) an idea they find really compelling. They make some notes. Or not. They open a word-processing document. They write the book, referring to the ideas in their head and/or the notes they created before starting… or they might write the first few chapters and then pause/plan/plot/ponder and make a few notes about the next phase of the story once they know their character and setting and setup a little better.
 
As they write, they typically have one primary doc containing the manuscript in progress. When they reach the end of a chapter they insert a page break, hit return half-a-dozen times, enter “Chapter 14” or whatever then drop down a couple of lines and keep writing. All one doc. (In TNR 12pt. double-spaced with 1” margins, because duh.) Maybe with a second doc containing notes, although I know a couple of writers who just put their “aha!” ideas at the end of the primary doc and keep pushing them along as they write and either use them or delete them by the end of the book.
 
If at any point during the initial drafting they happen to go back and re-read some previous pages or chapters and they find something clunky, they often just make a quick edit on the spot without saving the earlier version as a separate rev or anything. (The first time I mentioned that I did this—while I was presenting to a writer’s group—I remember a woman up front literally putting her hands to her face in the ‘home alone!’ gesture. In my defense, the saying is “Kill your darlings,” not “Have a giant memorial service for each one,” right?)
 
The same applies during revisions. Unless it’s a major structural rewrite, many working authors doing line-level revisions will revise directly in the original doc, not worrying about saving each earlier version.
 
I think a side benefit of doing this—beyond avoiding strangling yourself with multiple saved revisions—is that it teaches you that none of your text is so precious that it can’t be improved. It also teaches you to have confidence in your authorial vision… if there’s clearly a way to rephrase something that’s better/tighter/more compelling, trust your judgement, make the change, and move on.
 
Then, after multiple rounds of revise/edit/polish—when they feel it’s as good as they can make it on their own—they’ll send it to their agent or editor… with the full knowledge that their agent or editor will have ideas of their own on how to make it even better. Which is all to the good, as I’ve never seen a work that couldn’t be improved via thoughtful feedback followed by further revision.
 
TL;DR: Many working authors follow something roughly analogous to the following…
*Get idea, develop it.
*Make notes (or not).
*Open a doc.
*Write the book.
*Revise/edit/polish.
*Repeat until happy.
*Submit.
 
90% of getting published depends on having a really strong manuscript, so put your time there… into (1) developing your craft, then (2) executing it on the page, and then (3) revising until it’s absolutely as good as you can make it.
 
Stories that will move a reader (including an agent or editor) aren’t ‘assembled,’ like some sort of paint-by-numbers thing. They’re written in such a way that they make an emotional connection with the reader. And almost all of that comes from inside your head, not some formulaic external process.
 
So I would suggest not overthinking it, and not making it any harder than it needs to be. Writing is hard enough without feeling you have to attach a bunch of additional process-related stuff to it. (Unless you want to, of course. You do you.)
 
Happy writing!

 
One of the many things copyeditors do is check the grammar and usage of your character’s dialog, making sure everything is consistent and correct. And when they make a correction to something (specifically, something said by a character or something in interior monologue—which in a 1st person novel is virtually the whole manuscript) and the correction doesn’t reflect what I want the voice to say, I write “Stet, for voice*” in the comments, and they get it.
 
[*Stet is a common CE comment—it’s Latin for ‘Let it stand.’ And ‘for voice’ means we’re leaving this as-is because it represents a character’s authentic voice.]
 
Same with the ubiquitous “friend w/English degree” or your MFA neighbor or whoever you have read your manuscript to make sure everything is “correct”… whatever that means. Except there’s a chance (a good chance, in my experience) they may not fully get the ‘stet, for voice’ concept, and in the desire to make sure everything’s “legal” the aspiring author may likely go along with the ad-hoc recommendations.
 
Which can be dangerous… because correct is not always best. Especially in fiction.
 
Strunk & White-style grammar may not be the same as the way your specific character—with their background, age, and education—might really talk. And having your character speak with perfect, college-professor-level diction is probably going to grab the reader’s attention… in the worst way.
 
Because it doesn’t ring true in most cases. And ‘ringing true’ is a necessity when you want readers to relate to your character as though he/she were a real person. (And you definitely want this, if you want your book to resonate with readers.)
 
Dialog can be tricky. You generally don’t want to exactly replicate real verbal exchanges—with all the ums and uhs and ahhs and you-knows and incomplete and/or incorrectly structured sentences and run-on verbiage, etc. BUT… you also don’t want your characters to speak perfectly, as though they’d written out everything they were going to say and then did a deep edit on every sentence, making it “perfect” before saying it in what is supposedly realistic, unrehearsed, actual, you know, conversation.
 
(Let alone having your characters pass on information to the reader disguised as dialog which the other character likely already knows. This type of “As you know, Bob” exchange is clunky in the extreme and there are so many better ways to convey the information, including just having a snippet of dialog and then having the character tell us via internal monologue some of the non-stated information. Or suppress the need to explain everything and let the reader figure it out via context down the road.)
 
There’s a balance. We want our dialog to feel like real off-the-cuff human speech while not totally replicating the overly-padded content of actual dialog… and we want the dialog to convey something important to the story and help it move forward, whether that’s information or character development (or, ideally, both). But what it very likely won’t be is grammatically perfect. (Keeping in mind the great Elmore Leonard’s dictum: “Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly,” lest we error on the side of clunky, corny, or outright stereotyping.)
 
And while the concept of “Stet, for voice” obviously applies to dialog in the micro, it also—in the macro—applies to your writing in general.
 
We’ve discussed the concept of “voice” before (here) but it’s important to understand that the book’s voice—whether the character’s or the narrator’s, if applicable—might be the single quality that most affects the reader’s pleasure (or lack thereof) on a page-by-page basis.
 
Yes, the plot takes shape as we move through the book, but the voice is right there in every paragraph, every sentence, every word we read.
 
And if the voice doesn’t ring true, if it doesn’t compel us to read on, if it doesn’t make us connect with the character on an emotional level, then the plot probably won’t matter… simply because the reader may not make it to the end.
 
But if the voice grabs us and pulls us into the story and makes us care about the character and what happens to them, we’ll probably follow it no matter what.
 
SO… don’t give up what makes your book unique (your character with their own specific voice) simply because they don’t always utter the King’s English.
 
This doesn’t mean anything goes… that you can have your character speak in a wildly inconsistent manner, that the character’s voice can be a total mismatch for their personality, that you can sling slang all over the page and not have it throw readers out of the story.
 
You still need to be in charge of the character’s voice, and the decisions you make regarding it need to be made with an eye toward the overall effect on the reader. (Developing this sensibility to where you apply it almost unconsciously is a perfect example of the level of craft that comes from practice, and knowing when you’ve overdone it—and are willing to revise it back toward the norm—is yet another level of experiential aptitude. As is a willingness to listen to cognizant feedback about these things… from your editor or elsewhere.)
 
Ideally, your character’s voice—and how you choose to portray it—is another tool for your creativity to express itself when it comes to crafting something that’ll have a compelling emotional impact on the reader. A powerful tool.
 
Don’t give up this power in the name of perfection.

​ 
These things seem to come in waves. I did a little tour last fall (for 9:09 – maybe three weeks) which—along with a number of in-store signings—included half a dozen school and library type events, so I developed a basic presentation that would work for most of them with a few tweaks.
 
But then we went out on a larger/longer tour this spring which—as anchor points between in-store events—included things like doing the opening keynote at the awesome Colorado Teen Lit Con, along with some larger school events and a few writing classes, etc.
 
And a couple of months before we left, I looked at the itinerary, gulped, and said to myself, Holy crap, you’re gonna need some all-new programs… maybe several of them!
 
This can feel daunting as your brain spins around the questions of: Where do I start, what do I do, and how do I do it…??? However, as with drafting almost any how-to nonfiction piece, it can help to begin with a structure.
 
And not to get all instructor-geeky on you, but one of the best ways to develop a new program is to use the tools of the Standardized Approach to Training: A.D.D.I.E. (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.)
 
Don’t shudder and run away. Those are just fancy words describing a common-sense way to decide what to do, how to do it, and how to determine if it’s working. As follows…
 
Analysis: This initial step is where you determine what sort of presentation you’re going to build and give, based on the needs of your attendees. (Which could be school students, bookstore customers, conference attendees, workshop clients, etc.) These each have different needs. School presentations should be educational and entertaining. Bookstores have a fairly general audience with an obvious bias toward reading. People attending workshops are writing-centered and typically place a higher focus on actionable information and advice than entertainment. (Not that it needs to be bone dry… humor is almost always welcome at the right times.)
 
Design: Decide on an overall structure and make an outline for your presentation. (Examples: maybe a PowerPoint with lecture for conferences; “Draw and talk” for those of you who both illustrate and write; Storytelling with props for story time type events; a specific how-to lesson with guided exercises for workshops; etc.)
 
Development: Take your outline and fill in all the details. In other words, add meat to the skeleton by actually building the presentation you outlined above. Just like writing a story, don’t expect to get it perfect the first time. It’s an iterative process… write/revise/write/revise until it feels smooth and tight. (Leaving some room for on-the-fly improvisation, if that’s your vibe.)
 
