5 Tips for Your NaNoWriMo Outline

305/365 - NaNoWriMo! by haley-elise

Does your NaNoWriMo outline need a little spit shine? Like your basic story but don't know if it's any good?

Piggy-backing off last year's NaNoWriMo outlining workshop, I've got a few more techniques I've accumulated to help hammer your outline into shape and give it a bit of a spit-shine.

The following tips will help you identify your main conflict, work tension and conflict into each scene, make sure your scenes flow logically toward the ending, and move your story from hook to resolution.

If you haven't taken a look at my NaNoWriMo Outlining Workshop, it might be a useful reference for the application of these techniques.

Part I - Part II - Part III

1. WRITE A 35 WORD PITCH

The third, and Adryn's favorite (and by favorite, I mean she hates me for making her do this), is to boil the conflict down to 35 words. You might remember when I described how I wrote a 35-word pitch for The Mark of Flight, which has really helped me in my quest toward publication. (More on pitches)

A pitch this short will force you to think critically about the central conflict. You can use the pitch to keep your plot from sprawling in unnecessary directions (if you tend to sprawl, like I do) and to identify whether your story has core plot-issues. Can't pitch it? That's an indication that the story's basic framework might need more work.

If, like Adryn, you have no idea where to begin boiling down the conflict, start by summarizing who your protagonist is and what they want in 35 words. Then summarize who your antagonist is and what they want in 35 words (hint: it better be something that chucks a horny, sparkly vampire in the Bed, Bath & Beyond display room of your protagonist's goal.)

Now take your protagonist and describe what she wants and how the antagonist is preventing her achieving that (of course, in 35 words).

Yeah, this is time-consuming, but it will likely save you a ton of time in revisions and give you a great framework for your query pitches!

Yes? No! image by Laura Appleyard

2. YES, BUT... / NO, AND...

Conflict in your scene uninteresting? On a recent episode of the Writing Excuses Podcast, Mary Robinette Kowal described a technique for making sure your scenes are exciting. It was intended for pantsers rather than plotters, but I think the technique is a fantastic way to make sure you're giving your scene enough conflict and tension.

Simply, get your characters into a pickle. Then ask the question, do they succeed in getting out of the situation?

If you answer YES, you must then come up with a complication.
YES, Bilbo rescues the dwarves from the Mirkwood prisons, BUT they nearly drown in the barrels.

If you answer NO, you toss in a little extra complication to really put pressure on your characters.
NO, Katniss's friends and family are not spared at reaping day AND it's her little sister who's been chosen to fight (and probably die) in The Hunger Games.

3. BUT / THEREFORE

You've note-carded and chased every plot-bunny down their respective rabbit holes, but do your scenes flow one-to-the-next in a logical, domino-effect that leads you from inciting action to inevitable conclusion?

Carrie Ryan, Magical Words blogger and author of the creeptastically beautiful Forest of Hands and Teeth, describes a technique she learned from an editor.

"If you line up every scene or plot beat in your book, and the only words that connect them are “and then,” you have a problem; instead, each scene needs to be connected with either ”therefore” or “but.”

 I'm doing this with my outline for Beggar's Twin, and it's really coming in handy. It's a bit complicated with multiple perspectives, but I'm literally setting up my notecards into the different perspectives and making sure they flow both along their individual storylines and toward the conclusion. I've found it super-helpful in identifying scenes that aren't working.


4. SEVEN-POINT STORY STRUCTURE

The fourth is the 7-Point Story Structure from Dan Wells--seven points that help you move your story from hook to resolution, which you can watch in five parts on YouTube:



According to the Writing Excuses show notes, the seven points are:

• Hook
• Plot Turn I
• Pinch I
• Midpoint
• Plot Turn II
• Pinch II
• Resolution

If you don't want to take the time to watch the YouTube video, you can also hear the cast of Writing Excuses discuss these seven points HERE.

Similar to this: The Hollywood Formula; The Three-Act Structure; The Secrets of Story Structure

5. TORTURE YOUR FRIENDS

Put down the scalpel.

Once you're finished making sure your conflict is solid, your scenes have tension, your plot chugs nicely toward the resolution, and you're hitting all the points of basic story structure, it's time to type it all up and present the outline to a friend, preferably another artistic type.

Generally, I find other writers or artists understand how to look at an embryonic story idea and help it grow. You don't want someone to give you unnecessary criticism and kill the excitement.

Don't know any other writers IRL? A great resource for other writers is the NaNoWriMo forums! Find someone to swap outlines with. And hey, if you're noticing some familiar problems, point them in the direction of whichever resource was most helpful. I don't mean my blog, though that would be awesome; I mean the primary source. If you think they'd benefit from But / Therefore, send them to Carrie's post on Magical Words.

Happy writing, and remember to eat occasionally!

