Another

As astute readers might have noted, a couple of days ago I completed my editing of Next Time. That’s three - yes, three - books I’ve finished writing in the last 21 months.

After finishing the final run-through, I went for a run. Naturally, my thoughts were about the book and what to do next. I’m not ready to start writing another one yet when I have several in need of publishing. My thoughts bounced around and I came up with what I thought was a great idea: publish a sample on this website.

So, I did. I spent a little time Saturday afternoon going through the first chapter one more time to make sure it read well, and decided I should post three chapters instead of only one. I think that gives a nice glimpse into the characters and where the story’s headed. I’ll leave it up for a month or two and gauge how much interest there is and what kind of feedback I receive.

With three books ready to unleash on the world, what’s next? We’re almost a third of the way through the year and I’ve made no progress on publishing. My plan is to try again with a hybrid publisher, explore some independent publishers, and if nothing comes of those, form my own imprint and self-publish. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. And this time resources are much more available. Let’s see where the next few weeks take me.

NPC

By writing background sketches for all my characters, I’ve tried to avoid creating NPCs. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a video gaming term referring to non-player characters, or NPCs. In other words, the people in the crowd on the sidewalk, or the passengers on the subway car you’re riding in. Characters with no personality - they’re just there to make the virtual world realistic.

That’s exactly the kind of character I don’t want to inhabit my book. Even if the character is only in the novel for a page or two, I want them to have their own personality. I was thinking of this because my edits yesterday were to give a character more of a individuality and maybe even a little redemption by the end. The character is a Federal agent, and let’s just say it’d be way too easy to make him out of a stereotype.

I think I’d given him a distinct personality but by adding a few lines of dialogue here and there plus an additional scene where he intervenes on behalf of the main character, I was able to add depth. He wasn’t a NPC before the changes, but now he’s definitely not. If a character could thank me for making him better, I’m sure this one would.

Adjustments

There was one part of Next TIme that was bothering me: a chapter with a major confrontation that gets resolved too easily. On Monday evening the way to resolve it appeared in my brain.

I paused my read-aloud of the book to do some rework. This involved routing the characters involved down a different path and actually bringing in a new character for a short scene. Today I’ll finish the changes and go back to my regularly scheduled editing.

The reason I mention this is because those nagging doubts I feel about my writing are usually correct. I knew something wasn’t right but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. This is where an editor would have been helpful. I also think this is an area where experience comes into play. I could have left that scene as-is and it would have been okay. Not great, but okay. With this detour and a couple of writing sessions, I think it’s going to be great. And that’s what I want.

The Best Part

What is my favorite part of the writing process? Is it the writing itself, or something like editing, or holding a finished product in my hands?

Maybe it depends on when you ask me the question. Sometimes it’s when I figure out a point or scene that makes the story a lot better, one of those moments that feels like you just did something no one else has ever done. As I’ve written about before, those moments also seem to happen more frequently when I’m running. Which means I get to combine a runner’s high and that feeling of awesomeness.

Sometimes it’s when I’ve finished writing a book and that moment of completeness washes over me. It’s a momentary feeling, because I know I still have to edit, re-edit, rewrite some pieces, edit some more, and do a final edit.

The reason I asked myself about the best part of writing is because last week when I spent most of a Saturday editing Next Time, I really got caught up in it. Not the editing, so much, but the story itself. It wasn’t like I was reading something I’d never read (obviously) but I did want to keep reading it. The story propelled me along and I didn’t want to stop. It was a good feeling.

So, for that day, the best part of writing was reading what I wrote. Check back with me another day.

Progress

Progress? I’ve made none, at least in regard to publishing my books.

I got a ‘no’ email from an independent publisher yesterday, which I find interesting because they’re one of the (unnamed) examples I gave in my previous post. It’s probably just as well since I want to be with a publisher who puts out a quality product.

I have probably another week or so left in my read-aloud of Next Time, and then I’ll need to do some serious pondering. I’ll probably look at more independent publishers and send some queries, but I’ll also need to think about self-publishing again.

If I go the latter route, at least this time around there are services like Book Baby that offer packages to help with some of the marketing. Before when I self-published it was mainly for my family and friends to be able to read my books, but I think the ones I’ve written recently deserve a shot at a larger audience. Not that the others didn’t, but this time I’m expanding my scope. Dream big, they said. Shoot for the moon, they said.

Actually, nobody said that. At least to me. About writing. But I’m going to anyway.

Shift

I am so happy for independent and self-publishers. Most of what I read now comes from those sources, mostly through my Kindle Unlimited subscription. The shift in publishing has been a game changer. And now you can say, duh, thanks for the insightful comments, Captain Obvious.

