Inner and Outer Journey

In most modern novels, the main character undergoes some sort of transformation or enlightenment, which we call the character arc. Huckleberry renounces slavery, for example. There are exceptions. In farcical novels (P.G. Wodehouse, Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Buckley) and series novels (adventure, mystery, thriller) the character is often essentially the same at the end of the book as when it started.

But the majority of novels do employ a character arc, sometimes called the inner journey, as opposed to the outer journey, which the action of the story. Huckleberry escapes down the river with Jim, for example. The outer journey gives narrative momentum to the story to keep people turning pages. The inner journey is what makes it matter, the thing that lifts it above an action story. You can have the outer only and end up with pulp fiction, or the inner only and end up with some kind of literary miasma. Or you can make the inner and outer journeys dependent on each other, thereby reinforcing the significance of both.

Here's an example from Muffin Man to clarify. I dreamed about a sheriff who hears voices from a muffin. Although warned against it by dozens of people, I was certain this brilliant idea was my next novel. But I needed a reason why an otherwise normal guy would begin hearing voices. Over the space of several months I created a history for the sheriff, a bipolar father who abandoned the family and then suddenly makes an unwelcome return 24 years later. As it developed, in my mind this became the main story line--the father/son relationship going both ways from the sheriff, up to his father, down to his son, and his fears that he is actually bipolar as well.

 This is all meaty, visceral stuff, but it's all inner journey. I knew that this part alone wasn't enough to carry a novel for 300 pages. So I created the whole disappearing arsonist case as an outer journey, the story engine, the thing that pulls the reader to the next page to see what happens. How did those guys disappear out of a locked room? Why were they in there? Why did they set it on fire?

And there is the question of what is going on with the muffin (Is it really talking or is it all in John's head?) does pull the reader forward, but I don't think anyone would care enough about that question to stay with me for 300 pages.

So I found ways to bring these three elements together, to create multiple links between the father/son conflict and the arson case and have the muffin sitting in the middle of the whole mess. Without both the outer and inner journey, and the connections between them, the novel would not be as compelling.

In your current work in progress, pay attention to both story lines, the inner and the outer, and find ways to interlace them to strengthen the spine of your story. It could bring a new depth to your work.

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Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

Writers' Groups and the New Era

I've been an active participant in one or more writers' groups for over ten years because I think the benefit on both "sides" of the roundtable is worth the time and effort involved with submitting my work for review and reviewing the work of other writers.

During that decade, the publishing industry has entered a period of upheaval in which the gatekeepers of the legacy monopoly have lost their stranglehold on printing and distribution. The eBook and advances in print-on-demand technology have altered the landscape forever as indie publishing sheds the unsavory implication of vanity and proves that quality is not the exclusive purview of legacy.

Although I was late to the party, I have an excuse. Eighteen months ago, Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler had not yet made the publishing news headlines. But once they did, and in the same week, the rate of change in the industry accelerated out of control. It seems as if something noteworthy is occurring every day. Keeping up with it could be a full-time job, and most writers already have one of those that unfortunately doesn't involve writing.

 In April, 2011, one active member of the Novel-In-Progress (NIP) Group of Austin had begun the trek into the unknown wilds of indie publishing. As of today, six more have joined her with about 20 titles among the group, and it's obvious that the previous emphasis on submitting material to legacy publishers through literary-agent gatekeepers no longer reflects the new reality of indie publishing.

This last week I assumed NIP moderator duties, and to use an imperfect anology, the transition feels a bit like that of a new CEO facing a period of declining revenues. Attendance and roundtable submissions are both down at a time when it seems that the relevance of writers' groups should be on the rise. Indie publishing offers a realistic option to the current tumultuous environment of legacy, and for those writers who have not yet considered it, the collective experience of fellow group members is a valuable resource.

Looking ahead to the future of NIP, I fully realize that my role as moderator endows me with no more power than that of an arbitrator or mediator. The group belongs to the members and should reflect their common objectives.

How can the group best serve those who are actively submitting as well as those who are not, or those who have embraced indie and those who still seek a legacy publisher? These are questions I feel need to be addressed as the year comes to a close with the last three roundtable meetings prior to the holidays.

A bit of math illustrates the core issue, that of the time available to engage with other writers exploring the craft, and in the new era, how to think like a publisher.

NIP meets twice a month with the exception of Easter weekend and the holiday season in December. That's no more than 21 two-hour meetings, each of which at best provides 1:30 of rountable and what we call free-for-all discussion. The rest is devoted to our "icebreaker" question, announcements, passing out the submission for the next meeting and any shorter "probes." This equates to less than 32 hours per year to engage with other writers. Compared with the hours any active writer spends in the solitary world of the creative fictive dream, that's not a lot.

