Janalyn Voigt

August 20, 2012August 19, 2012

Cast Your Line to Hook Agents, Editors, and Readers

We writers talk about luring and hooking readers. Makes writing sound a little like a field-and-stream exercise, doesn’t it? In some ways, writing is like fishing. In both cases, you have to step out of your comfort zone, bait your hook, and make your cast. Then you wait for results you can’t see.

In writing, as in fishing, it’s important to know the denizens inhabiting the particular “pond” where you’ve cast your line. It does no good to fish for something that isn’t there. This is why studying publishing trends is important to your survival. Good starting points to catch industry news are at Publisher’s Weekly and the ECPA community site.

In fishing, you bait your hook with delicacies enjoyed by the kind of fish you want. Just because a particular fish exists doesn’t mean you should catch it, though. You might not care for the taste of catfish, for example, but you love trout. Writers who follow every trend in the hope of landing a book contract often leave their interests out of the equation. When it comes to deciding what to offer, don’t pursue soulless commercialism. That may appear attractive, but it’s not sustainable.

For a chance to catch a fish, a fisherman has to ready and throw a line into the water. Similarly, a writer needs to prepare a line, bait a hook, and give a great pitch to ever hope to snag an agent, land a contract, and net readers.

Once that line is in the water, any fisherman watches the pole. If you leave it unattended, when you return you’ll most likely find your hook stripped. That’s because fish nibble at bait without swallowing the hook. A good fisherman knows it’s important to set the hook at just the right moment. It’s one thing to lure a reader into the first chapter of your book. It’s another to have that reader go on to chapter two. Ending each chapter with a new hook will string your reader happily along.

A complaint made by editors is that beyond the first 50 pages, manuscripts often fall apart. Readers want the same thing that editors do—a story that sustains interest throughout its pages. Once you have that, it’s time to go fishing.

July 22, 2012June 17, 2012

Social Media Numbers: How Many Friends and Followers Are Enough?

Numbers are everywhere. They count my blog followers, posts viewed, tweets tweeted, and comments made. Social sites record my friendships and display which and how many of my friends like my updates. To find a total calculation of my online worth, I have only to check my klout score. A writer can also count reviews, rankings, and sales figures. Numbers these days sometimes seem more important than people.

Is it just me, or has the entire connecting and networking world collectively reverted to one huge high school popularity contest?

In the Biblical book of 2 Samuel, King David directed that his fighting men be counted. Joab, the army commander, urged him to reconsider. David overruled Joab, even when his army commanders protested, too. Why did they object? Perhaps they understood David’s motive as pride, the very sin that catapulted Lucifer from heaven.

David would listen to no one, and so 800,000 able-bodied men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah were enumerated. When David received the report, his conscience smote him, but it was too late to take back his sin. In the plague that followed, 70,000 of David’s people died as punishment for his sin and also for Israel’s rebellion against God.

Does this mean that keeping track of statistics is wrong? Yes, and no. Remember that at other times in the Bible, God directed the people to be counted. Knowing your numbers can be a useful tool, but pride in numbers does not please God. He wants us to look to His strength and not our own. He’s the same God who cut the huge army Gideon gathered down to size just to prove that victory would come not from human might but from the hand of God (Judges 7).

Once my pastor lifted my small daughter into his arms and pointed out to the congregation that it was her birthday and she was now four. She turned an unblinking stare on him. “I am not a number.” Her pronouncement, spoken with conviction, reached to the back of the church. While the congregation laughed, my face heated, and I sank down in my seat. Now I wonder if my preschooler wasn’t onto something many adults fail to understand.

I am not a number, and neither are you.

June 18, 2012June 20, 2012

How to Captivate Readers

Wonderment

Children’s eyes

See marvels,

Creation

Born anew,

Wonderment

In each small

Everything.

Give me, Lord,

A child’s view.

©Janalyn Voigt

The cup of tea at your elbow grows cold.The dryer buzzes, but you hardly notice. The clock ticks past the time to make dinner, but you turn the page and read on, captured by the author’s creative world.