My point in this post isn’t really about the shift in publishing, but about the shift in quality. Look, I’m not perfect and every time I read through one of my manuscripts I find errors. That’s because I haven’t had a proofreader go through them yet. Hiring a proofreader costs money, and in a lot of cases it’s clear the author or publisher didn’t fund the effort.

For example, I’m reading a series right now that is a great story with entertaining characters and witty dialogue. Oh, and tons of run-on sentences, lots of thoughts connected by a comma and quite distracting. Like what I just did in that previous sentence. I picked up on the pattern early on in the first book and decided to keep forging ahead. I haven’t regretted reading the series so far, but it makes me curious how an author can get thousands of 4-5 star reviews all while ignoring the basics of grammar. Good for them.

However, in the past six months or so I’ve picked up two independently-published books, one in physical form, and I couldn’t get past the first ten pages. Spelling and grammar catastrophes is what those were. It is rare for me to not finish a book, and to have it happen twice recently is a first-time event. Mayber the books were actually good? I’ll never know because the author didn’t have a copy editor and proofreader help them out. I admire their will to write, but in some cases we have to acknowledge our blind spots.

And it makes me wonder when an independent publisher releases a book in that state. We don’t want reviewers and critics looking down on independent publishers as second or third-tier; let’s not give them an extra reason to do so.

Saturday Editing

I spent a lot of the day Saturday editing Next Time. I really didn’t plan on taking most of a weekend day to do so, but I was enjoying the story and didn’t want to quit. I hope that’s a good sign.

I’m giving the book one more runthrough to see how it flows after the changes I made the past couple of weeks. I’ll probably need to make some tweaks, and of course I’ve found numerous missing words or typos. What I really want to make sure of is that I haven’t made something redundant or contradicted something else in the book.

For example, there’s a scene where a minor character asks the main character how many times he’s met someone. He says it’s three times, but I honestly couldn’t remember for sure since I’d added some scenes. So, I took the time to go back and count the appearances. The last thing I want to do is take the reader out of the book with such a simple error.

Once I finish this editing run, I’ll do one more, reading it aloud to myself. My own private audiobook, if you will.

Saturday turned out different than I’d planned, but in a good way.

Good Problem

Well, crap.

I have another book idea and it’s hijacking my brain.

This is a good problem to have and I can’t complain. The reason I started this post that way is because I already have a book I’m planning on working on next. The same thing happened when I was ready to start on said book but my efforts were derailed by the appearance of Next Time in my thoughts. Gotta be honest, this feels a bit like deja vu.

I have a premise and a main character, but what I don’t have yet is a plot. That’s going to take some additional thought and then I have to prioritize. Does the new idea take precedence over the previous one? If the new idea does bubble to the top, why? What makes it better for me to write than the other? And don’t forget the fundamental questions. Why write this book in the first place? What’s its purpose? What is the reason for it to exist?

TBD.

Writing Software

No, this is not a post about writing software code, although that is something I did for a living a few years back. No, it’s about what I use to write books and do my editing.

First up, let me state there are a number of good writing programs out there. Depending on what you’re writing, it might make sense to invest a little money into one. Especially if it’s a non-fiction book where you’re going to have a lot of citations or pictures.

You’re probably going to be disappointed when I say I use Microsoft Word for all my writing. How boring. And how much of a corporate sellout is that?

Before you unfavorite this site, let me just say that I get all that. Here’s my thought process: when I’m writing I don’t want the software to get in the way. In fact, years ago I wrote several books longhand and then typed them up because I didn’t want to get caught up in what the word processor was doing to take me out of the creative mode.

I used Scrivener for a time about 7-8 years ago, but I didn’t really need what it offered. It helped in moving chapters around, but other than that Word does all the same stuff for the most part, and does it the way I’m used to. I liked Scrivener and maybe someday I’ll use it again, but for now I’m keeping it simple.

Waiting

As Mr. Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part.

Here we are, now into the fourth month of the year, and honestly I haven’t made a whole lot of progress toward getting my books published. Some of that is me, some of it is waiting on others. That’s the hard part.

Last year I spent way too much time trying to see if an agent would be interested in me and my book. This year I’ve finished editing one book and will be done with another by the end of the month. I’d like to take time right now to dig into the publishing part, but I don’t want to lose momentum on editing Next Time. So, I think I will finish that and then take whatever time I need to get my books published before I start on the next.

I’d like to be further along in getting these published, no lie. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I don’t always get to pick the timing of what I want, and when it finally does happen, it’s at the perfect time. I’ll have to keep telling myself that.

Too Easy

What am I working on this week? Glad you asked.

I’m reworking some chapters of Next Time just a bit. I’d made it too easy for the narrator in the last section of the book and decided he needed more conflict.

Was the previous story okay? Yeah, it was, but everything fell into place too easily. That’s not why people read stories. They want to see the characters struggle and come out on top. In other words, they have to earn it. I could have left the last several chapters alone but if I wasn’t happy then readers wouldn’t be.

