Category Archives: The Fictorians

My first drafts are ugly. I have friends who talk about plotting and planning for months before they ever write a word on a new manuscript. I can’t see myself doing that. I’m getting better at plotting but even so, it doesn’t seem to matter how much I plan and ponder, dream and think, my first drafts are still rough.

For me, a first draft is largely an exploration of the plot. It’s also about me trying to get to know the characters. It’s not until I’ve gone all the way through a draft that I start to get a handle on the sub-plots and themes, and it’s only then that I start understanding my characters. So my first drafts are perhaps more what other people call planning.

I’d love to be one of those writers who can complete a manuscript to satisfaction in just a couple of drafts. It usually takes me about three drafts to really nail down the plot and it’s only then that I can start worrying about the details – sensory, emotional, visual. This is when I start looking at issues like what time of year events occur in and what the weather is like. For some reason, my characters are always trapped in an “unseasonal heatwave”. Here in Australia, we have very hot summers so perhaps this is the reason for my obsession with heatwaves. At about the dozen draft mark, I start feeling comfortable with what I’ve written and it’s really only then that I start to feel like I have a manuscript that’s getting towards being half decent.

I’m currently working on the first round of edits for a manuscript that I meticulously – for me, at least – planned prior to writing. I even used index cards – lots of them – and I thought I did a much better job of laying out the plot than I ever have before. However now that I’m finally re-reading this draft for the first time, I’m realising all that planning has left me with a first draft that really isn’t any better than what I usually produce. There are still massive plot holes, contradictions and things I just haven’t figured out yet.

So I’m wondering whether all that planning was a waste of time. Perhaps this is just the way my brain works. Maybe I need to go through that process of laying the story out, in the form of a first draft, to get my head around it. Perhaps what I’ve been thinking of as a first draft is really my planning stage. Other people use index cards, character notes, and synopses for planning. I guess I’m doing much the same, only mine is 80,000 words long.

So I’m wondering whether I’m approaching this the wrong way. All this time I’ve been telling myself I need to plan better, but perhaps what I’ve been thinking of as a first draft really is my planning process. It’s just a little longer than what some other people do. But then again, maybe I’m kidding myself. Am I just being lazy and avoiding planning properly because I find it so difficult? That’s the problem with writers, isn’t it. We can convince ourselves of just about anything by justifying it as our “creative process” instead of laziness.

So tell me: what planning process do you go through prior to writing your first draft?

A Matter of Perspective

July 4, 2012

Evan Braun

Evan Braun The Writing Life 2 Comments

One of the things I love about the Fictorians blog is that it offers publishing insights from every possible point of view. Still unpublished and looking for a way to break in? We’ve got you covered. Are you self-published and looking for help marketing and promoting your book? We’ve got a bunch of those. Traditionally published superstars? Check! A big goal of ours is to provide both information and inspiration for writers wherever they are on the publishing track.

Looking back over the last month of posts, I find myself humbled at how far I still have to go and encouraged that there are so many possibilities. Sometimes the publishing world can seem so daunting that it’s hard to keep going, to keep dreaming, but upon honest reflection there’s a lot of really good news mixed in with the bad; the future of publishing is brimming with promise. When I take stock, I realize that there are so many ways to capitalize. The deck may not be stacked in everyone’s favor, but when is it ever? Everyone has to face a tough uphill climb.

As fellow Fictorian Brandon Lindsay wrote on Monday, the statistics make the publishing forecast look more ominous than it really is. If it’s true that the majority of authors are going to fall on their faces, there are probably some factors playing into their failure that you can avoid.

The first factor is quality-and with the market overly flooded (the cloud), good quality is a rarer commodity than ever (silver lining). Whether you’re a prodigious talent or you dedicate yourself to learning the craft, you have a good shot of catching someone’s eye down the road; keep at it and hard work pays off. A platitude? Well, sure. But all the pros, every single one of them, agree on that score, so it has to be more than a mere platitude.