Writing Openings - Learning from The Hunger Games Model

Picture from hungergamesdwtc.net

Openings are tough. For me, they're one of the hardest things to get right. The balance of exposition and action, character introduction and identification, has always been something that takes me much longer than it probably should.

What everyone tells you to do in openings:

1. Show what the main character cares about.

2. Threaten what the main character cares about.

There are a billion and eleven ways to accomplish those two things, and however basic they may seem, they're still hard to do. It's the how, not the what, that's a little tricky to me.

At the most recent meeting of my writing club, Raven brought up a point our friend Ed (of IGMS and Magical Words) had made on a panel at ConCarolinas: The Hunger Games has an impressively succinct opening.

Think about it; within the first pages we learn how deeply Katniss cares about her sister, Prim. Not only does she break the law to feed her family, but she also tolerates her little sister's cat, which she hates. Despite the cat being another mouth to feed, Katniss lets it stay because Prim loves it, which shows how deeply Katniss cares about Prim. That's all within the first two or so pages. This caring perfectly sets up the story's inciting incident: Prim getting chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, and Katniss taking her place.

Openings don't come naturally to me, and I tend to take a while to ramp up into the story, action or not. In conjunction with this observation, two of my beta readers for HELLHOUND, Bryan Lincoln and Darci Cole, made a couple of points that had me rethinking that opening. I knew I needed to make it succinct and precise, like the Hunger Games, and to do that I had to think critically about the opening. I came up with the following method for accomplishing the two elements of the opening:

The Hunger Games Model

1. Demonstrate what the main character cares about by showing them overcoming some obstacle/hardship or another because he/she cares about it. (Motivation in evidence!)

2. Threaten the thing that character cares about in such a way that forces him/her to take the first step along the story's course.

I know, I know. Reading it written out like that makes me sort of go, "Duh. Of course that's how an opening should be done." But it has taken several failures and some strict, sit-down-and-analyze time for me to figure out not only what needed to happen, but how to do that.

I came up with exactly how to harvest these elements from HELLHOUND and weave them together in a scene that is similar to what I already had, but will likely work much better.

Does your story's opening follow the Hunger Games Model? How? What other ways have you seen or utilized to open a story?

Magical Motivation

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Magical Words blog. I've been following them since last winter, ever since I decided to get "serious" about my own blogging. Their blog posts (and comments, and responses to comments) provide an endless source of "aha!" moments and motivation for me. I was even lucky enough to meet a number of them at StellarCon this year, and the lovely (and awesomely bedecked in cool jewelry) Faith Hunter shuffled a copy of their book Magical Words: A Writer's Companion into my hand for review.

Wait, what? You don't know Magical Words? Well, then allow me to introduce the main characters of this blog post:

(click for exposition)

Edmund Schubert

David B Coe (aka D.B. Jackson)

AJ Hartley

Misty Massey

Stuart Jaffe

Faith Hunter (aka a lot of things)

C.E. Murphy

It's been a few hectic months of earthquakes, tornadoes, and moving house since I got the book at StellarCon, but eking out time to read it has not proved difficult. First of all, this book comes endorsed by Orson Scott Card himself, and you can just about hear the man's sigh of relief in the printed words - he's not alone in trying to teach the sea of would-be genre authors how to write!

With Edmund Schubert's forward about "price tags" in fiction and AJ Hartley's essay on High Concept leading off the pack, I knew within a few pages that I was going to need highlighters. Yes, it's a signed book. I even got a super-special copy with the title page printed upside-down (the only one!), which we deemed the "collecter's copy", and I'm pretty sure the smudge on the top is relic of one of Misty Massey's chocolate-chip cookies. And I highlighted it!?


Hell yes, I did.

Books about writing are plentiful. Writing advice - good or bad - is easy to find, and part of what makes this book so valuable to me is that Magical Words offers advice for writing genre fiction. That isn't to say every essay has to do with creating magic systems, effectively using genre tropes, and whether the Kessel run should take the Falcon eight or nine parsecs--far from it. Most of the essays deal with skills, techniques, and problems faced by writers of all genres: character creation, motivation, and development; world-building at all depths and levels; and all manner of best-practices applicable to writing fiction that doesn't suck. Especially the bits about it being okay to suck before you're any good.

What sets Magical Words apart from other books on writing, however, is the fact that nearly every essay goes back to practical application in genre fiction. From the worlds of Jane Yellowrock, Mad Kestrel, the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, and many others, the authors of Magical Words show us how they applied the lessons to their own fiction, or how they struggled to make the discoveries they now share. Everything goes back to applying writing techniques to genre fiction. Unlike the college writing professors who sneer at the mention of magic, or the more literary books on writing that simply don't mention other genres exist, Magical Words dives joyfully into the way these tools of the craft apply to speculative fiction, and how we can harness them like dark wizards harness the power of the innocents, bending them to our will to make greater the worlds over which we reign.

