Feeling Positive About Long Odds

In an interview on the Agent Hunter blog, Gemma Cooper of the Bent Agency was asked:

How many submissions do you see annually? And how many of those submissions will end up on your list?

Her answer:

"I see around 6000 submissions annually, and take on about 2-3 new clients a year."

Based on other things I've read, I'd say this might not be a typical answer. Many agents take on fewer new clients each year and receive more queries.

Let's break down those numbers, shall we?

I don't have exact stats, obviously, but I'm betting at least half, maybe even 3/4 or more of those submissions can be immediately eliminated from competition, either because the author queried too soon with a manuscript that is not yet ready or because the author failed to do the requisite homework and queried an agent who does not rep that kind of story. None of us wants to believe we're one of those writers, but if we're not, chances are good we have been.

If we've sufficiently polished our manuscript and done our homework, this means our odds are improved from impossible to merely astronomical.

In a typically perverse writerly kind of way, this gives me some positive feels.

Another reason this makes me feel better is that it means when an agent says my story does not connect with her the way a story needs to if she's going to rep it with the required enthusiasm, it might not just be a line. Agents may indeed be superwomen and supermen, but even super heroes have limited time. Well, usually. Unless their super powers include manipulating time, a power I'll bet most agents would love to have but, sadly, just don't.

It's not like the agent is accepting everybody else's manuscript and declining mine. Better books than mine are likely being rejected on that same day.

I've had other writers tell me they love my story, people who didn't have to tell me anything at all. This means there might still be that one agent out there who doesn't automatically push my query into the pile of 5,998 that will not make it. 

There are a lot of agents out there. If they all choose one or two, or even three, new writers, that's still a lot of new writers. Maybe I'll be one of them. Maybe you will.

And if not, we'll keep chugging along because we believe in our stories, but mostly because we just love writing them.

What About That Whole "Rejection" Thing, Anyway?

I've seen talented writers give up after a couple rejections. Rejection is a part of professional freelance writing, no matter how good you are.

In many cases, rejection means you tried too soon. It's tempting after typing "the end" to immediately start querying, but you have to revise. Not only that, but it takes time to learn the craft. You're not likely to be a virtuoso the first time you sit down to a piano or pick up a guitar. It takes practice. Writing is the same way. You have to practice and pay your dues.

Even after you've worked a long time at getting good, you're probably still going to be rejected. There are so many reasons that have little to do with the quality of your writing:

• The publication (or agent) recently published something similar.
• Something about the query didn't grab the editor.
• The piece isn't quite what the publication is looking for.
• It doesn't fit upcoming themes.
• The editor didn't feel a personal connection to the story.
• The editor was in a bad mood that day.
• Other writers sent in stories that are more timely or interest the editor more.

There are many more.

One way my career has helped my personal writing is that I can look at my writing like a project and create a little distance between me and the writing. I can accept editorial feedback without taking it personally. And I can understand that not every piece is right for every publication, even if the publication seems like a good fit.

I've received a lot of rejections, including two in the past week. My policy is to react to each rejection by sending two more queries. I still have to send one today to meet the two-per-rejection goal. 

Some rejections sting more than others, like when you get a positive response, such as a request for the full manuscript, and then get rejected. But a professional realizes it's part of the game.

It's like baseball. (Life's little secret: everything is like baseball.) A successful batter gets out a little less than three times for every hit. Great hitters still get out more than twice as often as they hit successfully. Over the course of a season, even the best hitters have many games where they fail to get on base.

As Ted Williams, maybe the best hitter in history, said, "Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer."

But Williams was wrong. Most writers, especially when they are starting out, face even bigger odds.

The thing about writing is, there's more competition than ever. It's always been a competitive field, but now, thanks largely to computers, everybody thinks they can be a writer. A lot of people think it's easy money.

It's not. It's hard.

No matter how good you are, your piece is likely one of hundreds competing for a few spots in a publication. It can be an incredible article or story, and still not quite be what a publication or publisher wants.

Like the great hitter who strikes out with the go-ahead runs on base, you've got to take the disappointment and turn it into resolve to make up for it next time, knowing full well that the odds are you won't succeed next time either.

Or you can take your ball and go home. There's no career after that decision. 

To paraphrase a baseball quote from Tommy Lasorda: There are three types of writers: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.