Time will tell whether the group is satisfied with the status quo or wants to explore ways to enhance our vitality, relevance, and possibly even our ultimate longevity.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Tools for the process

Some writers love deadlines, some hate them. Many find that they are more productive when writing under a deadline.

A traditionally published writer has a deadline imposed by someone else. Going indie means taking on all the phases of a project, from inception to release, and that includes deadlines. When you go indie, there is a temptation to throw out deadlines and take things as they come. In my humble, but accurate, opinion, that is a mistake.

I've read a lot of books on the craft of writing, but I've never seen anything on the mechanics of tracking projects and hitting targets. Back in the day when I had contracts and publisher-imposed deadlines, I developed a few tools to help me hit word-count targets and analyze a project for weak points. Now that I'm an indie author, I still use these tools.

WORD COUNT JOURNAL

When I'm in first draft, I keep a log of hours and word count. It looks like this.



The first column shows the number of words in that session, then the date, start and end times, total hours, words per hour, then word count and hour count per day and per week.

You can see that in this period my words-per-hour ranged from 182 (on what evidently was a particularly bad day) to over 500, which is where I like to keep it. Most serious novelists have a word count target for the finished work and a daily word-count target. The word-count journal allows you to track your progress and kick into gear if the weekly target is in danger.

I recently read a biography of P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote 90+ novels in his 90+ years. He was always very aware of word count and productivity. He did a daily 2,500 words or more during the bulk of his career, and when he was in his 80s and 90s, he still averaged 1,000 words a day. And I bet he didn't even have a spreadsheet!

GAP ANALYSIS VIA COLOR CODING

In a large project like a novel it's easy to miss issues that can affect the reader experience, such as keeping multiple plot lines or points-of-view alive.

For example, in Living with Fred I had story lines for:
A. Mark's encounters with WWII veteran Vernon.
B. Mark's escalating battle with Deacon Fry.
C. Mark's ill-fated romance with Jolene.
D. The Parker-Sonia-Mac love triangle.
E. Mark's attempt to answer the question "What would Jesus do?" This theme is interwoven into the other four story lines and has other scenes of its own.

Like a juggler spinning plates, I had to touch on each one often enough to keep them all present in the mind of the reader. That means I couldn't allow one particular story line to dominate long stretches of the narrative. Otherwise, after a hundred pages or so I'd bring up Vernon and the reader would say, "Wait, what was that about? Who is this guy?"

My solution: for each scene, track what happens and the word count, color-coded to show which story line it covers.

The same technique is helpful for tracking POV. Here's the chart for the first 16 chapters of Endless Vacation, a project in progress with multiple points of view.



You can see in the sample above that the first ten chapters are told from ten different points of view. That's probably a bad idea, but I'm always willing to try something daring. I'm sure my critique partners will bludgeon some sense into me before it's published.

With this tool, it's easy to see when long sections are dominated by one or two characters. In the sample below, you can see that the rainbow we had going earlier in the book has become less variegated. For nine scenes in a 3-chapter stretch, from 29-31, we only get two points of view. That's 5,000+ words, 20 pages. If I didn't have this chart, I would have to read through the entire book to get a sense of where I might need variety. With a chart like this, I can see potential problem areas in a glance.



This may seem like a lot of work, but when I'm working on a project approaching 100,000 words, I'll take all the help I can get. The goal is to get a book completed and delivered to the reader in a timely manner and to make the reading experience as seamless as possible. Tools like these help me keep on deadline and catch and fix problems that would be hard to see otherwise.

What tools have you developed to manage your writing or publishing?

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Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and the soon-to-be released Muffin Man.

Grenade in the Room

Within a loosely structured set of guidelines, AIW authors have the opportunity to blog about all things indie, including: the decision to go indie (well, duh), marketing, media, promotion, blog and book tours, industry, and, of course, the craft.

For myself, this isn't about trying to convince anyone of anything. I stand behind no podium, virtual or otherwise, with the intention of showering the benefits of special wisdom upon a rapt audience. It's about sharing personal experience with others, nothing more.

This post is tagged craft, and although the title may seem off-point, I think you might ultimately agree with the symbolic connection to the topic. To find out, I invite you to read on.

You're sitting in a room with a bunch of writers, and so far there have been no fistfights. Unusual, I know, but it happens on occasion.