MWAHAHAhahahaa...ha...no? Fine. Bad analogy. I guess I'll have to go back and reread the essay on metaphors and similes.

Another bit about this book that I think is really great is that a good number of the comments from the original posts were lifted from the blog and printed after the essay as a sort of dialog. The discussions that arise in the comments are part of what makes the blog itself valuable, especially when one of the other authors expands, disagrees, or provides an alternate perspective on the topic. In the book, it does double duty by reinforcing the oft-cited claim: "there is no one right way". It also provides us aspiring writers a peek at the way we should be analyzing other writers' advice, which is an important skill as there is a lot of advice out there and a lot of it is conflicting.

Another benefits of reading about writing, for me anyway, is that it always inspires me to write. Something about those little "aha!" moments gives me the motivation to get over whatever hurdle I've set in my own way. The other day I was worrying about HELLHOUND and how I could make the tension more apparent, and a well-timed post on MW set me to thinking about Helena's desires, and whether any of them conflict with each other. Aha! There's that little missing screw that was holding up the entire machine. My main character's own conflicting desires should work directly against whatever is happening. If there's magic, the tension should come from her desire to escape that life and find her own humanity. If she's hanging out with her roommates, the tension should come from her desire to protect her pack and her friends, which she must do by learning the magic that makes her not belong. Those desires conflict with each other rather directly.

If you scroll back through my blog, you'll see a lot of my posts start with "So I was reading the Magical Words blog today, and..." There's a reason for that, my friends.

I encourage you to check out the Magical Words blog and add to the comments. I've never had a comment go unanswered, and part of what makes me love these guys is the fact that they give so much of their time to the readers of the blog. Now, you could sift through the years of posts and comments to find all the posts in the book, but I encourage you to buy the book. Highlight it. These guys write this blog pro bono, and a look at any one of these posts will show you how much work they put into bringing the wisdom-of-the-published to aspiring genre fiction writers like you and me.

Kids, this book is only $6 on Kindle. Shoo! Go! Purchase! You won't be sorry!

For a little taste of what the MW crew is like, check out this interview with Kalayna Price (the chick on the far right, who is often a guest-contributor to MW, and whose wardrobe rocks my face off), recorded last weekend at ConCarolinas! Yeah, I was moving that weekend, but I was there in spirit. Possibly the spirit of Edmund's shirt...

Other frequent guest contributors to the MW blog:

Carrie Ryan

Diana Pharaoh-Frances

Lucienne Diver
Mindy Klasky

INTERACT: Are you a MW reader? What blogs or books on writing have you found helpful? Does reading about writing inspire you to write? What inspires your "aha!" moments? Have you ever networked at a convention?

Traditional Publishing

A few weeks ago, I spoke with "a friend of a friend of a friend" who wanted to interview aspiring authors about publication needs and choices, and what authors might be looking for. He and a friend are planning to open a website that can act as a resource for writers looking to bypass the "gatekeepers" of the publishing industry by giving writers a link to other "indie" editors, artists, typesetters, etc. I think there's a great market for that, and I told him everything I thought would be helpful to those looking to do self/small/indie publishing.

Then the conversation got a little awkward. When I suggested resources and necessities, such as formatters for the various e-readers, cover-artists, and editors all willing to receive payment from revenue rather than up front, things were fine. Then he asked: "So, if you could take down all the barriers to breaking into publication, and have complete control of your work, and receive a huge portion of the revenue, would you do it?"

Clearly, he didn't expect me to answer, "No."

"But you would make a lot more money, and you'd have artistic freedom, and (blahblahblah)." He was scrambling, knocked off-kilter by the fact that I hadn't given him the answer he expected.

"I think your idea is awesome," I said. "A resource like that would make a significant difference to people who are looking to self-publish or for small-presses looking to find new talent. But it's not for me. I still want to do traditional publishing."

I explained that I wasn't interested in having 100% artistic control. As long as they don't make Jaesung, the Korean love-interest, blond and blue-eyed on the cover of HELLHOUND, I trust that the cover-artist will do a good job. I know for a fact that a professional editor will tear apart my story and find the nuggets of potential, probe the sore-spots in the text, and challenge me to make my story better. I explained that the marker of "success" I've got for my own career is to walk into a Barnes & Nobel and be able to buy my book off the shelf. Most self-published authors can't do that, nor can any small-press without a contract with the proper distributors. A Kindle version of my book isn't good enough for me to feel "I've made it" - I want to flip the pages, smell the ink and glue and paper of a physical book. My book. In print. Now, I don't hold other authors to this - there are plenty of indie press authors I consider extremely successful, but different people have different desires, expectations, and markers of success with their own writing. B&N is mine.

