Writing conferences are wonderful, but it can be hard to know what to do afterwards.

Should you change direction, start something new, or compile a massive to-do list and then have a little cry?

I’m suggesting a more positive approach that gives you time to think and make decisions on what we hope will be a long and successful author career.

I hope you enjoy the podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

References:

Learn about the Self-Publishing Show at: selfpublishingformula.com/spf-podcast

Learn more about Craig Martelle and his Successful Indie Author Five Minute Focus Talks on YouTube at: youtube.com/@20Booksto50kRLiveEvents/videos

or look for 20booksto50k on Facebook.

Marc Reklau is an excellent speaker and author of genuinely useful bestselling self-help books. Click here to learn more and download free worksheets on marcreklau.com.

Here’s the full podcast

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Episode Notes

We discuss:

Reasons for ditching your genre and writing in a new one, and we touch on some of the pros and cons.

Switching genres is a long-term decision with many implications – it isn’t a quick fix.

There’s the lure of the shiny and the new, but you may need to think about building up a new readership from scratch. How many books will it take to make it in the new genre?

Is the new genre very competitive or is one that lacks a distinct readership? Buying a k-lytics report may help you to decide.

Jumping on a hot niche? Do you really understand what those readers want?

If you have a clear intent and you’ve thought out your reasons for switching genres, it can be a good move.

Do your research and assess the workload.

If you’re doing well in a genre, do you really need to change?

Can you experiment with a short project, e.g. a novella, to judge if the genre is a good fit? Perhaps you could try out an episodic format, writing one chapter at a time. Are people howling for more?

Writers’ toolbox

Notion for taking notes, planning, managing your processes, compiling research. world building and much more

Here’s the full podcast

Episode Notes

This was a wide-ranging discussion, but here are some of the main points:

Research genres before you begin, and try to find out where your book would fit. If you don’t do this, marketing will be an uphill battle.

Find a niche that is identifiable and matches the kind of

Write a series so that you can earn money via read-through, otherwise it’s hard to make profit.

Write a first draft in one go – don’t keep going back and editing.

To get into the flow of writing, avoid distractions and use sprints for say 45 minutes. Don’t stop for research, just mark the place with a symbol and then you’ll be able to find it later on and revise and research as necessary.

Rewriting is key.

Develop all characters, not just the main ones.

Maintain and control the pace of your stories to keep readers turning the pages.

Links

Claim a free book and learn more on Andrew Hastie’s website at: infinityengines.com

Find Andrew’s books on Amazon – USA

or Amazon UK

Writers’ toolbox

Vellum for formating ebooks and paperbacks on mac.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Please Consider Supporting The Podcast on Patreon

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Here’s the full podcast

Episode Notes

The main resource you’ll need is time – figure on two or three hours (or more) to put each episode together – be realistic!

Will your podcast be aimed at readers or other writers – decide this early.

Does your idea have legs? Can you jot down 20 ideas for episodes? How easy is it to come up with ideas for future shows?

What’s the value that you’ll be bringing to your audience?

What’s the rationale for your show? Will it have a theme or an objective that will tie all the episodes together?

How will you benefit from the time that you invest in the show?

Will you have a co-host to share ideas with?

Will you have informative guests?

How good are you at reaching out to people? You will need this skill if you want guests.

Podcasting Equipment for Beginners

Links below are affiliate links so using them will support the podcast – they don’t cost you anything, but amazon rewards me for each sale.

You will need a microphone, and most people start with a USB microphone – I’m not an expert on this but I have tried a few. I settled for a cardioid condenser microphone and this works well for me – I live in a quiet area and I have a home office that makes a decent place to record. Your choice will depend on several factors so I suggest you do some research – see below.