The ending chapter is fine, although I think it needs to be more vivid in tone and setting. I’ll work on that in the coming week. For now, I have a little rewriting to do.

The Routine

I probably talked about this before, but for me one of the things that really helped my writing to take off was getting into a routine.

Yes, I wrote three books without a daily routine. I look back on that time over ten years ago and wonder how I pulled it off. Young children, lots going on with sports and church activities for all the kids, a job I didn’t like, training for marathons…yeah, no idea how I managed to fit writing into my schedule.

Whereas it took me 6-7 years to write those three books, this time around I’ve written three in less than 18 months. Although I’m still editing the third and technically you could say I haven’t finished it yet. Whatever.

The key for me was establishing a daily routine. Usually within a half hour of waking up I’m sitting in front of my computer with a mug of coffee. That timeline gives me about 75 minutes to do the writing thing. The thing about a routine is that you also learn the routines of other people.

My office is at the front of the house; therefore, I see the people walking their dogs, the kids driving to school, the guy across the street leaving for work a little before 7:30 every morning, and on and on.

Routines. It’s how we get stuff done.

Tight Scenes

Last time I wrote about making each chapter like the scene of a movie or TV show. What do I mean by that?

The example that always comes to mind for me is Breaking Bad. I can’t say much about that show that hasn’t already been said before in probably an infinite number of reviews inhabiting every alleyway of the Internet. For me, one of the things that made it outstanding was how each scene was crafted.

Especially as the series progressed, every part of the script had purpose to propel the story forward. I remember the intensity of the dialogue, the physical responses the characters displayed, and my personal investment in every episode. Each scene is vivid. You could pull apart every episode and do a masterclass in all aspects: writing, blocking, editing, setting, props, etc.

How does that work with writing a book? At least for me, I want every chapter to function like a scene in Breaking Bad. I’m not that good a writer yet, but I keep trying. If I can make it so the reader walks away from a chapter with a clear visual image of the scene and even a small emotional investment, then I’ve succeeded at least that much.

The Edit Bus

I finished the character sketches and now I’m back on the edit bus.

How does this work for me? In other words, what’s my methodology? Maybe I do it differently from others, or strangely similar to what you’ve read in other places.

For those keeping track at home, I’ve done a read-through and fixed glaring typos and grammatical errors. This phase of editing will be larger in scope. I’ve kept a list of things I know need to be fixed, from minor plot points to gaping holes where I need to add a new chapter. I’m also considering a complete change in one character to add conflict later in the book. I don’t want things to be too easy for my narrator. And of course, I’ll incorporate pieces from the character sketches into the narrative.

I’ll go down the list, or more accurately I’ll pick and choose what I want to work on each day until I cross off all the items in the list. One of the items is something I put on the list for every book I write. It’s a reminder that each chapter needs to be tight, like a television or movie scene. Start in the middle of a scene, if possible, and close out each chapter with something to propel the reader forward. It’s a good reminder and though I’m not always successful, it’s an ongoing goal.

Now I’m off to hop on the edit bus. It promises to be a fun ride.

Sketching

I’m still working on character sketches for Next Time. It’s been an enlightening experience.

I’ve completed sketches on all the major characters, including the family and friends of the narrator. Let me give an example of how this has gone.

In the book, the main character’s sister is married and has three children with her husband, who I portrayed in the draft as somewhat hostile to his wife’s family. When I wrote it I knew he was a jerk, but didn’t know why. What happened in the past to cause him to act that way? Was it something they did? Or was he a jerk to everyone?

As I started filling in the blanks in his character sketch, I placed his hometown just outside one of the bigger towns I used in the book. He became a high school jock who parlayed his skill into a scholarship, which he then lost with two season-ending injuries in a row.

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Add in a dose of resentment for having to drop out and work a blue collar job, coming from a town considered inferior to its larger neighbor, no hobbies other than fantasy football and playing pool at the local bar with his buddies, and now I’m getting a sense of why he’s surly at family gatherings. He doesn’t want to be there.

I don’t have to write a book about this guy to figure out his character, but fleshing him out so I know reasons behind his actions is incredibly worthwhile.

What do I do with this additional background on a minor character? Do I add a page or two of exposition to explain it all? No way. I throw in snatches of conversation, comments, and stray moments, which all add up to layers of character development.

I don’t have to fully flesh him, or many of the other characters in the book, into major characters with deep backgrounds. It’s not that kind of book or series. What I’ll be doing instead is giving the reader enough information to round out the characters in their own mind. And to do that, they have to be rounded out in my own.

Series Burnout

I started a new book on Kindle Unlimited this weekend. It’s the latest in a series which now spans more than twenty books. The previous books were imaginative and built up an interesting world and group of characters over that time.