After awhile you notice something a bit surprising. In the midst of all this intellectual prowess and word savvy, miscommunication sometimes occurs. It's kind of like people talking around something and never quite getting there because a satisfactory end to the conversation sits behind yellow DO NOT CROSS tape.

So you decide to test the atmosphere, see how many of your writer friends are really listening to themselves and others around them. During the next relatively quiet moment you say, very clearly and with sufficient volume so everyone can hear, "Let's talk about point-of-view."

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a grenade in any room populated by writers. To follow up with the virtual equivalent of that grenade:

I believe understanding viewpoint and how to control it is important. That's not to say every writer should take the same approach, and I'm sure there are many examples of superb storytelling from authors who have never for one second thought about viewpoint. But for those of us engaged in communal exploration of the craft, one of the main reasons discussions on this topic can end inconclusively is the effect of vocabulary.

All disciplines use specific words to mean distinct things. If a chemist uses a term describing the reaction when substance A comes in contact with substance B, any other chemist understands without having to stop and talk about it. The result is predictable and repeatable.

The vocabulary writers use is much less well defined. That's a good thing because we aren't engaged in a science. But it's worth keeping in mind the definition of effective communication. Science might say we need a transmitter, a receiver, and a transmitting medium. I'll offer two additional items: common language and vocabulary.

During the years of my continuing struggle to become a better writer, I've listed for my own edification about 26 structural elements of fiction that in combination support the foundation of stories that work for me. Understanding the contribution of each element to the whole and how to utilize each to the most effective benefit has always been one of my goals. At the top of the list reside character and viewpoint.

I also believe it's instructive to consider the choice of person, viewpoint, and tense separately to evaluate the effect of these choices on characterization, in addition to how these elements interrelate as crucial factors in the writer's ability to create in readers the desired viewpoint experience within the fictive dream. I therefore define the total subject of viewpoint as the sum of a writer's decisions with regard to person, tense, and viewpoint.

Overlying these elements is the question of voice. Who is telling the story, whose voice will the reader hear? The author's, of course, but not exactly. The two most common choices are that of a non-participating narrator or viewpoint character.

Note: The material presented here borrows liberally from various source documents. One of my favorites is Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, and hopefully he won't mind. That said, I've personalized it from my own experience at my writing desk and in group discussions with other writers. To begin, let's address first things first ala Mr. Card.

The vast majority of modern fiction is written in third person. Readers are familiar with it, which makes the writer's choice invisible. That's not a bad reason to use it.

First person probably isn't all that noticeable, and few readers have ever rejected a book on that reason alone. The differences in the reader's experience with the story are far more subtle and we'll deal with that in a moment.

Second person is so rare as to be really weird. It's been done, but readers need a good reason to get by it and spend enough time with the story to move the writer's choice into the background. That's a steep hill to climb, and the writer better have a prize waiting for the reader at the top.

I find it most useful to follow Mr. Card's lead and consider three viewpoint choices (omniscient, limited-single, and limited-multiple), two choices of tense (present and past), and two choices of person (first and third).

First person is an eyewitness account. I can tell you only what I saw, did, what happened to me. I am limited to that one perspective. I can't include anything happening when I'm not there, no other thoughts, no other attitudes. This is not a grammatical choice, but a strategy for telling the story. I can choose someone else's voice, that of a character. But if so, I have to choose a new voice for every story (unless I'm writing a series or sequels) and they must not all sound like me.

In creating this narrator's voice, I must also create attitudes, with an implied past, using speech reflecting education and regional accent, best shown only through syntax and word choice rather than odd spelling and pronunciation or use of contractions to show different speech patterns. So, who should it be? The main limitation is that the character has to be present in all the scenes, so the main character is the most common choice.

Choice of first person requires a careful balance. The emotional experience must still allow coherent narration or it appears too melodramatic. Err in the opposite direction and the character appears too cool, heartless. This creates a situation in which the use of first person is both an asset and a liability. If I am a bore, the story will be. If I am relating great deeds, I will seem vain if I do not take care to show myself as brave without realizing it. And if I do something bad, why is it not a crime and why shouldn't the reader despise me for it?

One problem is that a first-person narrator is physically taking part in the story, must have a good reason for telling it, and know who the audience is. Also, as a participant in the events, the narrator has to tell the story while looking backward into the past so that the telling is distant in time from the story itself. One solution is for the narrator to use present tense in what is sometimes called the stream-of-consciousness approach, but there has been little success historically using this technique.

First person also creates a technical problem. The narrator knows the ending. Why not just tell the reader in the first few sentences and be done with it? When you don't, it is a constant reminder of the artifice, deliberately leaving the reader in suspense.

