I use them all the time. My desk is littered with Post-it notes. If you’ve wanted any of my video book reviews, you know that I use Post-its to mark the really important sections of books that I’m reading. I also use them as bookmarks and then I just tear them in half when I want to mark a page as being particularly important.
My friends and family members know that I love Post-its as well, so they give them to me as gifts, including these really cool ones. And although this technically isn’t a Post-it, it’s transparent so you can put it over copy in a book and then you can write on it to circle or point arrows at exactly what you want to highlight.
I have Post-its on my desk and in the hallway and on my nightstand so that anytime I have an idea I can quickly write it down and not lose it. I also put them directly into my notebooks when I am, you know, looking to record ideas. So I’ll just stick them right in the notebook along with everything else.
So I use them constantly all the time. I probably go through a pack or two a month. I really love Post-its.
My dystopian sci-fi trilogy (WIP: T.A.G.) has a large cast of characters, including a female and male protagonist. Those two are the point-of-view characters for most chapters, but not all. A variety of secondary characters have POV chapters and scenes. And the antagonists have multiple scenes in each book where they’re driving the perspective. In total, I have nine POV characters in book 1.
Full disclosure: It was 11 before my developmental editor advised me to cut two of them that were one-offs. One didn’t have enough payoff, while the other one spoiled some suspense.
Justifying the need for so many POV characters
From the beginning, I envisioned my trilogy as being cinematic in its presentation. So, having multiple POVs opens up opportunities for cut-scenes, where you get more than one perspective on the same action, as well as perspectives on action taking place away from where the protagonists are. Several of my beta readers spontaneously said they could see the story as a movie or TV series, which means they were totally picking up the vibe I was going for.
Those additional perspectives allowed me to show some of what Deborah Chester, the author of The Fantasy Fiction Formula, refers to as the hidden story. That’s the part of the story that’s occurring away from the protagonists. I find it’s a great way to build suspense by forecasting danger for our heroes.
While everyone loves a good plot twist, a lot of tension can be created by forecasting danger—being careful not to spoil things by being too specific. It makes readers anticipate and worry about what’s coming, especially when you set a countdown for the calamity to hit. Forecasting has the secondary benefit of warding off the disbelief that can accompany some surprises.
Another reason I’m enjoying having so many POV characters in this story is that it’s full of antagonists in gray, rather than straight up villains in black. I want readers to understand my antagonists and there’s no better way to humanize them than to put readers into my antagonists’ heads.
Characters have to earn a POV role
In an issue of Before and After the Book Deal, Courtney Maum said that the Big Five publishers are looking for: “Earned POV—whichever character[s] have a perspective in the book have a solid, plot-driven reason for having that mic time.”
In The Fantasy Fiction Formula, Chester goes a step farther. She says, “Each viewpoint besides the protagonist’s should be developed into a subplot.” That’s a high bar for sure. All of my point-of-view characters clear that bar except one, and I have a good reason for that exception.
Chester also says, “Ideally, a book of large scope needs no more than four viewpoints. A book of huge scale might stretch to encompass six.” Here I’ll claim that since my novel is the start of a trilogy totaling more than 260,000 words, the additional POVs are proportionally in bounds. Ultimately, I think all the POVs make for a richer world and—as my beta readers noted—a more cinematic story.
This is a book my developmental editor recommended to me after reading my manuscript. I apparently had some opportunities to tighten up my third-person close perspective—and I’ll tell you, this book really helped me understand where I wasn’t quite nailing it.
Now, the book includes an appendix that lists all of the common red flag words that indicate you may be telling instead of showing. However, you won’t need to rely on that, because the book does such a great job of explaining telling versus showing that you’ll be able to easily recognize it when it’s happening.
The title promises that you’ll “really get it” and, for me, that was 100% the case. I give it 5 stars, 12 dog ears, and 2 Post-its.
It’s really about closeness to the POV character
It’s not that telling is bad all the time. Depending on what you’re trying to convey, sometimes a bit of telling can be faster and less awkward than showing. However, telling creates distance between the reader and the point-of-view character. It does that primarily by injecting the author in between the reader and POV character. That’s not ideal, because today’s readers want to occupy the POV character as much as possible.
Dialogue is the most natural way to show, not tell. I have a firm handle on that.
Description is another way to show, but the key is to filter the description through your POV character so their attitudes, tastes, and preferences color what’s being described. I wasn’t doing that all the time. In some cases, I just needed to remove tags like “he sees” and “she hears” and just describe the things seen and heard.
And the final way to show is through internal dialogue. I was the least consistent at using this tool.
A few things happened when I did an editing pass with a focus on using those three methods of showing, not telling:
My descriptions became more interesting because they also helped readers understand the POV character better
Replacing “told” reactions with internal dialogue led to more unique and colorful reactions that felt more organic and in the moment
Chapters got little tighter, with the manuscript dropping around 3,000 words overall
That may not sound like many words to cut from a 90,000 word manuscript, but it’s amazing how much faster a chapter reads when you take two unnecessary words out of this sentence and replace three okay words with great words in the next paragraph—and do that again and again and again.
