Managing Reader Feedback

by ChelseaApril 13, 2021May 10, 2021

So you’ve written your first draft, gone through editing and cleaned up all the side tracks that didn’t go anywhere or got abandoned or just felt weird, and you have a solid, reader-ready copy of your book. You open up your advice source of choice and it says “get reader feedback” or sometimes “get critique partners” or occasionally “get beta readers.” It always fascinates me that there are sources that tell you to get beta readers after finishing your first round of self-edits. This is a terrible idea. Let me explain why.

What is a beta reader?

I suspect that the main reason for the erroneous suggestion above is a misunderstanding of what beta readers really are. In short, beta readers are readers. They’re not going to tell you how to improve the line-level writing of the book and they aren’t going to suggest improvements to your concept or ask if a particular character is necessary for the book because they’re only in a couple scenes. Their job is to read the book as if it was published and point out things that would make them either really excited for your book (i.e., oh wow, I never saw that plot twist coming. That’s really cool!) or consider putting your book down (i.e., um, sorry, but the chapter where the character goes to history class is not working for me. It was super boring.). Your job is to take the knowledge of what did work and what didn’t work for each of the readers and decide what changes, if any, need to be made.

This probably sounds like I’m arguing against myself—after all, don’t you want to know what works and what doesn’t for your next round of edits—but this is actually all bad for the first reader feedback stage. For the first stage you need someone who can suggest solutions and who is trained to look past the poorly implemented writing to see the idea behind and help bring that to life. You need a critique partner, and preferably more than one.

How is a critique partner different from a beta reader?

The most important difference between a critique partner and a beta reader is that a critique partner is expected to suggest solutions to issues, while a beta reader is only expected to point those problems out. There are other differences, largely in the complexity of the concern presentation but also in the stretch-scope of the role.

So, for example, a beta reader might tell you “this section didn’t hold my interest.” They might even say “the characters here didn’t feel natural and I wasn’t interested in their decisions.” That’s all great information and can inform your next decisions. But a critique partner would say “The characters here didn’t feel natural. Remember how MC reacted to a similar situation in chapter 3? They got really angry and glared, brooded about the issues for a week, then plotted a major assassination. Here MC has a very similar thing and just starts yelling and hacking at people. That doesn’t fit the character.” In early stages of editing, you need the more in depth discussion to decide which of those actions is more like your character so you can harmonize the character reactions. Obviously this is a pretty simplistic example—if you have this wide a disparity between responses you should probably have a strong character arc leading from one to the other, not an “oops, mis-remembered that” situation—but the point holds. A beta reader is a reader who will tell you what they enjoyed reading and what they disliked. A critique partner is a partner who will evaluate the manuscript to discuss elements that work or don’t and why they work or don’t. Let’s look at a few examples of how the feedback will differ:

Type of error/issue	Typical Beta Reader response	Typical Critique Partner response
Minor grammatical issues (I.e., missing punctuation or incorrect verb tense)	Two common responses: 1. If prevalent throughout, will likely note that “grammar issues made the read difficult to engage with” 2. If rare, will likely not say anything	Will usually highlight the issues, and depending on the prevalence (and their personal preference) may explain the rule that makes the error an issue
Character personality changes mid book without warning	Will usually say the characters don’t make sense or seemed to be poorly developed	Will usually discuss the altered personality from one scene to the next, pointing out how and why it is inconsistent and may even suggest changes to keep the character consistent
Plot doesn’t make sense	Will usually say that they were confused and/or couldn’t follow the action of the book	Will usually point out plot holes, missing explanations, and/or make suggestions for how to bridge the gaps while maintaining the intent of the book
Setting is weak and/or confusing	May ask for world details, or may say that they had trouble visualizing the setting	Will usually suggest places in the text where setting details can be added, possibly even referencing types of senses commonly excluded and how they could add depth at given moments
Too much information or information given in an inappropriate location	Will usually say the book got boring, slow, or confusing at the specific location	Will usually drop the dreaded “don’t infodump” warning, possibly tell you not to spout your entire backstory in one long rant, and have surprisingly little advice on how to rectify the issue beyond “cut some of this”

Now you may look at the list above and think “but why would I ever use a beta reader? Critique partners are better in every way, right?” Well, no. But this is exactly why I said a beta reader right out of self-editing is a terrible idea. Beta readers serve a very specific purpose, and it’s not the same purpose as critique partners. Beta readers are like beta testers for a video game—their primary purpose is to tell you if the story is interesting from an outside perspective. The more rough edges the work has, the more likely they are to tell you the book sucks even if they would actually like the finished product.

A critique partner, on the other hand, is more like the quality analysis department of the video game company. They probably like the book—they’ll do a better job if they do, in fact—but their job is to help smooth out the rough edges and bring the book to it’s greatest potential. A critique partner should never tell you a book isn’t good enough, interesting enough, or doesn’t have enough potential to be worth your time. The worst a critique partner should ever say is “the concept might work, but this presentation doesn’t so you might want to try re-evaluating the way you approach this concept.” Any critique partner who tells you to give up—whether on a specific book or on writing in general—should be immediately removed from your pool of critique partners. A beta reader, however, is perfectly within their rights to tell you a particular book doesn’t seem marketable.

So how do I know what feedback I need?

This question has a pretty fluid range of answers, and only you can know what stage you’re at, but here’s a few guidelines to help. Typically a critique partner is early in the process—in some cases even before you finish a draft, depending on your process. Critique partners help you refine elements of your story, improve your writing skill, and catch major flaws in style and presentation before they permeate the entire book. Beta readers are later in the process and give you a taste of what readers will think after you publish. They may find plot holes or inconsistent characters, but primarily they are to tell you whether or not the book is interesting to read. Beta readers are particularly good at helping you locate places where readers are likely to misunderstand what you wrote in unusual or unexpected ways.

As a rule of thumb, if you just finished a self-edit or are looking for ways to solve known problems, find a critique partner. If you think the book might be ready for publication but are unsure how it will be received, find a beta reader.

What if someone asks me to read for them?

Just about every writer is asked, at one point or another, to read someone else’s work and offer feedback. There’s only one piece of advice I can give for this situation Try, to the best of your ability, to pretend like you aren’t a writer.

The thing about writers is that every time they hear an idea they start thinking about how they would implement that idea. But when you’re reading someone else’s work, what you would do doesn’t matter. All that matters is how this writer was trying to accomplish the idea, and how well they actually did. So, pretend you aren’t a writer, try to figure out what the writer is hoping to present, and suggest toward that goal.

This works whether you’re asked to beta read or to be a critique partner. As a beta reader, your job isn’t to be a writer anyway. You should be focusing on whether you would pick the book up for yourself. As a critique partner, your job is to nurture the story the writer is trying to create. To do that, you need to set aside your own interests and writing style and evaluate what the writer wanted to make.

I can tell you from experience in four different writer’s groups all around the United States that this skill is extremely rare. I was often hailed as the best of the group at giving a critique because people thought I saw into what they were trying to do. I rarely knew for sure what the goal was and I was often wrong in my suggestions. But what I did do was try to match the image the writer was creating rather than mold the story into the image I would have created in their place. One of my closest friends in one of these groups almost convinced me to turn my epic fantasy series into a romance because she was most interested in the romantic subplot. She wasn’t malicious (in fact I genuinely valued her feedback), she just thought that thread of the story was most interesting and so she pushed me to develop it until I was having trouble finding the rest of the story. If someone wants you to read for them, don’t be that well-intentioned usurper who derails the entire story because you’re thinking about what you would have written.

Practice finding the thread the writer is trying to create and help nurture it. And look for critique partners who will do the same.

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Devel…opment in the Details

by ChelseaMarch 30, 2021May 10, 2021

World building is a complex process, and everyone has their thoughts on how to do it best. I’m not going to give a list of Do This and Don’t Do That, because no single piece of advice will ever be universal. Don’t dump all your world information in long paragraphs of explanation? Tolkien would like to direct you to The Silmarillion. Don’t use flashbacks? Try out Red Sister and Lies of Locke Lamora. Neither are quite up my alley, but I understand their use of flashbacks is exquisite. And all three of those books have readers who hate their world building for the exact reasons that others love the world building. Because reading taste is subjective.

What I want to talk about is something I think is a little more universal than any specific strategy. Something that almost all methods have in common. A unifying theory of world building, if you will. Details.

Conventional Wisdom Says…

Most people have heard some version of where I’m starting. If you go to a writer’s conference, or ask questions of any experienced writer or publishing professional, you’ll tend to hear the same thing. Give the reader just enough world building to understand the immediate action of the scene. Apply small details like smell, taste, touch along with your sight, but don’t go overboard. Fantasy writers get this particularly hard, because they have a reputation for info-dumping. The character wouldn’t stop and examine the scent of the stable before shoveling manure, so why are you pausing to describe it?