A common method for dealing with this problem is to always tell the reader everything known at the time and don't hold anything back (which does nothing for creating suspense and only puts unwanted distance between narrator and reader). We are cautioned not to state that some unspecified event occurred and keep the significance secret until the end of the story. It's okay if the reader and the character learn of the event at the same time and both discover the importance later, but to refuse to tell the reader about something the narrator did or knows isn't playing fair.

First-person narration also prevents using an element of risk in telling the story, in that the threat of death can never be used because the narrator is obviously still around to tell about it. Why should a reader be worried when it's obvious the character survived? Unless the narrator is speaking from the dead, of course, which has been done effectively, or so I'm told.

Although first person seems natural and a simple way to tell the story, it is easy to lapse and add things that are not first person. No other character can see, feel, hear, taste, smell, inwardly emote, or think.

The first-person narrator must avoid relating only the what and never the why, must do more than watch him/herself, and must remember things from inside the person. The whole point is for the reader to experience everything through perceptions, colored by attitudes, and driven by motives of the viewpoint character. The narrator must reveal the character of the person, be the kind of person who would tell the story, and clearly present these internal forces at work. First person is by definition a limited-single viewpoint unless the story is told from the perspective of multiple first-person narrators.

The choice of third came naturally to me because I wanted to tell my stories from multiple viewpoints, and using multiple first-person narrators seemed more experimental than I was ready for. Someday I'd like to try it.

As one who launched into writing fiction without benefit of formal training, my journey has had to rely on a combination of how-to books, participation in writer's groups, and what seems like a never-ending gauntlet of trial and error. And of all the structural elements of fiction, none have evolved more for me over the years than viewpoint and its relationship to person and tense.

My initial understanding of third person can be summarized as follows: the narrator 1) is not present as a character, but tells what happened to other people, 2) is distant in space, never there, always invisible, 3) can be omniscient or limited, and 4) can be limited-single or limited-multiple.

I'd been writing off and on in isolation for about ten years before I joined the Novel-in-Progress Group of Austin and discovered how terminology can degrade communicating with other writers. The words I used to describe my understanding of viewpoint were different than those of others around the table, and it became obvious that periodically getting hung up on semantics was part of the process. In retrospect, however, I realize that using different words also prevented me from seeing deeper into the viewpoint pond for what lay under the surface.

My first novel had been completed and revised more than once when I joined the group. At that time, the relatively small number of members actively submitting material and the fact that I had a complete manuscript allowed me to receive feedback on about 150 pages in the first year. A persistent critique comment had to do with characterization. The main character was too distant, too much of an automaton, too wimpy, and too inconsistent with regard to his attitude toward family and career.

As a writer's-group newbie, I hadn't yet learned how to process critique comments well enough to avoid the inevitable "pendulum-itis" effect: trying to satisfy every member of the group with wild swings in my treatment of characterization. Once I learned to better evaluate comments, they settled into three categories: 1) the absolutely right on, 2) the totally bogus, and 3) the largest group, worthy of consideration in whole or part.

And throughout this learning experience, a number of readers mentioned on multiple occasions that they didn't feel close enough to the main character. While not a unanimous verdict, the frequency and persistence of the assessment convinced me to do something about it.

All I got for my trouble was increased frustration as successive submissions failed to eliminate the comments. I've since concluded that this stagnation resulted from a combination of my not understanding how to do what readers wanted, and readers not being able to come up with just the right words to help me break through the roadblock. It's no one's fault, just the reality of learning, that sometimes it takes a synergism of input and reception to turn on the light bulb.

For me, a brighter moment occurred after I joined another writer's group we call Little Group, or El Gee. I'd begun submitting from my second novel in a planned series, and the same comments dogged my efforts. But as often happens in smaller groups, with less structure than is required to keep a larger group on track, we began a more wide-ranging discussion on viewpoint and person. For the first time I heard the term "distant third" and another especially intriguing one, "first and a half."

The discussion soon evolved into whether a third-person narrator can ever achieve the same closeness to readers as a first-person participant. Relative to what I'd read about third-person narration when I first began writing (as detailed earlier in this post), I realized that over the course of my effort, I'd drifted away from the concept that choosing third person necessarily dictated distance, invisibility, and non-participation in the story. I believed I could draw readers into a third-person participant's world if I could only learn how.

Then one of the members explained the concept of psychic distance as explored by John Gardner in The Art of Fiction. Although to characterize that moment as an epiphany might be judged as hyperbole, that's the way it felt.

