When it comes to editing your book, there’s more than one approach to the revision process. Some writers work through their manuscript from beginning to end, in chronological order. Others might work backward, one chapter at a time. Another efficient way to conduct revisions is by layering your edits.
Let’s consider what layering your edits might look like.
How to Determine Your Editing Layers
When you work with a developmental editor, you’ll often get an editorial letter and/or detailed notes at the end of the developmental process. These notes will likely detail several areas throughout your story that need extra attention. That’s going to look different for every writer, but some of these issues could include:
Story threads that need to be present throughout the manuscript
Character interactions that need to be more consistent
Hints or foreshadowing you need to add
Actions, responses, and interactions that should be more in-character
Plot points that need to be tightened
When it’s time to start revising, use your editor’s notes to make a master list of issues you need to address in your manuscript. Then, use it as a map that guides you through each layer of the revision process.
Layering Edits Allows You to Focus on One Story Thread at a Time
Correcting one story thread at a time is an effective way to move through your editorial process quickly. If you’re working through revisions after your developmental edit, it’s critical that you consider layering edits to maintain consistency throughout the process.
What I mean by consistency is that if you’re threading a particular theme through the story, you want to follow that through from beginning to end. Layering can help you focus on one thread at a time so you don’t get lost in other details along the way.
Layering Edits Can Prevent Unnecessary Rewrites
Just like getting lost in details, it’s a little too easy to get caught up in unnecessary rewrites (guilty…very guilty). If you layer your revision process and make a clear plan for the parts of your novel you plan to edit, it might help keep you on track to meet your deadlines.
This method is particularly useful if you’re writing long books with vast worlds. Making a seemingly small adjustment in one chapter could result in many, bigger changes as you go along. If you have a map to guide the process, you might be able to avoid a major detour.
Layering Edits Helps You Stay Focused on the Big Picture
As you move through revisions, you want to keep your focus on the big picture: completing your novel. It’s easy to get tangled in a web of extensive rewrites when you’re really supposed to be refining your existing story, so use your list of edit layers to keep yourself on track.
Most importantly, remember that there are no hard and fast rules for how to approach the editing process. The most important thing is to finish your book.
If you need to talk through how to layer your edits, Allie and Jo can help. Get in touch with us here.
With the rise of social media and the internet, marginalized groups have been able to create online platforms and share their experiences. With all of this new information cycling the web, and authors wanting to diversify their casts of characters, it can be difficult to make sure that you are representing a character that is a member of a marginalized group in a respectful way.
There have been many depictions of disabled people in literature throughout the years, some being more respectful than others. Some good examples that come to mind immediately are: Turtles All The Way Down by John Green, which depicts mental illness beautifully and draws on Green’s own experience, and the wildly popular Wonder by R.J Palacio (although I would argue that the movie didn’t do the best job at representation, as they overlooked some details of the main character’s disability). There are plenty of thoughtful and honest representations of disabled characters, but there are also plenty of disrespectful and dishonest representations.
So here’s the question: How do I make sure that my character avoids harmful tropes and stereotypes? Well, the best way is to listen to other people who have that disability. However, as a general rule, here are three harmful stereotypes that you best avoid.
Number One: The ‘Has No Life’
This character is pretty self-explanatory. They have absolutely no life whatsoever. They have no personality, and are only there so that you can say that you have a character with a disability in your book. This character has no hobbies or interests of their own. Their main purpose in the narrative is to make your protagonist feel better about their own life, as they realize there are people far worse off than they are.
This is harmful for several reasons. First off, having characters with little to no personality won’t help any story, no matter what the plot is. Second of all, this trope presents people with disabilities as pitiable, only good for looking down on or making able-bodied people feel better about themselves.
There are definitely ways to give your main character a eureka moment where they realize that their life isn’t so bad after all. This moment shouldn’t come at the expense of disabled people.
Number Two: The ‘Tragic Fall From Grace’
Sometimes, perhaps through an accident, a war, or an unexpected illness, people find themselves with a disability. This can be a challenging and daunting event that requires a lot of adjustment. I have definitely read some books that portray this struggle really thoughtfully, but I also have read books that are very insensitive.
This trope isn’t so much something to avoid, but something to be cautious of.
Is this character learning to live with their disability and cope with their changed self, or does this character exist so that they can be looked down on by everyone else?
