Extreme Planning for Authors E-Book

Christy Nicholas

• Herausgeber: Green Dragon Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Frustrated by another incomplete book? Learn new ways to escape the hamster wheel and fill the shelves with brilliant best-sellers.

Has your dream of authorship turned into a collection of half-finished manuscripts? Inspired by a great idea only to face burnout in the messy middle? Are you terrified by the evils of editing?

With over a decade of experience in indie publishing, best-selling author and specialist in process streamlining Christy Nicholas has real-world expertise in transforming the practices of both novices and seasoned pros. And now she’s here to share eye-opening techniques to stop blundering around the keyboard and finally type The End on that novel.

Extreme Planning for Authors is a no-fluff, straightforward, actionable guide to transition from a wannabe into a skilled and confident writer. Featuring examples both personal and professional, each easy-to-read chapter focuses on concrete skills to help you break through any blocks and push the publish button. And by implementing these core concepts, you’ll embark on a journey of self-fulfillment, unparalleled growth, and creative freedom.

In Extreme Planning for Authors, you’ll discover:

• Sections on preparation to take out the guesswork and jumpstart productivity
• How to tackle publishing and marketing to make that hard work pay off
• Ways to plot out your writing path and turn getting your words drafted into an exciting adventure
• Workbook exercises to stay on track and convert lessons into ingrained knowledge
• Powerful tactics for crushing editing, and much, much more!

Extreme Planning for Authors is a down-to-earth and effective manual for anyone hungry to call themselves a wordsmith. If you like clear and concise explanations, advice culled from years of know-how, and in-the-trenches guidance, then you’ll love Christy Nicholas's accessible handbook.

Start reading  Extreme Planning for Authors  to craft a must-read today!

Leseprobe

EXTREME PLANNING FOR AUTHORS:

A TREASURE MAP FOR

PLANNING YOUR NOVEL

––––––––

CHRISTY NICHOLAS, CPA

GREEN DRAGON PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2022 Christy Nicholas

Cover art © 2022 by GetCovers

Internal design © 2022 by Green Dragon Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, without permission in writing from its publisher, Green Dragon Publishing.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Green Dragon Publishing is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published by Green Dragon Publishing

Beacon Falls, CT

www.GreenDragonArtist.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Contributors

Part One: The Planning Stage | Chapter One: Planning versus Pantsing

Chapter Two: In the Beginning: Concept

Chapter Three: Research All the Things

Chapter Four: Synopsis

Chapter Five: Character Deep Dive

Chapter Six: Setting the Scene... List

Chapter Seven: Opening Scene

PART TWO: THE FIRST DRAFT | Chapter Eight: The Frightening Blank Page

Chapter Nine: Dialogue vs. Narrative vs. Action

Chapter Ten: Scene by Scene

Chapter Eleven: Characters Gone Awry

Chapter Twelve: The Agony and the Ecstasy

Chapter Thirteen: The Dreaded Writers’ Block

Chapter Fourteen: Procrastination and the Finished First Draft

PART THREE: EVIL EDITING | Chapter Fifteen: Editing Types

Chapter Sixteen: First Round of Edits and All the Pain

Chapter Seventeen: Draft Number Two, Electric Bugaloo

Chapter Eighteen: Beta Readers or How to Alienate Your Friends and Family

PART FOUR: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING PATH | Chapter Nineteen: The Querying Process

Chapter Twenty: Submissions

Chapter Twenty-One: Acceptance and More Editing

Chapter Twenty-Two: Artist Package, ARCs, and Review Requests, Oh, My!

PART FIVE: SELF-PUBLISHING PATH | Chapter Twenty-Three: Formatting Hell

Chapter Twenty-Four: Judging a Book by its Cover

Chapter Twenty-Five: To Audio or Not to Audio?

Chapter Twenty-Six: So Many Publishing Platforms

PART SIX: THE HEADY AFTERMATH | Chapter Twenty-Seven: Release the Kraken!

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Begging for Reviews, or More Ways to Alienate your Friends and Family

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Selling Yourself

Conclusion

Thank You! | Thank you so much for enjoying Extreme Planning for Authors. If you’ve enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review, to help other readers find this resource. | Giving a review to an author is like the applause at the end of a concert, and authors greatly appreciate them! | If you would like to get updates, sneak previews, sales, and FREE STUFF, please sign up for my newsletter.