Implementation: This is (theoretically) simple: you give the presentation you designed and built. But for many this is the hardest part—getting up in front of a live audience and presenting your material in a way that comes off as smooth and professional, yet personable and entertaining. Everyone is different and there are whole books on dealing with public speaking so we’re not doing a deep dive here, but there is one tactic that seems universally helpful: practice. I’m fine speaking to customers in a bookstore or presenting to kids, but frankly, doing a more formal presentation to a room full of writers or educators can make me a little nervous. What helps me is going somewhere quiet and giving the presentation—aloud—multiple times, well in advance of the event.
 
Evaluation: How did it go? Any slow spots where the audience seemed bored or antsy? Did the presentation run long… or did you run out of material halfway through? Any pertinent points you failed to make? This is where we close the loop back to ‘Analysis’ and make any possible improvements after the fact. Use your own assessment, but also touch base with a friend or acquaintance who attended, if possible. Sometimes presenters have a form for receiving feedback from attendees, depending on the nature of the event. Whatever the feedback, roll the actionable parts of it back into the ADDIE loop and make the next version even stronger. (But don’t over-think this. Give a few presentations and you’ll start organically making changes/improvements to the material without even thinking about it.)
 
Some tips from the trenches:
Pay attention to overall time during the dry runs. If you have 60 minutes to present, don’t have a presentation that takes you 60 minutes to get through. You’ll almost certainly lose a few minutes to admin stuff and introductions at the start and other things will crop up, and you’ll either end up rushing to finish it or you’ll have to end in the middle of a section—both less-than-optimum. Instead, plan accordingly and make adjustments as you get close so you end on time. (Sort of like a “two-minute drill,” if your closing segment takes five minutes, segue into it six or seven minutes before the end time so you can stick the landing without zipping through the most important parts.)
 
If you’re planning on a Q&A section, budget adequate space for it. ‘Adult Education’ is primarily about giving your attendees actionable information (i.e. stuff they can use) as opposed to entertainment or broadly educational content. In longer workshops I’ll often build-in a Q&A break after each section, and sometimes almost half of the overall class can be Q&A.
 
Get to know your specific audience. I’ll usually do a quick show-of-hands assessment to find out who’s there, their experience level, and what they really want to know. Then you can adjust your presentation accordingly and put a little more focus on their specific needs.
 
Remember why you’re there. You’re there to give your audience something of value, whether that’s motivating kiddos to read, aiding emerging writers in navigating the publishing industry, or helping workshop clients construct tight dialog. It’s about them, not you. To that end…
 
Skip the long self-intro. They probably know who you are and why you’re there—no need for the whole ego-boosting CV. A quick “My name is X and I’ve done Y” should suffice. (Or better yet, just jump right in with some interesting/useful information and hook them from the word “go”.)
 
Try to take video (or at least an audio recording on your phone) of your early presentations or classes and review them with a critical eye. I did, and learned that once I’m wound up and going, I can start talking too fast if I’m not careful. It’s amazing what we can learn by listening after the fact when we’re not caught up in the moment.
 
Have a “contact” page onscreen at the end of your presentation where appropriate, for any follow-up and/or feedback.
 
Always thank your host (festival or bookstore or school or conference or library, etc.). It’s a lot of work to put on whatever event you were part of, and people appreciate being appreciated. Plus, one of the best ways to get further offers to present is positive word-of-mouth from previous hosts.
 
 
Happy presenting!
 

 
You’ll often see two conflicting pieces of writing advice:
(1) Don’t have an unlikeable main character.
(2) You don’t have to have a likeable main character.
 
The first is one of those ‘conventional writing wisdom’ things, right up there with “Show, don’t tell” and “Write what you know.” And I think it’s about as misunderstood as those old sayings.
 
The second is newer (relatively speaking) and often bolstered with references to unlikeable characters in TV and film properties. (House of Cards, anyone?)
 
So, which is it?
 
First of all, there are no rules to writing fiction, right? So do whatever works for you and your readers.
 
And what works for most readers? Having a compelling character. Which isn’t the same as a likeable character, but in the Venn diagram of writing there’s a lot of overlap between them.
 
There’s also some overlap between a compelling character and a “Can’t take your eyes off her” diabolical villain.
 
Either can work as long as you keep in mind that readers have a few different ways of finding their way into a story.
 
Many readers like to identify with the main character. In a well-written 1st person POV novel (or very close 3rd), this character-identification can almost feel to the reader like they are the main character, either going through the story right there with them, or actually as them, depending. Either way, the protagonist has been crafted such that the reader really cares about them and what happens to them, on an emotional level.
 
This type of connection is the sort of thing that can lead to certain stories attaining the status of “beloved.”
 
There are also many readers who are entertained by interesting villains. But most of us (thankfully) don’t closely identify with evil people, so the deep emotional connection described above may be lacking.
 
Ex: Harry Potter is a beloved story, in part because people tend to identify with (and have sympathy for) an underdog character who’s good at heart. Voldemort is a strong villain, but while HP without Harry and Co. might be a fascinating study of evil, it wouldn’t have nearly the “empathy” factor of the same story with Harry and Hermione and Ron, etc.
 
So the question becomes: Do I want people to be able to identify—on some level—with my main character? If yes, then your character should of course have imperfections and moral complexities (nothing is more boring than perfection), but still come off to some extent as sympathetic and having those human traits which most of us admire and may want to identify with.
 
And if no, then make your unlikeable character as interesting and compelling in their evilness as possible, in hopes of capturing those readers who don’t need to empathize with a protagonist.
 
(Or try doing both, via the use of the anti-hero. It’s quite a balancing act, but the morally grey character can be quite compelling while still engendering sympathy if done well.)
 
All the above is a discussion of the value of purposely unlikeable protagonists.
 
But in reality, many complaints about ‘an unlikeable main character’ are actually aimed at unintentionally unlikeable characters. We’ve all read books where the protagonists weren’t cruel or evil… but weren’t necessarily people we cheered for either. This can be caused by them coming off as annoying or spoiled or self-centered or thoughtless or any number of similar attributes. Not that characters (and real people) can’t be these things at times, but if they primarily come off as annoying, you’re going to have a hard time getting the reader to even like them, let alone empathize and/or identify with them.
 
One way to avoid this is the use of a few trusted betas who will be honest enough to tell you, “The story was well written, but I didn’t really love the main character and I didn’t really care what happened to her.” This sort of feedback can be gold to you, because if your readers can’t bond with your main character, they very likely won’t bond with your book. (The external viewpoint is invaluable here because we usually love our protagonists—after all, they came from us—so we may not immediately grasp that they may not be as appealing to other people.)

So, to re-write the above axioms:
 
(1) No matter what, you want a compelling main character.
(2) And if they’re someone with whom you wish the reader to identify, try to craft them in a way that doesn’t preclude this.
 
Because some level of emotional connection between your work and your reader is vital if you want the work to resonate long after they turn the last page.
 
Happy crafting!

​ 
I may be shoveling sand against the tide here but there’s a pervasive paradigm within the writing-centric social media community that does a pretty serious disservice to aspiring writers. In short, there’s a lot of stress, importance, energy, time, and focus being put on things that aren’t primarily writing. When in reality…
 
The way you get better at writing is by… writing.
The way you create a strong manuscript is via writing.
The way you acquire representation is through your writing.
The way you get acquired and published is through your writing.
What makes readers want to buy and read your work is… the writing.
 
Man, it’s all about the writing.
All those other things only come from the writing.
That’s the place to put your focus… if you actually want to be a writer.
 
(I qualified that statement because there’s a subset of people who want to ‘have written,’ and/or want to ‘have had a book published,’ for some imagined perks that have nothing to do with actually loving—and improving at—the craft of writing.)
 
In this sort of environment, is it any wonder it’s easy for emerging writers to get distracted by all the non-writing aspects of the whole ‘being a writer’ thing?
 
Your attention—your focus—is like the money in your wallet… you only have so much of it, and if you want to make it to the next payday you need to think carefully about where you spend it. I see people spending lots of time/energy/focus (and angst) on non-writing things like…
 
Becoming ‘agented’… (Pretty sad it’s an adjective these days.)
 
Being published…
 
Doing book signings…
 
Doing school presentations…
 
Speaking at conferences…
 
Winning awards…
 
Making ‘Best of’ lists…
 
Hitting certain sales numbers…
 
These are all things a writer might do—on the periphery—but these things aren’t writing, and focusing on them won’t make you a writer.
 
Only writing will do that.
 
And—not coincidentally—the people who actually do the above things seem to be people who put the craft of writing above any sort of ego boost they might get from accomplishing those peripheral things.
 
And, as nice as they are, those things aren’t even close to being the best part of being a writer. Writing is the best part. By far. If you don’t love the craft of writing—without any of the supposed perks—you’re likely to be sorely disappointed if you’re trying to acquire the “writer’s lifestyle.”
 