Give your muse wings

Even an apprentice muse (think of Clarence in It's A Wonderful Life) can help you find the creative impulse in yourself. Remember, writing is like playing an instrument. You're not going to be a brilliant guitarist the first time you pick up a guitar, no matter how good the instrument is. When you're starting out as any kind of a writer, you have to give yourself permission to suck. Badly.

One thing I've learned about writers is that even the best think they've completely lost the ability to write while trying to finish a book. Steinbeck wrote in his Grapes of Wrath journals that he had completely lost the ability to write and that the book wasn't good enough to keep working on it. Twain put Huckleberry Finn aside for years before giving it a try again. Douglas Adams was a notorious procrastinator who suffered from crippling writer's block and had to be locked up in a hotel room with somebody who made sure he'd write.

None of us is Steinbeck or Twain or Adams, especially when we first pick up our instrument. But if they can have those doubts and that loss of confidence, it's OK if we do too. We just have to follow their example and keep plugging away anyway. It comes together eventually. Few writers publish their first complete works, or even the first three. The actual number depends on the writer. The only way to learn to write is to write, so those first efforts are going to be bad, maybe embarrassingly bad.

If you're writing, even badly, you're a writer. Fortunately, if you're writing, you'll get better (at your own speed, of course). Allow yourself to be A Writer. Make a deal with an apprentice muse that if she'll help you, you'll give her something back. If you need to create a ritual sacrifice to your muse, go ahead. Offer her a drop of your of your favorite drink if she'll help you get through an hour of writing, even if it's not very good. Or whatever works for you.

Every time a writer writes "the end," a muse gets her wings.

Ditch the chapters--for now

Many of us think and write in chapters. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a common way to think about your story. What's more, if we're in a critique group, our chapters have a habit of being about the same length as the number of pages we read at each crit session.

I'm guessing many of you can't easily imagine writing a book without doing it a chapter at a time. Today, I'd like to present an option that I've found freeing in my own writing:

Ditch the chapters. For now, anyway.

The basic building block of any story is the scene. According to many writing teachers and books about writing, a story is a string of scenes joined by sequels. You most likely know this, and you might use a certain number of scenes in each chapter.

But what if you don't worry about chapters while drafting your masterpiece? What do you gain?

Freedom. Freedom to end your chapters where they make the most sense later. Freedom to skip a difficult scene and move on to the next one. Freedom to concentrate on your scenes and worry about the bigger structural pieces later.

We've all rearranged the order of our chapters at some point in our writing. If you concentrate on chapters, this can give you a plot where the chapters make sense, but some of the scenes seem wrong. It's much easier to move scenes around than chapters. You probably do that anyway, which makes it so you have to redo several chapter endings.

You might insert new chapters, and have to renumber everything.

If you're having trouble with a chapter, you might skip it and move to another chapter. If you think in scenes, you can skip to a new scene.

If you think about scenes rather than chapters, if you keep each scene in a Scrivener file instead of a chapter, you can concentrate more on that basic building block, and you free yourself to reorganize and rearrange in smaller bits. You start to think more about your scenes and sequels and make sure they work, rather than thinking about your chapters.

Writing scenes and ignoring chapters can also help you plow through the story while keeping your inner critic in check. If you tell your story without structuring it like a book, you free yourself to write that crappy first draft without the additional mental pressure that comes with writing a "book." You're just writing. A story or a project or whatever is much easier to grasp than that monumental book concept. Just get it down and structure it later. Let it be messy. It might even be helpful to use a simple editor that discourages you from thinking about your formatting, like some of the distraction-free writing programs that are growing in popularity.

Later, when you revise (I recommend waiting until a draft near the final one), you can put in your chapter breaks. You might discover that you can come up with more effective chapter breaks if you wait. Like cliffhangers? Break your chapter mid-scene, or between the scene and the sequel.

Try this approach, especially if you struggle with structure or plot. Enjoy the freedom it gives you.

Utah Governor Commemorates Rick Walton

Rest Well, Rick Walton

Rick Walton's funeral is Saturday.

Those words were not easy to type.

I've wanted to write about Rick for a while, but I found it too difficult. Writing about him now means acknowledging something I don't want to acknowledge. Rick Walton is really gone.

Few people would argue that there has ever been anybody more important to the Utah children's writing community than Rick. He was a teacher, a mentor, a cheerleader. A friend.