Still, he argued. I started to get irritated, but I maintained my ground. Being able to keep 70% of the profit from each sale doesn't make up for having to do all the marketing and advertising myself. If I can provide the raw, creative material and work (till I'm sweating marrow) with a team of professionals to make it into something awesome, THAT'S what I want to do. Because to me, in the end, "artistic integrity" isn't about having complete control over the end-product. It isn't about not "selling out". It's not about receiving 70-90% of the profit from my work. It's not even about B&N. It's about making these stories that I care about so much as fantastic as they can be, and about getting them in the hands of as many people as I can, and traditional publishing is unarguably the most effective way to do that.

And I'm not sure how many willing, pro-level resources there will be for translating THE MARK OF FLIGHT into Japanese.


Today, David B Coe of the Magical Words blog wrote a post on why he continues to choose traditional publishing over the e-pub/self-pub/small-press models chosen by a few of his fellow bloggers. Aside from the advance an author receives upon acceptance of their manuscript by a publisher, he gives us a list of ten things a traditional publisher will provide at no cost to the author:

1) A professional editor who will read through and critique the manuscript, suggesting changes that will, without a doubt, make the book better. They will also shepherd us through the revision process, providing free online and phone-access technical support for our writing. No extended warranty purchase necessary!
2) A professional copyeditor who will further refine the manuscript, taking care of typos, syntactical errors, inconsistencies in plot, character, setting, etc.
3) Professional proofreaders, who will finalize the editing of the manuscript.
4) Jacket art by a professional artist.
5) Jacket design and layout services, as well as jacket copy (those plot summaries that we see on the backs of books) to help lure readers to the book.
6) Formatting, typesetting, and printing and/or electronic generation of the book, again by professionals.
7) (and the importance of this one simply cannot by overstated) Review copies compiled, printed, and distributed to journals, magazines, professional reviewers, and other publications often of the author’s choice, in order to garner reviews in advance of the book’s official publication. In addition, earlier in the process, publishers will send out review copies, or even bound manuscripts, to established authors in order to get cover blurbs that can be helpful in drawing readers to the books.
8) Advertisements of our books in magazines, journals, newspapers, and other print and online venues.
9) Nationwide (and at times worldwide) distribution of our books to physical bookstores, online booksellers, and ebook vendors.
10) And finally, accounting of our sales, shipments, returns, etc.

(You can read David's full post here.) Just the first point - the professional editor - usually costs somewhere in the ballpark of $1,000, often more, and I don't believe in half-assing anything when it comes to beating my stories into shape. If I did, I would have given up after the first draft of MARK OF FLIGHT.

This is not to say that I don't think e-pub/self-pub/small-press are not viable options. In fact, Pendragon Variety is working on a new venture called "Pendragon Express" as a way to try circumventing the distribution problem for independent authors. I've also read several books by small-press or self-published authors that I thought were awesome, but which might have been a little too "niche" to appeal to the current market. Abigail Hilton's "The Guild of the Cowry Catchers" comes to mind. Seriously fun story, but I can see why fauns, foxlings, and other half-beast main-characters battling it out on the high seas amidst a web of intertwining conflicts might not appeal to everyone. And that's before we get to death, sex, slavery, and tongue-removal.

Hey, *I* sure enjoy the heck out of it. But is it mainstream? No. Could Abbie have remained true to her vision of the story and changed enough of it to make the book mainstream? Maybe if it were a manga, but as a novel it definitely feels a little left of the target. I think Abbie made the correct decision in self-publishing her work; otherwise a really awesome story might never have seen the light of day. Now I can listen to Norm Sherman deliver the deliciously cutting lines of Silveo in the free podcast version of the novel.

But let's be clear about something: Abbie pays a lot of money to get tons of artwork for her story. She pays the other podcast talents that read her characters. She's explained again and again that the money she makes from selling the illustrated e-books and short-stories and extras just about lets her break even. And this is a super-popular story.

It all seems to come down to love. Abbie tried to publish through traditional venues first, but her story was "too long" (bah). She loves her story enough to put in the time, effort, and money it takes to bring it to the audience that wants to consume it (read: me). I love my stories enough to do whatever it takes to make them the best they can be, and in my opinion, that is with as many of the services in David B Coe's list as possible. If I end up having to pay out of pocket for them, then I will. It will take me forever, but I will eventually do it.

Of course, I'm going to try to go through traditional publishers first, because that means the cash is flowing towards ME. I hope I don't have to explain why that's preferable.

INTERACT: What form of publishing do you feel is right for your work? Have you looked into various options for publication? Which ones strike you as the most appealing, and why? Do you think a resource for writers who want to self/e-pub is a good idea? Would you be willing to provide a service (such as editing or art) for a percentage of revenue on the back-end?