So to those distracted/disappointed/depressed by all the current negativity on social around the whole subject of ‘being a writer,’ my best advice is to not waste any energy worrying about that crap and put your laser-sharp focus (and your time and your effort and your love) where it actually matters… on the craft of writing.
 
The goal over which you have total control (and—in an interesting karmic twist—the one most likely to get you all those peripheral things) is simply to become the best writer you can, and to write the best book you can.
 
Focus.
 

 
Something worth keeping in mind with any creative endeavor: The thing that represents the work is NOT the work itself.
 
No one confuses notes on a staff with actual music or thinks that a set of house plans is in fact a building… yet with writing it can be all too easy to conflate the representation* with the actual thing.
 
[*Have you noticed that most AI-generated stories read like a plot synopsis? A really shitty plot synopsis? Because for the most part, that’s what they are. Reading them, we’re rarely – if ever – actually ‘in scene,’ and virtually never to the point of immersion where we forget we’re reading something and are lost in the story. That’s because they’re basically just a structure… a composite based on an amalgamation of several other story structures, assembled into a single construct by a high-powered algorithm. And of course, most “write your novel now!” sites are all about following this same path. As discussed here. Often with similar results.]
 
I think part of this comes from us thinking of the story structure (the plot) as the story itself, when the plot is just the framework on which we build the actual story.
 
Imagine someone wanted to create a wonderful dress. Something unique and beautiful and amazing, which—hopefully—others might love as well. But instead of thinking about a one-of-a-kind design, using flowing fabrics with interesting colors and textures and shapes, they spent their time worrying about getting the perfect mannequin. Maybe one that represented the largest cross-section of people—or maybe one considered the ‘ideal’ size—so that their work might appeal to the largest number of people. All with little thought to the dress itself.
 
That sounds goofy, yet it’s analogous to what we often see… fealty to the minor god of “subject matter*” over other considerations… like story and character and emotional connection… and the actual craft of the writing itself.
 
[*You will often see on social media an aspiring writer bemoaning the fact that an agent or editor called out something specific in their #MSWL—for example, “Love to see an MG about a mystery set at summer camp!”—and the writer turned in something they thought fit the bill… and it was summarily rejected. And they don’t get it, because they sent the agent “exactly what she asked for.” I understand the frustration - as far as it goes -  but it’s important to understand when an agent or editor mentions something like the above in their wish list, what they’re actually saying is, “I’d like to see a really well-written, emotionally compelling middle grade novel about a group of kids—sort of on their own, away from home—solving a problem together.” With the unstated ‘well-written, compelling’ part the most important criteria, by far. Again, it’s really about the dress itself more than the specifics of the mannequin, right?]
 
If you gave the same basic plot to a bunch of different writers, you’d get a bunch of very diverse books. Because each writer is unique, with a different voice and life experience and perspective on the world.
 
Thinking it could be otherwise would be like thinking if you took a dozen different dress designers and gave them all the same mannequin to build a dress upon, you’d get twelve identical dresses.
 
I’m not saying a mannequin isn’t an important tool to a dress designer. Of course you want a shape to build the dress upon. But the mannequin is in no way the dress itself.
 
The story--your story—is the singular thing you have. Your voice, your vibe, your viewpoint… your weird take on life that makes your stuff interesting and unique and oddly compelling. That’s what you have. And the journey your character goes through as they transit the events in the story is the thing that shines a light on what makes you and your viewpoint worth reading… not the scaffolding.
 
 
Happy dressmaking!

 
Seems like we all get told the same platitudes regarding writing, like “Writing is rewriting,” “Show, don’t tell,” and of course, “Write what you know.”
 
It’s that last one I was to explore for a minute. I think it’s valid, but maybe not in the reductive way some people mean it.
 
I was doing a discussion/Q&A with a group of writing students a couple of months ago, and I got a new question. Instead of “Where do you get your ideas?” (discussed here) or “How do you deal with writer’s block?” (discussed here), someone asked, “When did you first know you wanted to be a musician?”
 
Wow. The last-second switch from the expected “writer” to “musician” sort of threw me. I mentally reviewed my options: I joined my first band around twelve. But I got my first drum set around eleven. But I had a brief fling with electric guitar at ten. But I saw my first band around eight or nine. All of those mattered, but the actual event that started everything—maybe even me becoming a writer—happened even earlier.
 
When I was a little kid of maybe four, I was with my family at a parade in our hometown… just your basic small-town summer parade. Somewhere amidst the baton twirlers and horseback teams and dignitaries in convertibles there was a marching drum corps. My dad had hoisted me onto his shoulders for a better look, and when they got near us those drummers started playing. Suddenly… all of them at once… at a very high volume. My God, I’d never felt anything like it! The thundering of those drums shook my chest (and in my mind’s eye, blew back my hair), but it also did something to me on the inside. Permanently. The raw power was so attractive… I immediately had the feeling of, Whatever that is… I want it!
 
And that was that.
 
After I’d explained this ‘big bang’ inciting incident I realized it was a teachable moment, for both me and the students. I said that yeah, following the adage of “write what you know,” in theory I should write a novel about a kid at a parade who becomes a drummer, blah blah blah… But I’d already written a book about a young drummer and I didn’t want to re-tread similar territory.
 
But… what if I wanted to write a story about a young race driver? Maybe he started with go-karts and moved up to destruction derbies and stock cars, eventually becoming a pro NASCAR driver. I’m not an expert on motor racing, but what if I took the experience of me at the parade and authentically recast it… maybe the boy was four or five and he was with his dad at the track for the first time… maybe standing next to the outside rail… maybe his dad hoisted him for a better view… maybe when the cars roared around the first corner toward them, the raw power and the deafening noise—and the smell of gas and oil and burning tires—imprinted on the boy, and he knew that whatever the heck that was… he wanted it! And from then on, his heart was permanently betrothed to gasoline alley.
 
I haven’t been there. But man, I’ve been there!
 
I don’t need to know the technical specifics to get in touch with the emotions that come with those early peak experiences. And neither do you. We just have to mine those experiences, remember how they felt—viscerally, not intellectually—and do our best to forget the limiting specifics and transfer that authentic emotion to our character.
 
We’ve all experienced moments of heightened emotion. Ecstatic, terrifying, validating, heart-rending, uplifting, soaring…
 
We can use these… not by putting our character in the exact same situation we’ve been in, but by putting our character in a new situation while allowing him/her to experience the full emotional rollercoaster that comes with those watershed moments.
 
Because, even if you don’t know, first-hand, all of the specifics of your character’s situation, you absolutely know how it feels to be in those moments when everything seems more.
 
Even if you haven’t been there, you’ve been there. And you know.
 
So… write what you know.
 

 
There is “the theory of” and “the planning of,” but sooner or later you’re faced with “the doing of…”
 
A typical day on book tour might start with packing up* and checking out of the hotel, then traveling to the next stop where (assuming you’re a PB/MG/YA author) you may have a mid-day school visit.
 
[*We learned early on not to unpack and put clothes in the dressers or closets. Suitcases on suitcase stands are way more efficient and you won’t leave things behind. We prided ourselves on how quickly we could move in or out, humming the “Mission Impossible” theme while doing it.]
 
These days you should add an extra fifteen minutes when presenting at a school, because you’re almost certainly going to have to visit the admin office first (at many schools, there is no other way to physically access the campus) and sign in, receiving a visitor’s badge. Then they’ll get the librarian or teacher who coordinated your visit to escort you to the auditorium/cafeteria/gym/MPR for your presentation. Go to the venue and prioritize getting the tech up and running before doing too much meet-and-greet. Almost all schools will have someone to help with this, and they range from total tech wizards to flustered/overworked teachers who aren’t familiar with the equipment. Pro tip: have your presentation available on a thumb drive for use and backed up on your computer as well as in one other location, preferably online. (Or vice versa. We try to use their equipment and present off our thumb drives when possible, but more than once the day was saved because we had our computers with us. Multiple cables & adaptors to interface between your computer and their projector/system are worth their weight in gold. I also bring a small USB “pointer/clicker,” because there’s nothing that kills the flow of a presentation more than having to run back to the computer to advance each slide or waving at someone to change slides for you. And finally, be able to give some semblance of your presentation without any technology at all, because sooner or later you’ll have to. Trust me on this…)
 
You’ll want to have an educational component in your presentation (teachers, librarians, and principals will appreciate this—you’re at a school, after all) but also something entertaining for the kiddos. And while you definitely want to talk about your work at some point, what you don’t want to do is simply show all of your books and give a sales pitch for each. (No one will like this approach, adult or student.) Don’t forget to give credit to the store that selected the school. (My brilliant wife makes a slide for the top of each show that basically says, “Sponsored by XYZ Bookstore” with the store’s logo, and this is up when the students are filing in. Often the store will have a rep at the school, either to watch or to hold a sale afterward. They always appreciate the shoutout.) At the end, also mention you’ll be at the sponsoring store that evening to take questions and sign books.
 