A friend, even if he'd never met you personally.

There are so many people who know Rick better than I do. (Even now, I can't stay in past tense.) I got to know him a little bit online, exchanging word play in the Yahoo group he led, which may have been the first real online gathering place for Utah kidlit writers. I met Rick in person, finally, at a conference. Wherever writers for young people gathered in Utah, Rick was there. He didn't necessarily insert himself everywhere or dominate, but he was there, like the Professor Emeritus overseeing everything, just by his presence. I was even taught by Rick in one conference session.

Rick was just as open to chatting with and encouraging people who were just starting to explore writing for kids as he was people who had published multiple books.

As I said, many people have closer personal ties to Rick. He enhanced the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands. And that doesn't include the countless people he touched with his books. I was recently on a BART train heading into San Francisco, and saw a woman several seats in front of me sharing Rick's Frankenstein with a child. I'm glad I was able to tell him about that.

I didn't see him in person for a few years, although we continued to share interesting or funny words with each other online once in a while. I don't even know if Rick knew who I was, really, at that point. Then, one day, he put out a call for people to help him with several projects he had in the works. I volunteered to help him with what was at that time still a pretty vague concept for a project exploring interesting roots of words. He picked me to help him. Next thing I knew I was at his house, talking words, exploring the thing we both loved so much. I hadn't seen him in a while, so the obvious effects of Parkinson's Disease, a cruel illness I've observed too closely in my family, took me by surprise.

But he was still sharp. Still creative. Still working on more projects than any mere mortal could handle. I feel bad that I have such a hard time juggling three or four projects. Rick had so many pots on the fire. (Rick would excuse the cliche. In fact, he'd probably tell me where it came from, then he'd flip it on its head and turn it into something funny.) Over the next few weeks, as the project started to take shape and gain momentum, we emailed each other almost daily, sharing our etymological discoveries.

The prospective publisher ended up pulling the plug on this project, and our collaboration was over. But I enjoyed that short period in his circle, and learned a lot from him. He didn't actually teach me anything. He didn't have to actually teach. You couldn't be around him long without learning, and without feeling like you had somebody in your corner.

Not too long after our momentary collaboration, Rick's brain tumor was discovered, and he moved into a care center near my home. I visited him whenever I could, which was not nearly often enough. At first, I went a couple times a week, but when I went back to school, my time was suddenly eaten up and I went when I could.

I wish I had been able to go more.

He loved visitors. He loved to hear how our writing projects were going, who we were submitting our work to, what projects we had in the works. Even as it became harder for him to make himself understood when speaking, he'd ask questions and give encouragement. For a while, a few of us would visit once a week to write with him. But that soon became difficult for him, leaving him visibly exhausted and frustrated.

I wish so many things. I wish I had visited more often. I wish I could have helped him more and helped him better when he asked for assistance. I wish I had known him better before he got sick. I wish I had been able to complete our collaboration.

Most of all, I wish he were still here.

See, even when he was sick, even when he was nearing the end of his far-too-short life and was clearly frustrated and depressed about not being able to develop all of those ideas that constantly exploded from the brain that was working against him, he encouraged and coached and led our writing community. He was losing the energy that was so much a part of who he was, but he still shared what he could, and absorbed what he could from his visitors. By just being here, just being on the planet, he made us better writers. Even when his own physical abilities failed him.

It's tempting, when somebody dies, to talk about the hole their passing left. But Rick gave so much, put so much out there, that he left a mountain behind.

Rick Walton forever changed the Utah writing community. He's gone now, but his influence will live on. Even when there's nobody left who remembers him personally, there will be people taught by the people he taught. There will be books by the people he encouraged and coached, and by the people they encouraged and coached. And, of course, there will be his books, somewhere around 100 of them, although an actual count is complicated because he did so many different things.

There will never be another Rick Walton. So many people were inspired by him. More importantly, so many people loved him. I hope he knew that. I hope he really understood that.

Goodbye, my friend. It really was a pleasure to know you. Most of all, thank you. Thank you for being there, and for letting me and so many others into your huge circle, and for giving us so much of yourself.

If anybody deserves a good rest, it's you. But I don't suppose you're resting. There are too many stories left to tell.