These talented ladies create a lot of great articles about craft, in addition to doing interviews with authors. I particularly appreciate the pull quotes they include in their newsletter. I find inspiration from those even when I don’t get around to listening to the full interview.
I enjoy Lincoln’s musings on the publishing industry and his interviews with authors. He’s very down to earth, but also uses words like panopticon. Respect.
Kat provides clear advice on tactical writing issues, often breaking issues down one by one. She gets bonus points for her series of articles on The D&D Method for Better Character Development.
Writing books is a long-term commitment to a solitary and sedentary activity. If you have a sedentary day job like me, then it can be a double-whammy for your health, as well as your social life.
Weight gain
After collecting notes for more than a year, I wrote my first book in an intense 3-month stretch. The 214-page first edition of Email Marketing Rules consumed nearly every night and every weekend. I gained 5 lbs. during the writing of it.
It wasn’t just that I was sitting for 12+ hours a day. It was also that it was a series of sprints—pushing to get a draft out to beta readers, pushing to get a round of edits done, pushing to get the jacket copy finished, and on and on. For me, hitting those deadlines meant lots of caffeine and sugar to fuel late nights.
Neglect of family commitments
At the same time, I also bowed out of various family outings and pushed more household responsibilities onto my wife Kate. She was understanding with the first book, but not so much with the second.
Kate is super-understanding and supportive, but it’s fair to say that, after 6 months of shouldering an outsized percentage of parenting and household duties, she was pissed. She also knew this wasn’t my last book.
I vowed to do better. I promised not to opt-out of family activities and to wrap up evening writing sessions by 9-ish. For the three subsequent nonfiction books I’ve published and two fiction books I’ve written, I’ve kept my word.
That has required longer time-horizons for books, but I think more planning and development has been better for the quality of my books as well. And it has certainly been better for my health, as I was able to drop all the weight I’d gained.
Resolve to write healthier
Some activities like writing can be hard on your body. Both real and self-imposed deadlines can make them even harder. As you set your goals for the year ahead, make sure you’re not unintentionally sacrificing your health or family responsibilities.
Unconventional formats are story structures that eschew the typical narrative flow of traditional formats, such as the three-act play, the Hero’s Journey, or Save the Cat. They are often less concerned with chronological time flow. And they can allow for modes of communications that are much more casual or much more formal, which can be more revealing or less revealing, depending on the device used.
Unconventional formats include vehicles such as:
Letters, postcards, emails, and DMs (epistolary novels)
Diary entries
Obituaries
Blog posts
Social media posts and forum threads
AI prompts and outputs
Outlines
Transcripts and scripts
Legal forms
Police reports, disciplinary reports, case reports, and progress reports
Recipes
Instruction manuals
Lists
How I use these in my sci-fi trilogy
While entire stories can be written in these unconventional formats, I’ve enjoyed weaving them into my sci-fi trilogy (Project T.A.G.) to change up the storytelling mode. For instance, in book 1, a messenger delivers a letter that a character reads, reacting to every few sentences. Later, the MMC writes a letter home, commenting to himself as he goes about all the details he’s not including.
In book 2, the MFC struggles to write a letter to her father, saying too much and then editing it down to its simplest, irrefutable core. That rewriting process shows readers details and feelings that would have otherwise stayed hidden had only the final letter been included.
In book 3, one of the antagonists edits video content, including using strikethroughs to indicate word changes in the script. And later, to show the passage of time, one of the government leaders reads monthly tournament ranking reports—which is what I’m working on right now.
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I read The Fantasy Fiction Formula on the recommendation of my developmental editor and found it to be highly helpful. It covers all the fundamentals of novel writing, from formulating a story plan to crafting a story climax, but also gives you a lot of tools to understand those elements better.
For instance, it includes a lot of charts and lists, including ones for different types of opening hooks and different story roles. One of my favorite frameworks is SPOOC, which shows you how the Situation, Protagonist, Objective, Opponent, and Climax all work together. Having a clear SPOOC gives you a massive headstart on writing your query letter and jacket copy. The book also includes plenty of drill exercises.
I give it 5 stars, 20 dog ears, and 5 Post-its.
For my dystopian sci-fi trilogy, two concepts from The Fantasy Fiction Formula were particularly helpful.
The moral dilemma
Chester says that “a well-written third act requires the protagonist to be cornered and forced to deal with some kind of inner dilemma. … Whatever the inner dilemma happens to be, passing this part of the final test requires the protagonist to reveal their true nature and face the internal problem squarely.”
Moral dilemmas feature prominently in the climaxes of each book in my dystopian sci-fi trilogy. But after reading Chester’s advice, I tweaked the climax of Book 3 to make the dilemma even more stark and the resulting cost even higher. [evil laugh]
The hidden story
Novels often contain as many as three story lines, says Chester.
The ongoing story
The back story
The hidden story
This was my first time encountering this concept, which I found fascinating. Chester explains that the hidden story is “running parallel to the ongoing story, although most of the time it’s not on view. Readers are unaware of it, but writers have to know what’s happening off-stage to their nonviewpoint characters.”
