Organizing: Taming Unpredictability, by Randy Ingermanson

If you've ever tried to make a daily plan and stick to it, you've learned an annoying fact about plans:

Life happens.

Life happens in all sorts of unpredictable ways:

* You need one extra fact for the scene you're writing, so you go browsing the web and discover that it's way more complicated than you thought. You spend the afternoon rethinking your plot.

* You get an emergency email from your editor that you MUST deal with right away, and you burn three hours of your day putting out a fire that you didn't even know existed when you made your daily plan.

* Your computer's hard drive starts making horrible noises, and it turns out to need a trip to the geek shop. Even with a rush order to fix it, you lose two days.


These kinds of things happen all the time to writers. You probably had at least a couple of days with unexpected roadblocks last week. You'll probably have at least a couple of them this week. And every week for the rest of your life. That's just how things are.

How are you supposed to stick to a daily plan when things like these happen?

My opinion is that you can't.

Stuff is always going to happen. Unpredictable stuff.


Here's what I've been doing lately to keep my head in the game when the game keeps going awry:

I still make a daily plan of things I'd like to get done, but I write this daily plan second.

What I do first is to write a WEEKLY plan. On Monday, my first task is to write down a list of the things I think I can get done during the week.

If I get them all done by the end of the day on Friday, then the week is a success.


It's OK if bad stuff happens two days out of the week. Matter of fact, even three bad days isn't a tragedy. Three bad days is normal.

I've found that I can almost always count on having at least one or two Xtremely productive days each week. I just can't ever know in advance which days they'll
be.

When you have a day where everything goes right, you whip through your list at light speed.

I'm having a super-productive day today, as a matter of fact. Tomorrow might be horrible, but today is going great.


In one excellent day, you can get half your week's work done.

If you get only one terrific day per week, you'll probably get most of the things done on your weekly list.

If you get lucky and have TWO great days in a week, you can almost guarantee that you'll knock everything off your weekly list.


Try this experiment:

* For the rest of this week, make a daily list. Count the number of days you actually finish everything on that list.

* Next week on Monday morning make a list of the core things you'd like to get done for the week – the minimal set of achievements that would make the week a
success. Continue making a daily list each day and continue counting the number of days that you get that list all done.


You might not have a single "successful" day (in which you get your entire daily list done).

However, you will probably have at least one and possibly as many as two highly productive days in which you make huge progress on your weekly list.

At the end of next week, look to see if the week as a whole was "successful" (because you got everything done on your weekly list).

You might be surprised. You might find that every day is "unsuccessful" and yet the week as a whole is a "success."

What's going on here? How can five bad days add up to one good week?


The answer is that we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day but we often underestimate what we can do in a week.

Stuff happens most days. It's a rare day when something doesn't go wrong. But those rare days can make up for all the rest. Most weeks can be good ones.

Try it and see.

_____________________________________________

This article is reprinted by permission of the author. Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 31,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Organizing: Formatting Your Manuscript Like a Pro, by Randy Ingermanson

There aren't any ironclad rules on how to format the manuscript of your novel.

However, there are good ideas and bad ideas. Whenever I teach at conferences, I see all kinds of bad ideas. Bad ideas are bad because they make things hard on the editor or the agent. Bad ideas make you look like an amateur.

In this article, I'll explain some of the good ideas on formatting your manuscript.

Before I begin, I need to emphasize how critically important it is that you create and use a set of paragraph styles in your word processing software. To be specific here, I'll assume you're using Microsoft Word, which is the most common software.

To edit the standard set of styles in Microsoft Word, click the Format menu and then the "Style..." menu option. This brings up a dialog that lets you customize all the styles.

Most of the text in your novel should use the style "Normal" defined by Word. However, the default setting for the Normal style in Word is usually wrong for writing fiction, so you need to customize it as described below.

* Use a proportionally spaced font with a serif.

The issue is readability. A good font like Times Roman or Times New Roman is highly readable. Monospaced fonts like Courier feel old-fashioned and aren't as easy to read. Sans serif fonts like Helvetica are even harder to read.

* Use 12 point type.

Again, it's all about readability. Anything less than 12 point type is going to cause eyestrain for some editors and agents.

* Double-space the main body of your novel.

You do this by editing the Normal style so that the spacing between lines is 2. When you do this, the spacing between paragraphs is one blank line. You don't want any more than that, so make sure the style doesn't have extra space after paragraphs.

* Indent the first line of every paragraph half an inch.

You do this by editing the Normal paragraph style to make the first line indent half an inch. The WRONG way to do this is to type five spaces manually or type a tab character. The reason is that eventually a publisher will typeset your manuscript in Quark or InDesign, and if you've inserted spaces or tabs, they'll have to undo that to make it right.