Resources

About the Author

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Introduction

Staring at a blank page. Every author’s nightmare.

It doesn’t need to be more frightening than a Stephen King book. No, really! I’m serious. Stop laughing.

While most authors of novels are intimidated by the enormous task before them, that intimidation can be chopped up into quivering bits with some planning and task management.

I must confess a secret. I didn’t plan my first book. I didn’t plan my second book. Not even my third. Now, now, stop clutching at your pearls. The truth is, I cheated on all three of those.

My first two books weren’t novels. They were travel guides. The reason I cheated was because I had already written much of the books before I ever considered publishing them. I’d been to Ireland and Scotland several times each and had taken copious real-time notes in the form of trip reports. This was both for my own flawed memory and to share the trip with others on a vicarious basis.

Several people had asked for advice on trip planning themselves, so I’d written up several cheat sheets for how to find a good B&B, or car rental, or researching airfare. I therefore compiled this data, as well as my notes from sites I’d visited, and added some I researched. Voila! A travel guide.

Which brings me to my first novel. I didn’t know anything about planning a novel. I didn’t know anything about writing a novel. I just knew I needed to write that novel, the story of my parents’ thirty-year search for true love, which culminated in a wedding on the Starship Enterprise in Las Vegas.

So, I dove right in. I wrote a few scenes in order, hated them, tried again. Then I tossed those and tried it from another angle. And again. Then I got tired of that crap and just kept writing.

However, this was all a cheat. No, really, it was. This was a novel based on a true story, so I knew the salient details, I knew the characters, I knew how it ended... none of that was anything I had to create. It was handed to me on a silver platter, not a real test of my plotting ability.

After the first draft, I decided I wanted to add a second point of view, that of my own as the researcher who found her father after thirty years, when he didn’t even know he had a child. So, I went back to add all that in.

In the end, I had a relatively cohesive tale, but the editing was atrocious. However, I didn’t realize it, and published it with a friend’s micro-publishing company. Many years later, I’ve gotten the rights to the novel back, and rewrote it, knowing what I’ve learned about writing in the meantime, and republished. I was in a state of permanent face-palm reading the first version. Not planning, and not properly editing, had led to so many continuity errors, outright contradictions, and plot holes, I’m amazed anyone liked it.

Now, not everyone is a planner. Some people prefer “pantsing,” or writing by the seat of their pants. Another term I like for this technique is “discovery writing.” If you prefer that way, you may be thinking, “Planning: blah, blah, blah, outline, blah, blah, blah.”

Most authors are on a spectrum somewhere between Extreme Pantser and Extreme Planner. But I think most authors could find some useful tools in this book, tools which might allow them to sculpt that horrifying prospect into digestible chunks.

Sorry for the graphic imagery. I guess Stephen King is still on my mind.

Please keep in mind that this book just demonstrates some ways in which authors can plan, write, and publish their books. It’s novel-centric, planner-centric, historical fiction-centric, and me-centric. I am in no way putting forth that this is the only way to write, or even to plan, a novel. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

The process of writing a novel is a scary mystery to most people. Sometimes including those who actually write novels! My own process is just one of thousands of processes, but here is a peek into my mad method.

Contributors

No one writes in a vacuum. Editors, beta readers, author friends, and resources all simmer in an author’s mind to distill into the final product. I’ve gotten some fantastic input from my beta readers, such as Ian Erik Morris and author Lee O’Connell, as well as authors Mattea Orr and Joseph Crance on some of this material, and their help has been invaluable.

In addition, I’ve done lots of research online, gathering data from places like Writer’s Digest, Reedsy, Ads for Authors, Writer’s Beware, and Absolute Write Water Cooler. Nothing proprietary, of course, but general information that might be helpful for the budding author.

The author group I am part of has been the most help, allowing me to see how my process was different from others. This group was organized and is run by fellow author Melora Johnson and has been the single most invaluable tool I’ve had as an author.