Once again, the difference between thoughtful representation and disrespectful representationboils down to this question: Is this character there to be pitied, or are they there to grow as a character and have their own journey?
Pay special attention if you want to write on this topic, as it can be written beautifully.
Number Three: The ‘Inspiration Porn’
This one is probably my least favorite trope. I’m sure a lot of us have heard the phrase ‘inspiration porn’ without knowing fully what it means. Isn’t it a good thing that people with disabilities are able to rise up, beat the odds, and inspire others as they do it?
That all sounds great, but this trope isn’t about disabled people, not really. It’s about what disabled people can do for non-disabled people.At it’s core, this trope is about able-bodied people being inspired by their non-able-bodied counterparts. This doesn’t sound so bad at first, but allow me to elaborate further on the two forms this trope comes in, and you’ll see why it actually sucks.
The first is summed up by this example: One time, I saw a news headline about a girl with Down Syndrome who was asked to prom by one of her classmates. The article was clearly framing the kid who asked her out as a hero for being willing to ask out a kid with a disability. Of course I’m not here to hate on that, and I’m really happy for both people in that situation, but the way people talked about it was… interesting. Able-bodied people should not get extra special praise for treating people with disabilities like people. That’s not how it works. If your characters are treating people with disabilities with basic respect and you are framing it as if they did a heroic deed, you might want to reevaluate.
The second, is the disabled person who can magically do everything. They serve as inspiration to all the able-bodied people trying to pursue their dreams, because if a disabled person can do it, surely they can do it too. The problem with this trope is that disabled people should not have to prove themselves in order to be worthy of respect. Another problem with this trope is that it enforces the idea that, unless a disabled person goes above and beyond, they are worthy of pity. We don’t treat able-bodied people who live mundane ordinary lives with pity- why should we treat everyday ordinary disabled people with pity?
Overall, the golden rule is this: Listen to disabled people and understand that while they do have their own special limitations, that doesn’t mean they should be treated with less dignity and respect than their non-disabled counterparts.
If your disabled character has limits, but also has dreams, goals, a personality, likes and dislikes, everything that makes up any other character; you’re off to a good start. And hey, we can always use more authors who are willing to dedicate themselves to diversifying literature.
There are many different reasons authors choose to self-publish. One of the most prominent is the idea of creative control. Many self-published authors are invested in retaining a greater amount of control over their published works than a traditional publisher might allow.
But what does creative control really mean, and what does it consist of? While self-publishing is right for many authors, there are many misconceptions surrounding what it means to be in control. Let’s deconstruct this idea and clear some of the fog, shall we?
Creative control requires:
Exceptional instincts for storytelling
A strong publishing team that understands your genre and the industry at large
The ability to delegate editing and marketing tasks
Willingness to learn the ins and outs of your market
Tenacity and perseverance
If you’re considering self-publishing and want to know more about what’s involved in a successful indie author career, let’s dive in deeper.
Exceptional Storytelling Instincts
Because you’re taking the reins of your own author life, you want to be confident in your storytelling abilities. A self-published author assumes all the responsibilities of a publishing house. That means you need to not only have a good story up your sleeve–you also need a keen instinct on what readers are buying in your genre.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to be the expert on your story or your market. But, you need to have your finger on the pulse of things enough that you can build a team around you who can help you run with your ideas.
A Team of Experts
Creative control doesn’t mean calling all the shots with zero input from other professionals. While you have the final call on every decision you make for your author career, you need a team that can help you take your stories to the next level, then get them in front of the right readers.
No one wants to go it alone. And in an indie author’s case, you don’t need to.
Spending too much time alone with your stories can cause major tunnel vision. It’s way too easy to self-sabotage, lose sight of the big picture, or even just get so close to your work that you can’t view it objectively.
Instead of trying to build your author career in a vacuum, build a team around yourself. Choose trustworthy experts who have deep industry knowledge. Editors who will help you make your stories the best they can be. Experienced graphic designers who know your genre. Marketers who know what sells and how to get it in front of the right people. Coaches who can guide you through each step of the process and cheer you on along the way.
Every team looks different. You might bring an editor onboard who can coach you a bit on marketing. Or, you might bring a handful of people into your author world.
The only hard, fast rule is to get the support you need to execute successful creative control, whatever that looks like.