When they can make readers forget they’re reading, books rank high on purchase lists. Figuring out how this happens is well worth the effort. Can such a thing be identified? Bringing the reader so fully into a story would seem to take an elusive blend of mastery and pixie dust. Besides, don’t readers’ preferences dictate which books will draw them in?

I would have agreed to this idea a week ago, but not any longer. You see, the book I’m currently reading for a literary contest is a young adult story. With my teen years forever behind me, I am not a target reader for this book. In fact, when I first picked it up, I groaned inwardly. While being required as a literary judge to read a slew of books might seem an envious pursuit, the bare truth is that sometimes I wind up stuck with a book I’d otherwise never open. It would be arrogant of me to judge another author’s writing without actually reading it, and so in a fit of fortitude I slog doggedly onward until the merciful end.

If that had been the case with this particular book, I wouldn’t be writing this post. It wasn’t. I did have to push past a slow start, but then the story enveloped me like a warm shawl on a chilly evening. I read late into the night, turning pages in a way that would have gratified the author. As I mentioned, I am not this author’s target audience, so I may never crack one of her books, but the next day I found her Goodreads page and became a fan. Why? Because her writing transported me in a way few books have. And I read a lot of books. If my experience is anything to go by, preference has little to do with captivating a reader.

What does, then? I asked myself this question with an interest not in the least academic. I want to apply this writer’s secret sauce to my own writing. I read the rest of the book with that goal in mind. What I discovered rocked me to the core.

Apart from the necessities of craft and mastery, two distinct factors elevated the story: a unique writing voice empowered by a vivid imagination. The author’s strong sense of self expressed without reserve resonated within her fully imagined story.

In these days of rapid writing, let’s not forget to add art to craft. The demands on you to produce and promote can steal the soul from your writing, if you let it. Feeding your inner artist is the only way to tap the wellspring of creative life within and produce enduring works. That will look different for each of us, but one thing remains true for all. The way forward is backward. At least mentally, let yourself step backward into childhood and discover the world with fresh eyes.

What books have you read lately that have surprised you? Transported you back to your childhood?

May 25, 2012May 25, 2012

How to Plot by the Numbers

Show, don’t tell. Watch your participial phrases. Don’t head hop. Whatever you do, stay within manuscript length recommendations. For a writer scrambling to keep up with all the dos and don’ts, the writing profession can seem full of arbitrary rules. And when someone breaks said rules and goes on to win awards, it’s tempting to follow suit. One standard you shouldn’t buck, however, is a publishing house’s word-length requirements.
Why? Shouldn’t you let your story tell itself without regard for its length?

If you will be the one footing the bill, you’re free to make your manuscript whatever length you prefer. But if you hope a publisher will pay to produce your book, it’s important to understand that additional pages cost extra money, and not just in terms of paper and ink. It takes several editors (who are on the payroll) to review and guide you in polishing a manuscript. Proofreaders don’t work for free either. If your last name is Tolstoy or Michener you might get away with submitting a beefy manuscript. The rest of us need to keep the bottom line in mind.

Book stores base the number of copies of a particular title to order on standard widths. If a publisher fails to adhere to these widths, it throws off a bookstore’s shelving efforts. Besides this, writing your novel shorter or longer than genre readers expect can negatively influence their buying decisions.

Aren’t these considerations crass? What about your inner artist?

Your inner artist will recover, and you’ll even grow as a writer from keeping to practical guidelines.

But how on earth can you tell how long a novel will be until you’ve written it?

You can’t know entirely, but I’ve developed a method that helps me write to a specific length. Even if you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer and allergic to plotting, my technique may help you. Here’s a screen shot of one of my working calendars. CS stands for my current novel, and the number represents the scene I’ll write that day. (I number them in my plot outline.) I find it helps to include upcoming deadlines and events as well. The DS represents DawnSinger, the first novel in my epic fantasy series, Tales of Faeraven. The Renewal mentioned was a conference I attended.