A Dedicated Writing Computer on the Cheap

Several of us have probably been there: We decide we want a dedicated computer for writing, so we go out and spend a few hundred dollars on a new computer, and next thing we know, we're checking out Facebook and playing games. Yeah, we're writing too, maybe, but it's just another computer, being used for everything.

There's an easier, cheaper way to get a dedicated computer.

The Raspberry Pi computer has become a sensation among tech-heads. This miniature computer, about the size of a playing card, packs enough punch to handle some pretty sophisticated projects, and more than enough for basic writing tasks. And it costs $39.95.

You don't get much for $39.95, though. Just the main computer board. I recommend picking up the complete starter kit. For about $75 you get the computer, a power supply, a case, an HDMI cable, and a memory card, as well as a couple other doodads.

In its standard configuration, the Pi comes with the Linux operating system and LibreOffice, as well as some other apps, but you could easily set up a distraction-free writing application, such as Focuswriter, or use Google Docs.

Of course, because the Raspberry Pi is a full computer, you could still get distracted by the Internet and games, or whatever your particular writing distraction happens to be. If you want to really go distraction free, you could set up the computer to boot to a command line, then open your editor and file straight from the command line. That way, you don't even see the other applications, and can't easily switch over to something that isn't writing. It might feel a little bit like 1990, but it works.

In the case, the Pi is about the size of a cigarette pack. You can use the HDMI cable to hook it up to a monitor or TV. Pick up a wireless keyboard (like the Logitech MK270, $19.95 for a keyboard and mouse on Amazon), and you have a fully fledged writing computer for about $100.

The Pi uses very little power, so once you have it set up, tuck it behind your TV or monitor and let it sit, powered on, where you can almost forget you even have it.

With a wireless keyboard and with your computer hooked up to your TV (and tucked neatly out of the way behind it), you can comfortably write from your couch or a favorite chair.

Setting up the Pi is easier if you're reasonably comfortable with a computer, but it's not that hard, even if you're not. It really depends on how much you want to customize it.

Here's mine:

Modern Middle-Grade Classics

This Thursday (May 11) the #mglitchat on Twitter will be about modern classics. If you want to join the discussion, hop on Twitter at 7 PM Mountain Time, 9:00 Eastern and search for #mglitchat.

In case you haven't heard of #mglitchat before, I'll explain what it is. Several writers (many published--you might even recognize some of them) and even some editors and agents get together weekly to discuss a topic having to do with Middle Grade books. I usually keep Amazon open in another tab to keep track of all the book recommendations that come up in the chats.

For those of you who do the #pitchwars thing, several of the mentors participate, so this is a good opportunity to get to know them and what they like.

#mglitchat has become a part of my weekly routine. It is always worth the hour spent reading tweets.

Great Deal! Scrivener 50% Off!

I'm popping in today to let you know about a great deal I found. For the next five days, Scrivener 2 is available from AndroidPit for $22.50 for Mac, half off the usual $45 price tag. For Windows, it's $20, half off the usual $40. So if you've been wondering whether to try Scrivener, you might want to jump on this deal.

Android Pit also has Scapple, the mind mapping and white boarding tool from the makers of Scrivener for $8.99, 40% off, for both Mac and Windows. This deal only lasts four more days. I've been using the trial version of Scapple the past week for a school project and I really like it, so I'm taking advantage of this deal.

Continuing the discussion

As you've no doubt noticed, posts have been scarce on our little blog recently. Our regular contributors have dropped off due to busy lives and, in some cases, the demands of the increasing success of their writing careers.

We will continue to post to this blog from time to time, but we're basically on hiatus for now. We're not going away, but the infrequent posts will likely stay that way for a while. If you're interested in becoming part of a rejuvenated blog writing team, drop us a comment. In the meantime, I recommend that you continue to find help in our archives. There's a ton of great info to be found.

For more current information and quick feedback, I encourage you to visit the Utah Children's Writers Facebook page, where several blog readers and contributors hang out. I would like to see that page become more active as a meeting place for members of our large writing community. Like any Facebook page, the UCW page is only as active as the people who post to it, so help us help you by joining in or starting new conversations.

Thanks to everybody who has participated in this blog, either as a writer or reader. We have a large, active community, and I hope to see all of you on Facebook and in other places.

Author website ideas

Because I need to redesign my own author site, I looked at several writers' sites to find ideas. Here are some of my findings.