I’m no book critic, but I do now what I personally like to read. With this latest story I’m wondering if the author is suffering from series burnout. Compared to the previous books, this one jumps from scene to scene without transitions or reason, characters act differently than we’re used to over the course of the series, and the story itself is somewhat fantastical.

For example, the villain of the piece is high up in the U.S. government. She captures the main character and his team of assassins, but they escape via an unseen battle. Then there are no follow-up ramifications from the villain, which should have followed rapidly when a dozen people are killed in your own home.

Anyway, it just got me thinking that maybe it’s tough to keep up a certain level of quality over so many books. Or maybe it was written by AI. Heck, maybe this was written by AI.

Just kidding, but give it a year or two.

No Fun?

Writing character sketches is one of those things you learn in writing class. Something you have to do, a writing exercise, if you will. It’s not supposed to be fun.

Or is it?

I’ve been writing sketches all week and every time I do this I forget how fun it actually is. I’m writing a bunch of stuff that will never see the light of day. I’m making up last names, names of parents, names of siblings, and can be as ridiculous as I want. The other day I decided the main character’s mom, who grew up in the 1970’s, loved disco. Now, fifty years later, nobody says they like it, but somebody must have. Will anything at all about her musical tastes make it into the novel? Probably not.

But at least it fleshes out the character in my mind. And by translation, in the minds of my characters. They know some of this information, although it’s not necessarily a topic of conversation. My main character? He knows his mother had a thing for disco. Is it important to the story? No. Is it fun to invest my characters with quirks and traits? You betcha.

Hobbies

Yesterday I finished the first run through of Next Time since I completed the first draft back in December. I think it went well and found no need of major revision. I have several tweaks and made a list to track them, but the first thing I’m going to do is the character sketches.

As noted previously, I didn’t even remember all the characters or names in the book. Reading through the manuscript gave me the chance to create a sketch document for every character. I was curious how many there were and just went and looked in the folder on my computer where I keep those docs, and found I came up with 22 characters for the book. Some make very short appearances, but easily half of those are major or important minor characters.

I asked myself a question late yesterday while I was thinking about these sketches: what’s my main character’s hobby?

I don’t know, and that’s what the sketches are for. I should know background for my characters, including what they like to do in their spare time. Does that information have to be in the book? Not necessarily, but it does give opportunity for extra scenes or even a snatch of a conversation, both of which can help round out a character.

Knowing a character’s hobbies is just one aspect I try to flesh out. In my character template I not only determine their physical characteristics, but also their education, jobs, likes/dislikes, motivations, and even what a “man on the street” sees when he notices them walking down a city sidewalk. Do they walk with purpose? Are they timid and meander? Does the look in their eyes grab you if you make eye contact? Stuff like that.

Just to be clear, though, I don’t think any of them will have writing as a hobby. They can get their own hobbies.

Strays

Maybe this is true of more than just writing, but stray thoughts enter my head at odd times when I’m working on a book.

For example, I keep getting those random moments where something pops into my head about my book Next Time, which I’m editing now. Sitting at breakfast, trying to fall asleep, watching a movie…all are settings where the story makes an appearance in my brain.

I’ve written before of how it’s helped me to go for a walk or a run and come back with something resolved in the story I’m working on. These other stray thoughts, though, don’t usually seem as impactful as those. Granted, they’re good ideas, but lower on the seismic scale of shaking up the story or characters.

In editing mode, the thoughts have more to do with emphasizing a scene late in the book, inserting some moments along the way to better explain a payoff toward the end, and even taking out some dialogue, in this case the pseudo-scientific explanation for a character’s condition. If I leave in the original text, which talks about science way over my head, all it’ll do is get me in trouble.

Maybe I should carry around a notebook with me to jot these things down. Wait, I do. It’s called a smart phone.

Liking It

Sorry if I’ve asked this before, but how do you know when something you’re writing is actually good?

Let’s start with the opposite: if I don’t like it when I’m in the middle of writing it, then I know other people won’t like it, either. I’ve been 15k words down a particular branch in a story when I realize I don’t like how it’s going. It could be that I’ve written myself into a corner where the only way out of the situation will be against what I want for the book, like an unbelievable escape or a resolution that changes a character in a fundamental way I didn’t intend. In those cases I saw off the branch and start a new one.

I asked myself the question at the top of this post yesterday. The reason being that I’m really enjoying Next Time as I edit it. I’ve found myself caught up in the story and have been looking forward to this morning for my next editing session. Granted, I know the novel’s not perfect and there’s still plenty of work to do, but if I like it this much then I think that’s a positive sign.

Does that make it good, though? That’ll be up to the reader to determine. As with anything, I’m sure some will, and some won’t. For what it’s worth, I think it’s good.