For my subsequent submissions to El Gee, I tried to incorporate the concept of psychic distance. To paraphrase the famous line, readers responded with, "By jove I think he's got it!" Since that time, I've honed my understanding and practical application of what I term "the zoom lens." And although I can't claim any particular expertise, I have managed to eliminate the previous comments from readers about feeling as if they were being held at arm's length by the main character.

With the exception of shorter pieces, I've never used present tense, and I seldom encounter it in the fiction I read for pleasure. A few years after I began writing, I opened a novel by an author I'd never read and immediately felt as if I'd been stiff-armed by the first page. First person and present tense just didn't read right. In an unusual (for me) fit of literary devil-may-care bravery, I forged ahead. Imagine my surprise when I became aware of the fact that I'd completely forgotten about person and tense and the story had me. Someday I'd like to try first person and present tense. Scary.

But for now I've settled into a comfort zone with past tense because it's the most common and therefore more comfortable for readers, who tend not to notice it. It helps channel information between writer and reader rather than create a barrier. Readers are conditioned to it by convention and interpret a past-tense verb as happening right now. For any "rewinds" into backstory, the technique I use is to indicate transition from current story time into the past with one past-perfect verb,  switch back to simple past for the duration of the rewind, then use one more past-perfect verb to clearly signal the shift back to current story time. Readers are conditioned to this as well.

As for the question of viewpoint, the following is paraphrased from Card's Characters and Viewpoint and describes my approach by comparing the characteristics of omniscient with those of limited:

Omniscient is Godlike. It shows every character's thoughts, dreams, memories, desires, using any moment in the past or the future. What omniscient does best is switch back and forth between characters and allows readers to see in each person's mind at the time of the event. Another major quality is that no character knows as much as the reader knows, and the only accurate view is the reader's.

Omniscient can cover lots of event time in brief passages. It can tell the story in less time and reveal more characters, but this prevents readers from fully engaging with any one character. Readers are constantly reminded that the narrator is telling story. Readers can't become fully involved and identify with characters, feel what they do, share emotions. The view is more distant, watching rather than experiencing. Omniscient is like looking at the world through the wrong end of binoculars. Readers see it all, but it's far away.

In limited-single viewpoint, readers are led through story by only one character. They see only what that character thinks, wants, remembers, and they can only guess at inner thoughts of another character.

In limited-multiple, the author can change viewpoint characters but only with clear division, like a chapter break or scene break and never in mid-scene. Transitional scene breaks are marked  with a line space, and sometimes with three asterisks or other symbol, which appear in the finished manuscript only at page break. (This is a formatting issue that in my experience has divided the world of legacy publishing into armed camps. One tiny advantage of going indie is that I don't have to deal with any particular agent's proclivity for nitpicking attention to some pet peeve or another.)

At chapter/scene breaks, readers are conditioned by standard convention to anticipate the possibility of a major change in location, time, or viewpoint, and the writer must establish immediately after a break what change has occurred, if any. This has become especially important due to today's trend of inserting chapter breaks every couple of pages.

Card: A major advantage of limited/third person that makes it the overwhelmingly dominant choice for today's fiction is that it trades time for distance, obtains more intense involvement, and prevents the feeling of readers being outside looking in. Limited can't see as many things in the same period of time as omniscient, but what it sees is up close and personal. It combines the best features of narrative style by allowing a closer look at the world through the viewpoint character's eyes without the constant reminder that the narrator himself is showing the reader by looking back at events from some point in story's future. 

Once again borrowing heavily from Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint, I have found it helpful to consider the following when deciding between omniscient or limited viewpoint and first or third person.

Do I want a presentational or representational style to telling my stories? These terms refer to the method of relating to the audience. Card recommends thinking of it in terms of a stage play.

Representational adds a "fourth wall" to the set. This one-way invisible barrier allows the audience to see through into the play, but the actors never interact directly with the audience. In presentational style, this fourth wall is torn down, allowing the actors to contact the audience.

In fiction, these terms relate to the storyteller's relationship with the reader. Representational never addresses the reader. The narrator never expresses personal opinion, all focus is on events, and everything is presented through the viewpoint character.

First person is more presentational than third, omniscient viewpoint more presentational than limited. Readers will notice the narrator more. Because I want readers emotionally involved with characters with minimal distraction, I choose the representational approach of limited viewpoint and third person. The combination is clean, unobtrusive, and the writing can be more ignored by the reader. Omniscient viewpoint or first person, on the other hand, invite the writer to play with the language even as they can distract readers from the story.