John le Carré

I like how the author's site captures his genre, with recent tweets showing on his home page as "intercepted" messages.

I also enjoyed le Carré's Bio page, which was humorous and revealed enough personal information to make me feel a connection, without oversharing.

E L James

I have no interest at all in James' books. However, her site is attractive. There is one feature I really like and might borrow for my own. Tucked under the "Gallery" section, where I wouldn't expect it, she has a "Soundtracks" page. This page lists music she associates with her stories. 

This is a fun way to reveal something about the work, as well as about the author. James links to a soundtracks collection on YouTube, so fans can hear the music.

Joe Abercrombie

I'm not familiar with Abercrombie's work, but his site gives me a way to change that. He provides sample chapters from his books, available on-screen or as epub, mobi, or pdf files.

My old site had some chapters, and one caught the attention of an agent's assistant who was trolling the Web. She requested more. Ultimately, the book was for a younger audience than her agent repped, so nothing came of the request. However, I did learn that providing chapters can attract attention and interest, even for an "underpublished" author.

J.K. Rowling

Rowling's site does not create a feel for her books, but it may well reflect her own personality. The design is clean and sparse and looks like something a writer who is as organized as she reportedly is might create.

When you first click deeper into her site, you are presented with coach marks that provide hints to help navigate the site.

Although I don't think her site is complex enough to require coach marks, I think it's interesting that she provides them. Coach marks can be useful to orient visitors and show them what to expect when they click on page elements.

Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell has striking and attractive banners (or mastheads) that instantly tells me what I can expect from one of his books. 

The banner for each page is different, which can be a little confusing, but the design is the same on each page despite the image changes so I don't feel like I'm being thrown to a different site. Each banner is attractive, and I feel like I know what his books are like just from clicking to a few pages.

Besides the attractive images, which displays his brand, Cornwell provides nav links that are easy to understand and almost beg me to click them.

I really like that he has a page where he responds to reader questions. Of course, this is of limited use to an author who has yet to interest enough readers to generate questions, but even an unpublished author could use a Q&A format to provide information about his or her work and why potential readers and publishers might be interested. This is a way to enhance the brand and demonstrate a platform or other qualifications.

Marcel Theroux

Theroux's site has a charming feature I didn't see anywhere else: drawings of his study and items that mean something to him.

The only thing that bothered me about these drawings is that there are so few of them. The same few drawings are repeated on different pages throughout the site. He doesn't have that many pages, so he could have used a different drawing for each page. This is an interesting way to reveal something about the author and to create a connection with readers.

Theroux's site is unusual in that the navigation links are in the center of the page, something I haven't seen much. I think it works with his design.

Whether you are designing your new site or tweaking an existing site, it's a good idea to examine the sites of other authors, especially those in similar genres.

The antagonist: Hero or villain?

In many stories, the antagonist may even be more important than your main character. Your main character cannot become sympathetic without an opposing force.

The antagonist is more than just a bad guy who tries to stop the good guy. A good antagonist actually pushes the protagonist to action. The bad guy gives the good guy a reason to behave like a good guy. Because he is so important, your antagonist has to be every bit as real, every bit as well-rounded, as the protagonist.

The Antagonist is Evil

 No. The good antagonist is not evil. OK, he could be, but not for the mere sake of being evil. It's fun to write the bad guy who ties maidens to railroad tracks for fun, and throws the hero's One True Love on to the conveyor belt at the saw mill just because he can. The kind of bad guy who spends his time laughing maniacally while he twirls his 'stache. There's one secret, one thing you need to remember, if you want your antagonist to be truly interesting:

The antagonist honestly believes he is the good guy. Everything he does has a reason, and to him, those reasons are Right. They are Correct. They are Good.

Your good guy needs flaws and your antagonist needs positive characteristics. In some stories, the reader might even start to wonder just which character is the good guy and which is the bad guy. Few characters are as dull as the arch-villain who is evil just because being evil is evil. People aren't like that. Even people with a warped sense of reality (another little secret: we all have a warped sense of reality, shaped by our imperfect perceptions), do things for a reason. There are truly evil actions, and your bad guy might do some of them. But we humans have an almost unending supply of rationalizations for what we do.