Yeah, your character probably wouldn’t do that. But as writers, we aren’t creating reality. We’re creating a false narrative that always focuses on things our characters wouldn’t notice in order to emphasize the important parts of the story. Think about how this plays out if we apply the “would the character do this” logic to another situation. If I watch an adult man and his younger sister, neither of them would refer to each other as sister or brother except in specific cases, like introducing themselves to a stranger. So if I write a first person narrative where a man and his sister interact with only people they know, does that mean I’m never allowed to tell my reader they are siblings? That’s illogical. Some level of contrived narration is necessary, and everyone knows that. So why can’t we have a stable hand walk into a stable and pause to grimace at the scent of unshoveled manure before he gets to work?

And the right answer? Maybe you should. Just not every time.

Details Done Right

Many years ago now, I used to be an obsessive player of World of Warcraft. Eventually I stopped playing (for a number of reasons, but primarily because I disliked a particular expansion’s changes), but when I did I tried out the then-new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. I never got too invested in that one. After a while, I heard about Rift which was supposedly really good at keeping engagement, so I tried it. Fun game, but not something that really drew me in like WoW. I also tried the Monster Hunter MMO—not my style—and the Lord of the Rings MMO—felt really old. Eventually I found myself completely without an MMO for years. I missed it and I told my husband that I wanted to play WoW with him again, even though many of the things I’d enjoyed were no longer present.

And I loved returning to WoW.

I didn’t have the time to commit that I had in the past, so I never became a top end player. But it was like going home, and that made me wonder why. One day, as I was sitting in the city of Stormwind waiting for something in game, I noticed that the two children who had been chasing each other on a loop around the city since the game’s released had reversed roles. Originally, the boy stole a toy from the girl and was running around taunting her with it. Now, the girl had taken a toy of the boy’s and was taunting him. There is no quest, or event, or achievement, or anything else involving these children. They are the purest form of flavor text, and that explained to me why WoW stole my heart and four other games failed. The details.

As you’re playing through early versions of WoW, you’re walking down the road and you see a dire wolf. That wolf might charge out of the grass to the side and attack you, but it also might chase down a rabbit to kill and eat. It depends on who is closer and what “threats” the wolf perceives. It’s all programming, of course, but there were no wolves chasing rabbits in SWTOR, Rift, Monster Hunter, or LOTRO. There were no patrols of opposing faction guards traveling the roads of Arathi Highlands and sometimes getting into fights with each other instead of the player characters. The wolves, guards, and monsters in those other MMOs were only there to chase you.

This is the difference between a book where the stable hand stops to grimace at the stench of un-mucked stalls before getting to work (once, not every time) and a book where you don’t even see the stable hand unless he happens to be central to the plot in one way or another. The momentary distraction of real life makes the bigger, world-changing or story-altering or character-defining moments feel real. When everything plays into the central narrative, nothing feels authentic.

Just the Right Amount

This is, of course, not an invitation to infodump the history of your world in the opening to your novel. To retain my video game analogy, I’ve played through every race opening in WoW at least three or four times (some a dozen or more) and I can’t tell you anything about the content of the opening cinematics for any of the races. I don’t remember any of it. But I remember those kids running around Stormwind and the toy vendor who sometimes has a white kitten for sale. I remember Anduin Wrynn as a 10 year old moping in the palace wondering where his father was. And hundreds if not thousands of players remember the struggle to locate Mankrik’s wife, who wasn’t where he said she was. It’s the small things that people remember.

So, when you’re building a new world—especially a secondary world fantasy, which needs so much more explanation than one set in contemporary worlds—how do you manage to insert these details without dropping the novel equivalent of a WoW opening cinematic? Well, there’s a few methods that often work.

Start with a small moment. This sounds pretty antithetical to most current advice on how to start your book (that you should start the book with conflict), but it’s actually not contradicting that advice. “Conflict” doesn’t have to mean “something big and dramatic” and it turns out that for most readers a small conflict is easier to attach to in a strange world than a big one. So instead of starting with someone dodging a fireball, start with your character being turned away from a shop because it’s closing time while the character argues that if they can’t buy the extra blanket they came for their sister might become deathly ill from the cold wraiths that stalk the city. Now you have a small moment that grounds the reader in a simple need (to help their family stay warm), have signaled that there is magic in this world (cold wraiths), and have a conflict on page one. Does it matter if the sister or the blanket ever come up again? Probably not, if you handle it properly.
Find reasons for the character to connect events to larger world building elements. You have to be a little careful with this one so you don’t fall into the trap of everything existing just to serve the plot, but done right this is the best way to include backstory and world building. Consider the difference between these options: your character is trying to decide whether or not to take a magical sword and suddenly remembers that magical swords are the only way anyone in the world gets magic and he needs magic to defeat the villain. OR Your character is trying to decide whether or not to take a magical sword and suddenly remembers that if he gets the magic from a magical sword he might be stuck with it forever because magic swords always turn people into wizards and he worries about how he’s going to live the rest of his life as a wizard. The last one doesn’t tell you he needs magic to defeat the villain, but we probably suspected he needed magic anyway. What it does do is give you an element of worldbuilding. Every person with magic in the entire world has touched a magic sword, and as a result gave up any other dreams that magic might interfere with in order to have that magic. What might their motives have been? This world feels more real now because the magic power up is a thing that could happen to anyone, with uncertain consequences.
Introduce new characters through context with existing characters, but give them interests outside the main plot. And more to the point, don’t drop a bunch of characters at once. If you have a group of seven people, take the example of Lord of the Rings and introduce them slowly, through the book. There, we first met Gandalf and Frodo (and Bilbo, of course, but he wasn’t a major character in Fellowship). After that, the important people inserted themselves in memorable ways throughout the story, such that no one forget the main characters. Merry and Pippin are the mischievous hobbits who tend to get Frodo into trouble. Sam is the loyal friend, Gandalf is the exotic visitor Frodo remembers from his childhood. And at no point do these other characters feel like they had nothing going on outside of the main story. Sam has the girl at the inn, Merry and Pippn are literally in the middle of something when they get dragged into the story. Gandalf straight up vanishes for months on his own business. If your characters come in because of a connection with or forced interaction with existing characters but recognize other elements of their lives that still matter, you create deeper characters. And deeper characters imply a deeper world.
Remember what things are new to your character, and what your character would notice/think. This is a common mistake that writers make at all levels of experience. My character is terribly poor. He doesn’t even have a home, just sleeps on the street. And he writes a quick note to his friend and slips it under the door as he runs off to get dinner at a local tavern. Wait, what? He can’t find a place to live, but he can afford paper, pen, ink, and to buy food from a medieval restaurant-equivalent? These tiny details can be extremely hard to remember, but they can also make or break the immersion level of your story. If I don’t understand the social and economic aspects of society, how will I ever understand the character’s personal struggles within that society? Most fantasy authors have been cautioned a dozen or more times against info-dumping this information, but you don’t need to. All you have to do is have the character notice how exotic the taste of the tavern food is while others turn their noses up at the plain, unappetizing meal. And give me a reason he has the money this time, but there are a dozen or more reasons for that.

Beware the Conlang

This should really be a point on the list above and the broader concept here is relatively simple. If you create a new language (a “constructed language” or conlang) and then write long explanations in it, your reader won’t have any idea what you’re saying. I doubt anyone really needs that information told to them. But there’s a more complex issue at work here, so I’m going to temporarily misuse the term “conlang” and broaden the definition into “any term either created for a fictional story or significantly re-purposed from its usual meaning to suit the needs of the story.” This expanded definition allows me to more easily discuss a problem I often see in fantasy and science fiction writing. I once saw a description of a novel that went something like this (conlang terminology, names, and some events changed primarily because I don’t remember any specifics, just the effect):

In the Mor’can Galaxy, Flerbendurdin Ajaor Kinlishious faces the deadly Hyncrix as the Flerbendurdin Council Flerbenmental for aid from the Junocipetrish. When Flerbenguard Jocsiaron…

Dude, I have no idea what this says. I guess maybe there’s a war? Or is it insurgents? Is Flerbendurdin a noun or an adjective? At the point where I had to stop mid description to try and identify what parts of a sentence the various new terms formed, the author killed any chance of me looking at the book. Your pitch is supposed to entice the reader with understandable character and conflict hooks. It is not designed to explain the world-building.

This is an extreme example, but it’s a problem fantasy authors always run the risk of facing. This is because every fantasy story has something that falls into my expanded definition of conlang. “Seeing” is a normal term that many fantasy writers use to mean “see the future,” but its most common usage actually means “perceive with the eyes.” Every fantasy author has to find ways to introduce new language without confusing the reader. Too often, in trying not to infodump, we make mistakes in this space in and give way too many details without anywhere near enough context.