The beauty of choosing your team is that you get to take your time choosing individuals who you trust. You get to pick the marketers you mesh well with, the designer whose work you love, or the editor you trust to help you develop the best stories possible. And, you have the power to let go of those professional relationships that don’t serve you or your books. The power goes both ways.
The Last Word on the Last Word
Taking on the responsibilities of a publishing house is a weight of responsibility. But for so many self-published authors, it’s also exciting to take the reins. Just remember that getting the last word on your work means intentionally setting yourself up for success
You’re the architect of your author life. You get to build your dream team around your books then put them out into the world. That’s what creative control is all about, and that’s pretty amazing.
Need help plotting out your author life? Hit us up. We’re a team of experienced editors, coaches, designers, and marketing experts who are passionate about helping authors build their dream publishing careers. Get in touch here.
Ready to start querying agents and/or publishers? We got you.
Nailing Your Query and Submission Packet walks you through the following:
Checking the Market for the viability of your novel
Creating a pitch that an industry professional can’t ignore
Building a query letter to capture attention
Writing a synopsis that will best showcase your story
Discovering a personal bio that connects you to your work
How to move forward and begin the submission process
This workbook is best for writers who are nearly finished with their novel and hope to find representation and publication for that project.
After workshopping countless authors through this process over the past eight years, Jo knows the common pitfalls and strengths of most writers at this stage in their journey. She also knows that this is often the most vulnerable piece of an author’s career. With this workbook you can work at your own pace, at a time that works for you, and wherever you like. And as always, if you’d like to schedule a “Quick Chat” or a full “Plot Consultation Call we can go over your submission materials together.
Allie and Jo are passionate about helping quality stories find their place the world. We created this series of worksheets to give intermediate authors a series of questions and checklists.
This resource is to help authors who:
Want nothing but our most popular worksheets.
Have written enough to not need detailed explanations.
Want to revisit how they approach story.
Are starting a new genre.
Are frustrated with writing.
Burned out with story-telling.
Allie and Jo both use these worksheets for EVERY new piece of fiction they write.
This workbook is a collection of our most popular questions for authors. They’re the things Allie and Jo go back to again and again as we work on new projects. You can find it HERE
Want to get the most out of your edits and get your book noticed? The best way to make your book as strong as it can be is by learning how to edit your own words before your manuscript ever leaves your hands.
No one knows your story the way you do, and no one can edit in a way that helps you stay as true to that idea as you can. This workbook will teach you how to look at your manuscript objectively, taking it through your own round of edits before querying agents or handing it over to your editor. Self-editing saves you time and money and helps you get the most out of your editing process, whatever publishing path you take.
This workbook is designed for authors who:
Want to get the most out of a developmental edit, or any type of edit
Want to feel more confident in sorting through reader and editorial feedback
Want to make sure they keep their novel true to their vision
MASTER SELF-EDITOR was created by Jolene Perry, a published author and professional editor. After more than a decade of working with editors from five different publishing houses, reading for agents, and running her own editing company, Jolene has assembled the tools every author needs before handing their manuscript over to a professional.
An effective story pitch sells your idea to your readers if you’re an indie author, or to an agent/publisher if you’re traditionally published. It’s a way to distill the heart of your story idea into a quick, simple description that hooks your readers and leaves them wanting more.
A pitch is crucial in selling your book. If an author takes the traditional route, a pitch sells a book to an agent who uses the pitch to sell to an acquisitions editor, the editor uses that pitch to sell to the publisher, who uses it to sell to the distributor, who uses it to sell to the bookseller, who uses it to sell to readers. In independent publishing, a pitch is the simplest and most effective tool in finding the right readers.
A solid pitch is the first step to a solid story.
In Pre-Writing Genius,I draw on my thirteen years of publishing experience to bring you a process that helps you pick your next project, know if the idea will work, then give you focus tools to move forward with as you draft your project. I’ve even had writers say they used this method to help in revisions.
This DIY workbook is best for authors who:
Want to work at their own time, at their own pace, and within their own space
Have a difficult time choosing which project to write next
Want their book to have its best chance of selling when they’re finished
Don’t want to panic when people ask, “What’s your book about?”
Want to have a specific and focused idea to help through the writing process
We’ll work together to put your core values to use, explore tools to narrow down your project list, and find ways to make your take on the story unique to you. Because at the heart of it all, YOU are the unique element of your story.
Saving time on your process means more time to write your next story–and the next, and the next.