A Rebel With a Cause

Your antagonist has his own character arc. Give your antagonist a cause. She wants to accomplish something, wants that more than anything else. And, like your protagonist, she is prepared to do what she has to do to achieve it, because that's what people do when something is of ultimate importance. Even a bad guy who wants to do something truly awful, like blow up a stadium full of innocent people, does it because he believes it has to be done to achieve the end result, which he believes to be for the ultimate good.  

• Sauron thought he was doing Middle Earth a favor by taking dominion.
• Saruman thought he was doing good by trying to stop the Black Lord and taking the power himself.
• Darth Vadar probably saw the Jedi as nefarious upstarts who wanted to thwart his plan to make the universe a better place.
  
  

A Hero in His Own Mind

The antagonist believes he's the hero. Your protagonist, who stands in his way, is the villain.

We are both nice people. The last cookie is sitting on the counter. You want it. I want it. Boom: conflict! In my story, you are now a villain because you want what I want.

My favorite example of this principle comes from politics. No matter what your political position is, your side is right and the other side is wrong. Maybe even evil. The thing is, the other side looks at you the same way. Why? Because each side believes it is right. If they were allowed to have their way, the world would be a spectacularly better place. It's the same with your hero and villain.  

Which one is the bad guy? Molly has a new puppy. This puppy is so naughty. When she takes it for walks, it pulls at the leash and tries to go its own way. It doesn't follow Molly's perfectly reasonable rules. When the puppy runs away, Molly is devastated. How could her puppy be so wicked? But what is the puppy doing, really? It's being true to its own puppiness. It doesn't understand Molly's unnatural rules. All she does is try to to restrain it and she scolds it for simply being what it is.

Let your reader sympathize with the villain, and understand why he wants what he wants, and maybe even see his point. If your reader can sympathize with both the hero and the villain, the conflict becomes more real, the stakes are raised, and your reader is more engaged.

Read More About It

• Writer's Digest: "6 Ways to Write Better Bad Guys" by Laura DiSilverio
• Writer's Digest: "3 Techniques For Crafting a Better Villain" by Hallie Ephron
• springhole.net: "Basic Tips To Write Better & More Despicable Villains"

7 tips for writing fiction even if you think you’re not a writer

When I mention that I write, I often hear responses like:

• I’d like to write a book but I don’t know where to start.
• I’d like to write, but I never have any good ideas.
• I could never be a writer. I’m not creative enough.

There’s nothing wrong with not writing if you’re not going to enjoy it. But if it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, go for it.

1. It only takes one idea.

Ideas are everywhere. Keep your eyes and ears open. Most people who write have folders and notebooks full of ideas, often too many for one lifetime, but you only need one. We find ideas in:

• Our real life
• The news
• The books we read
• Overheard conversations
• Travel

The smallest spark can become a story. When you see or hear something, ask yourself “what if?” What if that strange-looking person is really a ghost? What if Macbeth took place on a distant planet sometime in the future? What if those kids talking about their homework at Burger King were actually aliens sent to spy on their school?

2. Practice. Practice. Practice.

You wouldn’t expect to pick up a guitar or sit at a piano for the first time and immediately sound like a master. Writing, like all the arts, requires practice. The more you write, the better you get.

Here are some practice ideas:

• Look for writing prompts online. Several sites provide them.
• Write about anything. It doesn’t matter what.
• Work on one element of writing at a time.
• Write badly on purpose.

Give yourself permission to suck. Practice means taking baby steps. It means working through frustration. Being bored. Getting impatient. And always improving, even if you don’t notice the change, until one day something clicks.

3. Imitate your favorite writers.

Every writer begins by imitating the writers they like. It doesn’t matter if it borders on plagiarism. When you start, you’re writing for practice, not publication, so copy all you want. Write fan fiction. Copy style. It takes a lot of imitation before you start to develop your own voice.

4. Set reasonable expectations.

Don’t expect your first idea, no matter how excited you are about it, to be the Great American Novel. Start small and think small. Think in terms of a project, a story, or “that little thing I’m writing.” A book is a Big Thing, and it’s easy to intimidate yourself out of finishing, especially when the inevitable Inner Editor kicks in to remind you that you’re not good enough, and just who do you think you are anyway trying to write a book?

Few writers publish their first attempts. It’s incredibly difficult to get published, and we don’t all have what it takes to self-publish successfully. Fantasize about it all you want, but don’t expect it. Not yet.