The second factor is ingenuity and perseverance. If you write a lot, constantly improving yourself and building your body of work in anticipation of a future payoff, you’re likely to be rewarded. If you write sparingly and wait around for a lucky break, chances are it’ll never come. Great success comes to those who pursue it the most doggedly. To me, it’s almost an issue of magnetism. I acknowledge that success isn’t inevitable (the world just doesn’t work like that), but it’s more than a long shot if you’re doing everything you can to secure it. Most of the pros I’ve met agree on that one, too.

And who am I to argue with the pros?

When it comes right down to it, of all the possible perspectives I could take on writing and publishing, the rosiest is the pro perspective. They’ve already made it, so they can look back at their careers knowing that all its various components ended in success. If you know that your story ends with success, that makes success inevitable. Well, I’m not there yet, but just for a minute let’s pretend that I am; for now, I choose to view success as inevitable, to see the end of my career from its beginning.

From this perspective, the road forward doesn’t look so bad at all.

Never Surrender!

July 2, 2012

Brandon M Lindsay

Brandon M. Lindsay Publishing The Writing Life 5 Comments

With so many people officially on the self-publishing bandwagon, there have been a lot of proclamations going around to the effect that grand success as a self-published author is no longer possible. Even our own guest, David Dalglish, a paragon of self-pubbing success if ever there was one, has admitted that a significant factor of his triumph was timing. And now, it seems, the moment has passed.

The secret is out. The vast sales a few authors achieved in the early days of ebook self-pubbing led to an avalanche of me-too-ers. The market is flooded, and now the chance to have your book become a blockbuster requires you to compete with horde upon horde of writers who had the same idea as you. The picture painted by the self-publishing statistics floating around on the interwebs seems a bleak one indeed. Having seen it, some people may even decide that it is not worth the struggle.

But when taken in context, nothing has really changed on that front, at least not in a negative way. According to a recent survey, the average yearly take of a self-published author was $10,000, with a majority making less than $500 a year. How is that a bad thing? Before self-publishing was a viable option, failure was much harsher. Failure meant no money and no readers. I would gladly take $500 a year and a paltry following over nothing at all.

I should also point out that I hate statistics as a guide to personal action. The reason is that it’s easy to look at a given pie chart and think, “Oh, I have a 78% chance of failing to achieve my goals, so I’m not going to bother.” But no graph can ever tell you who you are. You are you, and there is a 0% chance that you are anyone else. Always keep that in mind when looking at statistics that attempt to tell you what kind of life you will have and thus how to live it.

Besides, there are exceptional writers out there. Imagine if your favorite author had looked at the odds of getting published and said, “Meh. Not worth the risk.” They would have never taken the plunge; they would have filed their TPS reports, always wondering, “Could I have been a success?” And the world, deprived of their creations, would have been a dimmer place. Perhaps you are one of those outliers. Perhaps you are really as good as your mom says you are.

And if you are that good, if you are the next Patrick Rothfuss, Stephen King, or [insert favorite author here], and you quit now, I am going to be very, very pissed off at you.

Hopefully, none of this means anything to you, because deep down, you are a writer. And writers write, no matter what anybody else says.

Never surrender.

Sunday Reads: 1 July 2012

July 1, 2012

KylieQ

Kylie Quillinan Sunday Reads The Writing Life No Comments

We hope you enjoyed Publishing Month as much as we did. Stayed tuned for our next theme month – details to come in a few weeks. In the meantime, here’s 10 reads worth your time:

Aaron Hildebrandt talks about how writers need to be experts in so many areas in Writing is Hard.

Zoe Winters discusses earning the title of writer in Labels: Writer vs Author.

Cyndi Pauwels talks about the need to recharge in All Good Things.

Charles Passy examines a few movie industry gimmicks that writers should be aware of in 10 Things Hollywood Won’t Tell You.

Susannah Breslin offers Why You Shouldn’t Be A Writer.

And Sarah A Hoyt responds with Why You Should Be A Writer.

i09 has The 22 Rules of Storytelling, According to Pixar.

Writers’ Village discusses The Laziest Way To Find a Winning Plot.

Looking for some feedback on the structure of your writing? Check out Pro Writing Aid.

Upcoming convention, plus a short story contest: CopperCon 32.

Missed any Fictorians articles this week?

Guest post by Gini Koch – Why I Like Traditional Publishing