Entry-level microphone for podcasters:

Blue Snowball: https://amzn.to/2YDiiN0

A better USB microphone for podcasters:

Blue Yeti: https://amzn.to/2VoUwm8

I haven’t tried this one, but it’s worth checking it out – the Neat Beecaster professional microphone: https://amzn.to/3g0Flaq

In the UK try this microphone for podcasting

For quite a while, I used the Auna 900 USB and I like it a lot: https://amzn.to/3eHUtcv

An excellent microphone setup for podcasters:

NEAT King Bee Cardioid Solid State Condenser Microphone with Pop Filter and Shockmount- this is my latest and was used for this podcast

https://amzn.to/31r6Dmb

You’ll also need a USB audio interface. I use the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd gen

https://amzn.to/2Zl8syD

And to complete this microphone setup, you’ll need a couple of extra items – an XLR cable

https://amzn.to/2BOARoq

and a stand such as the Samson MK10 which I find to be sturdy and reliable

https://amzn.to/2Vt6yuB

Software for Podcasters

You will need audio recording and editing software (often referred to as a DAW – a digital audio workstation).

Free: Audacity https://www.audacityteam.org/

Mid-price: Reaper http://reaper.fm/

Premium: Adobe Audition https://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html

Headphones are optional but will be useful. Pick a comfortable pair of over-ear headphones that enclose your ear so that sound doesn’t leak out to your microphone.

https://amzn.to/3dD96g5

Podcast hosting

You will be investing time and energy into your show, so invest in proper hosting.

Plans vary widely – for a recommended podcast host and discount coupon, see below:

I use and recommend Pinecast.

Please use this coupon code to get 40% off for 4 months:

r-9929b4

You save money and I get a small reward if you use this coupon code. Here’s the link: https://pinecast.com/

Writers’ toolbox

Podcastage on youtube

Booth Junkie:

The Audacity to Podcast podcast is an excellent source of info: theaudacitytopodcast.com

If using Reaper, there are a lot of tutorials online:

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

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Episode Notes

We need to do a lot more to address the issues of inclusion, equality and diversity.

Too many voices are under-represented.

We need to make sure our characters represent the real world and include people from a diverse range of backgrounds.

We want to avoice tokenism, stereotypes and cliches.

All our characters must have agency, and they must be richly drawn and fully fleshed out.

Can we encourage, support, mentor and promote writers and other professionals from under-represented groups?

Writers’ toolbox

Libre Office – an ideal tool for knocking out an outline in an open file format.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Please Consider Supporting The Podcast on Patreon

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Episode Notes

Publishing your book – How can we make your book description work?

Today we’re looking at the perennial problem of writing product descriptions (sometimes called blurbs) for our books on Amazon and other stores.

Let’s take a step back and think in terms of strategies.

Product descriptions are sales copy so we need to become better copy-writers

We achieve this through the regular and frequent application of our craft.

Every tweet, Facebook post, email, blog post, newsletter and so on, can be copy-written.

We need to become copy-aware.

Use white space.

Every word must pack a punch.

Be economical!

Be precise – you only have a few sentences – you don’t want them to be misread.

Questions can work, but pseudo-questions can be irritating.

Formulaic descriptions might get you started, but innovate!

Be aware that words carry inference – we don’t want to encourage negative emotions.

Each sentence must grab attention AND lead the reader to the next.

We are not trying to explain or describe a book – we are trying to entice the reader.

Does your copy intrigue us? Does it make us want to read on?

Evoke an emotional response.

Who are your readers? What re they looking for? What cues will they recognise?

Encourage the reader to empathise with your characters or situation.

Walk them into the showroom of your imagination.

Introduce them to your world.

Compell them to stay!

Match the tone of your description with the genre.

Write several variations then walk away and look again.

Get peer feedback from writers IN YOUR GENRE.

Use ads on Facebook or Amazon to test copy.

Writers’ toolbox

Reedsy marketplace – find professionals to help with your book projects.

Mastering Amazon Descriptions by Brian Meeks – find it online

edited: I no longer recommend Plottr to plan your novel as I found it had stability issues.

The writing resources page on this site.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Please Consider Supporting The Podcast on Patreon

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Episode Notes

Publishing your book – Should You Go Wide or into Kindle Unlimited (KU)?

Today we’re looking at the pros and cons of putting your book into KDP select (often referred to as Kindle Unlimited or KU since this is what it’s called for participating readers) and comparing it to wide distribution on all retailers (going wide).

Both are long-term strategies.