* Use one-inch margins on both sides and on the top and bottom.

These are standard in the US. If you're using metric, a margin of 2.5 cm is almost the same as one inch.

* Use a footer on every page, with the page number centered horizontally.

Page numbers are a good idea, but they shouldn't get in the way of reading. The best place to put them is at the bottom of the page, in the center.

You don't need to preface the page number with the word "page". Editors are pretty quick to figure out why there is a lone number at the bottom of each page.


* Use a header on every page with your last name flush to the right margin.

The usual reason for using a header is the alleged nightmare scenario where two paper manuscripts fall on the floor and the pages get all mixed up.

I've been assured by a world-famous editor that this has never happened in the entire history of the world, but for some reason, just about everybody fears that it will, so you'll often see advice to put your full name and the title of your book in the header.

I have seen headers that contain the title, author's name, address, email address, and phone number.

In my opinion, less is more here. When an editor is flipping through the pages, the last thing you want is for her eyes to get distracted by all that info in your header.

There's a second reason I think putting your title in your header is a bad idea. The horrible truth is that your title probably isn't nearly as good as you think it is. About 50% of all working titles get changed before publication. About 10% of all working titles reek like a rat.

The real nightmare scenario is to have a dreadful title in the header of every single page of your fantastic manuscript. Then every time your editor flips a page, she's reminded of just how awful your title really is. Doubts begin to creep in about your sanity.

Don't do that to yourself. Your last name is all you need in the header to identify your manuscript. Really.

That's my opinion, anyway. Plenty of people disagree with me on this one.


* Begin the manuscript with a title page that has the title of the book centered on the page in a large type size. I typically use 36 point type. Use your best judgment on what size looks good. It depends on how long the title is.

Beneath the title, you can put a subtitle centered in normal size. Usually, the subtitle is "A Novel." You probably don't need anything more clever than that. If you think you do, then talk to three writers with more experience than you have.

Beneath the subtitle, put your name centered in normal size. If you use a pseudonym, use that here instead of your real name. If you have multiple authors, put each name on a separate line.


* Begin each piece of front matter on a separate page with a headline that tells what it is (Acknowledgments, Author's Note, and Dedication are some of the most common pieces of front matter). The headline should be in a larger font size than normal and it should be bold.


* Begin each chapter on a new page with a headline that says "Chapter __" and replace the blank with the number of the chapter. I normally use a special style for this that has a few lines of white space above it, so that the chapter headline is a couple of inches down the page. I also add in a little extra white space below the chapter heading.


* At the beginning of each scene, you might optionally include a dateline or other information centered in italics at the top of each scene.

I like to put the name of the viewpoint character here.
This is not standard, but I like doing it. It gives the reader an immediate cue on who she is for the next scene.

Editors have sometimes asked me if I really insist on doing this. I do. They've always been OK with that.


* Every time you have a break between scenes within a chapter, add some sort of visual cue. You can add an extra blank line -- that's the minimal amount you should do. Many authors use a line with three asterisks centered horizontally. That works for me.


* You have no business using underlines or boldface anywhere in the text of your story. This marks you out as an amateur.


* Using all-capital letters is also usually frowned on. Yes, I know that J.K. Rowling did this a lot in the Harry Potter series. When you're brilliant, you get a little extra license.

If you're not J.K. Rowling, then I strongly suggest you don't do this.


* Use italics sparingly. The trend these days is to use italics less often. I can justify italics for short sections of interior monologue and for emphasized words and for foreign words.


* I am going to be cruel here and allow you a grand total of one semicolon for your entire working career as a novelist.

This is just my opinion. There are tens of thousands of amateur writers who disagree with me.

There are probably one or two professional editors and agents who also disagree with me, so I won't insist that semicolons are on the same deadly level as underlining and boldface. But I have never seen a semicolon in a novel that couldn't be replaced by a period.


That's pretty much all the important things you need to know in order to format your novel.

Following these rules won't make bad writing magically good.

Following these rules will protect good writing from what my mother used to call "the appearance of evil."

Appearances matter.

If you don't believe me, try going into that five-star restaurant while ignoring the sign that says, "No shirt, no shoes, no service."


*This article is reprinted by permission of the author. Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/

Marketing: 24 Secrets of Ebook Publishing Success, by Randy Ingermanson

I'm currently reading a free e-book by Mark Coker, the CEO of Smashwords. I heard Mark speak last year at the Novelists, Inc. conference, and I was tremendously impressed with him.

Smashwords is an e-book distributor that helps you publish your work and distribute it to most of the major online retailers (all except Amazon).

Mark's new e-book is free. You can get it at

Smashwords.com. The title is THE SECRETS TO EBOOK PUBLISHING SUCCESS. You can get it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431

Here are my thoughts on a few of Mark's secrets:

Secret 1: "Write a great book."