After the school presentation—and some version of checking in/unpacking/eating—you get to the bookstore. As with a school, it pays to arrive a little early. Greet the owner/coordinator, get the lay of the land, browse the shelves if there’s time, meet some customers if there’s time, grab a coffee if available, and get ready for your presentation…
 
As mentioned previously, there are a few different types of signings. Your mileage may vary, of course, but here’s how I broadly categorize them…
 
“Sit & Sign.” This is where the store parks you somewhere (typically near the entrance, or maybe in your genre’s section if it’s a big store) at a table with a stack of your books, and you’re left to try and engage customers as they walk by, hopefully leading to a discussion and maybe even a sale. These are usually not the best experience, and we try to avoid them if there’s another option. You’re engaging with people who aren’t there to see you and likely aren’t even interested in the type of book you’re presenting. There’s no real draw to this sort of signing (unless you have fans/friends/readers in the area who will make the trip to see you) other than the fact that it can lead to signing a fair amount of stock. (Seems like the larger chain stores tend to go for this, so sometimes the stock signing can be significant. When we sign stock we always volunteer to put “signed by author” stickers on the books, because it increases the likelihood that book will sell down the road. Chain stores will have a big roll of these, or you can bring your own to smaller stores.) Also, as there is no actual presentation, it’s harder to give the customers much of value during a sit and sign other than occasionally taking questions one-on-one.
 
“Read & Sign.” This at least offers customers the ‘value’ of hearing you read from your work. (Usually your latest, which they likely haven’t read yet… like a trailer or teaser for your new book.) I put value in quotes because you’re giving them something they can get simply by picking up the book and perusing a chapter. I’m not a huge fan of readings—either as attendee or presenter—but if the audience consists primarily of fan-ish readers (which it usually doesn’t—see below) then this might work well for you and your attendees. At least you typically have the trappings of a presentation—chairs for them and a place in front for you—and there is some interaction between reader and author. And of course you can do a Q&A afterward, which is even more interactive.
 
“Presentation w/Q&A.” This is our favorite, because it has something for everyone. As mentioned, a high percentage of people want to write a book. (And of course, some of them are actually writers, actively writing and/or trying to publish. These people are even more interested in speaking with you.) The details regarding how to decide on the specifics of an author presentation might make a good post unto itself, but a few popular topics include “where writers get ideas,” “the journey to publication,” “making the creative life work,” “the writing process,” and “a peek behind the publishing curtain.” A variation of this is the “In conversation with…” presentation, where someone (often another writer, or perhaps one of the store’s staff) will interview you. Either way, a conversation is almost always better than a one-way delivery.
 
A big key to reaching the audience is knowing who you’re addressing. We sometimes do a quick assessment first (via a show of hands) regarding how many have an interest in writing someday, how many are actively writing, how many have a draft they’re in the process of shopping, how many have no interest in writing but are avid readers, etc. Then we tailor the presentation to them. Another key factor is not making the presentation about you. Ideally, it should focus on them, and give them something that can help them get where they want to go. (There’s nothing more boring than some dude droning on and on about himself and his books, his story, his process, his life, etc.) And of course, the way to make sure you’re giving the attendees what they want is to be as interactive as possible. Sometimes the bulk of the presentation ends up being a lively hour-long Q&A session. (Again, a bunch of concise answers will usually be better than a few long dissertations here. Regardless, we always try to do a “lightning round” near the end where we answer a bunch of questions quickly, because there’s nothing worse than someone sitting through a presentation and not getting a chance to ask their question.)
 
After you’re done you sign books for the attendees, of course, and always be sure to ask the store if they’d like you to sign stock.
 
And… always thank the staff profusely for hosting your visit. This is a mutual-aid thing. Yes, you’re taking the time to present, hopefully bringing people into their store, maybe even new customers. But they’re allowing you to present your work in their establishment, which costs them in terms of time/work/money. You want to leave them feeling good about you and your books, and they want you feeling good about their store. Win-win, right?
 
I can honestly say we’ve met booksellers and school librarians who’ve become lifelong friends through doing events with them. Which shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, we have a shared love of books.
 
Happy touring!
 

 
“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to book events.
It’s more like “If you build it--and tell them all about it--some of them might come.”
 
Yes, there is the rare store that has such a strong, loyal customer base that you can just show up and there’ll either be a decent sized crowd waiting or they’ll flock to you from around the store once they see an author presenting, but depending on either of those is a very bad bet.
 
And unless you’re hovering near the very tippy-top of the NYT bestseller list, it’s also a mistake to think that your name alone will bring in a crowd.
 
One obvious challenge with a book tour is that you’re not in your hometown. When you do a local book event—assuming you have a new book out and you haven’t done anything local in a while—you can tell all your friends and family and co-workers about it, and get a pretty good turnout from just that.
 
But that doesn’t apply when you’re hundreds or thousands of miles away, in a different state, where you know virtually no one… and very few of them know of you.
 
So, you have to ask (and answer) the question: Why would someone come and see you if they didn’t know you, and/or didn’t know your books?
 
The answer is two-fold: They have to know about the event, and they have to be interested in the event once they learn about it.
 
Let’s take the second part first. People are generally interested in information that can benefit them. I mentioned this last time, but multiple surveys have shown that something like 85% of all adults want to write a book, typically a novel or perhaps a memoir. (And a smaller but still significant number have started writing.) We can provide value to them (beyond talking about our latest book) by stepping outside our specific genre and addressing this broad area of interest directly, as follows…
 
When we were calling stores and the event coordinator/owner/manager would find out we wrote MG & YA, she’d often say “We don’t usually have good luck with kids’ events, and worse with teens.” And we’d say, “We agree completely. We have better luck when we position it as: Two published authors are going to talk about reading and writing and the publishing business.” And we’d promote it that way. And it generally worked. Often we’d have a good turnout with lots of engaged people at the event—asking questions and buying books to get signed—and there wouldn’t be a kid in the room.
 
We’ll talk about presentation specifics more next time, but for now you should come up with a general theme and pitch for your presentation. We call our joint events the “He Said, She Said” presentation and it’s largely based on us riffing back-and-forth on reading, writing, publishing, and living the writing life, and at least half of it is Q&A. (Remember, your goal is to give the attendees something they’ll value, not just find different ways to say “Here’s my book, buy it now!”) And my solo events cover largely the same territory, often focusing on the power of art. Again, with lots of Q&A.
 
So now that you have something that—hopefully—people will be interested in (and that the store’s event coordinator will feel the same about), you want to help get the word out.
 
Sure, you should definitely put your tour schedule all over social media because once in a while someone will show up from seeing that. But really, your strongest move is helping the store let their customers know.
 
Easy things first. Make an electronic poster for each event with all the pertinent date/time/presentation info (as well as graphics of you and your book, of course) and send it to the store. They can print out and place the posters wherever they see fit. Also send them high-res graphics of your book cover & author photo, so they can use them on their website and their social channels and in their email newsletter, etc. When time allows we’ll sometimes send out a turnkey press release—specific to the store, time, and date—for the store to use with their local press outlets and/or social media/newsletter posts.
 
For our big tour we also made a nice overall tour poster which had all the images & info about us and our presentation, with spaces for each store to fill in their specific date and time, then we printed out a hundred of them at 11x17 and sent one to each store on the tour ahead of time.
 
We made a fun (okay, some might say corny) little “tour trailer” video which we sent to all the stores as well as posting on our social accounts. This gives the stores an idea about the vibe of our presentation, and lets them post it on their social accounts to let their customers know a little about the event.
 
Along with this we did a TV interview or two along the route, usually the day of the evening presentation in that market, as well as getting press in some local papers for the same reason.
 
And finally, make sure the store has your book in stock for the event. (Don’t laugh. It seems obvious, but on our very first out-of-state stop on the big tour—in Arizona—the store had my book but not my wife’s, and then in Minnesota the opposite thing happened.) Your publicist can definitely help here, as they’ll get in touch with their sales rep for that region and make sure the store has your books. Another piece of insurance is to contact each store with a quick message a week or so out saying, “We’re on the road headed your way—can’t wait to see you on June seventeenth!” or whatever. (We had one store cancel on us after we’d already started the tour, but luckily we found out ahead of time due to the above and it saved us driving halfway across Mississippi for a non-event.)
 
Okay, the pump has been primed: the store knows, the customers know, and the books are in stock. Next, we’ll wrap up with the day-to-day nuts & bolts of in-store events.
 

 
Last time we discussed the overall steps in setting up a book tour. Let’s look at some of the important specifics around booking the events as well as scheduling your travel.
 
1. The Pitch. Believe it or not, not every store you contact will immediately say “Oh my God YES OF COURSE!” when you ask about doing an in-store event. It takes time and effort on the store’s part to put on an event, as well as ordering in your books for it, etc. So the store has to do some quick and dirty ROI calculations to determine if they’re going to have a fighting chance of making a few dollars and/or bringing in some new customers in exchange for their time and effort. All of which boils down to your ability to bring people into the store.
 
Once you let the store know you share the same goals—bringing people into their store—and it sounds like you have a realistic view of how to do that, they’re more likely to want to have you do an event at their store. (More about this in Part III, but a big clue here is that approx. 85% of all adults want to write a book.)
 