For all my flippant disregard, I understand the problem this author faced. I once attempted to pitch a novel that featured zero human characters and the main character was of a serpentine race somewhat reminiscent of half-dragons from D&D. The thing is, their lore was that they believed themselves to be descended from real dragons, but in actuality dragons were pure myths and these creatures had a completely different historical lineage that mattered to the story a lot. But how do you pitch that book? You have to say the main character is a “half-dragon” because anything else either ignores the character not being human or adds a bunch of conlang/world building details that the editor doesn’t care about. As an author, I railed against the idea of mislabeling my character, but failing to find another solution, I called my main character a half dragon and his main enemy an elf. The editor replied “Everyone loves dragons and elves, but why do I care about yours?”

How Do You Use Details Well?

I like to think about the moments that worked for me in WoW. The children in Stormwind. They added flavor, depth, and complexity to the world, but if I was describing the game I’d never mention them. Details work best as seasoning, like salt in King Lear. It sounds like a minor thing and you’d rarely bother to mention it in a description. But what would your story be like without any?

All content on this blog is provided free for any readers and I’m always delighted to reach new audiences. If you enjoyed this story and are able, please consider supporting my work with a donation:

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The Ever-Pretentious “Born Novelist”

by ChelseaMarch 9, 2021May 10, 2021

Anyone can be a writer, right? It’s something you have to learn to do well, and some people don’t want to do it, but anyone could learn. It’s not like high science, where a certain level of ability to understand complex concepts is necessary and some people just can’t do that well. And just about every writer has had that conversation where they say to a new acquaintance “I’m a writer” and the person replies “Oh, I want to write a book some day.” Like it’s a thing you just do without any effort or learning curve or hard work. But is there such a thing as a born novelist? Someone who is born to write and as a result does it…better, maybe?

I’ve heard a lot of negative stereotypes of this concept and I was shocked when I first heard Brandon Sanderson insist that he doesn’t think it’s a real thing. Anyone can be a writer, Sanderson said. You don’t have to be born with a calling to be good at it.

What a strange way to interpret the concept of a born writer.

Finding a Path

Most of a decade ago now, when I was in my seventh year of undergraduate college trying to get a four year degree, I spent an evening reading a book of quotes from authors, directed toward aspiring authors. One of these quotes caught my eye, attributed in the book to R.A. Salvatore, though I can’t find any evidence this was actually him. I don’t have the book any longer, so I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like this.

Every year, when a new set of students comes into my classroom, I do an exercise. I tell them to consider all the things they might want to be, and if they think they can do anything besides writing, they should do that for a career. For those who can’t imagine doing anything else, those are the writers.

For the first time since I started writing novels at eight years old I felt understood. I’d started college intending to get a creative writing degree and become a famous novelist, but college requires you to do work and I was lazy as a teenager, so that first year went poorly. When I went back after a year off, I was focused on getting some form of stable life. Everyone knows you don’t make a real career out of writing, or so I was told, so I spent the next six years trying every college major that seemed reasonably interesting, excelling at most of them, and then changing my mind and trying something else. By the time I read that quote I had two associate’s degrees in physics and philosophy and a year and a half of upper division physics classes under my belt. And when I opened my notebooks to study for my physics tests, every other page had a fantasy story written, continued from the last time I’d been writing, so that it was clear I was spending my class time writing novels instead of trying to understand the content. In some ways it’s a wonder I got as far as I did.

Now I’m not going to tell you that one quote in a book of author quotes changed my life. There were a lot of factors in my decision to make one final change of major. But for the first time, staring at that quote, I thought that maybe my lifelong desire to be a writer wasn’t crazy.

Several years later, after finally finishing my bachelor’s degree (in creative writing) and getting a job at a legal publishing company as a copy editor, I attended a writer’s conference where Jeff Lindsay gave a keynote address. Jeff Lindsay wrote the very popular series of novels featuring Dexter Morgan, a serial killer working for a police department and using his serial killer urges to punish those other serial killers who weren’t prosecuted by the police. Lindsay got up for his keynote and told a story about how he become a novelist. Again, I don’t have a transcript, so I am paraphrasing (and probably getting some details wrong), but it was something like this.

When I got my first job, I had no real expectation of being an author. I was just an entry-level employee. But after a while, as I talked to some people, I got into some discussions and then I ended up writing the content for some of our blogs. Later, I worked at another place, and my job had nothing to do with writing, but after a while I ended up writing and managing the company newsletter. At another place I wasn’t supposed to be writing, but I ended up composing all the company e-mails going out for announcements. Eventually I just realized I was feeling this…voice or this call. I needed to write. That was what I should be doing. So if you hear that voice, you’re not crazy. Some people are just called to write.

At my editing job, I’d just ended up being asked to write an article for the company newsletter to showcase my team’s work on a particularly time sensitive project. There is nothing quite like the kinship of realizing that the big name author giving the prestigious keynote address at your writer’s conference is just like you.

Two Types of Authors

The most fascinating thing to me about Brandon Sanderson’s statement on people who are “called” to write is that he took it as an attack on those who aren’t. No one’s saying you can’t write if you don’t have that call. I don’t even think Jeff Lindsay or the author from my quote book would say that authors without that call are lower quality. It’s like saying some people are born to swim. That doesn’t mean all Olympic swimming champions will be “born swimmers.” But this comment illustrated to me a fascinating distinction between two essential types of authors.

Some authors love books and they are so excited by the books they’ve read that they decide to write some of their own. These authors seem to often be planners, though that’s anecdotal and shouldn’t be taken as any sort of rule or definitive statement. But the thing about these authors that distinguishes them from my other category is that they chose to start writing. At some point they saw a story and thought “I want to create something like that.”

The other category are the “born writers.” The people I’ve met like this seem to be pantsers, but I see no reason why a planner couldn’t have this same drive and implement it by planning the story concept out beforehand. These people will often love books as well (there are some really great books out there), but on an essential level, they write because they have to. Personally, I tried six other college majors, from forensic science to chemistry to literature to philosophy to math to physics, and I loved them all. But I literally could not stop writing. It’s not a matter of me enjoying the process, although I do. I write, and others in this category write, because there are stories I have to tell and there is no better medium for me.

Since I’m defining new categories, let’s pick some names. Let’s call the first category “Mirror Writers” since they take a thing they love (usually a genuinely great piece of writing) and try to recreate that effect with their own vision and stories. The second category we’ll call “Spotlight Writers” since they are driven to tell stories they often can’t let go of no matter how they try. These are for the purpose of this post only, though feel free to steal them if you like them. Just remember to explain the terms, since probably no one will know what you’re talking about.

So what do we do with these new categories? Do they mean anything? I actually think they do, and I think they mean a lot more than the traditional “planner vs. pantser” distinction that writers often use.

Writers talk about themselves in terms of what their process is all the time. Rarely do writers talk about why they write. When they do it’s often in response to someone being rude, or to a perceived implication that writing is an unimportant or lesser pursuit. But I write because it makes me whole (and I can’t stop), while Brandon Sanderson (I think) writes because he loves sharing his creations with his fans. Both of these are perfectly reasonable, but publishing (especially traditional publishing) only considers one of them valid.

Publishing Expectations

I’ve said before on this blog that publishing is a business. Businesses need to create products for which they have a market. And in order to make sure they have a market for their product, publishers demand that writers explain what fans their book is targeted toward. This is a good business practice that assumes everyone wrote their book with the audience in mind. Some of us didn’t have a choice. The story wouldn’t leave us alone.