This is the conventional wisdom among publishing professionals, and I agree. One of the linchpins of my own strategy has always been that marketing is easy if you have great craft. So spend your energy developing your craft.

This is why my own teaching focuses so heavily on craft. You might get some short term success by brilliantly marketing a second-rate book. But you'll be forever marked as a "great marketer, lousy writer." Who wants that?

Mark thinks that about 80% of the success of a book is due to its quality. I don't know whether this is true or how one would prove this. It seems plausible, but I'm not married to a number.

The main point is that great marketing starts with a great product. If you want to make your marketing easier, improve your craft.

Secret #5: "Write another great book."

Mark's point here is that every book you write is a marketing platform for every other book you write.

What? Not Facebook? Not Twitter? Not your blog?

Well, no. A post on Facebook or Twitter has a lifetime of about 3 hours and then it's gone. After that, it has no more effect on the world and can't do a blessed thing to help market any of your books.

Whereas a book you wrote ten years ago may very well be the road by which a new reader discovers you today. If you've written another 20 books in those ten years, then that old book now serves as a sample of all 20 of your other books.

And furthermore, each of those 20 serves as marketing for the ten-year-old book. And for each other.

All your books are marketing for all your other books. There is a simple math rule to describe roughly how effectively your books market each other.

Having 2 books published is about 4 times as good as having only 1 book.

Having 3 books published is about 9 times as good.

Having 10 books published is about 100 times as good.

Every book is helping market every other book. (As long as you have followed Secret #1 and written a great book. Bad books don't help each other.)

Yes, it's true that you can get short-term results from Facebook or Twitter. Nobody seems to know how much, but you can get something.

Yes, it's also true that you can get results from your blog. A blog post is forever, and so a blog can give you long-term results.

But e-books are forever too. They never go out of print unless you get embarrassed by them and pull them from the online retailers. The advantage of an e-book is that it's the best indicator of what your other books are like. If a reader likes one of your books, she'll probably like all of them.

So write your best e-book and then write another, and another, and another.

Secret 11: "Give (some of) your books away for free."

I have long been a fan of giving away some things for free. And not your worst stuff, either. I believe in giving away some of your very best stuff. Give away some of your gold.

Just as an example, one of the very best ideas I've ever had was the ten steps for designing a novel that I named the "Snowflake method." I posted an article on the Snowflake on my web site about nine years ago. It has since been viewed over 2.5 million times and it has made me famous. I constantly hear from people who say that the Snowflake has revolutionized their writing.

It's not for everybody, but it's gold for many people.

Giving stuff away free works. Mark Coker does this a lot. You can convert your books to e-books on

Smashwords at no cost. You can post them for sale there at no up-front cost. (Smashwords will sell them for you and keep a small percentage as a consignment fee. This is a great deal for you and it gives Smashwords an incentive to give you great service.)

Mark's e-book is free. Why? It helps authors and it gets the word out about Smashwords. Any writer will benefit from his e-book, and many of them will choose to work with Smashwords, which will then eventually earn him a tidy profit.

I don't think you should give everything away for free. You need to eat and pay your bills. But giving away some of your very best stuff can make good sense.

Mark estimates that free books on Smashwords are downloaded 50 to 100 times more than paid books. This works wonderfully if you have a number of other titles, because the free book acts as marketing for all the others. (Remember Secret #6.)

Secret #17: "Platform building starts yesterday."

Your platform is whatever you have in place that allows you to reach readers. This may be a speaking business, a web site, a blog, a Facebook page or profile, a Twitter presence, an e-mail list, or whatever.

If you don't have a platform today, then you can't use it for marketing your books. But you can use your books to help build your platform. Then tomorrow, your platform may be of some value in promoting your books.

Mark has a simple formula for building a strong platform: Be useful to other people.

By no great coincidence, this is essentially the same as my own formula for building a platform: Say things that are valuable to other people.

You don't actually have to say much about your products when you follow this formula. If you are useful to other people, if you say things they value, then they'll tell other people about you and your platform will grow.

A small fraction of those you reach with your platform will buy your products. It's silly to worry about those who don't buy your stuff. Focus on doing things that make the world a better place and you'll be rewarded financially. Maybe a little; maybe a lot.

I've talked about 4 of Mark's secrets. There are a couple of dozen more. Here are some of the most interesting:

* "Practice metadata magic"

* "Understand the algorithm"

* "How retailers select titles for feature promotion"

* "Architect for virality"

* "Practice the never-ending book launch"

* "Maximize distribution"

* "Think beyond price"

I highly recommend THE SECRETS OF EBOOK PUBLISHING SUCCESS. There is gold in this e-book. And you can't beat the price. Free.