Kindle Unlimited (KU) gives you:

simplicity – ease of distribution, admin and record-keeping – effective use of time

Free days – 5 per term of 90 days – but is this valuable at the moment?

Kindle countdown deals (often known as KCD) – can be useful but only in the UK and USA so can lead to disappointed readers

Exclusivity – this is an iron-clad restriction

To some extent, you’ll be governed by Amazon – this may be acceptable

Huge market share

Amazon working hard to draw in users to KU

Page read income can be significant and alters the economics of advertising

Are KU readers going to be the ones you want?

Going Wide gives you:

Unrestricted freedom

Ultimate control

Access to a very wide global market

The other retailers aren’t sitting still – they want a share of the ebook market

Can be more work but Draft2digital simplifies this immensely

You’ll get flexibility and the ability to change direction and adapt to new opportunities on other retailers

You’ll be focusing on building a readership of people who’ll pay for your books

You might sleep better having spread the risk

You’ll lose page read income

Some advertising strategies may be uneconomic but Bookbub ads become more useful.

It’s up to you to decide between KU and going wide

Make a decision  based on your long-term goals

Your career may last decades – build towards a sustainable future

Don’t be swayed by hearsay

Don’t try to copy someone who is in a different league or a different genre.

Stay positive and stick to your guns – there are millions of readers out there, some of them may be waiting for your book!

Writers’ toolbox

Book: Going Wide Unboxed by Patty Jansen – free on Kobo and non-amazon stores: find it here

David Gaughran’s informative post: A Tale of Two Marketing Systems

Draft2Digital – my recommended distributor

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

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Episode Notes

Write the first draft of your lockdown novel

So at long last, we’re digging into your draft and thinking about how you can best get going with it.

By now you should have a place for notes and some form of plan, however simple it may be.

You should also have put some thought into the nature of your project and why you are undertaking it at the moment.

You can always go back and listen to the last few episodes for a refresher if you wish, and there are comprehensive notes and links on the site at writingtalkpodcast.com

As well as those bits of groundwork, it’s worth setting your stall out in a few other ways.

You’ll need some blocks of time set aside, preferably daily, and you’ll need somewhere where you can work uninterrupted.

These are ideals, and real-world events can sometimes work against us, but all we can do is try our best and see how it goes. If things don’t work out, then whatever you do, don’t just throw your hands in the air and give up. Instead, see if there is one small change can make to improve things, and then start again.

Maybe that means sacrificing a TV show that you usually watch, or getting up half an hour earlier, but there is time and space to be found if we look for it.

Once you get going, there are a few principles worth bearing in mind, and we’ll run through them here.

Firstly, we are trying to achieve momentum, and that’s partly what the daily writing practice is all about. But it’s hard enough keeping your project on the rails at the best of times, so once you are writing, or more accurately drafting, try not to do anything else at all.

That means phones might have to be on aeroplane mode or out of the room. Internet browsers need to be shut. And things that may have become habits, such as the compulsive checking of emails or social media feeds, must be squashed.

In the show notes, I’ll add links to a few resources that can help you with that. I use Facebook to communicate in certain groups and I have Facebook pages set up for as an author and for other affiliated sites I have, but on my computer, my laptop, and my phone, I do not have a Facebook feed, so I don’t get distracted by all that stuff that Facebook hurls at us every minute of every day. Because it only takes a second of reading something unpleasant to spoil my day. So I don’t have a Facebook feed, I don’t have social media apps, and I’ll mention in the writers’ toolbox a few tools that can help.

Other distractions that rea going to derail your draft are things like research. You may think that you need to look up the exact make and model of some item you’re going to refer to, but actually, that kind of thinking is the enemy of your drafting process. I get trapped by this all the time, because sometimes when you’re describing something you want to see a picture of it. For example, in my current work in progress, which is a mystery, there are several references to vintage typewriters, and as you can imagine they vary in shape size and colour and so on and I wanted to be sure that I was referencing something real. So, like a fool, I started searching for information online, and time slipped away faster than I could grab onto it. There are many sites dedicated to typewriters, and many places where you can drool over handsome machines that would look just darling on your sideboard, but during that time I lost valuable momentum.