The Pre-Writing Genius workbook will help you gain a clear focus to turn your idea into the solid story it deserves to be. You can find your copy HERE.
There’s an ages old debate that happens in writing advice circles between whether you should write what you want or write what readers want.
Writing to market is bad, says one group. You should follow your inpiration and write what moves your soul.
Writing to market is good, says the other. You’re going to die broke and alone if you don’t give the readers exactly what they want.
So which one is right?
Both, but you don’t have to get weird about it…
Both are 100% necessary to incorporate into your process to a degree. If you swing too far to either extreme your stories will flop.
If you publish stories that don’t take readers into consideration at all you will not sell that book. You’ll frolic through the meadows of your imagination (which is important but we’ll get to that) until you’ve written a tangled mess of words and events that are at best puzzling and at worst incomprehensible.
If you only write to the market in a genre you don’t read about tropes you disagree with centered on characters you aren’t invested in, you might be giving readers what they want but they’ll smell your game from the first word of the blurb. These books are at best obviously formulaic to at worst a slap in the readers face.
Here’s my advice, in case any of you asked for it.
Write for you, edit for your reader.
The books that you write have come from your heart in the way of tone, theme, and emotional growth. The characters you write must be interesting to you even if the world may not be. The struggles of the conflict must be something you can sit with over the course of an entire book/series. The story question should be one you want to know the answer to.
The rest should be run through the reader filter. The tropes you use, genre you write in, creatures/world building, the plot events should be geared toward the kinds of readers you are hoping to attract to your author brand.
You love stories about unsure girls transforming into strong independent women? You can write that in many genres using many tropes. A small town girl new to the big bad city for a sassy women’s fiction, a young woman leaving a bad relationship and learning to define love on her own terms with a man she never thought would be right for her in an angsty romance, a teen girl standing up to her mother to make her own decision for the first time for a YA, a young warrior training to take down a rebel army in a Sci Fi, new to magic one girl grows into her rightful place as queen in a fantasy…
It doesn’t matter if you are just starting your writing journey, you’ve finished one book, or your backlist is filled with titles. It doesn’t matter if you’re Independent or Traditional. Every single person we’ve worked with, or met in the writing world, has one thing in common:
Occasionally, we all get stuck.
We’re sometimes overwhelmed by the process, or afraid of the criticism/rejection, or we’re just plain burned out.
We get it! We’ve been in all of those places. We’ve navigated these paths over and over, which is why we’re here and ready to assure you that you are NOT ALONE. We are here to let you know that WE’VE GOT YOU, and are so excited to help you fall back in love with your writing and build a fulfilling career packed with readers who love you.
This guide is intended to help you reset your expectations, core values, and re-assess how you want to move forward in the way that makes the best sense for YOU.
Part I: Reset expectations, toss toxic beliefs
Part II: Get aligned (or re-aligned) with your core values
Part III: Be prepared for the hard parts. We’ll help you build a toolkit to help you through the downswings.
Please be honest and thoughtful as you work through this guide, and remember that your values, ideas, and toolkit may change as you do! Embrace the change. Enjoy the process. You can get your copy here.
Selling your books is a process that quickly gets out of control, leading to confusion, indecision, overwhelm, and then shut down.
The cause is too much information, too quickly, and at the wrong time.
Authors (and everyone else on the planet) are consumers of information, but consumption also requires digestion and integration–the most important part of learning
So all those podcasts you binged about author marketing were a colossal waste of your time if you don’t digest and integrate what you heard. Did you go out and DO the thing you learned about, let it sit for a bit, and then come back to analyze it?
If the answer is no, you just wasted your time. When the time comes for you to do things, you will have to learn it again because the first time you consumed but didn’t allow the information time to stick.
The same rule applies to structures, foundations, frameworks, methods for selling books. What someone else does won’t necessarily be right for you. Just because some guy is famous for marketing books doesn’t mean it will be the magic solution to your sales problems. Or because some Facebook group is obsessed with ad strategy, sharing tips, tricks, and rants about ads all day, doesn’t mean ads are right for you.
The number one thing you need to do when creating your marketing plan is to get curious, get comfortable with risk, and get listening to your intuition.
The most effective way to sell more books is to create a marketing plan that you are excited to implement. The most impressive sales techniques in the world won’t sell you a single book if you don’t show up—or worse, show up half-assed and confuse people.