Leaving the discussion of literary versus genre fiction for another time, suffice it to say that at this point in my writing effort, I'm most interested in telling a good story that entertains because I believe the majority of readers in my targeted audience want that. And for me, limited viewpoint and third person serve my purposes because the combination is the most common. As Card points out, It provides the flexibility of omniscient with the intensity of first person, doesn't require the same mastery of language, seems more familiar and feels more natural to both writer and reader, and it is also the best reason for avoiding present tense. Past tense reads as happening in the present and appears invisible.

Another driving factor for choosing this strategy is my desire to tell stories from multiple viewpoints. I get to play more than one role with this approach. Weaving the scenes together presents an interesting challenge and offers readers the benefit of experiencing the tale up close and personal from more than one perspective.

So for now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.  

The Dusty Novel

If you're like most writers, you probably have one or more novels sitting on a literal or virtual shelf gathering dust. They may be calling to you, begging for attention, but you've been so preoccupied with a current project that it's like wearing earplugs or a noise canceling headset.

Or maybe real life has shoved your writing aside. But for whatever reason, you've been neglecting them. Now the time has come to blow off the dust and get back to work.

How you begin depends on your basic approach to writing and whether the novel is a completed or partial draft.

If it's a partial, and you're a writer who creates stories without an outline of any kind, you'll probably do what you did to start with. Sit down and let 'er flow from the blinking insertion point into blank space. 

If the novel is a completed draft, you'll put on your editing hat and choose to concentrate on content/developmental issues or line/copy editing based where you think the novel is in the journey toward prime time.

But if you're a writer who prefers to work with some form of story map in place, the task with either a partial or a completed draft is quite different, especially since you have many more options other than simply to begin writing new content or editing the old. 

You're going to think in advance about how best to proceed, and the process will probably include a detailed evaluation of your existing story strategy and scene selection, handling of point-of-view, character arcs for the protagonist, opponent, and major supporting characters, just to name a few of the structural elements of fiction worthy of your attention.

At the risk of offering an opinion with no way to prove it other than with personal experience, I submit that most of us make a classic mistake by our failure to recognize what emergency-room doctors and nurses know full well. It's called triage, and the medical analogy is absolutely apropos of revising a novel.

I may be speaking only for myself (but I doubt it) when I say that my first inclination is to line/copy edit simultaneously with evaluating content and story development. This may not be a fatal flaw, but it certainly hinders the revision process. To avoid that revolting development of struggling with multiple versions ad infinitum, here are the proper steps:

1.     Stop the bleeding. Translation: Evaluate the story from a structural perspective to determine if it works. This is the big picture, not the tiny thumbnails like where the commas are.

2.     Perform major surgery. Translation: Fix the structural problems. Excise all the text that fails to support a major structural element of fiction and stitch the patient back together.

3.     Perform cosmetic surgery. Translation: Make the happy-for-glad substitutions and tighten the prose by distilling the text into a richer broth. (Please pardon me for the mixed metaphor, especially two whose combination is somewhat distasteful . . . and there I go again!)

And just like in the emergency room, failure to follow these steps may result in the death of the patient, or at the very least a prolonged hospital stay.

With two short non-fiction books recently published, and my commitment to have the second novel in the Pilot Error series on the Austin Indie Writers' table at the Texas Book Festival in October, the time has come for me to wipe the dust off Red Line.

We all know how time flies when we're having fun, so I'd best get to work.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.   

SNR: The story-to-noise ratio

Many temptations lie in wait for the novelist. One of the more insidious is the tangent. I recently read two detective novels by different authors that went on at length on topics that were marginally relevant to the case at hand, but which stopped the story dead in its tracks.

I call this the story-to-noise ratio (SNR). Like the signal-to-noise ratio in the audio world, which tells us how much music we hear compared to noise generated by the recording or playback process (such as tape hiss or the 60-cycle hum of poorly grounded equipment), the story-to-noise ratio tells us how much story we get compared to irrelevant rambling.

True, there may be a good reason to slow down the pace, perhaps to establish character or a sense of place, or any of the other little things authors do to keep a novel from turning into a screenplay. And to be sure, there is a certain amount of personal taste involved in determining the proper SNR, and I have a fairly liberal meter, as anyone who has read my novels knows.

But when you go twenty or more pages in a detective novel without anything of significance happening, the SNR is dangerously low.

In some cases the writing may be good but fails to move the story forward even a centimeter. Typically these pace-killing detours are some soapbox topic of the author or perhaps an attempt to get some mileage out of hours of research.