My recommendation to you is that if you find something you’re going to need to research later, you use some kind of shorthand to remind you to go back to it after your first draft is done. I tend to use the #, although in the US it is used, it’s not really used for anything in the UK, so when I see that mark I know that it’s something that needs dealing with.

Invent your own shorthand, something that you can use to denote a place that needs further work, and then perhaps if you have an odd moment at the end of the day and realistically you can’t possibly get any more drafting done, you can go back to hose points. You might be sitting on the sofa watching TV or something, and at the same time, you could be idly flipping through a few references, storing them on your phone or tablet or laptop for later. I use pocket for that, and there’s more on that in the writers’ toolbox.

The same goes for those obscure words that you know are on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite find. You could spend time in a thesaurus, and that is something that is not too time-consuming, but it can hurt your momentum. I tend to use the one from Collins which has an online dictionary and thesaurus, but I try to only use it in the editing stage, and that would be my recommendation to you.

Anything that stops you from adding new words to your manuscript is going to slow you down.

Also, when writing dialogue, you could try drafting without any punctuation. Just hit the return key to get a new line and won’t be too bad to fix afterwards. It really is fast, and you’ll get a decent amount done in a few minutes.

Another principle, and one that I believe I got from the writer Chuck Wendig (who blogs about all kinds of things but has sometimes in the past put pieces up that are useful to other writers), and that is the idea that you shouldn’t cheat on your manuscript with various side projects might seem appealing at the time.

Remain true to your WIP.

If you become one of those people who is a serial beginner of manuscripts then you’re also going to become someone who never finishes one.

So I would recommend that you don’t do any other fiction writing whilst you have a project on the go. That doesn’t mean to say you can’t write in a different format, for example, a blog can be a nice way of winding down with a different form of work. But don’t start getting into short stories or, God forbid, other novels. If you have an idea for something, jot down a note and stash it away in your system, whatever that may be.

As you get more and more words down on the page, you will become faster at rejecting your first ideas in favour of your best ideas.

This is the process whereby we go from our first fledgeling ideas to more elaborate prose with more interesting language that provides extra information about situations, characters, relationships, themes and so on.

To keep in the flow, you might use the most direct verbs you can think, but as you improve, you’ll notice that while you’re typing one word, you think of a better one. And you might delete the original one and replace it with a word that fits and does the job better. This can feel slow and frustrating but stick at it. This is you improving as a writer. It means that you’re noticing things like repetition, noticing the crutch phrases that are creeping into your work, and you’re spotting the filler words like ‘just’ and ‘really’. And I’ll add lazy and vague verbs to that list of horrors, e.g. ‘get’. You don’t get a cold, you suffer from a cold, or you catch a cold. You don’t get a library book, you borrow it.

Those things creep into my work, and it’s good to have a little part of your mind paying attention to those aspects, because as you practice and you get faster and faster, you’ll catch yourself coming up with those words as the sentence forms in your mind, and your rough version will never actually make it as far as your fingers, because you will have corrected it in time.

You’ll put in better words, cut out unnecessary words, or replace incorrect words with better ones.

That process of improvement happening as you write comes with practice, and the more words you put down, the faster that becomes, in the same way that if you’ve been driving a car for 10 years, you don’t have to think about changing the gear, but when you’re learning to drive, you have to go through the steps in your mind, drilling them home until they become second nature.

That will happen as you write, and soon you’ll be able to do all kinds of fancy manoeuvres without having to take your hands off the wheel, so to speak. Your fingers will remain on the keyboard, and you’ll just be in that wonderful state we call being in the flow.

Writers’ toolbox

I use and recommend cold turkey blocker which you can use to block distractions. Set up a schedule. On my main computer and my laptop, I cannot access various sites on a list I’ve compiled. It comes with a list already but you can add to it, and there must be about 70 things in there. I set a schedule, and the cold turkey program won’t let me access anything on that list at any point between 8 o’clock and four in the afternoon.