A well-written book can be mashed into one of these target audience categories with very little mangling even if it wasn’t conceived of within that framework. I’m not really arguing that target audience isn’t a thing. I always know my target audience before I sit down to write: Readers of low-magic epic fantasy. What I am saying is that a lot of publishing advice doesn’t make sense from the Spotlight Writer point of view. Here’s some common advice that frustrates me:

That genre/trope/etc isn’t really selling right now. Now, I talked about this a bit in an earlier post, but here’s the thing, random publishing professional. I don’t have a different genre or trope to sell you. This is the story that spoke to me. What do you want me to do? Just wait ten years until that’s a thing again? This is gate keeping at its most pure—deciding what readers want before they ever get a chance to see it. And, of course, because publishing is a business, doing anything else is risky. But what if we found a way to get some reader feedback to help make decisions on what books to buy? I bet publishers would be surprised by some of those results.
Don’t trend chase, but be aware of the market when you write a book. Another one I’ve glossed over before and my top-level complaint is the same as the last point, but let’s take a closer look. If you’re not trend chasing (which you shouldn’t…trends end way faster than most people can write and publish a novel), then what do they mean by “look at the market”? The current trends won’t help you, as we discussed. The most recent past trends might give you a hint what isn’t likely coming back right now. But what else are you expected to look at? What they really seem to mean is “be a Mirror Writer” so that you can take the good things that sold well from the past and re-purpose them into your book. I’m not a Mirror Writer. Do things that I enjoyed from past novels I’ve read find their way into my books? Of course they do. But no amount of market research is going to allow me to incorporate those organically if that’s not the story I need to tell right now. Telling me to write differently is just going to make me write bad books.
Don’t keep querying the same book over and over again—move on to a new project. The problem here is actually fascinating. Almost all authors start off querying a book that wasn’t ready to query yet. Brandon Sanderson himself did it with a bunch of books. I don’t recall the number, but he has an entire writing series on YouTube from his BYU class that is actually pretty good and has the number in it. So is traditional publishing telling us to start off writing and querying books we don’t care about so we can learn through the querying process? Then, once we know how to polish our books well and have a solid understanding of how and who to query, we should stop querying those interim books and write the one we care about. What if we had programs (college classes or writer’s conference workshops or writer’s groups or something) that actually taught us this sort of skill instead of focusing on how to evaluate creative works or how to apply writing theory to book drafting? I have a degree in creative writing (and took classes for it at three different colleges). Very few creative writing programs teach you anything about the publishing world, and I don’t recall more than a few conference workshops that even approached the topic of self-editing, much less gave you any techniques.

The short version of this list is, traditional publishers want you to prove that you can write something you don’t necessarily love before they let you write the thing you do love. This strikes me as a terrible idea, and even though these examples hit Spotlight Writers hard, the concept hurts Mirror Writers as well. If writers are writing things they don’t love, they’re far more likely to write poor quality books that don’t sell. As well, agents always say they’re rejecting books because they “didn’t connect with the characters quite as much as they had hoped.” Of course not! You told me to write bland people and stories until I’d figured out how to query right!

Are There Solutions?

Obviously I’m exaggerating a bit in my frustration, but it’s interesting to me that traditional publishing takes a product that they know to be a work of art (regardless what type of writer authored it) and then complains that the author won’t treat it like a paper clip. But you can tell a paper clip manufacturer that people don’t need to hold pieces of paper together very much anymore and that manufacturer can go make tablet screen protectors or something. If you tell the YA fantasy novelist that YA fantasy isn’t selling right now, what do you expect that author to do? Suddenly start writing a different genre they don’t enjoy?

So, anyone can write a book and with enough study and work, anyone can do it well. But some people are called to write. Born with it in their blood, or drawn to it early enough that it’s a thing they’ve always wanted as a core part of their person. And those born novelists are at a lot more risk for being left behind when the publishing industry decides to stop signing new authors to a particular sub-genre.

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Indie-pub vs. Trad-pub

by ChelseaMarch 2, 2021May 10, 2021

Many writers begin their writing journey with a dream. That big name publisher calls, excited by their book, and offers them a huge advance. The fans swarm their book signings. And then comes the movie deal, or the TV adaptation. And then they start hearing statistics about how many writers fail to ever get published at all and the starry eyes fade, the dream hides a little bit, and they buckle down to the work of writing. Or not. Let’s be honest, some people give up when they realize that dream is just wishful thinking. But for those of us who stick it out, we get to work. And at some point, that work leads us to this question: Is traditional publishing the right route for me?

Up until five or six months ago, I was convinced that traditional publishing was the best option for my work. I had been diligently editing based on beta reader feedback. I’d been through a few rounds of querying and felt confident with the process. I’d even received a few partial manuscript requests from cold queries, which anyone in the querying world knows is a pretty big step in the right direction. It’s not a full, and it’s not an R&R, but it means your query is likely doing its job. And then I pitched at a writer’s conference to an agent who was really, really excited about the concept I was pitching. I eagerly ran through a final polish of my query materials, sent the query through the form she’d told me to use, and waited to hear how much of the book she wanted to see.

I got my form rejection in six days.

Now everyone who has been very far into querying has had that one rejection that just crushes their hopes and this was it for me. Not just an agent I was interested in. Not an agent whose MSWL seemed to match my project perfectly. I’d seen those before. But this was the agent who seemed to really connect with my ideas when we spoke and she liked the story I was trying to bring to life. She knew the project. I personally know another of her clients who she picked up despite that client’s book having pacing issues she asked them to adjust after signing, so she’s not prone to rejecting a book because it might need some work. And she gave up on my book after the ten to fifteen pages included in the basic query.

To say I was demoralized is the wildest of understatements. I immediately quit querying (even though I had just restarted a query cycle), I sent my book back to a new round of betas, and I started questioning every sentence in the draft. Does this one really need to be here? Does that sound like telling instead of showing? Is this emotion overdone? Is my conclusion okay? Are my characters bad? I challenged things the agent hadn’t even known existed in the draft, because maybe that eventual turn destroyed the entire book and my knowledge of it caused me to write something earlier poorly.

After about a month and a half of this frantic scrambling to determine what I’d done wrong, I had to admit it. This rejection wasn’t about my book. It was about the agent’s expectations for how this sort of storyline might play out. She’d referenced Game of Thrones as a series she’d love to see something similar to, and I realized she’d meant the TV series and all its sensationalism, not the books with their painstaking (and therefore very slow) world building. She rejected me for writing epic fantasy, instead of just high fantasy. And that is when I started seriously considering self-publishing for the first time.

Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing

I’ve assumed thus far that you know the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing. For the purpose of this post, I am using the term “self-publishing” to refer to all forms of “pay for your own services to release a book” publishing. However, there is a wide range of tactics used to publish outside traditional publishing, so this blanket category is somewhat misleading. It’s worth understanding the distinctions between the processes, but in many instances the points here apply similarly to all forms of self-publishing. If you need a refresher of the basics of each form, here’s the rough outline of each.

Traditional Publishing

Requires querying agents, who then query publishing houses, who ultimately decide who gets published
Requires a certain level of skill to get a foot in the door, followed by a decent chunk of luck to get noticed by the right agent, then more luck to get noticed by the right editor
Offers an up-front advance of money if you get selected for publication…but that’s not as good as it sounds (for a few reasons)
All costs of publishing are paid for by the publishing house (if you’re paying anything up front, you aren’t getting traditionally published)
Provides help in the form of a team of editors, artists, marketing professionals, and your own personal cheerleader (that agent you worked so hard to get)
Almost never does as much marketing as the author thinks they will, and generally not as much as the book needs
Control of cover, editing, marketing, and release details entirely in the hand of the publishing house
Very low royalties, and you get to share those with your agent, too (Plus, taxes! Don’t forget taxes)

Self-Publishing

Nothing barring entry for anyone willing to click a few buttons on some free publishing software (a point both good and bad)
No marketing done beyond what the author does, and marketing can be expensive
Author must pay for all cover work, editing, marketing materials, publication fees, and anything else that comes up (good editing and cover design are also expensive)
Offers very little visibility without a great deal of work, resulting in typically much lower sales numbers
Allows complete author control over editing, cover design, marketing, release details, price and price adjustments, etc. (not always as good as it sounds)
No built-in team to lean on when you have questions (all research and planning has to be done by the author)
Relies heavily on luck and author work to get noticed, but if you get noticed, you have just as good a chance of being successful as a traditionally published author (even getting on bookstore shelves, if you do it right)
Much, much higher royalty rates, and they’re all yours (except taxes. Don’t forget taxes)

The Catch

I said above that a few of the points weren’t as good as they sounded. These included author advances from traditional publishing, the easy availability of publishing under the self-publishing model, and the freedom of choice in self-publishing. Let’s take a look at an example.

Jane Trad and Amy Indie

For fairness, we’ll set the stage this way: Jane Trad has been working on her novel for years. She’s gone through betas, edits, querying, agent submissions, and she’s finally received an offer from a traditional publishing house. The contract says her release date is two years out (relatively standard, though some are longer and I’ve heard of one as short as 16 months) and her advance will be $8,000. On the same day, Amy Indie decides that her manuscript, which she has been working on for at least a year and has edited using critique partners and beta readers, is ready to self publish. Amy, being a responsible indie author, is ready to scope out professional editors and get this show on the road.

Now Jane is very excited. Her advance isn’t super high, but it’s decent and relatively common (she’s a fantasy author, so a publisher has to give her at least $3,000 or they can’t be a publisher under the SWFA, barring any grandfather clauses exempting long-established publishers). Right off the top of that advance comes 15% for Jane’s agent, so she’s really got a $6,800 advance. But that $6,800 is not a lump sum. She gets it in installments over the course of her publication process. Most publishing houses have three installments (or did before COVID hit) but it’s not entirely uncommon to see a four-installment contract. Let’s say Jane’s is three. The first installment comes when she signs the contract. $2,667 right out the gate (minus her agent’s 15%) gives her a take home of $2,267…from which she immediately sets aside taxes.