2. Setting the Time and Date. Stores know their local customers and the best times for presentations (and you’ll want to defer to their experience) but much of this is common sense: weekday visits usually happen in the evenings, after dinner but not too late… like 7:00 PM or so. Sometimes I’d be booking a Tuesday in Georgia and the store would say, “We like to do author signings on weekends,” and I’d have to say, “Well, we’re coming through Atlanta on Tuesday… by Saturday we’ll be in St. Louis,” or whatever.*
 
[* But be advised, this is NOT “business hardball.” They’re a bookstore and you’re an author. You both love books, and you’re on the same team. While you certainly don’t want to cool your heels in a hotel room for three or four days waiting for the “perfect presentation slot,” we would occasionally defer for a day under special circumstances. (Ex: Apparently NOTHING happens in Nebraska during a Cornhuskers game, so we had a day off in a hotel in Omaha on a Saturday, which is usually a prime day.) But overall the stores were almost universally accommodating to our schedule… we managed to present six-plus days a week for four months during our biggest tour.]
 
3. School Visits. As opposed to in-store events (which are free), school presentations typically include an honorarium. (See this post on some issues associated with doing free school visits.) But while we were on book tour, when scheduling allowed we would occasionally tell the store that we’d donate one joint presentation—free—to a local school of their choosing, during the day of the store event. There were several reasons this made sense…
 

• We were already there—with a local event that evening—so there was no additional travel cost involved.
• If it was a significant store and they were waffling on having us, this often sealed the deal.
• The store would often hold a book sale at the school along with the event.
• We always told the students and faculty, “Your local bookstore could have had us go to any school, and they chose you. Remember that when it’s time for you and your school to buy books.”
• We also told them that we’d be at their local bookstore that evening if they had more questions, and we invited them to bring their families.
• It was a single 45 min. presentation—long on engagement and entertainment, and short on lecture—and the benefit to the store, the school, and us was well worth the hour out of our day.

 
4. Booking Lodging. We booked virtually everything online in advance. At first we booked a few weeks ahead, as we traveled, but after a couple of close calls we started booking further in advance, and by the time we did the second leg of the tour we had everything locked down before we even left the house. Logistics matter here, and you can optimize your hotel time with a few little tips regarding how you juggle your presentations and lodging:
 
We booked in one of three general configurations: the “sign-and-sleep,” the “hit-and-run,” and the “two-fer.” The sign-and-sleep is your basic “Do the evening event, go to your hotel and sleep, then get up and drive to the next stop” routine. And it works fine, especially when you have quite a distance between stops. The downside is you don’t get the best bang for the buck, hotel-wise… you’re either checking in during the afternoon then grabbing dinner and doing the event, or—depending on how far you had to drive—arriving in town then eating, then doing the event, then checking in and hitting the hay before getting up and driving on.
 
If we didn’t have a super long drive to the next stop and/or if the event was reasonably early in the evening, we’d do a hit-and-run, which meant instead of sleeping in the event town we’d do the signing then immediately drive to the next stop and check in… where we’d usually have a two-fer. (Two nights in the same place.) That way we’d wake up and have the whole morning (or day, if no daytime event) to hang out at the hotel, go for a run or swim or sightsee, and get in some serious writing time down in the lobby with coffee and snacks. Then after the evening event we could just go back to the room and hang. You get more “hotel time” for the same outlay, and of course you only have to load-in, unpack, pack up, and load back out once instead of twice. We did this whenever we could, and it always felt like a luxury when we could have a day to hang out or sightsee without having to pack up and drive. (We presented six or seven days a week, so any little break was welcome!)
 
Regarding rooms, our basic priority list when booking was:

• National chain. (At least an “okay” level of quality pretty much guaranteed.)
• Breakfast included. (Saves so much time—and money—in the mornings.)
• Indoor rooms. (More comfortable, quiet, and secure than rooms facing the outside.)
• Near the venue and near the main highway.

If there were several that met all of the above, we’d usually go with the most reasonably priced one.
 
Next time in Part III we’ll discuss making sure you have people (and books!) in the store during your presentation.
 
See you there!
 

 
We’ve gone on three different book tours within the past year. First for my wife’s newest book (The Peach Rebellion) last May, then for my latest (The 9:09 Project) in Nov/Dec. And since both our books published within 6 months of each other (at different imprints of the same umbrella house), we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go on a “He Said/She Said—Part II*” joint book tour, from which we just returned a couple of weeks ago as I write this.
 
[*To recap, the original “He Said/She Said” tour was a four-month national book tour covering well over 100 venues. Probably the biggest U.S. book tour of that year. See here for more on it.]
 
The original post covered the “why” of touring, from a philosophical viewpoint, but I’ve gotten questions about the logistics (aka the nuts & bolts—the who, what, when, where, and how) of setting up and executing a book tour. When I was younger I spent a fair amount of time on the road playing in a few different bands, and many of the logistical lessons I learned on the road still translate well today (and certainly came in handy when we booked that big, crazy tour half a dozen years ago). So let’s dive in…
 
1. When. The first decision—before you even figure out where you’re going and which stores to visit, is when to tour. Obviously, the best time is when you have a new book out. Throughout the life of most books, the briskest selling period will usually be in the months after release, and you (as well as the Event Coordinators at the stores you’re visiting) will want to capitalize on that. However, if there’s no new release but you have a backlist that sells well, this can also work. Or you could tour with a friend who writes in the same genre who happens to have a book coming out. (Think about how big musical acts tour – their either have a new record out, or they do a “greatest hits” tour, or they do a “package” tour with other like-minded bands who have a similar fan base.)
 
Then decide how long you want to be out. Realistically, you might average one store an evening, with perhaps one non-store presentation (school, conference, festival, etc.) during the day. (Weekends are different—you can sometimes do stores during the day and evening.) So if you want to present at a minimum of a dozen stores, for example, plan on a couple of weeks. Once you know how long you can be on tour and the rough number of stores you’d like to visit, you can start planning your route.
 
2. Where. At its most basic, a workable plan looks like this: Pick an efficient route that goes through a number of target-rich environments. (IOW, a major interstate that passes through a bunch of cities and towns that have bookstores.) A loop route is generally better than an out-and-back because you don’t want to hit stores near other stores you’re covering (the stores don’t like it, and you’re drawing from the same well of customers twice) so a circular route gives you twice as much “fresh territory.” (Our overall rule was stores should be at least 20 miles apart, and ideally further. Big cities are an exception, because two stores ten miles apart can have totally different customer bases. This will come up in your conversations with the Event Coordinators at the stores.)
 
A few factors will help determine the route specifics: where you live, any special places you may have as a goal destination, and desired daily mileage. You can occasionally bang out 500 miles or more in a day when you have to get across a “book desert” to get to another locale, but that’ll wear you out quickly and takes all the fun away. We try not to schedule more than 200 miles for most “normal” tour days. That’s only three or four hours of luxurious sight-seeing per day—broken up by meal stops, etc.—which makes for an easy cruise. (Plus, the goal isn’t to cover the most miles, it’s to visit the most stores, so venues closer together makes for a more efficient tour.)
 
3. Who. Once you know the basic route, it’s time to look for likely venues along the route. Good sources of info for this: The American Booksellers Association website (click their Find a Bookstore tab, then enter the city you’re currently searching); entering “bookstore” into the Nearby tab on Google Maps when you’re mapping a given location; and word-of-mouth, either from fellow authors, local booksellers (indie stores know each other), or asking for recommendations on social media.
 
When hunting for likely prospects, you’ll have your own personal criteria. We were looking for indie bookstores which had good connections to their local community, with bonus points for hosting regular book clubs and/or writers’ groups, having a coffee bar, and having a store dog or cat. Number of books in stock might also be a consideration for you… all bookstores are wonderful in their own way, but a store with 5000 books is less likely to carry your titles than one with 50,000 books. Not that this should be a Boolean consideration, however—some of our best (and most successful) visits were at smaller stores.
 
At first, you’re looking for more initial prospects than you’ll need. (Take the total number of days you’re going to be out and multiply by two or three—ideally two or more in each target city on the route--for reasons we’ll see shortly.) We’ll talk more about the selection process when we get to the “how.”
 
4. What. This may be the easiest part—deciding what your presentation will consist of. Broadly, there are three categories of signings: the “Sit and Sign,” the “Read and Sign,” and the “Present and Q&A.” We’ll do a deeper dive into these in Part IV, but the critical task here is to come up with a general idea of a presentation that works for you, your books, your audience, and the bookstores you’re visiting. The reason you need to come up with a rough idea now (instead of months down the road when you’ll actually be doing it) is that you have to sell it to the event coordinators at your target venues (more on this in Part II) and if they don’t think you’ll have something of interest to their customers, it’s going to be a much harder sell. My overall advice here is something I’ve reiterated before: the worst way to get people interested in your work is to drone on about it. OTOH, if you come off as interesting or informative, they’ll naturally be inclined to think your book may be likewise, and may check it out. (TL;DR: Do not shout “Buy my book!” at potential readers. It’s bad form… and it never works.)
 