Cold turkey blocker

cold turkey micromanager

The pocket app allows you to store easily readable versions of webpages and also links back to the original site so you can check your sources. It also allows you to tag each item with a reference. So I tend to tag all my items as ‘research’. All I have to do is start typing, and when I hit the R in the tag box, the word research pops up and I hit enter. I have the pocket extension on Firefox, and I think there are extensions for all major browsers but you have to check that.

At the end of the process, before publishing the book, I open up all those items tagged research, copy down the links, and I list those sources on my website so that people who want to look up my sources of information can find all those in one place. I just put a link in the back of the book, and it’s done. It’s a bit like the old DVD extras, and it gives me some bonus material that I can share with people.

pocket

Also mentioned:

Collins thesaurus

Facebook feed blocker for firefox

And search the chrome store for: Facebook feed eradicator

Questions

What tools do you use?

What topics would you like me to discuss?

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Please Consider Supporting The Podcast on Patreon

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Episode Notes

How to write a novel with a great story

In this episode, it would be very tempting to talk about getting cracking with your draft.

However, I want to hold back a little bit because I want to do one more bit of thinking before we dive headfirst into getting that draft underway.

I want to start by asking a simple question: what is the point?

And by that, I mean what is the point of your story?

If I were sitting next to you, I would say what is this story about? Then when you answered, I would look you in the eye and say, no, what is it really about?

What I’m getting at here could be described as theme and metaphor, but all we are really doing is trying to delve a little deeper into the reason that you are starting this project in the first place.

You can frame it any way you wish, but what I can say with some confidence, is that if your novel is simply a series of events, then no matter how interesting characters may be, it won’t satisfy you or your readers.

I’d like you to take a moment and ask yourself why you are really going to write this novel.

It’s not enough to say that you’ve always wanted to write. You need to have a story to tell.

People often say that at some fundamental level we all know what a good story is, but the word story is used to cover a multitude of sins.

If someone tells you the story of what they did at work that day, it probably won’t have much significance to anyone but them and possibly you. Similarly, we might describe two neighbours who are gossiping over local events as telling a story to each other. But again, it’s not something that would bear retelling, and almost certainly isn’t worth writing about.

When I was rereading Share Your Work by Austin Kleon, I found a great quote from John LeCarre Macari. Apparently, LeCarre said that The cat sat on the mat is not a story, but the cat sat on the dog’s mat is a story. And really what he’s trying to imply in a humorous way is that events need to have some significance beyond the scope of what has actually occurred.

People who are cat owners and dog owners would relate to his example in an immediate way. It would elicit an emotional response in them. “Oh yes,” they’d say. “I know how that’s going to turn out.”

This is we’re looking for in your story. Not just events, but emotional responses that go beyond what is actually set down on the page. We’re looking for a story that resonates with people.

Try and bake these questions into your process as you go: what is the point? As you’re working on your plans or your early drafts, ask yourself over and over again. Is it intriguing, will it pique our interest, will it make us laugh or cry your tug at our heartstrings?

This is not to imply that the events in your story must all be earthshattering. A seemingly mundane action can speak volumes. We’ve all seen or read stories where a person has laid a place at the dinner table for someone who is no longer there. We can use small actions to reveal aspects of your characters’ lives and in so doing elicit emotional responses from the reader.

If we bear that principle in mind, we can see that themes and metaphors will emerge as we answer those questions. It’s also true that we will be able to produce those scenes more effectively and with more impact if we have some idea of what those themes and metaphors are before we begin. But don’t get hung up on the decision.

You may be worried that you will pick a theme or metaphor incorrectly for your story or that your choice of theme will tie you down in some way. But I urge you to remember that we are still in the planning phase here.

These ideas are not set in stone and they cannot be wrong.

It is absolutely fine at any point to modify or delete them or replace them entirely.

But we need this step in the process because it isn’t just about crafting a more meaningful story, it also feeds into the motivation you need to keep going through the whole process.

I can still remember the dread horror of the kind of writing tasks that I was set at primary school. My imagination wanted to run free, but what the teacher asked for was an elongated diary entry called What I did at the weekend or What I did over the summer. Sound familiar?