The world would be a better place if all authors took the advice Mark gives in this book. Authors would do better. Readers would have an easier time finding the books they want.

Here's the direct link to Mark's e-book again: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431

Have fun!

This article is reprinted by permission of the author. Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com

Creating: The Magic of The Hunger Games, by Randy Ingermanson

I believe that every novelist should be reading the current bestsellers.

You should definitely be reading the bestsellers in your own category.

You should also be reading the massive breakout bestsellers that are selling millions of copies per year, even if they aren't in your category.

Every novelist should read THE DA VINCI CODE. Every novelist should read THE SHACK. Every novelist should read the Harry Potter series and TWILIGHT and THE LOVELY BONES and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

These should be no-brainers. If you want to write for the modern reader, then you need to have a feel for what the modern reader actually reads. Yes, even if you think popular fiction is crap. Even if you write literary fiction. Even if all your favorite authors died in the 19th century.

Every novelist should read THE HUNGER GAMES. I've taught on the craft of THE HUNGER GAMES at a couple of recent conferences and was shocked to see that many of my students hadn't read it.

Seeing the movie isn't enough. Any novel has interior monologue and interior emotion that the movie won't capture. Any novel has a voice that generally will get muzzled or lost in the movie. Any novel has scenes that will be dropped when adapted to a screenplay.

Once you've read any of these novels, you may find it useful to analyze them -- to figure out what makes them tick.

THE HUNGER GAMES is a great book to analyze because it's extremely well written (not all mega-bestsellers are). I can almost guarantee that if you analyze THE HUNGER GAMES, you'll immediately see ways to improve your writing.

I generally use my well-known Snowflake method to analyze a book. Many writers (but not all) find the Snowflake helpful in designing their story before they write the first draft.

But anybody should find the Snowflake useful when analyzing a story that has already been written. Why?

Because most of the steps of the Snowflake correspond to time-tested methods of analysis that writers have been using for hundreds of years (in some cases for thousands of years).

The ten steps of the Snowflake are summarized here: http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/art/snowflake.php

The first step in the Snowflake is to summarize the storyline in one sentence. This is sometimes called your "elevator pitch." The one-sentence summary of your novel will serve you well as a selling tool forever.

Here is my one-sentence summary of THE HUNGER GAMES:

"A 16-year-old girl volunteers to take her sister’s place in an arena where twenty-four teens will battle each other to the death."

That's 25 words, which I consider the upper limit for a one-sentence summary. I prefer to see a one-sentence summary in the range of 10 to 15 words.

The goal is to tell the main idea of the novel in as few words as possible. Shorter is always better, if it captures the story.

The shortest one-sentence summary I've ever seen is the summary for my friend Tosca Lee's forthcoming novel ISCARIOT. Here it is: "Judas".

That's one word and it tells you everything you need to know about Tosca's book.

The purpose of a one-sentence summary is to tell people whether they're interested or not. That's all.

Notice that I didn't say that the purpose of the one-sentence summary is to sell your book. That would be crazy. Most people are not in the target audience for your book. If they're not in your target audience, they probably won't like it, and there's no reason you should want them to buy it.

You want a one-sentence summary that immediately gives the hearer enough information to know whether they're in your target audience or not.

If you like suspense fiction, then the one-sentence summary I gave above for THE HUNGER GAMES immediately tells you that you're going to love this story. If you don't like suspense fiction and the thought of teens killing teens makes you sick to your stomach, then you'll probably hate the story.

A one-sentence summary should hit emotive hot buttons.

Notice the hot buttons I hit in the summary above:

* "A 16-year-old girl" -- All adults can remember being 16. It's generally a crazy mixture of really great things and incredibly horrible things. This is automatically a hot button.

* "volunteers to take her sister's place" -- Self-sacrifice is always a hot button for readers. Most of us are only altruistic when it doesn't cost us much. But we would like to be altruistic on a heroic scale.

* "arena" -- This has been a hot button ever since the Romans put the first two gladiators together.

* "battle each other to the death" -- Single combat to the death is wired into our emotive genes. The idea was already old when David faced Goliath three thousand years ago. You may wish we were more civilized than that, but we aren't.

A great one-sentence summary is focused. Notice what I left out of my one-sentence summary. Not a word about the romantic subplot. Not a word on politics. Not a word on the dystopic future. All of those are great elements, but they're not central.

The central story is combat to the death in an arena.

Less is more when you're writing a one-sentence summary of your novel. You achieve perfection in a one-sentence summary when there is nothing more to remove.

One final point about your one-sentence summary. It should focus on what happens early in your story.

It will often focus on the so-called "inciting incident" -- the incident early in the story that kicks your characters out of their ordinary world. That's what I've done here.

It may sometimes focus on a disaster that happens as much as one quarter of the way into the story. Rarely will you need to tell anything beyond that in a one-sentence summary. You don't want to tell too much.