You don’t need to decide on every detail at this point, just enough to be able to say to the event coordinator, “I have a presentation that covers X, Y, and Z, and I take questions from the attendees. Then I sign for everyone who wants a book, and I’m happy to sign whatever stock you have.”
 
5. How. Now that we know what we want to do, let’s step through the nuts & bolts of the preliminary actions. Be aware that for a significant tour you’ll want to start this process well in advance of the projected tour dates. Like several months.

 1. Buy a big-ass map covering your potential tour area and put it on the wall in your workspace. (We call ours the “war room map,” because that’s what it looks like in the middle of booking a tour.) Get small colored stickers in various colors.
   a. We used different stickers for “initial,” “provisional,” and “confirmed.”
   b. Don’t highlight your route, because it may (will) change.
 
 2. Start building documents to track all the information discussed below. Use whatever method works best for you, but we ended up with an overall plan and a page for each day of the tour with all pertinent info. (Venue, location, time/date, name of contact, etc.) My wife is brilliant at building informative spreadsheets for this (lucky me!).
 
 3. For each city on your route, look at the list of candidates you compiled in #3 (Who), above, and order them in terms of your preference.
 
 4. Make initial contact with your first choice for each given date/location. (You’re contacting a business with multiple employees, so phone is the best for this.) Introduce yourself, briefly explain you’re setting up tour dates, and obtain/verify Event Coordinator name & contact info (which is the whole purpose of this call).
   a. Place an “initial contact” colored sticker at that location.
   b. Go to the next target location and do the same. Etc…
 
 5. Contact the Event Coordinator to discuss possible events. (This may happen during the above call, but will usually require a follow-up call or email.) Explain the tour basics and the rough timeframe you’ll be in their area, and get provisional approval. Explain that you’ll circle back to confirm a specific time/date when schedule is finalized.
   a. If they pass, go on to your 2nd choice for that location and do the above.
 
 6. Do this for every venue on your route, at every likely city.
   a. Again, keep spacing in mind. You don’t want two stores in the same market, but you also don’t want big gaps of several hundred miles if possible.
 
 7. Go back to your first venue and confirm a logical start date/time that works for you and the store. This is your “anchor”--everything will stem from this date. Replace the “provisional” sticker at that location to a “confirmed” one.
   a. Gen up and send a ‘confirmation document’ to the event coordinator with all pertinent information.
 
 8. Go to the next store on your route that provisionally approved a visit and book them for the next day.
 
 9. Continue the above, through the rest of your route. Realistically, you’ll still be getting initial approvals for the end of the tour while you’re starting to finalize the early stops. That’s fine, because by that point you can say, “We’re scheduled to come through your area during the middle of the first week of August, so can we pencil in the 3rd or 4th, and we’ll confirm with details in a couple of weeks?”
 
In Part II we’ll cover some of the details around the scheduling of the signings, booking school visits along the way, and the logistics of booking rooms.
 
Happy tour planning!
 

 
I’ve been thinking about book reviews lately for a number of reasons. Until recently (historically speaking) the vast majority of book reviews were—for lack of a better term—professional reviews. Meaning the critic (frequently a professional journalist herself) had extensive knowledge of not only the author’s previous work but of much of the other works in the genre, and could place the work in question within a broader context, both artistic and historical.
 
Now the field is more democratic, ranging from the weekly NYTBR to the grumpy bastard on Amazon who gives your book one star because it arrived with a bent cover. And everything in between.
 
Much of “everything in between” includes reviews written for blogs, book-based websites, and sometimes pieces generated by retailers who wish to give their customers the value-added experience of booksellers, longtime book bloggers, etc. (These can also be in audio or video form—podcasts, FB, YouTube, Insta, BookTok, etc.) And these are often written by book lovers for book lovers.
 
All to the good. And far be it from me to say what someone can or cannot do. As I always say, you do you.
 
But somewhere along the way, a disconnect seems to have occurred between the writers of some reviews* and the purpose of the review.
 
[*Full disclosure: I don’t review books in public. For one, an author reviewing books is like a restaurant owner penning the food column for the local paper… there’s a potential conflict there. For another, I’m too aware of how incredibly hard it is to write even a “bad” novel to stand up in the public square and pontificate about what I think might be “wrong” with one. I occasionally mention recent reads on social—with a brief description of what I liked about them—but I only post about books I feel are worth recommending.]
 
One common disconnect is some people seem to think a book review is simply a point-by-point re-hashing of the plot, like a book report from a third grader who wants to—understandably—bang out their homework so they can go outside and play. Not even really getting into the actual story itself (separate from the plot in that it concerns the character’s journey), let alone any discussion of the themes contained within. To say nothing the emotional impact the work had on the reviewer. (Which, in the end, is what really matters, right?)
 
Another fairly recent phenomenon is people using reviews to point out what wasn’t in the book but “should have been.” They’re essentially reading with the book in one hand and a checklist in the other, making sure the book covers all the right issues (in the opinion of the reviewer, of course) and mentions none of the wrong issues. In other words, they’re not reading the book for the story itself, but for any agenda contained within (or missing from) the book. And they’ll be sure to highlight these in their “review” of said work. (As Roger Sutton once said—you need to review the book in front of you, not the one you wish the author had written.) It’s sad that we’ve come to that level of divisiveness, but… well, here we are. All I can say is there are plenty of books expressly on political issues and current policy for those people—on both sides of the aisle—to pontificate upon, instead of turning the act of reviewing a novel into a diatribe on the reviewer’s personal views. (Not to say that politics aren’t necessarily germane to novels… they certainly can be. Just not your politics.)
 
A close cousin of this is people reviewing books based strictly on their own personal likes and dislikes, with zero consideration as to whether or not the book succeeded as a work within its intended genre and audience. (IOW, the statement, “This book had vampires and I don’t like vampires—one star!” is a content-free proclamation whereby the “reviewer” is just showing his ass.)
 
[*This is related to the phenomenon of people conflating “I like it” with “it’s good,” and “I don’t like it” with “it’s bad.” See the final point of this post. I try—not always successfully—to keep these things separate in my mind.]
 
Then there are those who somehow feel the overarching goal of a review is simply to find “problems.”
 
The job of reviewer is not that of a teacher, grading someone’s homework. The fallacy here is that within a school setting the teacher typically has expertise in the subject they’re teaching, and can tell the students what they did “wrong” (a word that doesn’t really belong in any discussion around art, regardless). But when reviewers apply this reasoning to novels written by experienced, professional authors, there is an implied instructor/student hierarchy at play which rings false. (I could review a concert by The Rolling Stones, but if I listed the places where I thought Steve Jordan’s drumming could have been better, I might need to check my head.)
 
Along with this we have the “claw sharpeners”… those who seem to exhibit the attitude that finding a problem with someone’s work is equal to creating the work itself. (Pro tip—it’s not.)
 
And finally, a review of a current or recent book absolutely shouldn’t contain major spoilers. This should go without saying—and you might think it’d be limited to user reviews on Amazon—but I saw this just today on a supposedly legit book blog. It’s hard to say how long a book needs to be available before we can safely assume most people who want to read it have read it, but unless it’s a well-discussed classic, you’re doing any potential readers a disservice by giving away major plot twists. (Duh… but again, apparently some people didn’t get the memo.)
 
When you boil it all down, the overall question you want to answer in a reader’s mind is: Would I enjoy reading this book? Not: Did the reviewer enjoy it? Because if that’s the only question, you can simply say “Liked it!” or “Didn’t like it!” in your review, and you’re free to go play outside. But it doesn’t help the potential reader make up her mind about whether or not to give the book a try. So we need at least a medium dive into why the reviewer found the book enjoyable, so the reader can decide if those same aspects apply to her, which helps her decide if she might also like the book.
 
Life is short and there’s probably enough negativity floating around already. If you have a choice between reviewing a book you didn’t care for and one you found enjoyable/valuable/insightful, it might serve your readers better to discuss those books you think might actually be worth their time.
 
Happy reviewing!

​ 
[Haha! I lied to you, as writers do. This is not a tutorial on how to write a query. The floor of the internet is absolutely littered with them. This is a little story about how to successfully land an agent who’s a good fit for you and your work. Which actually has very little to do with your query.]
 
You are a produce seller, with a stall at the farmer’s market. And a sign, describing your wares. You don’t have a wide variety of products. Probably one. Maybe two. Rarely three. In other words it’s all about quality, not quantity.
 
An agent is a shopper, going to market with a list. And they also have some sort of sign… maybe a fluorescent sandwich board, maybe just some words scrawled on the back of their t-shirt with a faded purple sharpie. But they all have a sign somewhere, if you look for it. You can read—find it and read it.
 
Let’s assume they’re looking for peaches. Specifically, peaches that remind them of a warm summer’s evening when they were a kid, hanging on the street corner with other kids and eating farm-fresh peaches with the juice running down their chin. Those kinds of peaches.
 
Not canned peaches drowning in high fructose corn syrup.
 
First off, if your sign says “Strawberries!” they’re likely to pass on by, even if your strawberries are exceptional. (Especially if they’re carrying a sign that says “No berries!” and you still try to talk them into your strawberries. Odds of success here are rapidly approaching zero, right?)
 