Part One: The Planning Stage

Chapter One: Planning versus Pantsing

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PLANNER: One who creates a writing plan before and/or during their writing process

PANTSER: One who writes “by the seat of their pants,”

allowing creativity to guide their story during the writing process

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I am a planner. That doesn’t mean I am rigidly required to adhere to my plan, but I do make a plan and mostly follow it. No one is 100% pantser or planner, rather most writers are on the spectrum between those extremes. Despite my adoration for a well-crafted plan, that plan has run afoul of my story many times. One scene becomes eight, eight becomes one. Subplots take a left turn. New characters show up out of the blue and just demand to be added, sometimes taking entire subplots as their own.

It’s madness.

However, that doesn’t mean I won’t plan the next book. I just hold in my heart the understanding that the best laid plans of writers and authors must be modified as required. Just like any war, tactics change as the battlefield conditions do.

So, whether you see yourself “Full of Pants” or a “Plan-loving Word Bug,” settle in and enjoy.

Chapter Two: In the Beginning: Concept

Definitions:

Inciting incident

– a change in a character’s normal life that thrusts them into the main action of the story

I strongly believe in teaching by example. Therefore, I’ll be using a book I wrote, Misfortune of Vision as a step-by-step guide. Misfortune of Vision is the fourth novel in the Druid’s Brooch series. Book two, Legacy of Truth, had just been published the month I started Misfortune of Vision, and book three, Legacy of Luck, was submitted and due out four months later.

The idea was to have three trilogies in total for a total of nine books in the series, because I am wedded to symmetry. The first trilogy (the Legacy books) is set in the 18th/19th century. The second trilogy (the Misfortune books) are set in the 11th/12th century. The third and final trilogy (the Age books) are set in the 5th/6th century, and the final book of that trilogy gives the origins of the brooch itself.

That means to plan my next book, I really must plan out six novels. And make them all tie neatly into a bow at the end. Right. Okay, deep breath, let it out easily. Let’s do this.

Most writers are Planners or Plotters to some extent. I’m strong on the Planner end of the spectrum. That means I like to plan out my book and my scenes, flesh out my characters and my subplots before the first word is written. Yes, it can change later due to the capriciousness of my muse and my own editing, but that’s how I begin. When I got into planning, I used The Snowflake Method (an amazing process you can look up online, though I have no affiliation with the creator). This process was a delight to this detail-oriented accountant/author. I’ve modified my process since then to suit my own style, which I encourage everyone to do. Find a method that works for yourself.

My first task is to come up with a basic premise for each book. A one-sentence elevator pitch, or what you’d say to an agent if you ended up on an elevator with them and only had a few minutes to pitch your book.

Using some popular novels for examples:

Outlander

:

1940s nurse travels back in time 200 years and falls in love with a Highlander in the Jacobite revolution.

Lord of the Rings

:

A group of farmers embark on a quest with a wizard and some elves to destroy an object of evil in a fantasy realm.

Hunger Games

:

A girl volunteers to fight to be the last person standing in a brutal entertainment show to save her sister.

As you work on your own one-sentence elevator pitch, concentrate on the meat of the concept, not the details. Ignore names for now. No subplots. No side characters. Make those few minutes count without wasting it with extraneous add-ons.

Describe what your protagonist does. (the Character)

What changes in their world to start off the story? (the Inciting Incident)

What do they need to accomplish? (the Goal)

What do they lose if they fail? (the Stakes)

Each basic pitch should have a main character, an over-arching conflict, a goal, and stakes.

The Character: Form a brief description. Gender? Age? Physical description? Motivation? Personality quirk? Nothing deep yet, just something quick and dirty for now.

For Misfortune of Vision, my main character is a 65-year-old grandmother. One inspiration for my character was a reddit thread about the savior of the world needing to be a grandmother with life skills rather than yet another teenage wonder child. Sure, I won’t be able to include as much angst and rebellion, but I can insert plenty of snark and sarcasm. I love it when little old ladies order everyone else around.

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CHARACTER EXERCISE: Describe your main character. How old are they? How heavy? What color is their skin? Their eyes? What is their hair like? Do they pick their lips? Bite their fingernails? How do they present their gender?

The Inciting Incident: What changes in their normal life to make them interesting enough to write a story? Does someone come to town? Do they go on a quest? Does their father figure die in a horrible fire? Do they die? (i.e., The Lovely Bones) Something gets them out of “ordinary” and into conflict.