Your purpose in writing a one-sentence summary is to create a "story question" in the mind of the hearer. A "story question" is always of the form "Will she or won't she _______?"

In THE HUNGER GAMES, the story question is "Will she or won't she survive the arena?"

Your story question depends crucially on what category you're writing.

In a mystery, the story question is generally, "Will he or won't he find the murderer?"

In a romance novel, the story question is almost always, "Will she or won't she marry That Guy?"

One thing your one-sentence summary should NEVER do is to give away the ending. The one-sentence summary is a selling tool. It ignites curiosity. It never satisfies that curiosity.

The whole point of a one-sentence summary is to get one of the following two responses:

* "Sorry, not interested." (This will be the most common response. Sorry, but most people just won't care one peanut for your novel.)

* "Wow! That sounds cool! Tell me more!" (This is the response you should expect from your target audience, and from nobody else.)

There is a third response you may get from your one-sentence summary:

* "Hmmmm, sounds pretty good." (If you are hearing this, then you either don't have a story or you haven't yet figured out what it is. "Pretty good" is a death sentence for your story. You want people to love it or hate it. If your one-sentence summary is "pretty good" then kill it or fix it, but don't keep it.)

We've now got a one-sentence summary of THE HUNGER GAMES. Have you written a one-sentence summary of your own novel? Does it do the job? Can you make it better?

Should you kill it and create a new one?

Next month, we'll look at the large-scale structure of THE HUNGER GAMES -- the so-called "three-act structure."

Your homework: If you haven't read THE HUNGER GAMES, read it before next month and then summarize it in a paragraph of no more than five sentences.

This is harder than it sounds. A lot harder. Unless you're a professional novelist, you'll find it almost impossible to write a one-paragraph summary that does the story justice.

My challenge to you: Try anyway. It'll be good for you.

Hard work makes you strong.

*This article is reprinted by permission of the author. Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/

Organizing: The Incredible Power of a Challenge, by Randy Ingermanson

Can you do 100 pushups in less than 2 minutes?

Can you read 1000 words per minute?

Can you write a novel in 30 days?

Most people can't do any of these things. But quite a few people have found that they can do one or more of them -- once they've set a challenge for themselves.

You can do amazing things when you challenge yourself, and when you make a plan to meet that challenge.

On May 25, 1961, John Kennedy announced an ambitious challenge for the US -- to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

Kennedy had strong reasons for setting this challenge. As he said in a speech at Rice University, "The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space."

He also knew that it would be hard and expensive. Accepting this challenge meant that other good things would go undone.

So why do it? Part of the answer was that taking on difficult challenges makes you strong. In Kennedy's words, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

What makes a good challenge? A challenge should be all of the following:

* Objective

* Worthwhile

* Difficult

* Possible

Kennedy could have chosen many ways to challenge the US to explore space and to advance techology (sp). Most of those ways would have been difficult to measure or verify.

Putting a man on the moon is objective. You either put footprints in lunar dust or you don't. You can see the results. You can prove you did it. Your vision is clear and focused.

In issuing the challenge, Kennedy made the case that\ space exploration was worth doing. It would be an adventure. It would establish US leadership. It would advance technology. And it must be done by a nation intent on using space for peaceful purposes, rather than for filling it with weapons of mass destruction.

But Kennedy made it clear that the challenge would be extremely difficult. The US could do it only with a maximum effort. Half measures would be worse than none at all.

However, Kennedy was confident that it could be done. Humans could walk on the moon -- if only they chose to go.

As it turned out, Kennedy was right on all counts. The space program has resulted in massive technological advances. It was hard. But the US did it in the time frame allotted.

A great challenge led to great results.

A bad challenge generally leads nowhere.

If a challenge is subjective, then it's a bad challenge, because you'll never really know if you got there, so you aren't as driven to try.

If a challenge is not worthwhile, then it's a bad challenge, because when the going gets tough, you've got no reason to stay tough and keep going.

If a challenge is not difficult, then it's a bad challenge because it sets the bar too low. Yeah, sure you can challenge yourself to run a 20-minute mile. For most people, that's no challenge at all. A challenge ought to stretch you, to change you, to make you a better person.

If a challenge is impossible, then it's a bad challenge because it's pointless. You can't jump over the moon with muscle power. Trying hard may make you a better jumper, but you won't try nearly as hard as you would if you set the goal to be possible.

In my own experience, I've often found that I could do a lot more when I set myself a challenge. Something objective, worthwhile, difficult, and possible. It's easy to go easy. But going easy usually means not going very far or very fast.

If you're writing a novel and you seem to be spinning your wheels, it may be because you haven't set the task as a challenge. Challenging yourself is fun. It focuses your efforts. It drives out distractions.