1. Estimate your desired word count. If you don’t know what that might be, read publishers’ submission guidelines at their sites. As a starting point, here’s an agent-maintained list of word count guidelines. Find the happy middle ground in a given range. That way you can guard against running too-short or too-long.

EXAMPLE: A publisher gives the range of 80,000-100,000 words for a historical romance. The middle ground to aim for is 90,000 words.

2. If you already know the average number of words you write per scene, use that figure. If you don’t know this number, write the first 50 pages of your book, then estimate the average number of words per scene. You can also base your figures on 1,500 words per scene, but eventually, you’ll want to check your own average against this figure and make adjustments as needed. It’s okay to round your numbers.

EXAMPLE: Approximately 12,500 / about 8 scenes = 1,500 words per scene

3. Divide your average words per scene into your desired total word count. The answer is the number of scenes to brainstorm.

EXAMPLE: 90,000 / 1,500 = 60 SCENES

4. Develop your plot to include the number of scenes you should write for your desired total word count. Write just a few sentences to describe each scene. This keeps you from bogging down while plotting and gives you a flexible guideline you can easily adjust as you write.

What’s next?

To learn more about my system of plotting, read How to Plot a Novel in Three Acts at my Live Write Breathe site.

Are you more of a plotter or a seat-of-the pants writer?

April 16, 2012April 17, 2012

7 Steps to Writing a Story in Scenes

Stage You’ll notice I didn’t include the word “easy” in the title of this post. There are not seven “easy” steps to writing a story in scenes. It takes hard work. I suspect that’s why so many writers substitute narrative summary for scenes.

Of course, when you’re not sure of the components that make up a scene, it’s harder to write one. If your writing seems flat or passive and you don’t know why, you may have omitted one or more of the following:

Real Time: Even if you’re writing in third person using past-tense verbs, lay out actions in sequential order. As a rule, especially in the beginning of your novel, don’t jump backward or forward in the story. If you do, you’ll interrupt the flow of time and disconcert your reader. For an unusual perspective on time flow in fiction, read Teach Your Writing Voice to Sing.
Characters: This element may seem like a “no-brainer.” (Of course a scene will have characters.) But hear me out. Let’s say you’re writing about a lynch mob ready to hang an outlaw. You could state the bald fact, or you could pick faces from the crowd. Maybe the outlaw killed Jack’s brother, robbed Otis’s store, and held a gun to Chet’s face just for fun. Having these fellows, even as minor characters, call out their grievances makes the incident personal and, therefore, more immediate. For a unique and efficient perspective on creating characters, read Dianne Christner’s Creating Characters With Personality.
Showing: You experience the world through your senses. Similarly, for readers to enter your written world, you must draw them through their senses. Labeling emotions is telling. It’s also lazy writing. Instead of stating that Mary is sad, show her reasons for sadness, and then have her react physically and perhaps with introspection. Just don’t do this in a clichéd manner. Maybe she doesn’t weep but instead grows quiet or withdraws. David is angry but rather than punch a hole in the wall he exterminates every weed in his yard. For more tips, watch my video: 5 Ways to Show Rather Than Tell in Fiction Writing.
Setting: New writers often neglect this element needed to ground every scene in place and time. Using too much or not enough description is a common mistake. With too few setting details the reader will feel curiously weightless, like an astronaut floating in a zero-gravity chamber. Characters will seem like “talking heads” lost somewhere in space. If you overload your readers with description, you’ll weigh them down so badly they’ll barely make progress through the scene. Finding a happy balance takes practice. It helps to have feedback from great critique partners. Sarah Baughman tackles the topic of How To Balance Dialogue and Description.
Action: Something physical happens, with or without dialogue. Some writers call actions that accompany dialogue “beats.” Using beats instead of tags to identify speakers helps you bring a scene to life. For tips on writing dynamic action scenes, Bryan Thomas Schmidt has you covered. Read his Write Tip: 10 Tips For Writing Good Action Scenes.
Dialogue: Too many writers neglect dialogue, which is a shame. It’s a vital tool for characterization and for imparting information (provided you don’t try to shoehorn it into your reader). You can even use dialogue to give glimpses of back story in a realistic way that doesn’t disrupt your story’s flow. For more on dialogue, read Sharon Lavy’s Do You Hear The Voices?
Purpose: Every scene must further your plot. If a scene exists merely to dump information on the unsuspecting reader, it has no real purpose and will seem aimless. Cut all such scenes and work only the information your reader needs to know into the story when your reader needs to know it. Jody Hedlund offers great advice on strategically selecting scenes in How To Make Your Book Play Out Like a Movie.