As Jane is doing her happy dance, Amy begins researching editors and cover designers. Amy falls down a black hole of Google searches, reading post after post about how much various services should cost. How is it possible there are so many different answers to this simple question? That guy says he’ll do a developmental edit for $250, but these three blogs say developmental editors cost $0.03/word at a minimum. Author A recommends his amazing editor, but when Amy looks at a sample of Author A’s book she cringes. The characters are absurd, the plot is random, women are “breasting boobily” places instead of just walking. Is this the author or the editor? How did this even get published?

Oh, right. Because self-publishing has no gatekeepers. And as a result, when Amy self-publishes, many potential readers will think her book has quality like this.

With a determined sigh, Amy begins making a list of every self-published author whose books she respects and tries to find any advice they have about finding editors and cover artists. Meanwhile, Jane has worked with her agent and sent in an initial version of her manuscript. She waits for her first round of edits, the developmental edit, so she can get started. Two years before release, she doesn’t have much to do for her book’s publication besides wait and try to write something new. Under some contracts she might need to supply marketing copy or discuss title adjustments, but let’s say the publisher liked her query blurb and title and are giving that to marketing as is. The marketing department will still make changes, but Jane doesn’t have to do anything about it right now.

So she stares at blank pages, wonders how many changes she’ll have to make, tries to think of a unique characteristic for a new protagonist. She has a great idea for the sequel to her first book, but she only got a one-book contract, so her agent told her to write something unconnected for now in case this doesn’t sell. Jane tries to blog and become engaged in social media, since she needs the connections to promote her book, but she doesn’t really know what to say. She’s not well-known and she can’t talk about her book yet. Finally, eight weeks after submission, Jane gets her edits. The editor said six weeks, but editors are always overworked, so it took a bit longer. Jane has a month to get her changes made and resubmitted.

By now, Amy has muddled through the confusion of Google and chosen an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. Her cover designer also does formatting for a small additional fee, so she’s done picking services. The editor is booking three months out, but her cover designer is busy and won’t have a spot for six months. She’s happy with him, though, so she’s willing to wait. Amy sets her release date for eight months out so she’ll have time to prep after getting everything done. Then, Amy announces on her social media and to her network that her book will be releasing later that year. She begins planning a marketing strategy, recruiting some of her beta readers to help her spread the word, and preparing to run a pre-order campaign. She also decides on a price for her book. She picks the relatively common price of $8.99 to be competitive.

After a grueling month of intensive editing, Jane finally finishes her edits and sends the completed draft back. While she doesn’t make every change, she feels like most of them are an improvement to the story and if she has any questions she can ask her agent. Now she has another wait, filled with any number of relatively minor obligations to her publisher and a growing need to build her market. In another month and a half the editor sends back a second round of changes, a few more developmental items but mostly line edits this time, which Jane has to finish in three weeks. By the time Amy’s editing appointment comes around, Jane is sending her second round of edits back to the editor.

Amy sends her book in to her editor and continues her marketing and social media campaigns. She gets the edits back in a month, pays her editor (typically around $2,500), and evaluates the recommendations. She makes the changes she agrees with and stares in crippling anxiety at the others, unsure if she is making a mistake by choosing not to implement those changes. But there’s no one for Amy to ask for advice, and she is the final arbiter of what changes get made in the book. If the editing sucks (if women start “breasting boobily” places) it’s all on her. Amy feels bad for rejecting Author A’s editor. He can’t control what Author A did with his recommendations. So, Amy signs up for a month of a writing aid software and looks at the recommendations it gives to evaluate why the editor’s changes might be good or bad.

As she begins that, Jane gets her manuscript accepted by the publisher. This is different from signing the contract to publish. It means that the publishing house thinks the book is now ready for the next step. Along with this comes Jane’s second installment of her advance, same numbers as before, and she’s done a lot of work I that time. Certainly more than her advance is worth in hourly wages. But Jane isn’t here for the advance money. She’s getting her book published! And they’re paying her for it! She can make money off the book after it releases.

While Jane waits for the next round of edits, or her cover, or whatever the next step is, Amy has decided on her final edits. She has a proofread-ready copy. Except for the formatting, which will happen during cover design. In the two months before that begins, Amy prepares a pre-order campaign. She announces, talks about her book’s upcoming release, and starts collecting some ARC readers to give initial reviews. When her cover appointment comes around, she has a stack of covers from similar books to discuss and she and her cover designer come up with a great idea. That plus the formatting is done within three weeks of beginning and Amy pays for that. Because she went with a photo-realistic cover from an experienced artist and formatting is included, she pays $600 to the cover designer. She announces a cover reveal and sends her formatted manuscript to her proofreader.

Jane’s activity at this point varies widely by publisher. Maybe she’s already received her cover, or maybe she’s in the middle of copy edits. Maybe she’s just blogging, talking on social media, and trying to find writer’s conferences to attend. What is guaranteed is she hasn’t received her third installment yet. That won’t come until publication day from most publishers. Some publishers define “accepted manuscript” differently and wouldn’t have even paid her second installment yet. But whatever Jane’s step in the process is, she isn’t in control of any of the decisions being made about her book. She might get consulted on the cover, or she might not, but at the end of the day the publisher decides what her book will look like.

When Amy gets her book back from the proofreader, about two to three weeks, and pays about $1,000 for that, she’s ready to publish. Ten months after beginning the publishing process, Jane is waiting for her next steps while Amy announces that her book is now available. She’s already received ten sales through pre-order, which all count as sales on day one.

Status Report

Let’s pause right here and evaluate the standing of these two stories. Amy and Jane have been through a lot of stress over these ten months. Jane oscillated through stretches of endless waiting followed by short bursts of frantic activity and she’s not even half done yet. Amy struggled through a far too massive amount of dubiously accurate information to make decisions, and she has no idea if she made good choices. In the process, Amy spent around $4,000, while Jane earned about $4,500 and saved the $4,000 that Amy spent. That’s an $8,500 financial difference between what Amy spent and what Jane made. To make that up with a typical self-publishing royalty rate of 35-70%, Amy is going to have to sell between 1,351 and 2,700 copies of her book, depending on what royalty structure she uses.

Surely Jane’s strategy is better, right? She’s even got another lump sum coming up…in fourteen months.

So is Jane doing better? Amy went through a lot with that process, but she has a book out now. And to “break even” by selling enough to cover her publishing costs, she needs half as many books as I’ve listed above. She can continue building her social media presence and network with references to that book, and she can write the sequel she has planned. Plus, Amy has already sold ten books (about $31.50-$63 of her money made back). How many more might she sell before Jane’s book even releases? The average book sells 3,000 copies in its entire lifetime. Amy makes money on that number—between 676 and 1,350 copies to recoup her costs, then she makes between $5,190 and $14,625 on the rest of her sales. A total of $9,190-$18,625 if she makes the average sales numbers.

On the other hand, Jane’s royalty rate means she earns very little…after she finally starts getting any royalties. That advance she was so excited about is taken out of her royalty payments. I’ll admit, not being traditionally published, that I’m not certain how the math works out here, but let’s assume the scenario best for the author. The advance was $8,000, so when the book earns $8,000 in gross sales Jane starts getting royalties. Another option (and the one I honestly think most likely) is that Jane starts getting royalties when the total amount of royalties she would have earned without the advance meets $8,000; by that math Jane has to almost double the sales average to get royalties at all. But assuming the better scenario, Jane meets that mark at 890 book sales. The rest of those average sales earn her an additional $2,845 (minus 15% for her agent), or $2,419 in additional income. So a total of $9,219 in the best possible scenario for average sales. That’s not much better than Amy’s low number, and to get it she waited an extra 14 months for publication and lost all of her creative decision-making power.

Now some people may point out that the 3,000 book average is based on traditional publishing and it may not be accurate for self-publishing. That’s true, primarily because the quality of self-published novels varies so widely. For the most part, traditionally published novels all meet a minimum quality standard, so you can compare their sales numbers and get reasonable predictions. But consider, also, that if Amy plans her book releases right and targets readers to her 70% royalty options, she needs just over 1/5th of that average to break even. If Amy sells 2,800 books doing this, she makes more money than Jane’s best case scenario for selling the 3,000 average. And if Amy’s first book never does more than earn her investment back, she can choose to publish a sequel, which makes more people willing to buy her first book. If Jane only sells 676 books, she’s not getting a sequel and she’s lost the right to publish one herself.

For Consideration

Jane’s strategy isn’t necessarily wrong. Some books need the power of a publishing house behind them, and some authors can’t afford the $4,000 that Amy spent on good publishing. But if you can afford to self-publish and have the time or network to get the word out yourself, self-publishing can offer so much more potential. And for those people who can afford good self-publishing, the only thing traditional publishing has to offer is a reputation.