If your goal is to sell books, what’s the path of least resistance between the book and the reader? This trail will look different for everyone.
Everything you do will fall under one of these four categories, and the goal is streamline, simplify, and eventually automate/outsource.
One of the biggest problems I see with authors in all genres is the slow shift away from being a writer and toward becoming a marketing expert. I’m guessing you didn’t start writing with the goal of accidentally changing careers half way through?
The four tiers of an Author Marketing plan are Vision, Strategy, Tactics, and Gimmicks (not all gimmicks are slimy, I promise).
Vision
Your vision is just for you—the ultimate goal, the dream, the state of being that you’re after in your publishing career. Where do you want this journey to take YOU? If you’re unsure, write your Vision scene.
The typical day scene is a written account of a day-in-the-life of you, the author. There’s a reason it’s a typical day and not a special day too. It’s easy to imagine the day your book comes out, or the premiere of your movie/show, but those dreams are also too specific and not a representation of your inner success and happiness.
Think to the future, if everything went your way and you got all the things you wanted, what would a typical day in your life look like five/ten years from now. I’m guessing it doesn’t involve you obsessing over ad copy? Dig into this scene and write it down as if it were a scene in a novel. When you write down your goals and dreams, they become that much more real—more attainable.
Don’t hold back, but don’t get too carried away either (we all want million-dollar book deals). Stretch your vision of who you want to be (not just what you want to get) and how you want to exist in this world but start today. Start where you are right this second. You don’t need to change your circumstances, core values or personality to become a successful author. And you can’t change the facts of your life/the world right now.
Write the details and experience your success in the way that feels right for you and your life. Grab your Dreams to Goals Guideto dig into this exercise.
Strategy
Your strategy is your big picture view or map of how you’ll make it to your vision by providing your audience with a magical experience. This is where your readers become important in your marketing.
How will you show up? Where will you be? What is the path you’ll take your readers down? What landmarks of your life/writing are essential for your readers to see?
Often the word strategy gets tossed into things like ads, funnels, opt-ins, and the like, but in truth, none of those things is an author strategy by themselves. Your strategy is the engine, how all the bits fit together to make the whole machine work. The purpose of an engine is to drive a car. The goal of your marketing strategy is to sell books.
Your strategy also includes your reader journey. You need to understand how readers browse and buy books, move through the process, and build your marketing strategy around their needs while remaining true to you.
Easy, right?
Tactics
A tactic is one small, focused effort to gain a specific result. So the overall goal is to sell books. A tactic is to release a free story to get people on your email list. The free story is the tactic, and the specific result is more people on your list, the big picture is that they’ll eventually buy your book.
There are hundreds of tactics to try and test, to mix and match. Your job while creating your marketing strategy is to fill it with tactics that work for you, your readers, and your time—not with what others tell you to do. I’m not saying ‘don’t trust book marketers’, what I’m saying is they don’t have a magic framework no matter what they might promise you. So don’t try to cram yourself into someone else’s vision.
The only absolute I have when marketing is never lead your reader into a dead end.
This phrase is repeated to my authors over and over again.
The secret to creating effective tactics that support a solid strategy is the LOOP EFFECT. Every call to action should take your reader on a journey back to you.
What does this look like in practice?
The simplest is the end matter of your book (yes, your end matter is a marketing tool not just a thing you need at the end of a book). When someone buys your book and reads it, is that the end of the line? Or do you have a link to sign up for your email list, get another book from the series, or join your discussion group? The link in the back of the book brings them back into your world–it completes the loop.
Every tactic you employ to expand your readership, grow your following, or sell your book should be AFTER you’ve thought through your loop. What are you asking readers to do? And how are they directed back to you after doing it?
Gimmick
A bad reputation follows the gimmick around like a shadow, but gimmicks themselves aren’t gross, the people who misuse them for selfish reasons are.
A gimmick is simply a way to get fast results with minimal effort. Unethical marketers use tricks and bribes to pad numbers and create false promises to get self-serving results but at the core of a well used gimmick is reward.
Giving away a $50 gift card is a gimmick. You’re relying on the basic fact that most people like getting free money. But the reward is so open-ended that the goal isn’t to provide real value to readers, it’s to get as many people to sign up as possible regardless of what they need. Misused gimmicks are selfish marketing because you care more about your numbers, ranking, profit, or status than you do about offering readers something they will need/want.