What's your current challenge?

Is it objectively verifiable?

Is it worth doing?

Is it difficult enough?

Is it possible?

A typical challenge for a novelist might be this. "I will have the first draft of my complete novel of at least ______ words written by this date ______."

If you don't have a challenge, then there's no better time than now to create one for yourself. Once you take on a challenge, you won't be bored.

*This article is reprinted by permission of the author. Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/

Creating: Why Downton Abbey Rocks

Downton Abbey is the outrageously popular TV series set in the home of an aristocratic British family during the years 1912 through 1920.

On the face of it, the show's popularity makes no sense. 1912? What was happening in 1912? Oh yeah, the Titanic, but what else?

Why is Downton Abbey getting such incredible reviews? Why has it won six Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe? Why has it become the best-selling DVD box set on Amazon?

In a word, it's story. Downton Abbey is packed full of story.

And what does "story" mean, precisely?

Story is characters in conflict. Characters with impossible dreams. Characters willing to do anything to reach their dreams.

Let's look at the characters of Downton Abbey and their impossible dreams.

Lady Mary Crawley is young and beautiful, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham. As the story begins, her fiance has just died on the Titanic. Mary's problem is that she doesn't have a problem with that. She didn't much love the guy, even though she was engaged to him.

Why would any girl agree to marry a guy she didn't love? Simple. She was pushed into it. Mary is the oldest of three daughters, but there aren't any sons in the Crawley family.

Unfortunately, the estate and the title and most of the family money have been "entailed," meaning that they will be inherited by the nearest male relative, not by Mary.

This is massively unfair, but the family has hoped to make it less unfair by pushing Mary into marrying the heir. Mary has gone along with this, until now. Not happily, but she's gone along.

Now the heir is dead and Mary doesn't feel sad about him. The only thing she feels sad about is that she doesn't feel sad.

Something is deeply wrong with Mary. She knows what it is. She has no purpose in life. As the story begins, her main purpose is to find her purpose.

Mary wants to make her own decisions in life. And that's impossible. Women in her position don't make decisions. They have their decisions made for them.

With the loss of her unwanted fiance, something snaps in Mary. From now on, she isn't going to have decisions foisted upon her. She's going to make her own decisions.

If the only decisions Mary has power to make are bad ones, then by heavens, she'll make horrible, wretched, idiotic decisions. But she will choose her own way in life. She will. Starting now.

The news of the Titanic arrives on the same day that the new valet, John Bates, arrives to begin his duties. Bates is an old Army friend of Lord Grantham, and lately some shrapnel has shifted in his knee, giving him a serious limp. But nobody knows about his injury until he arrives to begin work.

Unfortunately, Downton Abbey has zillions of stairs and no elevators. How can Bates manage his duties when he can't carry things even on level ground? Will Lord Grantham have to get rid of his new valet?

Bates is one of the show's most likable characters. He never complains. Never feels sorry for himself. Never tells anyone about the failings of the other servants. He's honest and kind and decent. All he wants is to have a job, and that is apparently the one thing he's going to be denied.

Bates has a rival. The head footman, Thomas, is young, strong, and handsome, and he wants the job of valet.

Thomas has a massive chip on his shoulder because he's "different" -- which is his term for the fact that he's gay. In 1912, that's a serious problem.

Thomas will do whatever it takes to get the job of valet, and if he has to lie and cheat to get Bates removed, no problem. But whether he gets the job or not, Thomas will never be happy. Because he's "different."

Mary's mother is Cora, originally from an American family, now a middle-aged English aristocrat. Cora desperately wants to get her three daughters married off well to nice men. Now that the heir is dead, it's time to reopen the question of that wretched entail. Why can't it be broken?

Cora repeatedly asks her husband to get the family lawyer to break the entail. And he repeatedly refuses, claiming that it can't be done. Cora strikes up an alliance with her mother-in-law, Violet, who also thinks that the best course is to break the entail.

Violet is an acid-tongued old woman who gets most of the funniest lines of dialogue in the series. Violet wants the same thing Cora wants -- to get the daughters married off, and most especially to see Mary keep the family fortune. But neither Violet nor Cora can persuade Lord Grantham to try to break the entail.

Why won't Lord Grantham at least try? He certainly loves his daughter Mary, and wants to see her married well and prosperous. But breaking the entail would probably not succeed, he's convinced. Mary might get the money, but never the estate.

Lord Grantham has poured his entire life into maintaining the estate. He married Cora for her money because it would enable him to keep the estate. Now how can he separate the estate from the money? The estate would die, and he can't tolerate that.

For Lord Grantham, the solution is simple. Let Mary marry the new heir. That would be young Matthew Crawley, a third cousin once removed. He's a handsome guy, although (gack) he's a lawyer. But even lawyers can often be trained.