All content on this blog is provided free for any readers and I’m always delighted to reach new audiences. If you enjoyed this story and are able, please consider supporting my work with a donation:

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On Discovery Writing

by ChelseaFebruary 9, 2021May 10, 2021

Writing advice. The one thing all authors agree that other authors probably got wrong. “Oh, don’t listen to that writer, all advice is subjective, but you know what you should do…” We all do it, and we all mean well. Helping others through writing troubles reminds us of how we got help when we needed it and gives us an opportunity to give back to the community that, for the most part, supported our dreams when most others wouldn’t.

But all advice is subjective, and few bits of subjective advice are quite so common as “try an outline.” This is so pervasive, even from authors who call themselves discovery writers, that I am becoming convinced that many authors don’t know what discovery writing even is. So let’s start with some definitions.

Discovery writing, often called Pantsing or Gardener writing, is the process of writing a novel (or other story) without pre-planning the path that novel is going to take. There’s several subcategories of this, because every person’s process is a little different so every time someone talks about it they tend to redefine the term to exclude some subset of people whose process is too different from theirs.

Plotting, also called Planning or Architect writing, is the process of writing a novel by completing an outline of the content and using that to create your story. Again, there’s several versions of how people do this, sometimes resulting in redefining the term to exclude people who seem to fit the category.

Most authors agree that, really, discovery writing versus architect writing are on a sliding scale and every author employs some amount of each technique in their process. Few people are completely pure architects who know every detail of their story before they start writing it, and it’s extremely rare to see a pure discovery writer sit down with no concept of what they intend to write and pound out an entire novel.

I’m the latter.

I start every novel with a rough idea for a character and a place where that person is standing. Little to no knowledge of that character’s backstory, motivations, or current crisis, and sometimes no knowledge of the world they live in either. As a result, I’m sure pure architects exist, and I’m sure they have as much potential to be great, innovative authors as anyone. However, as a result of my extremely low pre-planning, it baffles me to see some people call themselves discovery writers and then pull out their rough outline of how the plot arc of their next book is going to go. If you haven’t started writing it, how can you possibly have an outline? And this brings us to perceptions of writing styles.

Why Does Everyone Want to be a Discovery Writer?

Over the years, I’ve attended a number of writer’s conferences, been part of several writer’s groups, and talked to a lot of writers online. In each case, I’ve watched the definition of plotter shrink further and further. “Oh, I’m a planster. I don’t really outline, but I need to know where I’m going.” “I’m a discovery writer, but I like to tent pole. I set up a few important turning points and write those scenes, then start at the beginning and write towards the next tent pole scene.” I’ve been comfortable with these broadenings of discovery writing. Everyone’s process is different. What stunned me was when I watched a YouTube video of a somewhat popular YouTuber and author and she said “People misunderstand pantsing. Just because you’re a pantser doesn’t mean you don’t start with an outline.”

No. That is literally exactly what it means! That is the only hard rule that distinguishes discovery writers from architect writers.

Every push of the discovery writer definition toward the middle of the sliding scale has been to include people who don’t really outline, but don’t jump in blind either. If you actually outline prior to writing, however rough the outline is, you’re an architect writer. And that’s great! So why are so many people trying to include themselves in the discovery writer definition when they don’t really fit?

I would argue that there’s a misperception as to what it means to be a discovery writer, drawn from the mis-perception of what it means to outline. In school we were taught to outline by breaking down every significant point of the thing we were outlining and putting it on a bullet point. Every major event should be represented. As I said, very few authors do this before they begin writing. However, since that is the process people think of when they hear about outlining, they assume that outlined books are extremely formulaic. A growing subset of authors think outliners are boring writers or have flat characters. As a result these authors don’t want to be called plotters. So they expand the definition of discovery writer to include light outlining, or I had an outline but went off track because my creativity took over, or any number of other process decisions that really should fit more under plotter. Because of this, discovery writers are sometimes seen as more creative, and maybe even more intelligent.

That is not true.

Of course most people know, if you talk to them, that the process you use to write doesn’t indicate your intelligence or creativity. For the most part, people aren’t even aware they think this. But listen to the awe with which some writers speak about being a discovery writer. “Wow, that’s just amazing. I could never do that.” I’ve even heard “I wish I could write like that.” Why? It’s just another process, no better or worse than anyone else’s. So to anyone who writes rough outlines and is upset that I’m calling them an architect writer, remember this:

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most prolific fantasy authors of our times, he is wildly imaginative, and he is an architect writer. He excels at combining concepts, plotting out interesting story ideas within those combined concepts, and writing engaging stories with compelling characters. You don’t have to make it up as you go to be creative or innovative, and your rough outline isn’t something you should have to defend. Discovery writing is no better, as a writing process or personality choice, than plotting.

Discovery Writing is Not a Thing People Grow Out Of

And then there’s the other side. Architect writers who think discovery writers just haven’t learned how useful an outline is yet. Almost every piece of writing advice, every writing class, and just about every recommendation for overcoming difficult writing sessions encourages this belief. “Write an outline, it’ll help you make sure you’re headed in the right direction!” Just…please stop. We’ve tried, I promise. If that worked for us, we’d be architect writers.

Despite my frustration at this advice, I actually understand why this is so common. Most discovery writers can’t explain why they don’t use outlines. They say things like “It just doesn’t work for me.” When pressed for specifics, they add “If I outline, then I lose all the fun of writing and can’t write it anymore.” I’ve used these explanations. Steven King very famously uses these explanations in all his interviews where this comes up. It even makes sense that an architect might hear these explanations as “I just don’t like doing all the work beforehand and don’t have the drive to push through frustrating writing sessions.” But that’s not actually what’s going on. Here’s a few things I’ve discovered through several years of refining my personal writing process.

Discovery writing is about building a plot line and character arcs out of the logical results of the events that just happened. As a result, when I outline my story, every event feels unnatural. It’s not that I can’t write it after outlining, it’s that the resulting writing is bad. And I mean really bad, the unsalvageable kind of bad. The best explanation I can come up with is that until I have written scene one, I can’t tell what logical progression leads into scene two, and without scene two I can’t predict what is going to work for scene three, etc. Architects function in the exact opposite way. Without knowing the scope of the story, even in some rough form, they can’t tell if the scene they just wrote works for the story.

Discovery writing does not mean you don’t use structure in your first draft. I use structure pretty heavily in my first drafts, actually, but story structure is not the same as an outline. I know the approximate word count that I want for the book. I break that into an approximate chapter count, and I mark where the plot points are going to be. I have no idea what those plot points are, or often even the names of my main characters (I have drafts riddled with “MC1 strode across the room, his/her arms folded in anger.” and the like). But the structure and location of turning points and important moments don’t really change. So when I sit down to write a scene, I know how close I am to the next plot point. That tells me whether this scene needs to be rising action, climax, character building, or something else and I pick a starting moment of the scene that supports that. From that starting point, I see where it goes. Logical progression from previous events.

I live the story as I write it (figuratively speaking). This is true for a lot of writers, but the architect writers who do this imagine out from the outline or rough vision of the story they created. As a discovery writer, every moment I write is deeply personal at the time of writing, so if it doesn’t fit right, I have trouble writing it. This is my theory for where the “if I outline I can’t write the story” actually comes from. Many discovery writers are like me. Their outline attempts result in plot arcs that aren’t logical or well placed for the story, and when they try to write those scenes that don’t fit their instincts rebel. Not because they struggle to push through a difficult writing session, as all writers sometimes have to do, but because they can’t feel a connection between what they are writing and its place in the story they’re living. The scene feels unnatural, so the writing doesn’t work.

I struggle to deviate from outlines. This is a hilarious contradiction, because outlines choke my ability to write, but if I have one, I feel compelled to find a way to include every bit of what I outlined in my story. Any architect writer will tell you that your outline can’t be set in stone, especially if it’s more detailed. You have to be willing to make adjustments to the plan when needed to fit the needs of the story you’re telling. So, having an outline forces me to write a lower quality book, because I can’t deviate from the plan once it’s made unless I throw the entire plan out. And if I’m ditching the outline a quarter of the way through, I’m probably rewriting the opening quarter of the book anyway, and then why did I outline to begin with?

None of the process elements I’ve discussed above are related to being a new writer. Discovery writing is a way of visualizing your story, and that method of story creation doesn’t go away simply because I (or anyone else) have now written more books than when I started.

Some Tips for Discovery Writers

For those discovery writers out there who are looking for writing advice (and are tired of hearing about the wonders of outlining), let’s talk about process. I said earlier that I rely heavily on story structure when I begin writing. This is something I recommend. As a discovery writer, you probably have pretty strong instincts on how story structure works, but you should still research and study it. Learn three act structure, hero’s journey, and all those various systems of describing story structure. I know that all the guides on these talk about how to outline, but try to think in terms of how the ideas apply to books or stories you’ve already written.