How I recommend authors use gimmicks is to serve their existing readers by rewarding them for their support.
Let’s say you have 500 people on your email list, and your next book is about to release, but there isn’t a lot of buzz happening even though your launch strategy is in place. You can whip up a quick gimmick that will help boost the buzz plus offer the people who are already supporting you a reward for their efforts.
Send out an email and ask your subscribers to share your release with their followers on social media and send you a link to the post. They’ll be entered into a draw for $50 for each platform they share on up to three platforms.
Important Note: You cannot use this to get reviews, that goes against Amazon’s terms of service. Getting more buzz around your book sure, but you cannot reward readers for reviews.
It’s quick and dirty, but instead of being greedy about it and trying to get numbers through manipulating strangers, be strategic and reward those who already support you.
Your road to selling books to readers will be full of vision, strategy, tactics, and gimmicks. They should work for you and make you excited to show up for your readers.
Each one will inform the other, but if you keep these things centered in your mind, your marketing plan will almost create itself:
Start where you ARE, not where you wish you were
Fill your strategy with things you’re excited to try
Always lead your readers back to you using the LOOP EFFECT
Reward the readers you already have with gimmicks, and forget about your vanity metrics
Remember that your best marketing strategy is always the ONE YOU’RE ACTUALLY GOING TO SHOW UP FOR
Feel free to check out our DIY resources HERE or learn ways to work with us HERE.
If you haven’t read them get caught up here: 4S Author | Self | Story | Support | Sales
It’s easy to slip into thinking your writing is just you—the author. Your readers and those dreaded gatekeepers are way over there. In essence, it’s you alone and then everyone else you are trying to reach across some great expanse, whether real or imagined.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
It should be you—the author—surrounded by the people who support and uplift your career in different ways.
I want you to start segmenting your support networks into categories and then understanding what each support category does for you. Your support system is not a two faction entity—this or that—it’s multi-faceted.
Let’s start with the obvious.
Your reader
Your readers are people who open your book, read your words, and like them. They will often read more of your books and like those too. They will talk about, review, and recommend your books. The ultimate support a reader can give you is to talk about your book to others. That is reader endgame.
But make sure you know if your readers are also your buyers.
Wait? Aren’t they the same thing?
Nope.
Your buyers are the people who open their wallets and purchase your books. These can be the same person in the case of most adult fiction, but don’t assume it is.
For Middle Grade and Young Adult, the buyers are mostly parents/guardians and librarians. The adults are often the ones with the final say in what kids read. Knowing that is crucial to setting up your marketing plans or structure your story to be sure the people with the money get the message, but the reader gets the experience.
Even if your reader and buyer are the same person nurturing them as a readers and selling the next book to them are two very different things.
Your efforts with your readers should be on nurturing them into advocating for you. Save the hard marketing for your buyers.
Your peers
Your peers are other authors who are in a similar place to you. Not to imply that only debut authors can network with debut authors or that traditional authors must stick together. I mean, people who are struggling with the same things you are, or hitting similar milestones. If you’ve released your first book and are trying to get it into more reviewers’ hands and another author has 12 books out and is working on her first 100K month, the two of you don’t have relevant advice to share back and forth.
The hallmark of a peer relationship is that it’s mutually beneficial. You need to network with authors who have similar struggles because each of you will have different strengths to lend to each other. You will be able to speak the same language, commiserate together, hold each other accountable, and cheerlead each other.
A word of caution here: Beware the Author Whirlpool!
The Author whirlpool is my term for clusters of authors that begin to treat each other as readers. I’m not too fond of newsletter swaps for this reason (and others). I’ll share your book, you share mine. I’ll buy your book, you buy mine.
Authors all hang out together in big Facebook groups where they inadvertently build a readership of other authors and not readers. They pump money into ads and target authors and wonder why their conversions are low. It becomes a whirlpool and continuously flows in on itself but never expands beyond other authors.
Your peers are not your market.
Mentors
You need to learn. Learning and growing as an author happens through formal or informal education. Finding a mentor, teacher, or coach isn’t mandatory to a successful author career, but it sure does speed things up and make them way less painful. Your agent or editor qualifies a mentor as well. Mentors are always more knowledgeable or more experienced than you, and the flow of help runs from mentor to mentee (even if the author is paying for the help).