I have only one thing to say about this temptation: resist it. Do not succumb to the urge to spend ten pages, or even two pages, on characters talking about some pet topic, whether, as in the books I recently read, women’s fashion or gender roles or theology or clever but pointless banter between characters. Or anything else that doesn’t advance the story. And if you discover during edits that a passage of this nature has crept in, excise it immediately and ruthlessly, regardless of how much you may love it.

If not, you’re practically inviting your readers to start skimming, which is not a thing to encourage in your novels. Do like Elmore Leonard, who said, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

If you want to follow rule number one of publishing (Write a good book) then you must pay attention to the SNR. More story, less noise.

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Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

The best way to sell lots of books

You've written a book and got it published, whether indie or traditional. Now how do you sell it? For over a decade there has been a big push for authors to build an online platform as a basis to boost sales.

In a recent Romance Writers of America poll, I noted a section called "Activities That Do or Do Not Interest the Romance Buyer" and the interaction of readers with authors on social media. Here are a few of the percentages.

Percentage of readers who DO NOT AND WILL NOT:

• Follow authors on Twitter: 83%


• Follow authors on Goodreads: 75%


• Follow an author group blog: 72%


• Follow authors on Facebook: 70%


• Participate in online author events: 69%


• Read an author's blog: 62%

For those who do follow authors on Facebook, 76% said being friended does not influence their purchase decisions. And 67% said that reviews in blogs do not influence their purchases.

The top purchase influence is enjoying an author's previous books.
So what can you do to sell books?

Write a good book.

I'll leave it to Tosh to discuss the practical side of marketing for an indie author and harp on this one point.

Write a good book. I can't emphasize it enough. Study the craft. Learn the craft. Find a critique group with authors of substance. Learn to take criticism. (Probably the hardest thing in the list.)

Read voraciously, mainly the good stuff, but also a little of the bad stuff to see how it reflects the things you're doing wrong in your own work and how bad it looks out in the wild.

Write incessantly. Put in your 10,000 Gladwell hours. Be profligate with your words. Try the same story from different angles, different points of view, different protagonists. Experiment and don't hesitate to throw out 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 words if it's not working.

To give a personal example, last week after four drafts and 80,000+ words, I threw away everything I've done on my next novel and started over with a blank screen. And I'm not a newbie. I have four traditionally published books and two indie books. I say that not to brag but to illustrate that you have to be brutally honest with yourself about your work, take criticism from sources you trust, be willing to wipe the slate clean, and start over, regardless of what you have invested.

Write a good book.

That's table stakes. Because otherwise all the marketing tricks in the world are nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig, which is just a waste of lipstick and it annoys the pig.

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Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

Leaving the Cocoon

larva noun: the active immature form of an insect, esp. one that differs greatly from the adult and forms the stage between egg and pupa

pupa: an insect in its inactive immature form between larva and adult

cocoon noun: 1) a silky case spun by the larvae of many insects for protection as pupae; 2) a similar structure made by other animals; 3) a covering that prevents the corrosion of metal equipment; 4) something that envelops or surrounds, esp. in a protective or comforting way

If we consider the idea for a novel as larva and the writing of it as pupa, I believe that for most writers we can extend the analogy to include the cocoon.

For most of us, it's a solitary endeavor. The outside world fades into the background as we enter the fictional universe of our own devising and experience the story through the characters. We may struggle, but the conflict is contained within the cocoon until that magic day arrives when it's done.

We stare at the blinking insertion point and realize that it's no longer demanding the next letter, word, sentence, paragraph, scene, and chapter. So, is it ready for prime time? And for an indie writer, that means right now, because the process of creating the product is streamlined to the point that it's almost too easy.

And here, we abandon the analogy with the realization that what exists within the cocoon is not an adult, but something far less complete in terms of form and function. There's work left to do, and we have the choice of remaining within the isolated world at our writing desks or venturing into the threatening environment of a critique group.

I submit that the decision to participate is absolutely essential for most writers, and that a novel will seldom, if ever, reach its full potential without accepting the necessity to challenge ourselves by seeking the comments of other writers. For me, writing and revising a novel within the group experience has been well worth the commitment of time and effort required. Here are some observations from many years at the roundtable.

Groups have a communal personality. Like any social entity, they change over time.

Egos have to be left at home. Once a writer begins taking comments personally, benefit suffers.

Writers need a group compatible with their personality and interests. Depending on where you live, this can be impossible or relatively easy. No groups close by? Start one, and remember that in the world of the Internet, you don't have to write in a vacuum.

Roundtable discussions appear at first glance to be the heart of any group, when in reality the outside associations that develop provide the most benefit. Identifying a few writers in a larger group as critique buddies with whom you can trade material on a regular basis is an effective way to be reviewed more frequently.

