Tag: Writing

Writing a book is a major accomplishment that few people can claim. Taking the next step and trad publishing or self-publishing is an even bigger accomplishment, because so much more is required. It’s a long, long road that can take many years to traverse.

Bird by bird

Building the confidence that you can complete such a long journey is step one. When I wrote my first nonfiction book, Email Marketing Rules (1st edition), I’d already written more than a thousand articles and blog posts. It was no coincidence that I modelled that first edition after Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, which is essentially a collection of short blog posts.

I knew I could write what turned out to be 108 rules and put a nice wrapper on it, because I’d already written 10 times that number of articles. In fact, like many nonfiction authors, I mined some of those articles to create the content for the book. Beyond that, the challenge was how to organize the content into sections that created a logical flow from topic to topic. I spent more than a year collecting notes, and then an intense 3 or so months to write and edit it.

In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, she talks about working your way through big projects bit by bit … or rather, bird by bird. That was absolutely my experience with all five of my nonfiction books. However, the experience with the two novels I’ve written so far was different.

Flight by flight

If I can expand on Lamott’s analogy, I wasn’t just describing each bird. I had to create several birds, harness them all, and fly them in different combinations from one place to another. And not just any place, but to pre-determined destinations.

Admittedly, in a number of cases, the birds took me to some places near where I’d planned to go, and often took detours or otherwise improvised. It turns out, directing a gaggle of birds is tough. They often have ideas of their own.

So, while writing nonfiction books first absolutely gave me the confidence I needed, novel-writing is nowhere near as straightforward. It’s no exaggeration to say that a novel involves a hundred times more variables and therefore decisions than a nonfiction book. For me, investing a lot of time in plotting was key, even if my birds introduced a bunch of wrinkles to the plot that I hadn’t planned from the beginning.

Related posts:

Why are we trying to discourage aspiring novelists from publishing?

Recommended reading on novel writing from my developmental editor—and what I’d already read

How to generate writing momentum

To receive future posts for free or to become a Patron and support my dystopian sci-fi novel and get special thank-you goodies upon its publication… 

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.

Related posts:

Book review: ‘The Fantasy Fiction Formula’ by Deborah Chester

Villains vs. antagonists

How I use beta readers

To receive future posts for free or to become a Patron and support my dystopian sci-fi novel and get special thank-you goodies upon its publication…