The inciting incident will be her giving a dire prophecy that no one believes. A classic Cassandra tale. And, of course, it’s about an incident that means personal, physical danger, not only to her, but everyone she knows.

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INCITING INCIDENT EXERCISE: Where does your main character live? What’s a typical day like? What is their job? Who do they live with? What happens to change that everyday life? What event from their past haunts them?

The Goal: What is their purpose in this conflict? To survive? To win a race? To marry the hunk next door? To save their best friend from an alien?

My little old lady needs a quest, so she’s seeking out an heir. Why? Well, she has this heirloom. A magic brooch she must gift to a relative, which is a common element through “The Druid’s Brooch Series” To raise the stakes, all her children are dead, so she must seek out her grandchildren. She either has never met them or hasn’t seen them since they were babies, because travel in the twelfth century was dangerous and tedious.

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GOAL EXERCISE: What does your main character want more than anything in the world? What goal drives them to shove off the daily drone and do something about it? What catalyzes them into action? Why now?

The Stakes: What happens if they don’t reach that goal? Will they be left in a loveless marriage? Will the world go poof into a million atoms? Will their hair fall out?

If she doesn’t pass on the brooch, it will be lost to the human world forever. Her family passed this legacy to her, and she must uphold her honor.

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STAKES EXERCISE: What will your main character lose if they don’t reach their goal? At what point in the story does this become the point of no return?

If you’re writing a series, like I am, it might be a good idea to work out your main elevator-pitch plot on the other books-to-be, so you have a good variety of themes and plots. I did a one-paragraph synopsis on each of the eight remaining books after I finished book one, so I didn’t run out of ideas and have to change something I’d already done. See? Extreme planning!

Once you’ve got a one-sentence elevator pitch, you can use that in the future to tempt an agent or write advertising copy. For now, you’ll use it as the seed to grow your synopsis.

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ELEVATOR PITCH EXERCISE: Combine the above exercises into an elevator pitch, one sentence that describes your character, the setting, their goal, and the stakes. It can be a long sentence, but must be able to be said in ten seconds.

Chapter Three: Research All the Things

This section is going to be very historical fiction oriented. However, most novels set in the real world, including contemporaries, romances, and literary, require some research to properly ground your readers in setting. Even if you’re setting your book in your own hometown, like a memoir, you will need to research some details to improve verisimilitude.

If you’re creating a science fiction or fantasy realm, then you need to do even more research. You’ll want to create magic systems that work, or a socioeconomic world in space exploration. Do you need to know more about black holes? Faster-than-light drives? How about the power structure of a medieval setting with seven types of sentient creatures vying for primacy? Do they each have their own cultures, languages, and martial traditions? Don’t forget maps! For examples of extreme planners, see Frank Herbert, Patrick Rothfuss, or J.R.R. Tolkien.

So, that’s a huge amount of planning. Where does one start? That really depends on your personal passion. If you love politics, you might start crafting the political structure of your world. If you love travel or geography, you might begin with a physical setting. If you love history, you might first find a real historical event to base your story around.

I love history. I needed to find a time of great conflict to set my story in.

For Misfortune of Vision, since it’s set in the twelfth century, I dove into a rabbit hole of the Annals of Irish History, Lady Gregory, Yeats, and the ever-mocked Wikipedia. Yes, you can use Wikipedia, but please be cautious of using that as a source.

While Wikipedia can be a great tool to give a researcher a path to more reliable sources, I prefer to use those resources when I can access them. I don’t rely on Wikipedia’s accuracy. People can change the information at any time, without any sources. At the bottom of the page, there are often links or lists to the source data. Many are scholarly resources, peer-reviewed or published. Often, I can find a great article listed there but hosted on sites such as academia.edu or jstor.com to help me get the historical details I need. Unfortunately, I must add a caveat that some of these reliable resources are behind a pay wall. However, sometimes if you can find the article you need, you can contact the author and they will send you a copy.

As an example, I researched kings and social structure. I spent way too much time finding a better word for king, since that was not a word used for Celtic people in the twelfth century. I looked up documents about the time period, including the Annals of Ireland. I asked some scholars I know on the period about their suggestions. After sifting through many bad options from other cultures, I finally found one which fit with Irish culture of the time: Chief or Chieftain.