Participation requires commitment to the idea that each of us learns by acting both as reviewers and being reviewed, because you will spend more time evaluating other writers' material than vice versa. In my experience, the benefits of reviewing flow from two distinctly different aspects of the roundtable.

First, everyone at the table has read the same submission. In almost every meeting, one or more members will comment on something I didn't notice. Each of these tidbits can become part of my craft, and the lessons learned have generally proven to be at least as valuable as being critiqued.

Second, reviewing manuscripts outside my personal reading and writing interests forces me out of my comfort zone. Unfamiliarity with the content and unique structural elements of another genre is no excuse for not doing my best to offer something worthy of another writer's consideration.

Roundtable comments fall into three basic categories:

• Right on, you know it the minute you hear/read it.
• Way off, you toss it out as being so far off base that it isn't worth considering
•  In the middle somewhere, you take time to let it percolate, and over time determine how much of it you will incorporate. 

Roundtable comments also vary by how often you hear them:

• Some are offered only once, receive no support from other members of the group, and are often the ones easiest to reject.
• But one member can also see something no one else does, and it becomes an item you immediately accept as right on because it needs no supporting opinion.
• Unanimous comments are hard to reject because if the group is good enough to stay with, widely held opinions carry the weight of authority that you have already accepted as beneficial by participating.

In summary:

• Some writers are totally incompatible with any group.
• No group is compatible with all writers who choose to participate in one.
• Mutual-admiration-society (fluff) groups are worthless.
• If you choose to participate, leave your ego at home, wear your thick skin to meetings, stick with it long enough to develop a comment filter that works for you, and do your best to give and receive with equal dedication to the collaborative effort.

 Most of you will be glad you did.

 Tosh McIntosh is the author of Pilot Error and the upcoming Wings on my Words: Tales from the Writer's Desk, Words on My Wing: Tales from the Cockpit, and Red Line, second in the Pilot Error series.  

On Letting a Manuscript Age Properly

Zadie Smith is an author with whom I have little in common, not a bad thing from her point of view. She is relatively young, British, and acclaimed. Her initial novel, White Teeth, published when she was 22, caused a literary sensation. 

In her gracefully written book of essays called Changing My Mind, she has the following advice which applies nicely, I believe, to the work of any novelist: 

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second - put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal - but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can't tell you how many times I've sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It's an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it’s published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.

As an architect I never depended on my writing to eat. The proof is that I am here writing this blog, a feat difficult to pull off if I had starved to death many years ago. Zadie Smith is a more serious writer than I, but I can confirm that her recommendation is probably beneficial to any writer. During my pre-published writing career, I “finished” several novels. Unable to sell one novel, I would put it on the shelf and go on to the next. Eventually, new ideas for novels became more and more difficult to conceive and I decided that I needed to dedicate some time to polishing the old ideas. Now, I am going back to those to those old manuscripts and rewriting them. There is no doubt in my mind that they are far better the second time around. 

A second point, relating to self-publishing, is that I doubt very much that I would have ever gone back to those old rejects if it meant going through the traditional process all over again -- sending out queries to agents, having most of them rejected or ignored, sending manuscripts to the few interested agents, getting rejected again, maybe signing with an agent at last only to get rejected by publishers, writing a new novel, and starting the whole dispiriting process all over again (while hoping that agents don’t remember your first effort). Meanwhile, several years of my life will have come and gone. As it is, I expect to have three novels out in my first year as a self-publisher. 

These days, it is very easy and inexpensive to skip all those callous agents and publishers. Just take your completed manuscript and send the MS Word file to Create Space for the paperback edition (print on demand) and listing with Amazon. Convert your MS Word document to a “Web Page, Filtered” file (just two clicks) and transmit the resulting HTM file to Amazon at their Kindle Direct Publishing page. 

At this point, it’s a matter of hours, not months or years, until you become a published writer. Even if you don’t sell a single book, this is a far more satisfying experience than collecting rejections month after month. The next great benefit is that you can now afford to be patient while you wait for your audience to discover the love of your life. It will be around virtually forever rather than jerked off the shelves by unfeeling bookstore managers after a brief few months of fruitless display and converted to compost. 

So here’s my advice to aspiring novelists. Write the first complete draft of your novel, rewrite it once, then do the same thing for your second novel. Then go back to Number One and start rewriting. At this point, you will recognize for yourself how much you have grown as a writer. The improvements you come up with feel like inspirations from your Muse. After rewriting Number One, publish it, then go back to Number Two.