Another tip: think about the scope of the story you’re writing. You don’t have to break your story down into chapters with word counts like I do, but at least know how long you want the book to be before you start writing it. A young adult romance shouldn’t be 150,000 words, and an adult epic fantasy shouldn’t be 80,000. If you don’t have a sense for how long the story is (i.e, maybe you’re writing an epic fantasy and you have no idea if it’s 200,000 or 350,000 words), pick a length similar to some of your favorite books in that genre and adjust as you write. The point is, if you’re 80,000 words into your book and you can’t identify the inciting incident and/or at least one major plot turn in the book, you probably need to re-evaluate your plot. By this, I do not mean “map out what’s going to happen and make sure the plot is sound.” That’s what you would do if you were an architect writer. Instead, I mean “look at what has happened already and make sure the events are important enough to be in the plot arc of this story.” If you have three chapters of the character going about daily life with nothing having changed, you’ve probably started your story too early.

When you get stuck, many pieces of advice will tell you to outline. But you’re a discovery writer, so this probably won’t work for you. Instead, try re-reading the content you’ve already written. I often find that getting a feel for the existing flow of the plot helps me identify where the story should go next. Another option is to write some backstory for your characters, or jump forward in time and write a big decision they have to make even if it’s not in the current story. If you have a good feel for your characters and are just struggling with what the plot does next, consider what choices your characters would make in response to recent events. And remember that your villains are characters too. One of my favorite tactics is to explain the problem I’m having with writing a scene to someone who doesn’t understand the entire vision of the story. This forces me to explain all my reasoning, and typically results in identifying the thing that was holding me back. And if none of that works, go play a game or watch TV for a bit. Maybe you just need a break.

Most of all, if you think you’re a discovery writer, make sure you try different processes to find what works for you. Some people are architects who work best when they use loose outlines, but because they think of outlining as a rigid process, they avoid doing that and try to discovery write. This doesn’t work (and is another potential source of the misconception that discovery writers grow out of that process). Before committing to any one label for your writing process, try an outline, try discovery writing, and try all the combinations thereof. Then decide what system works for you and stick to your guns. Whatever your writing process, trying to fit yourself into a mold not suited to your style is just going to frustrate you…and probably hurt your writing quality, as well.

Preparing to Publish

Publishing as a discovery writer has a few unique pitfalls of it’s own. Namely, the Synopsis, blurb, and one-line pitch. These terrify many an author, but many of the best recommendations for overcoming these challenges again rely on an assumption of outlining.

When preparing to write the book, think about what the one-line pitch is to focus your opening
Write the book blurb and synopsis before you write the book. Then you’ll know it’s marketable
Consider the state of the market and how your book would fit in before you start writing

These all sound completely absurd to me. I know nothing about the story before I begin writing the book. I suppose I could sit down before every book and write out “MC1 has goal A, but trope B causes him/her to face initial challenge. MC2…” Does that sound helpful to anyone else? It’s never helped me. But there’s a point to these suggestions that actually shouldn’t be ignored. The marketing descriptions of your book are a part of your book, and too many authors see book blurbs and the synopsis as something extra you have to tack on at the end. This is a mistake. The marketing descriptions are tools, and you should use them for your own work so you know they describe what you’re creating. Here’s a process I recommend trying:

Write your first draft through whatever process you normally use, then take a break. This break should be at least two weeks long, preferably more like a month or two, and you may not look at your book in any form during this time. After the break and before you begin editing, write your book blurb from your memory of the story. This should capture the pieces of the story that felt especially important and central to the conflict to you. Then, begin editing. As you edit, consider if the scenes you’re working on contribute to the big picture you set out in the blurb. Whenever you get to a scene that feels particularly significant or to any scene which supports the themes of your blurb, summarize it in a single sentence as part of your synopsis. After you have a second draft, send the book to critique partners and begin refining and polishing your blurb and synopsis. This makes the creation of the marketing materials part of the process and forces you to look at the first self-edit through the lens of what the overall big picture of the story should be.

Discovery writers need structure in the same way that other writers do, but structure is not the same as pre-planning. Integrate the creation of the marketing materials into your writing process and use them to make sure your structure is sound. You’ll be amazed by how much you did this without even thinking about it.

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Trad Pub: If you’re going to debut in epic fantasy, you better be the exception

by ChelseaFebruary 2, 2021May 10, 2021

All writers have heard it: “You’re not the exception. Follow the rules.” But when it comes to the rules of word counts, there is one major exception that everyone seems to overlook. Epic Fantasy.

What is Epic Fantasy?

This is a surprisingly unclear term. I was sure I knew what it meant until someone asked me to define it, and then someone else argued that my definition was wrong. So here’s a few of the hang-ups.

Epic Fantasy is often used interchangeably with High Fantasy
High Fantasy definitions range from “anything set in a secondary world” to “Fantasy with a heavy presence of magic and/or complex magic systems that substantially affect the world” to “Fantasy with a broad, overarching scope.” And I’m sure there are plenty I haven’t mentioned.
Longer fantasy books are struggling to survive the choking word count restraints of traditional publishing

I don’t want to spend a lot of time making a case for one or another definition—There are lots of good arguments on all sides of that. So, for the purpose of this discussion, we’re going to define the terms and move on.

Epic fantasy, as used below, refers to fantasy with a broad scope of plot encompassing world-level changes, consequences, or involvement, often (but not always) set in a secondary world. This means that an epic fantasy romance is one in which the central romantic plotline both occurs in a world with fantastical elements and has consequences which will change the world as a whole, not just the couple families or even kingdoms the lovers live in. Note that the secondary world expectation is not required and there is no level of magic/fantastical creature presence in this definition, so a low-magic historical epic fantasy fits perfectly.

High fantasy, for the purposes of this discussion, refers to secondary world fantasy which typically includes a strong element of magic or fantastical creatures integrated into the world. Games of Thrones, for example, is arguably not high fantasy by this definition, but is epic fantasy.

These two definitions are mostly arbitrary, but the primary distinction of scope is important. Most of the things I discuss apply equally to epic and high fantasy, but high fantasy suffers from these problems a lot less in one-shot, standalone novels. Epic fantasy might struggle to include a standalone novel at all.

Word Count Requirements

Now that we’ve defined some terms, let’s talk word counts. Here’s a few lists of recommended word counts by genre that I use regularly: Writer’s Digest, Bookends Literary Agency, and Writers & Artists. There’s an exception listed in almost all lists for adult targeted science fiction and fantasy, sometimes they even label it as space opera and high fantasy, that let’s you write up to 120,000 words. Half again as much as the standard 80,000 word count for contemporary novels. Sounds great! They understand that epic fantasy novels are longer. But now do a quick search. Pick some of your favorite adult high fantasy books and look up their word count. Here’s a few off my list:

Magic’s Pawn, Mercedes Lackey, Debut Novel, estimated around 106,000 words (1989)
Daughter of the Blood, Anne Bishop, Debut Novel, estimated around 146,000 words (1998)
Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey, Debut Novel, approximately 276,000 words (2001)
Elantris, Brandon Sanderson, Debut Novel, approximately 201,000 words (2005)
The Warded Man, Peter V. Brett, Debut Novel, approximately 158,000 words (2008)
Way of Shadows, Brent Weeks, Debut Novel, approximately 156,000 words (2008)
The Tethered Mage, Melissa Caruso, Debut Novel, approximately 124,000 words (2017)

Do I enjoy books that aren’t debut novels? Of course, but I’ve self-selected off my favorites list to make a point. Publishing has an excuse for why so few high fantasy novels fall within the word count guidelines. Those books were written by established authors who had readers already waiting for the next release. Or, the first book in the series is always the shortest. That first book in the series is probably close to guidelines, right? Those “long” fantasy books are all the exceptions to the rules of word counts: books written by already famous authors or the books so well written that they broke the mold. Or my personal favorite: Maybe in past times longer books were more accepted, but these days readers just don’t have the attention span for longer, more complex novels like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series or George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books.

But every book in my list above was a debut novel, and only one falls into the current publishing guidelines. That book was released in 1989. That’s eight years before George R.R. Martin’s 292,000 word series opener, A Game of Thrones.

A close second to fitting the word count guidelines is Melissa Caruso’s 2017 The Tethered Mage, and to be frank, I wished it was longer. As good as that book was, the plot and the world felt under-developed, and as a result I haven’t bought any of the follow-up novels. It felt like a one-shot, and until doing research for this blog, I actually didn’t know there were sequels. The story didn’t leave any room for them, so it never occurred to me to look.

So now that my rant is properly set up, let’s discuss what’s going on here. There’s a few factors at work.