Don’t expect greatness. Expect to entertain yourself. Expect to have fun. Expect to learn something. Expect it to take a long, long time. Expect to think you suck more than you do. Expect to think you’re even better than you are.

5. Read widely.

You don’t like romance novels? Read one anyway. It might help with a romantic scene you weren’t expecting to write. Read classics. Read current best sellers. Read history and science. Read about words. Read about writing. Read author biographies. Read true crime fiction. Just read.

It’s especially important to read in the genres and age groups you want to write, so you understand the elements of those kinds of stories. But don’t stop there.

You’ll generate ideas. You’ll understand how people work so you can make your characters more realistic. You’ll learn about the ways you never ever want to write.

6. Write.

If you want to write, you have to write. You’d be surprised how many “writers” try to skip this part.

Write for yourself  Write every day. If your life doesn’t allow you to write for an hour, write for fifteen minutes or ten. Give yourself permission to miss a day now and then so you don’t quit when you realize you’ve been so busy that a week has gone by since you last wrote.

7. Set a goal and persist until you reach it. 

Never give up. Start small. Your first goal should be to finish a paragraph, then a scene. Then the next one. Eventually you’ll have a story. Even if it’s no good, you wrote one. The vast majority of people who start writing a story never finish. Probably 95% or more. Finishing that first draft puts you in an elite company of writers. That’s something to be seriously proud of.

Pat yourself on the back. Throw a party. Take a break. Then start revising.

Enneagram: Create Characters Based on Personality Types

Today I’m going to show you how to use personality tests to flesh out the people in your stories. My favorite system for this is the Enneagram.

Image source: The Canadian Institute for Enneagram Studies

I’m not a fan of those quizzes in magazines or on websites that claim they can fit me into some narrow category that defines who I am. In general, I don’t trust anything that takes real people and shoves them into tight little cubbies. People are too complicated for that.

When I create fictional characters, however, these things can help me determine my characters’ desires and how they will act in the various situations they’ll face.

Discover how your characters tick

The Enneagram categorizes personalities into nine types:

Type	Role	Personality	Stress	Security
1	The Reformer	Rational, idealistic	4	7
2	The Helper	Caring, nurturing	8	4
3	The Achiever	Adaptable, success-oriented	9	6
4	The Individualist	Intuitive, reserved	2	1
5	The Investigator	Perceptive, cerebral	7	8
6	The Loyalist	Committed, security-oriented	3	9
7	The Enthusiast	Enthusiastic, productive	1	5
8	The Challenger	Powerful, aggressive	5	2
9	The Peacemaker	Easygoing, accommodating	6	3

I recommend doing an Enneagram quiz for your main characters. For your first test, answer for yourself so you can get an idea of the questions and how the test and the Enneagram works. Then, think about your characters and take the test for each of them.

The act of taking the quiz forces you to think about your character’s personality. This quiz is made up of 37 questions, with two possible answers for each. Before you take the quiz, spend some time thinking about your character so you’re not just making stuff up as you answer the questions.

Hint: At the end of the quiz, I suggest printing the page before you click to calculate the results. Then you can go back and look at how you answered the questions. Include the printed quiz in your character profile.

Deepen your characters

For a character to seem real, he or she has to react to situations in a way that is consistent with his or her personality. And, because certain character types naturally conflict, pairing a protagonist and antagonist with clashing personality types creates the tension you need for a successful story.

What I like about this system is that it doesn’t say a person is one type and that’s it. It assigns a number value that shows how firmly a person fits into each type. In other words, it acknowledges a challenger might be a peacemaker as well as a reformer, with strong individualist tendencies. It also defines which types bring either comfort or stress to each type.

I took the test for one of my characters and got these scores:

Type 1: Reformer	2
Type 2: Helper	8
Type 3: Achiever	3
Type 4: Individualist	5
Type 5: Investigator	2
Type 6: Loyalist	6
Type 7: Enthusiast	4
Type 8: Challenger	3
Type 9: Peacemaker	3

This tells me Aellin is primarily a Helper, with strong Loyalist tendencies. She is not a Reformer or an Investigator.

So what could I do with this character? As the first table above shows, a Helper is stressed by a Challenger, Aellin obviously needs to be pitted against a powerful authority figure. Her sidekick should be an Individualist, because a 2 is comforted by a 4. And Aellin should be forced into a situation where she needs to be an Investigator. Maybe she needs to plot revenge against the leader. As it turns out, this is a major part of the story I’ve come up with, so the test tells me I’m on the right track.