Lord Grantham's plan is to train young Matthew to be the new Earl. And to convince Mary to marry him. Why won't Mary do what she's told? It's the obviously right thing. Lord Grantham loves Mary, but she can be so infuriating sometimes.

Matthew's certainly a nice guy, handsome, kind, honest. If Mary didn't feel forced to marry him, she'd probably be interested. But Mary's a stubborn cuss, and she won't be pushed.

So Matthew has no chance, even before she meets him. Matthew has no chance, even though he falls in love with her on sight. Matthew would do anything to convince her to marry him. But nothing is enough. He can't have her, plain and simple.

There's enough so far to make a movie, but not a TV series. There has to be more, much more. And there is. Practically every other character has something they desperately want -- and can't have.

Edith, the homely second daughter of Lord and Lady Grantham, would love to have a husband. But every time she sets her cap for a man, her beautiful older sister Mary steps in and flirts with him. Edith has no chance for a man and she hates Mary. She'd do anything to ruin Mary's life. Anything.

Sybil, the youngest daughter, is interested in politics and women's rights. But what chance does she have to do anything that matters? She's been educated by a governess, which means she's learned nothing. She can't do anything, because it's not ALLOWED, and that drives her crazy.

Anna, the head housemaid, is a thirty-something woman, not quite pretty, not quite plain. She's sweet and kind and she's naturally attracted to the new valet, Mr. Bates. But Bates has some dark secrets in his past, things he can't talk about.

Anna knows instinctively that Bates is protecting somebody. But Mr. Bates won't talk about it, and until he does, Anna's love is going unrequited.

Gwen, another housemaid, isn't happy with her life in service. She's been taking a course in typing and shorthand and would love to get a job as a secretary.

But nobody will hire a housemaid with no experience. Gwen has no chance to pursue her dreams. Unless Sybil gives her a hand, and even then, the odds are long.

Cora's maid, Sarah O'Brien, is a bitter woman who secretly despises her employers but adopts a fawning attitude when they're around. She's in league with Thomas to make life miserable for Mr. Bates, and incidentally Anna. For no good reason. It's not clear what drives O'Brien, but her goal is clear -- to make everyone else miserable. She's extremely good at that.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes, is a quiet soul, but she secretly wonders what her life would have been like if she'd married the farmer who asked her many years ago.

But she'll never know, will she? Unless . . . she gets a second chance at love. Will she get that chance? Would she take it?

The second footman, William, is a young man fresh off the farm. He means well, but he's none too bright, and the highest ambition he can imagine is to rise to the position of first footman.

William has a thing for the kitchen maid, Daisy, and he'd be ever so happy if only she would notice him.

Daisy is a young girl from a miserable background. If her self esteem got any lower, it would be underground.

Daisy is in love with the footman Thomas, who rarely gives her the time of day. Thomas only ever pays attention to Daisy because he knows it hurts William.

Daisy is too naive to realize that Thomas is never going to love her because he's just not interested in women.

Mrs. Patmore, the cook, is slowly losing her eyesight. She's a kind soul, but she thinks she'll be sacked if anyone learns she can hardly see. Mrs. Patmore only wants to keep her job, and she's terrified, so she takes out her frustrations on Daisy.

The butler, Mr. Carson, runs the household and supervises all the other servants. It's a constant challenge. Mr. Bates can't carry. Thomas is a conniving SOB, but you can't pin anything on him. O'Brien is cruel and arrogant to the servants, but she's always sweetness and light around her employers, so there's no getting rid of her.

Mr. Carson feels that the honor of Downton Abbey rests on his shoulders. It's a heavy responsibility. Carson desperately wants to maintain tradition, but that's impossible. The world is changing and soon it's going to be unrecognizable.

Butlers should have no favorites, but Carson loves Mary like his own daughter and he'd do anything to see her happily married.

Mr. Carson has a secret from his past, and it would kill him if anyone knew. But the only person who knows his secret lives far away. For the moment.

There's more, of course. I've left out a few major characters and all the minor characters.

But I've covered enough to make it clear what drives Downton Abbey. Here is the secret that will drive your own fiction to success, if you let it:

Every character in Downton Abbey behaves as if he or she were the hero of the story. Each one desperately wants something. Something he can't have. Something she will do almost anything to get.

When you write your novel, it's tempting to bring in characters solely to serve the story of your protagonist. Characters who are there merely to play the role of Sidekick or Villain or Love Interest or

Humorous Relief or whatever. Characters without their own hopes and dreams.

That is the road to second-rate fiction.

Give each character a dream. Preferably an impossible dream. Something your character will do anything to get.

When a person will do anything to get what they want, then anything can happen.

That's why Downton Abbey rocks. That's what will make your story rock too.