Literary Agents Read Too Much

This sounds absurd. The entire job of being a literary agent is to read, right? Well, not really. What literary agents actually get paid for is knowing the market, negotiating contracts, and helping authors make the connections to sell their books. Literary agents are salespeople, contract negotiators, and advocates for their clients. In the process, some of those agents also offer writing and editing feedback to their clients, but their primary job is to sell books to editors.

So why do agents read so much? Well they often get one hundred to two hundred queries a month, sometimes more, and beyond that they have to keep up to date with what the current market is publishing and what appears to be selling. This results in a frustrating catch-22. Agents have to read to know their job. But the more agents read, the more they get frustrated with seeing the same things over and over. “80’s Fantasy” came back into style about fifteen years ago, and it went back out of style before many readers ever got tired of the revival. Why? Because agents and editors saw so many books in that style (undoubtedly hundreds more than they published) that publishing got over-saturated and bored with the common tropes in those fields long before the reading public did.

And therein lies the problem.

Editors, agents, and other publishing house professionals steep themselves in the world of books, tracking every book release (or at least, an awful lot of them), tracking sales of each book type, and reading as much as they can manage. Your average agent or editor reads way more than your average author, and your average author reads a lot more than your average target audience member.

This is especially clear when you get feedback on a novel from writers and readers at the same time. The writers will critique your placement of various bits of information and your sentence structure, while the reader ignores all that and tells you the book was either great and they enjoyed it or not so great and they were confused, bored, etc. If the reader loved it, does the clunky sentence really matter that much? I’ve heard and participated in long debates between authors over novel formats, use of POVs, scene length and structure, consistency in character presence. I then asked a few readers about the things discussed and the consensus boiled down to “Well, I see your point, but my favorite novel has [example that refutes my point] and it’s a favorite for a lot of readers. I’m just not sure readers actually care about that…”

So what do readers care about? It’s hard to tell. They’ll tell you things, but often they don’t know how to articulate what they mean so what they ask for isn’t really what they want. The best barometer for reader enjoyment seems to be this: If you enjoy it, then readers like you will probably enjoy it, and no one is so unique as to have entirely unique interests. Someone shares your excitement for what you’re writing. You just have to find them.

Traditional Publishing Misreads Why Some Things Don’t Sell

Hunger Games was a sensation, but Divergent wasn’t as good. Not because it came later and people were tired of those tropes, but because the book actually wasn’t as good. Tris was a boring character who rebelled simply because she wanted to feel pretty and was forced into the revelation that she was “special.” In contrast, Katniss was someone who wanted to sneak by under the oppressive ruler’s radar and took calculated risks for the benefit of people she loved, who sacrificed herself early in book one to save her sister. In the long run, Tris was proven to be the one person born with special powers that confirmed a theory of humanity, while Katniss remained a normal girl who fought against being something she wasn’t and eventually confronted the fundamental corruption of rebellions that create figureheads for promotional purposes. From book one, Hunger Games kicks Divergent’s ass. Post-apocalyptic YA novels that sort children into factions aren’t out of fashion, YA novels with boring characters are out of fashion.

This same comparison is true for dragon rider novels (Dragon Riders of Pern was only matched in quality by Naomi Novik, who took the same exact tropes and put them in Napoleonic Europe), portal fantasy (Christopher Stasheff was my guy, but there were a few of these that were good), paranormal romance (hate on Twilight if you want, it was massive), and a dozen others. Ask a publishing house why you can’t write those things and they’ll say “That went out of style,” “Dragon Riders aren’t big right now.” But when was the last really good dragon rider novel published? I’ve looked for some on Amazon. They all suck. If that’s what’s “not big right now,” I can’t say I’m surprised, but it has nothing to do with dragon rider novels and everything to do with crappy writing.

I heard a story once (unconfirmed), that after George R.R. Martin got famous he had to start arguing with his editor to actually edit his books for quality. I believe it, not because of anything about Martin’s books or any personal knowledge of Martin himself, but because of what I often hear from agents and editors at conferences:

“Once you prove you can carry an audience, you can get away with longer books.”
“If you sell well enough, you can start doing things like flashbacks and info-dumps, but as a debut you need to make sure an agent has no reason to reject you.”
“Write what you want, but be aware of the market when you pitch. Once you’re established you can start trying to publish books in [insert genre/trope you asked about here].”

So what I’m hearing is, when we think you’ll make money no matter what, we care less what you do. Mercedes Lackey, one of my favorite authors, took her well established and developed world and started writing a Harry Potter knockoff in it which broke every rule of her world that she’d ever created (complete with a her-world equivalent of Quiddich). I’m aware I’m not the target audience for those books, but imagine if a debut YA author tried to write a Harry Potter knockoff. They’d get laughed out the door for all the wrong reasons.

Traditional Publishing is Scared of Failing

Publishing is a business. Longer books take more money to print, and books that are more expensive to produce make publishing houses less profit. As a result, word count expectations became a requirement across all genres so that publishing houses could predict how many of each type of book they could afford to publish. That’s understandable. A business that can’t predict costs is a business that’s about to go bankrupt. Here’s the kicker. Before the massive increase in self-publishing popularity, traditional publishers had a safety net in the form of mid-list authors: authors who wrote relatively formulaic stories pretty quickly and who had a dedicated audience that would buy anything that author wrote. This included a lot of romance series, a lot of westerns, most of the monster-of-the-week sword and sorcery fantasy, etc.

As a result of mid-listers, publishing houses had the leeway to take a chance on all sorts of books that might not sell as well as they’d hoped. If it flopped, they’d drop the author, if it did okay they’d give the author another shot. And then, in the mid to late 2000’s, self-publishing started to get big. Mid-listers discovered that they could make the same sales for more income through self-publishing, depriving publishing houses of their safety nets. Why do we care?

Because this is the reason behind strict word count limits.

Publishers might hedge the truth if you ask, but word counts aren’t really all about book quality. They’re about protecting the publishing house from a costly investment on a book that might not sell well. The list of debut novels above is in chronological order. In 2001 and 2005 a couple great books at or above 200,000 words came out. By 2008 we were down to about 160,000, and in 2017 it had dropped to 124,000. Correlation does not mean causation, but the timing fits. Self-publishing hit the traditional publishing houses hard, and they responded by tightening their word counts.

Your 300,000 word epic fantasy might need trimmed down (honestly, it probably does), but it also might need all that description to make sense. Publishers, however, see a book that costs over twice as much in production cost per copy as Melissa Caruso’s The Tethered Mage, which was very popular. If yours doesn’t sell at least twice as well, you’ve lost them a lot of money.

To combat the damage that self-publishing did to their safety nets, publishing made a decision. Books over 120,000 words are high risk investments, even in a subgenre where books surpass 200,000 words regularly. What they’re missing is that those word counts are killing the epic fantasy subgenre. People are combining epic fantasy with high fantasy and scaling the definition back to just “anything set in a secondary world” because there’s almost nothing outside Brandon Sanderson that even fits the more traditional definition of epic fantasy anymore.

Your 300,000 word epic fantasy better be one damned amazing “exception” if you plan to debut it through traditional publishing.

In Summation

I’ve spent a lot of this post listing problems with traditional publishing, and I want to be clear: traditional publishing is a great option. There’s a lot of benefits, including an up front lump sum payment regardless of how well you sell and a host of editors and other support to help you make decisions and plan next steps. You also don’t have to manage all the various bits of your publication process like a self-published author does. They’ll handle distribution, getting you on the list of potential reviews by important reviewers, and give you the credibility some marketing options require to get your foot in the door. And even if you choose to go with self-publishing, all the work of refining and editing and cutting extraneous wording that traditional publishers push still needs to happen. You just have to do it all yourself. For authors whose genres fit into the models that traditional publishing bases its revenue on, it’s the best option for a lot of people.

Epic fantasy is not one of those genres.

This is significant because traditionally epic fantasy has been seen as the purview of traditional publishing. Steampunk and many genres of romance, among others, have thrived on self-publishing, but a lot of the bigger storyline books have been mis-categorized as good for traditional publishing because of greater visibility. The truth is, the new model of traditional publishing is stunting the growth of epic fantasy books. At its core, epic fantasy is a niche subgenre, just like steampunk. Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings are household names, but how many people outside the epic fantasy readership remember Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archives, and Sword of Truth? I’ve met YA fantasy writers who’ve never heard of George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, or Brandon Sanderson. Epic fantasy is a lot more niche than we think it is and traditional publishing can’t take a chance on niche genres right now.

If you’re like me and want to adhere to the definitions of epic fantasy I listed above, you have two options: self-publish or write something that isn’t epic fantasy for your debut.

All content on this blog is provided free for any readers and I’m always delighted to reach new audiences. If you enjoyed this story and are able, please consider supporting my work with a donation:

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