I had no real interest in recounting these events, and though they could be made interesting perhaps by a skilled diarist, to me they were dull and repetitive tasks that I trudged my way through with little enthusiasm.

You cannot afford to bog down your novel writing process in the same way.

So ask yourself, what is this story really about?

The themes don’t have to be ideas that will be recognised by scholars of ancient literature, nor do they have to be earthshattering. They just have to exist.

If you’re not sure where to begin, here are a few examples of universal human experiences we can all aspire to talk about.

Loss is one that we can always explore because we all experience it in some way at some point. The loss of a loved one, a relative, a friend, or even a beloved pet.

Another rich seam is the relationships within families.

I often find fathers and sons coming into my work, perhaps because I lost my dad quite a few years ago.

Another evergreen theme is the coming-of-age story. It may have been used many times in ways that are quite clichéd, but it can also be toyed with in other ways. We all go through the stage of becoming an adult. Then again there are other ways in which we could be said to come of age, e.g. settling into new modes of life, leaving home, leaving a hometown, getting married or remarried, changing careers, coming to terms with life’s obstacles, overcoming troubles.

These are all variants of the coming-of-age to my mind.

Whatever your theme, think back to the previous episode, and remember that what we’re interested in is change.

When characters undergo significant changes, the story moves forward.

Writers’ Toolbox

The Reedsy marketplace has all you need to assemble a team and produce a great book

Find Reedsy here

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with your friends. You can also support the show by subscribing and leave a review and a rating:

Your ratings and reviews will enable the podcast to continue and to improve – thank you.

Please Consider Supporting The Podcast on Patreon

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Episode Notes

How do I outline my novel in lockdown?

In the previous episode, we talked about the basic setup that will get you going with your lockdown novel.

If you haven’t tried episode yet, you might want to go back and check it out.

I talked about having a basic text editor or word processor and setting up three documents: one for notes in which you blast ideas down, another for plans, and a third one for your first draft.

In this episode we’re  going to concentrate on that planning document.

Now I ike to call it a plan rather than an outline, but you can call it what you want. You could spend the next three months reading books on how to outline a novel, or we could just get on and begin it. I know which I prefer. So let’s get cracking!

I mentioned that a section with a timeline is useful and just to elaborate on that a little more, it’s worth considering whether you should jot down a simple sequence of events in the order they happen. Some types of work benefit from detailed plotting, for example, in a mystery novel, you’d be well advised to note things like dates and times of day for many of the events in your story. This  will help you later on when your sleuth is putting together the clues and piecing together what happened.

The same would go for a police detective in a crime novel.

In all kinds of novels, it can be very useful to know who was where at each point, for example, in a romance, you might need to know where everyone is located as you build towards the meeting of your romantic couple. In a thriller, this level of detail is useful in helping you to take the reader on an exciting journey, building suspense and elements of intrigue as you go.

But as well as these mechanics, which are starting to sound dangerously like admin, we want our plan to enhance our work. So let’s take a step back and decide what we are actually trying to achieve.

To my mind, we are trying to establish a workable system that will help and guide you as you construct your novel. People will sometimes argue that writing some kind of outline will stifle your creativity, and there are times when I’ve thought that myself. But I don’t really buy that argument. This objection seems to be based on the idea that having a plan will make you wedded to it, and I just don’t think that’s the way it has to be.

You should regard your plan as rough and ready, and only put into it those things that will help.

If your planning is getting in the way, then maybe your going about in the wrong way.

Your approach should be personal and tailored to build on your strengths and address your weaknesses.

Some people like to have everything laid out before the begin, just as many cooks or home bakers like to follow a detailed recipe. I think that even those keen cooks will, over time, adapt those recipes, substituting one ingredient for another or adding something extra for a bit of variety stop. I’d encourage you to take the same kind of approach with your plans.

Your planning progress is in itself a work in progress.

So let’s look at the aims of your plan.

One of the things that were trying to avoid is a long, rambling narrative doesn’t go anywhere, because that will bore you to tears and leave your readers frustrated. We want to write something that has some kind of sense of drive, partly to engage your readers, but partly to keep you excited and engaged as you you write it.