     This article is reprinted by permission of the author.
     Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

     Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Marketing: Beginning With The End in Mind

In Stephen Covey's classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he recommends that you "begin with the end in mind."

He's talking about living your life in a way that you'll be proud of it when you die. The "end" he has in mind here is death.

But beginning with the end in mind makes sense, no matter what path you're taking, and the path we writers care about is the road to publication.

The "end" of that path is the happy day when an editor calls you to say, "We voted today and we've decided to offer you a contract on your book."

That's a good end to a long, long path. Getting published by a traditional, royalty-paying publisher is validation for your work. (You may also consider it validation for you, but it's really just validation for the novel you wrote.)

It's important to know the "end" you're trying to reach, because then it's not hard to work backward from that "end."

Let's do that now. Let's work backward several steps.

What comes before you get the contract?

That's easy. The last thing that happens before your editor calls to offer you a contract is that the publishing committee meets and your editor pitches your book to them and they vote on it.

What happens before the committee meets?

That's also easy. The editor reads your manuscript (and probably also your proposal) and decides that this is a manuscript she wants to champion.

What happens before your editor reads your manuscript and proposal?

There are two normal ways to get a manuscript in front of an editor. Either you or your agent send the editor the manuscript.

It doesn't matter who sends the manuscript. The only thing that matters is that the editor recognizes the name of the sender.

If your agent sends the manuscript, the editor accepts it because she knows your agent.

If you send the manuscript, the editor accepts it because she knows you.

If the editor doesn't know either of you, then she doesn't even look at your manuscript. She's too busy dealing with professionals to be bothered with amateurs.

And how in the world would the editor know you? What has to happen in order for the editor to know you?

That's extremely simple. The editor will only know you if you have met her. The usual way that happens is that you meet her at a writing conference and pitch her your story and she says, "Wow! Sounds interesting. Send me your manuscript and/or your proposal."

If meeting an editor at a writing conference sounds scary, you might think that it's better to just get an agent and let him do it. OK, fine. Let's say your agent send the editor the manuscript.

What happens before the agent sends the editor your manuscript?

Again, very easy. Your agent first has to offer to represent you and you have to accept that offer of representation.

Why does an agent offer to represent you? What has to happen first?

That's also easy. You send that agent a copy of your manuscript and/or proposal, and he recognizes your name on the cover, reads it, and decides that you are a talent worth spending time on.

Uh-oh. How would the agent recognize your name?

The agent will only recognize your name if he's met you. The usual way that happens is at a wriitng conference. You make an appointment and pitch your story to the agent, and he says, "Wow! Sounds interesting. Send me your manuscript and/or your proposal."

You may be wondering why you have to meet people in person. Can't you just mail in your manuscript? Or e-mail it? Are agents and editors too snooty to read their mail or their e-mail?

No, they're not snooty. They're busy. They're overwhelmed with the zillions of other writers sending in stuff by mail and e-mail. Your mail or e-mail is lost in the flood. Unless they know you.

A writing conference is your best chance to capture the undivided attention of an editor or agent -- for fifteen minutes. You make an appointment. You've got a quarter of an hour to show what you've got. No interruptions. Nobody else.

Sure that's scary. Sure that's hard. So was getting your driver's license. So was getting your first kiss.

Lots of things are scary and hard, and you do them because the rewards are worth the risk. Life is about doing the scary and hard things you need to do to get what you want.

If you want to meet an editor or agent and have a more-than-fair shot at making an impression, then a writing conference is an excellent place to do it. In my 20+ years as a writer, I haven't seen a better way to make that connection.

About once a year, I write a column in this e-zine about the enormous benefits of going to writing conferences. I believe in conferences.

I sold my first book (and my second, and my third) on my own, without an agent, as a direct result of the contacts I made at writing conferences. I met my first agent (and my second and my third) at conferences.

Most of my published novelist friends did the same.

No need to belabor this point. Either you're ready to go to a conference and make some connections, or you aren't.

If you are, then what are you waiting for? The year is early. Make it happen.

If you aren't, then now might be a good time for me to mention that writing conferences are a great way to learn more about the craft of writing fiction.

I joined my first critique group as a result of going to my first conference. I met my first writing buddy at another conference. I first heard the phrase "you're going to get published soon" from a novelist at a conference.

I don't usually make a sales pitch for my products in this column, but I will now, because it would be wrong not to mention it.

I've got an e-book available, the Writer's Conference Survival Guide, that tells you all about how to pick the right conference for you and how to get the most out of it.

You can find out all about the Writer's Conference Survival Guide HERE.

If the "end" you have in mind is to get published with a traditional, royalty-paying publisher, then a writing conference is very likely to be one of the last steps you take before you reach that "end."

Nothing happens unless you take action. Go to it.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 30,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.