Then I researched clergy and local saints, which melded into fairy queens and holy wells. I found maps of sacred sites in Ireland, as well as the history of the larger ones. I delved into Neolithic mounds and burnt villages in the area, since I wanted my character to encounter the Fae in a mystical spot. Neolithic mounds and stone circles were the best places for such encounters. Burnt villages were a great backdrop for tragedy and violence.

After a good fifteen hours’ worth of research (no, I’m not exaggerating), I checked out the local Vikings, to see if it was logical to include them as an added conflicting element and what they were called. In the records of the time, people called them Ostmen or simply Foreigners. I discovered a local chief who was a renowned craven coward. When the Norman invasion reached the northern counties, he simply fled.

Fantastic! Cowardly chiefs are great! Let’s use him. He was the Chief in Downpatrick, but John de Courci, a famous Norman, took the town. Now I know where my main character lives, and exactly when the story would take place. She has a purpose and plenty of crap to get in the way of that purpose.

External conflict is easier to meld into the characters’ internal conflict, adding tension and action. When I decided on twelfth century Ireland, I had no idea exactly how violent this time was in the northeast of Ireland. I knew atrocities happened in the southeast with the Norman invasion, but this time period makes Game of Thrones look like a peaceful Sunday picnic. Perfect for high tension stories.

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SOURCES

The main historically reliable documents from the time, such as the Annals of Ulster, mostly just list the deaths of chiefs and nobles, bishops, and other Very Important Personages. There were a lot of them! It seemed like every minor chief had a relative who hated him enough to off him for his throne. Some were details about cattle raids, sieges, or a kidnapping, but the majority were the stark mortality details.

However, once you get your hands on a juicy, historically accurate conflict, some historical characters you can work into your story, and a concrete time period, you can plop your characters into the middle and see if they swim.

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Your tale is more interesting if your characters can’t swim.

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I went back to do some editing on a previous manuscript to give my unconscious mind time to percolate the story. As I did so, I realized that I’ve already read several books set in my time period by authors whose research I respect. Ken Follett (Pillars of the Earth), Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe), and Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael Mysteries) have written books set in the twelfth century. While they were all set in England, a different culture and political structure, they still give me some “flavor” of the setting, mores of the day, and details about daily life at that level of technology and trade.

For some people, anything prior to modern times is “ancient” and there is little differentiation between those periods. For an historian, however, or an enthusiast of historical fiction, those differences are important. And I won’t even get into the debate over the misnomer “Dark Ages” here because I don’t want this book to be 100,000 words long.

For instance, a noblewoman of seventeenth century France would wear a completely different costume than a noblewoman in twelfth century France. The Renaissance occurred at different times in different areas throughout Europe, and took different forms throughout the world, just as the Bronze and Iron Ages did. Technology and fashion took time to migrate in the past, as social media hadn’t quite been invented yet.

When writing details of the time period, an author could research the different foods a character is eating (Pro tip: Your 12th century character wouldn’t order a caramel frappe from Starbucks!), clothing, the way they made their living, etc. Even within professions, they might have different names, such as a wheelwright or cooper. At the same time, you need to ensure your modern reader understands the reference. Make certain that unfamiliar terms are couched in context, or have a glossary in the book.

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Planning allows the author to create a complex web of subplots to weave around your main conflict, each one adding to the overall tension of the tale.

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These differences in culture can help a lot in your planning. Different time periods, cultures, even different worlds, can offer a variety of interesting conflict to assist in your plot and make your characters miserable.

I then make a list of possible conflicts that arise from such an environment. There are both internal and external conflicts.

Internal conflicts might be a moral dilemma, a crisis of faith, or the suspicion of a friend or family member. Someone might be dealing with PTSD, depression, or anger management.

External conflicts might include that broken wagon wheel, war, or someone blocking the road. A broken wagon wheel wasn’t as easily fixed as a flat tire is today. An arranged marriage was much more common for nobility in medieval times. Blasphemy was a huge worry.

CONFLICT EXERCISE: List out at least three possible internal and external conflicts in your story.

External