However, if your stall has a sign in front saying “Peaches for sale,” they’re very likely to stop and at least take a look. If your sign says “Fresh peaches for sale,” I suppose they might be even more inclined to stop, and if it says “Ripe, juicy, farm-fresh peaches for sale,” they’re almost certainly going to stop.
 
But peaches are expensive and they only have room for a few of them at the moment, so guess what? They aren’t going to think, “That’s a really well-written sign—I’m just going to buy those peaches.” Are you kidding? They’re going to try a sample.
 
And at that point, everything depends on that sample. Everything.
 
You can tell them, “These are the best, juiciest, freshest peaches in the whole market,” and it won’t make one damn bit of difference if they take a bite and disagree. You can talk about your peach-growing degree or the fact that you won the peach pie contest in eighth grade or that all your friends absolutely love your peaches and… Yup. They don’t care. If the sample is less than scrumptious in their opinion, adiós.
 
But if your little stall has a simple sign that says “Peaches,” and you say, “I see you’re looking for fresh peaches… here’s a sample of mine” and they take a bite and the juice runs down their chin and they’re suddenly transported back to being twelve years old on the street corner on a warm August night, guess what? They’re going to buy a bag and see if the rest are the same. (They will be, if you take your peach-growing seriously.) And once they realize your sweet little sample was telling the truth about your peaches, they’re going to want to be in business with you, helping you sell your peaches all over the world.
 
Happy farming!

 
You see a lot of posts on social these days from people spending a lot of time and energy trying to put together a pitch and/or query agents and/or land an editor & get a book deal, and a lot of words around how hard this all is*.
 
[*Fair enough. It is hard, no doubt. But to put some reality around this perception, (a) I heard publishing guru Jane Friedman say on a podcast just this morning that there are more books being acquired today than ever before, and (b) it has always been hard—my wife had ten years of rejection over the course of three or four novels, and pretty much every published author I know (including yours truly) has a not-dissimilar story. So don’t lose sight of this amidst the current pub-doom scrolling.]
 
But also, you see a lot of musing on whether or not it’s “worth it,” and whether or not they should keep doing it.
 
On one level, the whole question is a self-correcting issue. I mean, if you want to do it, you’ll do it. If you don’t, you won’t.
 
But this is simplistic, and avoids the real issue here: What is it you actually want to do? Not as a stepping stone, but as a terminal objective?
 
Get an agent?
Land an editor?
Get a book deal?
Successfully publish?
Sell a bunch of books?
Win a big award?
Hit list?
 
All those things largely depend on the decisions and tastes of someone else.
 
Now, hypothetically, what if your primary goal was dependent on only you… what if your primary goal was simply to write the very best book you are capable of writing? Period. Not comma.
 
What would you end up with? There are no guarantees of course, but if you really put your heart and mind to the above goal, there’s a reasonable chance you’d end up with… the very best book you are capable of writing.
 
There are also no guarantees this would get you an agent and an editor and a published book. But if you were to get those things at some point, which factor would probably be more important… starting with a clever pitch, or starting with the very best book you are capable of writing?
 
Not that your query doesn’t matter. Of course it does—you have to have that in place to get them to read your manuscript, so you obviously want to make sure it does its job. But even the best query in the world won’t make them sign a mediocre manuscript.
 
One thing agents and editors say over and over: it needs to be good enough for them to “fall in love with it.” These words mean different things to different people, but one thing we can be fairly certain of—once you get their attention, everything else falls away and it’s all about the writing.
 
The perfect pitch, the carefully curated mood board, the well-researched comps… they can’t help you at this point. They’re like an Uber driver who’s taken you to a job interview. They’ve done their job, and now it’s all down to the actual words on the page. Once the agent or editor starts reading your pages, all they care about is… does this have “it”?
 
At this point, what you really want them to have in their hands is (wait for it…) the very best book you are capable of writing.
 
And in my humble opinion, the way you get that is to focus on that—rather than the whole marketing aspect—until you’ve written and revised and edited and polished your manuscript (and probably beta/rev/beta/rev… and more polish) to the point where it represents the best work you can currently do.
 
Even then, your agent (probably) and your editor (absolutely) will have multiple suggestions to make it even stronger. But they need to see the potential in your writing before you’ll ever get to that stage.
 
And you can give that to them, by giving your writing the best chance to succeed.
 
In light of all this, the “should I quit?” question doesn’t even come up. Quit writing? Why would you quit something you love, something you’re driven to do, something that costs nothing to do, something that no one is stopping you from doing?
 
I can’t imagine that.
 
Not if the goal is to write the best you can.
 
But if the goal is something second-hand, then maybe so. Because when it comes to motivation, intrinsic beats extrinsic every time, hands down.
 
In my admittedly-finite data collection on this, the ones who want to write… who need to write… are the ones with the best chance of getting published. Because they’re more likely to be doing the thing that editors want… they’re putting something on the page that means something to them… and thus it’s more likely to mean something to the reader.
 
To put it in mathematical terms:
 
The more you want Z, the less likely you are to get it (because you’re distracted from what it really takes to get it).
 
But the more you want X and Y (the precursors to Z, namely: a burning desire to put words on the page and tell your story, and a long-term dedication to the craft of writing) the more likely you are to wake up and find Z pounding on your front door.
 
Funny, isn’t it?
 
 
Happy writing!
 

 
Humans have built-in biases for—and against—certain things:
 
1. We’re biased toward methods practiced by “successful” people, even if the methods have no actual bearing on their success. (Survivorship bias.)
 
2. We’re also biased toward methods that agree with ideas we already hold. (Confirmation bias.)
 
3. We’re biased toward what everyone else seems to be doing, whether or not it it’s actually working. (Fear of missing out).
 
4. And if presented with two methods, we’re naturally biased toward the one requiring less work on our part. Even if the effort-based methodology has better logic behind it. Because humans. (Least-effort bias.)
 
Any time you see one of those “Seven Secrets to blah blah blah…” ads, they’re counting on a mixture of Survivorship Bias and FOMO to get you to pull the trigger. They want you to think, Hey, there are secrets, and those successful people are willing to tell them to me! And if not to me, then to someone else!
 
As we’ve discussed before, the one commonality most successful creators seem to share is persistence. And all that implies. (Not just “hanging in there” and remaining static for months and years. But persisting via constantly improving our craft, our creativity, and our knowledge of the business. Working harder and smarter.)
 
I see people asking successful authors some variation of these questions almost daily: What are your secrets? What did you do to become a successful author? What steps should I take?
 
So here it is: The big secret is… the words. The words on the page. It’s all about the words, and very little else.
 
Want proof? Consider the following: When the vast majority of those author first got signed, the only thing the acquiring editors knew about them were the words they had put on the pages now in front of those editors. The words that made that particular submission—out of hundreds—stand out to the point where the editor said “Yes!” That’s all. Just the words.
 
Of course things outside our control—like luck and timing—also come into play, but even when we take that into account, we still have to have words on the page. Words that move, that connect, that are unique, that will make someone lean more toward “yes” than “no.” (And there are things we can do to increase our “luck,” as discussed here.)
 
And the great good news is, those words are totally within our control! So much about the publishing industry is beyond us, and I’ll be the first to admit this can make being an author stressful. But when it all gets a bit much, I remember that the one thing I have absolute control over is the writing… and I tear myself away from the vapid vociferousness of social media and refocus on the writing of my next work-in-progress. The words.
 
I see aspiring writers on social discussing the vagaries of publishing and having long threads about how to game the system to combat the horrible practices someone’s mentioned upthread. And the funniest/saddest part is, the majority of the things they’re all worried about (a major publisher totally changing your manuscript and publishing it without your buy-in, for example*) have zero relation to the reality of publishing.
 
[*Seriously. Saw this one on Twitter again, just this morning. Wow.]
 
So not only are you not getting good answers to the issues within publishing with your pub-doom scrolling, you’re not even getting the straight scoop about what those issues actually are.
 
It’s the same thing with trying to discern the exact steps an author took to get where they currently are. You can devote as much of your writing time as you want trying to learn the tiniest details of some successful writer’s path… but it won’t really help. You’d be way better off reading their work and trying to discern why it “works,” to the degree you think it does. Because everyone’s path is different, the only real commonality (besides perseverance, of course) being this: They eventually got a sample of their well-crafted, emotionally resonant writing in front of an editor who was looking for what they were offering.
 
That’s the path, right there.
 
So maybe we should spend, say, ninety percent of our writing time trying to figure out how to write emotionally connecting, well-crafted work. (And maybe a little of the remaining ten percent on getting it in front of the right agent/editor/reader.)
 
Instead of letting our survivorship bias tell us we should write using the same methods those authors did, to the same daily schedule, with the same crumpets between chapters. That’s the whole fallacy of survivorship bias—it looks at winners after the fact and then declares, “These easily measured differences are what makes them winners!” When the real reasons they’re winners are much more intangible and less easily measured. (Are there any easily-applied metrics for a piece of writing being “emotionally connecting and well-crafted”…? Not to my knowledge.)
 