Fundamentally, that makes perfect sense. Of course, things are happening that you aren’t showing. What I found really interesting was that I was routinely revealing the hidden story, particularly with my antagonists.
In other craft books, I’d read about writers cheating their way to big twists and surprise reveals by artificially withholding information. Instead of being impactful, these can make readers feel cheated. Moreover, they’ve robbed themselves of the opportunity to create suspense by revealing breadcrumbs of the struggles to come.
In my trilogy, I make the hidden story visible to create dramatic irony, which is when the reader knows more than the characters do. Then readers have to experience the tension of wondering if the heroes will avoid the coming danger (Nope!) and then painfully watch as danger blindsides our unsuspecting heroes.
That said, turnabout is fair play. And sometimes the antagonists are unaware of what our heroes have been up to and don’t account for that in their plans. [evil laugh]
In addition to my book files, I have a separate book notes file for Project: T.A.G., my dystopian sci-fi trilogy. That file is currently 683 pages, and includes over 100,000 words of copy I’ve cut or substantially rewritten, but wanted to save. The remaining 50,000 words are focused on two very different aspects of the project:
Cast list, including details on appearance, backgrounds, motivations, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc.
A timeline that goes from 2048 to 2116, even though the action in each book takes place over a year or less, academy-style, between 2104 and 2106 over the course of the three books in the series
Locations around the world where scenes take place
A list of all weapons, equipment, and technologies used by characters
Themes for each book
A list of mirror scenes and echoes
The playlist for each book
Publication & marketing plans
Comparable books
Back cover copy and flap copy (book description, bio, etc.)
Potential blurb contributors
Notes on book cover concepts
Website updates to make, including creating an electronic press kit
Pre-publication launch marketing plan
Post-publication marketing plan
Along with my book notes, I have a separate spreadsheet to track my querying efforts. I also have a separate doc to plan my blog and social media content that has a running list of topics and draft posts for this trilogy and the next four novels I have planned.
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While I’ve written five nonfiction books and nearly 4,000 articles and posts, I knew I didn’t know nearly enough about novel writing. I’d taken a couple of courses on it in college, but that was long ago and those were workshops rather than instructional. What I needed was a masterclass in novel writing, so I set out to create one for myself.
I started off with Hooked by Les Edgerton and How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, both of which my eldest son gave as birthday presents. Then I bought a few more books on craft I found at Barnes & Noble. And then I started buying the craft books mentioned in the craft books I was reading, plus ones mentioned in articles I’d read.
Admittedly, some advice is repeated by multiple authors, but I’ve found that just reinforces what the fundamentals are. At the same time, truly unique advice and frameworks have stood out, especially once I got a dozen books in.
Both kinds of advice were helpful, since I was writing and revising my novels as I read these books on novel writing. As I read, I reflect on what I’ve written in previous chapters and whether it needs tweaking. Or I can adjust my outline for future chapters, which happened after I read The Fantasy Fiction Formula—which I highly recommend.
I’ve since read two more craft books, and I have six more in the TBR pile on my desk. Every one I read makes me a little better writer.
Some of the books on novel writing I’ve read
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From the gramophone to compass to the computer, advancements in technology routinely cause people to abandon skills, says The Atlantic’s Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Age of De-Skilling (link to gift article).
“It’s a reassuring pattern—something let go, something else acquired,” he says. “But some gains come with deeper costs. They unsettle not only what people can do but also who they feel themselves to be.”
Of course, AI is the next big advancement that’s causing the current cycle of de-skilling. The question is: What skills will people be giving up? And how will that impact their identity?
In these cycles, people have several paths available to them:
1. The cyborg
They can use the technology collaboratively, keeping their skills while gaining speed, precision, or other benefits from the technology.
2. The monitor
They watch over the technology as it does their former job, stepping in to assist when the technology falters. In this role, the person invariably loses skill and their former identity.
It’s around these two choices that most of the conversation about AI has revolved. Will you be the “human in the loop” that stays actively engaged in your craft? Or will you be the “human on the loop” that merely oversees and signs off on the work the technology does?
But I think there are two other options.
3. The innovator
Freed from some aspects of their profession or task, they specialize in one or more of the remaining aspects. In the age of AI, this means focusing on very niche subject areas where there’s relatively little domain knowledge—or, more commonly, being on the forefront of new discoveries. The innovator doesn’t compete with the new technology. Instead, they expand knowledge or pioneer new methods, which over time improve the new technology or fuel the next technology innovation.
4. The artisan
Some people will continue doing things the old way. They will maintain their skills and identity, but compete directly with the new technology. In some cases, a critical mass of consumers will appreciate this human- or hand-crafted product or service, making it a viable choice. In other cases, there won’t be a viable market.
I recognize that not every person in every instance will have full discretion over which of these paths they take as AI spreads across industries. However, in my day job, I’m going to lean into being a cyborg and specialist, as that makes me the most valuable as a digital marketer. And in my night job as a novelist, I’m going to lean into being an artisan, as that best aligns with my values as a novelist.
The final paragraph of The Age of De-Skilling by Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Atlantic