Why does the test tell me that? Well, if Aellin is clearly not an Investigator, then having to become one means that there will be conflict, not only against her powerful enemy, but also internal conflict with herself as she is forced to act in a way that is unnatural for her. She’ll revert to her natural personality, which works against what she has to do. She’ll struggle constantly to achieve her goal because she’s fighting against her own nature.

Wash, rinse, repeat

As legendary editor Sol Stein said, each character needs to have his own script. So, if I take the same quiz for each major character in my story, I’ll get a good idea of their inner and outer conflicts, and how they’ll react to various situations. I’ll create characters with their own consistent lives, and I’ll see how to create personality conflicts.

Learn more about it

The Enneagram is a complicated system. I’ve presented a simplified explanation. You don’t have to understand everything about it to create strong characters. If you want to know more, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article. For an even deeper dive, I recommend9types.com or The Enneagram Institute, where you can learn more about the personality types and find additional tests.

Creating Reality in a Fictional Setting

Use available resources to create an imaginary place as real any you can actually find.

One of the fun elements of fiction writing is creating a setting and bringing it to life. When creating a setting for your story, you have three choices:

1. Use a real place.
2. Create a fictional place.
3. Create a fictional place based on a real place.

I wanted to set my story, The Secret of Eucalyptus Cove, in a place I know well enough to satisfy the Writer’s Digest list of setting elements.

I knew I wanted Eucalyptus Cove to be a small, somewhat isolated ranch on the San Mateo County coast in California, near Half Moon Bay. It’s not far from where I grew up, and is the section of coast where I spent countless hours. I know it physically, sensorily, and culturally.

Because I could not find a place exactly like I needed for my story, I created a composite of several places. Between my memory, my imagination, and the magic of Google, I was able to create a setting as real to me as any actual place.

There are several farms and ranches in the area, and I knew how I wanted Eucalyptus Cove to look.

I wanted my ranch to be above a small, secluded beach. The part of the coast that I selected has countless little coves, many of them almost inaccessible at the bottom of cliffs. I combined my own memories of the coast with the pictures below to create exactly what I needed.

 

Once I had my location, I needed a farmhouse. For this, I drew on the Patterson house just across the city limits from my home town. It’s not right on the coast, but it’s not that far. It’s easy enough to move a house in fiction.

I took the house, transported it to my fictional ranch above the cove, and modified it a bit based on other homes of the type and in the area, such as the Meek mansion, whose tower became an important part of my farm house.

Like ranches everywhere, Eucalyptus Cove needed a compound of sheds, barns, and other out buildings. Something like the one on the left below, which also happens to have a beach and eucalyptus trees, combined with the typical coastal ranch on the right:

 

I also needed the ranch to have some history, so I placed an older house on the ranch, an adobe home from the days when it was a Mexican rancho. I based the adobe on several in the San Francisco Bay Area and surroundings.

 

Finally, of course, Eucalyptus Cove needed a eucalyptus grove. There are groves all along the coast. The one I drew from was the one on the edge of my home town. As kids, we referred to this grove as Hobo Jungle, a place of many legends and secrets. And a place that, sadly, is now only a fragment of what it once was. Fortunately, there are enough similar groves that I could find pictures to trigger my sensory memories.

 

I know from experience what a Eucalyptus grove smells like and how the peeled bark, seed pods, and other plant litter looks and feels under foot.

I’ve used Hobo Jungle and the Patterson house before, in a poem I wrote many years ago. Here’s part of it:

Us kids passed that grove on Jarvis
eucalyptus stretched to Union City
trunks striped with peeling bark
the odor of Dad’s cough drops

Deer, fox, rabbit, coyote
Pat heard there were bears
they like eucalyptus he said
A farmhouse, deserted, rotting
a haunted hotel for jungle hobos
Juan said. We laughed, stayed away

With all the pieces assembled in my mind and in my files, it was time to imagine how my characters would interact with the place I created.

(Note: None of the pictures in this post are mine. I collected them too long ago and didn’t expect to use them in a blog, so I didn’t keep track of my sources. Thanks to the original photographers for helping enhance my imagination.)