The best way to find a mentor is to be active in author circles to respectfully and tactfully conduct yourself within those spaces and hold back your urges to defend yourself when receiving feedback. There’s nothing more off-putting to an established writer than a newbie asking for advice and then proceeding to refute each point. No one wants to waste their time teaching someone who does not want to learn.
Hiring someone if you have the funds is the best way to know you’re getting the support you need from someone who believes in your writing and will show up for you as they promise (because you’re paying them and if they don’t show up you will stop paying them).
Family/friends/community
People who aren’t in the writing community don’t often understand the writing community. If I had a dollar every time, someone asked me a silly question or made a stereotypical assumption about what I do…
But here’s the thing with your home-front support.
You don’t need them to support your writing.
You need them to support your time and energy.
So many authors don’t get the support they need at home, but a lot of authors also don’t articulate their need and desire. You hole away behind a computer screen, and your loved ones become resentful that you are distracted and distant, not that you’re writing. You tried to talk to them about your books, and they were dismissive, so you fell silent and steal bits of time here and there, never telling anyone what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Just because your husband doesn’t like your genre doesn’t mean he won’t support you. It might mean he won’t ever read your books, but is your husband your target audience? Not likely. His opinion on your writing isn’t going to be helpful.
But him taking the kids to the park on Saturday morning so you get some time to write? That is what support of your time and energy means.
The real secret here is honest communication. Talk to your family about how much you love writing and how it makes you a better parent/partner/friend. Set real expectations that they can understand around your time and energy, not your books. Be open to compromise and flexible to changing it up.
“I need an hour to work on a project that makes me happy, when can we fit this into our schedule to work for our family?”
“Writing helps me clear my head, gives me a creative outlet and fills me with purpose. When I feel that sense of purpose, it makes me more confident, fulfilled, and excited about life. That makes me show up better as a parent/partner. I need a space of my own in the house to do this work. How can this work for all of us?”
Once you settle on your time and space, protect it.
Be patient but firm with them if you are safe to do so. It takes time to shift expectations and set the foundations for your boundaries. They aren’t going to get it right, right away. Remind them what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how their support is helping.
I tell my 5-year-old that she’s helping me write my book when she’s coloring/reading next to me—that my words are a direct result of her support. I show her how many words I wrote on the screen, which she finds fascinating and is pretty proud of herself for being a part of it.
I report my writing progress to my husband, not as a sarcastic jab or justification, but as if my writing is a job just like his. I ask him how his day was when he gets home and what happened at work.
I started telling him how my day went too in a casual way. No snark, no passive aggressive nonsense that would only make him shut down. I talked about how many words I got down, if they were a struggle, I complained about characters as if they were co-workers and celebrated milestones which helped him understand the process better.
After a while of me doing that, he started asking about it. More than that, he began to understand that I was working toward something that mattered to me. My chatting about it normalized it in my family and extinguished any assumptions he had about what I did behind the computer screen.
Next week is the final post in the 4S Author series and it’s often the things authors skip straight to, which is why I strategically left it for last. See you next week for a chat on SALES.
If you need some extra support, reach out to us here and we’ll help you get back on track with your writing.
Story is arguably the most important part of a writing career. You can be wicked confident and have a ton of money to throw at an in depth marketing plan, but if your story isn’t compelling all the hype will quickly flop.
Now, there’s no possible way to get all the ways to improve your writing skills into a single post. I would never even try.
Instead, I will walk you through how I work with authors to deepen their own stories. Notice I said stories, not writing. Wordsmithing is a skill separate from storytelling in my mind, and the most critical part of writing a page-turner is having a solid story behind your beautiful words.
Great stories are always about compelling character growth. A character starts at point A and ends at point Z, an entirely different person—for better or worse. Humans are drawn to human struggles. We are sucked in by a character in a seemingly impossible situation, and it’s curiosity that drives us to know if they will get through this list of insurmountable obstacles. We absolutely must know what happens next.
As an exercise in character growth we are going to turn to my favourite thing: Trees.
I’m obsessed with trees (I have a giant tree tattooed across my whole back as proof), which I combined with my love of story to create the Character Growth Tree.
Let’s chronicle the growth of your protagonist through trees…
Stay with me here.
The characters are the trees; the story is the forest; the plot is the elements.
The tree has four parts for the purposes of this character lesson—roots, trunk, branches, and leaves.