Another oft-quoted axiom—“Do the writing, then send it out into the universe!”—was appealing as hell to me, for years. Because I really enjoyed the initial drafting. And because I didn’t really enjoy revising. And because one of my early writing heroes once said something similar. And—especially—because I was lazy. All of which added up to me pointing at this advice and telling myself, “See? I’m doing the right thing!” But the reality, of course, was that me sending out my early drafts (drafts which had been “edited”—scrubbed for SPG errors and obvious mistakes and continuity issues, but no real story-level revising) rarely led to the results I wanted. My biases at play here (“least effort” and “confirmation”) were biting me in the butt, and it wasn’t until I realized the real value of revision that things started to open up a little. (I still remind myself, “Hard right over easy wrong,” during the writing/revising/re-writing/polishing of every book-length project I do, lest I backslide…)
 
So, biases be gone!
 
The words.
It’s all about the words.
 
 
Happy writing!

 
We’ve all heard the fable of the dry branch breaking while the supple limb flexes and comes back stronger than ever. Nowhere is this more apt than in working with publishers and their creative staff.
 
Recently I heard someone talking to his friends about his newly-finished book manuscript. Someone asked, “So when’s it coming out?” and the writer replied, “As soon as I find a publisher that won’t make me change anything!” I was there as a friend-of-a-friend so I didn’t say a word, but what I thought was, So… never, then?
 
Because that’s what publishers do! I don’t mean they alter the meaning of your project or make changes without your approval or anything even remotely nefarious. What they do do is ensure the books they publish are the best versions of those books possible, in the expert opinion of their creative staff (editors, editorial directors, art directors, copy editors, designers, editorial assistants, etc.) who—collectively speaking—have vast amounts of experience in publishing.
 
They earn this right via the simple fact that they’re paying for the production of your book, from your advance to the editor’s salary to the physical printing of the books (to say nothing of the publicity, sales, marketing, and distribution of said books to various venues all over the world… all of which contribute to your bottom line).
 
And beyond that, they’re generally pretty damn good at what they do. (Maybe better than you… definitely better than I.) And they generally know what works in any given market… again, maybe even better than we do.
 
Because of the above, they will actually offer editorial suggestions regarding manuscripts they plan on publishing. And if it becomes clear that you—as the author of said manuscript—aren’t amenable to considering feedback regarding your precious words, you suddenly become much less interesting to the editor in question. On the flip side, if they get the vibe that you’re a talented writer who also plays well with others, that’s a plus. Virtually every story of publishing success I know of involves taking (or at least seriously considering) editorial input at some point.
 
My very first professionally published piece began as a letter to the editor of a magazine. But the more I worked on it, the more it started to look like an article (at least in my naïve opinion at the time). So I went ahead and wrote the entire piece (around 3000 words, IIRC), complete with charts and graphs and photographs. (Which I developed in our little homemade darkroom, indicating what century this was.) Then I bundled up the whole thing and sent it off to the editor without a word of warning. (Query letter…? What’s that?)
 
His response upon receipt of my bundle of literary brilliance? “Sorry, but we’ve already done something like this.” Shit. “But…” he suggested, “how about writing an article about this, instead?” And the this he referred to was something I didn’t have a lot of interest in, to be honest. But hey, this door into publishing—even if it was the wrong door, leading somewhere I wasn’t really interested in going—was open. If only a crack. And it was the first door I’d seen up until then that wasn’t bolted tight. So I took his suggestion and wrote the piece (which he bought and published) and that was the beginning of my nonfiction career, leading to two hundred articles in various national publications as well as a couple of nonfiction books.
 
My first fiction sale went something like this: I submitted a science fiction story to the editor of my favorite SF magazine. (A breathtakingly brilliant story that was absolute perfection in every way, I might add.) His response was basically, “It’s an okay story, but we don’t need to see the protagonist break in and steal his boss’s prize fish. It’s obvious. Just have him leave, and then return with the fish.” Man, I hated that suggestion. Because I loved the fish stealing scene—so clever, so funny, so… superfluous. Yeah, once I removed it (something I never would have done on my own) I saw he was right. So I sent him the revised story, and he bought it and published it. Which was awesome. But even better, I learned an invaluable lesson—just because a scene is “good” (or well-written or funny or clever or whatever adjective strokes your writerly ego) doesn’t mean it helps the story. And the secondary lesson here was that this insight didn’t come from a writer, but an editor. Because that’s what editors do--they make stories better. Not by re-writing them, but by making suggestions to the writer as to how they might re-write them. (Understanding this difference is crucial, lest you fall prey to the goofy-yet-popular “Publishers will totally change your shit and publish it without your approval” myth.)
 
My wife’s first book deal came about when an editor read her manuscript and returned it with a note on the order of, “I like the voice but it’s way too long for the genre. If you cut it in half, I’ll look at it again.” A lot of writers would have thought, NFW am I ripping this thing apart for a major structural rewrite just because one person might ‘look at it again’…! That’s a ton of work with no commitment on the editor’s part, and my wife obviously thought the book was good as-is or she wouldn’t have shopped it. (No agent at this point.) Yet the door—while not exactly open—was at least unlocked. For now. (That’s another thing about rejections-with-suggestions: they come with an expiration date, which is exactly as long as the editor’s memory of her good feelings about your manuscript. Different for each editor, but generally weeks or months and not years.) So (with my loving support and encouragement… most of which consisted of me saying, Are you freaking crazy? Of course you should do this!) my wife buckled down and did the hard work of making the book significantly shorter while keeping the stuff that made it unique and wonderful in the first place. The editor eventually bought it—which started my wife’s career in children’s literature—and they currently have thirty-plus books together… and counting.
 
My first book deal (nonfiction) was also based on suggestions, but in this case it was the writer giving suggestions on the editing rather than the other way around. I’d written a fairly lengthy series of how-to articles for a magazine, and when the series was concluded my editor floated the idea of bundling them up into a book, basically re-printing the articles as they’d originally appeared in the pages of the magazine. I’d had similar thoughts, but I didn’t want it to be just a ‘collection of articles,’ so I suggested I write additional material to bridge each section and gen up additional photos and drawings (as well as change the 3-column magazine format of the text to a more “bookish” 2-column layout) which the editor was flexible enough to agree to. The end result was a coherent book the editor and I were both proud of—it became one of the better selling books the publisher had at that time—and I can’t help but think this might not have been the case had we just put out a quickie compilation.
 
With my first published book-length fiction (a YA novel), there was some editorial back-and-forth between me and the editor before I even got a contract. I recently heard someone opine that you should never do any revisions without a contract (and if your last name is Rowling or King, I might agree) but my thinking is if an established editor at a reputable house is willing to work with me on my manuscript, then I’m goofy not to. Her suggestions were very good—typically more about what to trim than what to write—and I took at least 80% of them. And I ended up with a contract and an advance and an agent and a book I’m proud of. None of which would have happened had I put my foot down in a show of authorial inflexibility.
 
And finally, with the novel I recently sold (actually, which my amazing agent recently sold, to a Big Five imprint), the editor had some questions before she made an offer. She let it be known that she was interested in the manuscript—loved the main character and his voice—but she needed answers first regarding how I might address certain things. I felt she was basically saying, "This is roughly what I think it needs. If you aren't up for doing the work, let me know before we tie the knot." And I totally understood that viewpoint, and I really appreciated her forthrightness. (See this post on how “a willingness to revise” is one of the main things an editor looks for in an author.) Then I proceeded to reply to her with a couple thousand words on how I might address her comments. And, well, here we are—the book pubs this fall and I couldn’t be more excited.
 
And to be honest, I think my general willingness to roll up my sleeves and work with her was as germane to selling the manuscript as any specific revision ideas I came up with.
 
And… now that that manuscript is pretty well buttoned up, we’ve had a conversation about next steps. I said I had ideas in sub-genres A, B, and C, and she said she was more interested in books that fell under B than A or C. Fair enough. So I sent some pages of an idea that came under B, and she let me know what she liked and what she thought needed some tweaks. Again, I’m free to do what I want, but if I want to continue to work with her, the smart move would be to work in an area in which she’s interested and listen to her feedback. So that’s what I’m doing.
 
Begin to see a pattern here?
 
So… if you need a publisher that will put out exactly what you write, word-for-word, without suggesting any editorial changes, that’s easy. You just have the wrong P-word. You’re not looking for a publisher, you’re looking for a printer. There are a ton of them who’ll be happy to take your money and print up your draft exactly as-written. And there are lots of sites where you can “just press publish” and your words will be magically available to whoever wants to read them, exactly as you drafted them. And all of that’s perfectly fine.
 
But if you want to successfully work with a publisher—one who will pay you, as well as pay for the production, printing, publicity, sales, and marketing of your book—then a little creative give-and-take can go a long way. And will very likely make your book even stronger than it would have been on its own. After all, you and the publisher want the same things—for your book to be the best version of your story, and for it to find success, both artistically and commercially.
 
Don’t be so brittle you break. Sometimes there’s more strength in being agile.
 
Happy flexing!