It’s going to take quite a while, to put this novel together, so you need to keep that motivation going. If we stacked all the unfinished novels in the world on top of each other, how far would they reach? To the moon and back? Further?

So how will we bake that sense of narrative drive into our first draft?

Let’s start by breaking the novel down into its constituent parts.

Starting at the top level, we could break our story into acts if we wish. Personally, that’s not something I do, but if it helps you, then go ahead.

After that, we are all familiar with chapters. At the chapter level, we can start to note down the dominant point of view, and other information such as location and time.

Each chapter may consist of one or more scenes. And the scene level is where a lot of our planning needs to take place. To make our draft work, we need each scene to have some kind of significance. Some people say the scene has to ‘turn’, others like to talk about the shifts in polarity that occurs within that scene, e.g. a negative situation is altered and becomes a positive one or vice versa.

In putting this podcast together, it occurred to me that what most people are interested in is change. We’ve evolved to take notice of the new, the unusual, the suddenly absent. Give people a sense of change in each scene, and they’ll keep coming back for more.

Those changes may be in terms of character development, for example, something significant can be revealed about a character. Or the change can be expressed in terms of action, or it could be a significant change in the emotional impact of the situation, your characters find themselves in. For example, it might be a heightening of tension, a deepening of emotion, or a more relaxing interlude following a tense scene.

By planning for these changes, we can give the reader a pleasantly varied experience. Action is great, but if it’s relentless it can become dull. Sometimes, a gentler scene can be useful in that they allow characters to regroup and the reaffirm their aims. For example, we often see action heroes hiding away for a while, tending to their wounds and swearing vengeance, so that their reemergence is all the more spectacular. Sleuths tend to get stumped and retreat to get their heads together. Hardened detectives pop home so that their neglected partners can scold them for working too hard.

We’re planning these changes to make sure we get them into our story, but we can also use the planning stage to eliminate boring scenes. Sean Coyne, in his book Story Grid, refers to what he calls shoe leather scenes, and I find that phrase useful to bear in mind. The shoe leather scene is one in which characters simply go from place to place. It’s easy to put these sho leather scenes in by mistake because we’re keen to tell the reader everything that happens, but unless something significant happens on the way, leave them out. A shoe leather scene might creep into your first draft, but that doesn’t mean it has to make it to the second one. You might well find you can curtail these scenes by starting a new chapter and simply having your characters arriving at the place they need to be.

If you think about Harry Potter, and yes, I know it’s a bit tiresome that everybody uses these books as examples, but they are widely read, and even if you haven’t read one of them, you are probably aware that each novel takes place over an entire academic year. If we had every lesson and every homework assignment spelled out in detail, the books would totally lose their pace.

How much you record in your plan for each scene is a personal choice. It can be as simple as one sentence, e.g. it might say Jim fights the dragon. But many people find that a thumbnail sketch in the present tense helps them to visualise the scene. This is a trick borrowed from screenplays, and they’re often called beats. For example:

It’s lunchtime in the coffee shop. We see Brian sitting alone at a table. He’s moody on account of his argument with Deb. Sally comes in and cheers him up. They get on well and she invites him to dinner and he accepts.

That took me a few seconds to record, yet it could make a scene of around 2000 words, because if I wrote it, I’d have lots of dialogue, thoughts, description and detail.

Importantly though, even though this was off the top of my head, as I wrote it, I was beginning to see the characters and the coffee shop, and I’m starting to wonder whether Sally hasn’t always had designs on Brian. The schemer! And what about poor Deb? Once she’s had time to cool down, how will she react when she finds out about Brian’s dinner date?

In other words, the act of writing that little paragraph sparked my creative process. It’s fun, it’s playing with ideas, and if you can make your planning into that kind of imaginative game, you’ll enjoy it, you’ll come up with all kinds of great ideas, and you’ll be more productive. And while you’re at it, you’ll be getting an insight into the beating heart of your story. What will make it work? What will make it better? What will make it great?

These are the questions we’re dealing with, and tackling them will help your work to shine.

Writers’ Toolbox

Keep Going by Austin Kleon

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