The Roots are Character Misbeliefs
The roots are invisible but the most vital bit to the tree’s chance of survival. Without roots, there is no tree. Without understanding and developing solid character’s roots, the book you’re writing will not be able to grow and flourish as spectacularly as it could.
I love to poke at character motivations. It’s my whole editing style. Why did the character do that? Why doesn’t she trust men but still is a serial monogamist? Why did he choose this over that? What happened in their life to foster this train of thought? And on and on I go. I drill my authors with questions about the exact details of why their characters think, act, and speak the way they do. They both love and hate me for it.
Because the series of events that shaped a character’s entire belief system before the story begins culminates with the root scene–or the moment the character chooses to go all-in on their misbelief (or the lie/fatal flaw, as some editors call it).
The key to a sturdy root structure for your character is choice. The events in your character’s life do not make them, how they choose to react and respond to those events shapes them. Your character must have agency in their own story. Too many times characters just weather storms that come at them with no active participation in them. Take what happens to your character and analyze what they choose to do with their circumstances.
The Trunk is Character Reactions
The trunk of your character is their foundational choices and reactions. Once you understand their roots and how strongly a character holds tight to their misbeliefs, you can bring them out of the ground and expose them to the elements (the plot that will continuously batter the character’s misbeliefs like wind and rain). This trunk will be the protection they use against the plot assault. Think carefully about how your characters protect themselves. Their actions, choices, and reactions will protect the soft core of vulnerable insecurity that lives beneath the bark’s sharp hardened edges.
It’s completely pointless to know things like what kind of coffee they order at Starbucks unless there is a reason that is relevant to the story. Do they order an iced caramel Frappuccino—even though they think cold coffee is blasphemous—because their friends do? Perhaps they’re terrified of not fitting in, so they suffer through gross ice coffee to keep their popular friends thinking they belong with the popular crowd? Because in that case, their Starbucks order is relevant, not because of what they order, but WHY. They choose to silently suffer to protect their belief that popularity is more important than joy.
Your plot is going to challenge that misbelief. They will grow to realize that their happiness is more important than being popular (if it’s a happy ending), or they will destroy themselves in the effort (if it’s a cautionary ending).
The Branches are Character Behaviours
The branches of your character are their behaviours that result from their misbelief and the protective way they respond to threats against it. Keeping on with the Starbucks analogy, if our character wants to be popular and is willing to drink gross coffee to achieve it, what sort of outward habits would stem from making decisions to follow the crowd? They would be more aware of what others were doing. They’d hesitate before making decisions, ask a lot of questions, or maybe they’re never the first one to speak, instead they wait for their friends to say something first. They lie about having plans and blame it on others, so they don’t have to go to Starbucks and suffer one more sugar cup of yuck but still get to keep their status.
The options are endless, but your character’s behaviours grow directly from their protective reactions to keep their misbelief alive.
The Leaves are Character Mannerisms
The leaves are the outermost layer of your character’s misbelief. The beautiful, colourful distractions from what’s going on beneath the surface. All the ways in which their mannerisms, habits, actions, choices, and misbelief are left to reader interpretation.
Maybe they touch their mouth a lot to stop themselves from talking, or laugh nervously, or stand defensively. They might be twitchy or stutter when asked their opinion. Character mannerisms also grow from environmental circumstances such as sharing a trait with a parent, culture, social group, or geographic location. Still, the core reason the character adopted these habits will always trace back to that character’s root—their misbelief about the world.
What happens next?
Once your characters have all been created, you then have a forest. An interesting tidbit of tree knowledge is that all trees in a forest are interconnected by their root systems. Nutrients are passed back and forth from tree to tree or cut off from the trees that are unlikely to survive, for the greater good of the forest.
In a similar manner all your characters roots, misbeliefs, and mannerisms are going to become intertwined and feed off each other.
This process is how you take your characters and create a story around them that creates a compelling experience for your reader, not just a book to be read. After your readers take in the characters and understand them, they will begin to see how it’s all interconnected beneath the surface, and they’ll be desperate to see how it ends.
Are you looking for help strengthening your characters to create a truly compelling story for your readers? If you’d like to DIY this, you can check out the PRE-WRITING GENIUS or FIVE-POINT STORY MAPPING.
And please know that my very favorite thing to do is to talk writers through their books. You can find information on that HERE.
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