Telling a cohesive story through scenes is an art that, once mastered, will breathe life into your writing.

What are your tips for writing scenes?

March 14, 2012March 19, 2012

How I Really Landed a Book Contract

Blackberries As a child visiting the family homestead, I went on numerous blackberry-picking adventures with my Missouri cousins. Toting buckets, we ventured deep into woods thick with brambles while keeping an eye out for iron pyrite nuggets to load down our pockets.

We returned, hours later, to be met by Aunt Ethel and her various soaps and ointments. Despite our bites and bugs and itches, we had little to show for our efforts but purple stains on our face and hands. I still remember the taste of sun-warmed berries cramming my mouth, handful by greedy handful. I remember, too, the sting of berry juice in the long red welts I collected.

Exchanging pain for sweetness seemed a reasonable trade to me as a child. I’m more circumspect now.

My life as a writer has had its share of thorns. I’ve tried hard to make my dreams come true, which means that I’ve gathered my share of rejections. When my golden moment finally came, and I held a contract for my first nonfiction book in my hand, it seemed surreal.

The contract fell through.

Looking back with the knowledge I have now, I probably had a lucky escape from a disreputable offer. As I learned in my childhood, all that glitters may be fool’s gold. I knew none of this then. All I understood was that I had held my dream in my hands and watched it crumble to nothing.

I gave up writing. For life. If I didn’t try, I couldn’t fail again. My scratches wouldn’t have to sting.

But I tasted no sweetness either.

Years went by and still I did not write. Had I not made time for daily devotions, I might not have returned to writing at all. I prayed to understand God’s plan for my life, and a funny little question formed in the back of my mind: I’m not supposed to be writing, now am I? I pushed the irritating thought away, but it returned. No matter how I tried to ignore the idea, it would not be stilled. To appease my conscience, I gave lip service to writing again but avoided doing so. And when several people invited me to join the same writing group, Northwest Christian Writers (NCWA), I expressed an interest but put it off.

And then, one morning while in prayer, I surrendered my fears to God.

At the first NCWA meeting I attended, I felt lost. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what they were doing while I had no plans beyond showing up at meetings. After several months, I’d identified a goal. I would finish writing the epic fantasy series I’d abandoned so many years ago. This January I signed a contract with Harbourlight Books for publication of DawnSinger and WayFarer, the first novels in my Tales of Faeraven series.

In risking the thorns again, I’ve learned to approach my desires with more caution. I no longer have writing ambitions; I have a calling to write, something altogether different. Although I’ve attained it, my first goal is no longer publication, but rather to tell my stories with truth and grace. If I succeed in this, I’ve accomplished a different and better dream, one that’s worth a few scratches.

February 21, 2012March 15, 2012

How to Find an Audience for Your Novel

Chances are, you’ve heard it before: if you want to sell, know your market. For some, that’s a no-brainer. Those who write romances, for example, can usually name an audience. But what if you haven’t yet settled into a niche or write across genres? If finding your target audience is a sticking point for you, believe me, I understand.

My debut novel, DawnSinger, first in the Tales of Faeraven series (releasing in 2012 from Harbourlight Books) is considered epic fantasy. Although with strong elements of romance, suspense, history and adventure, it really combines genres. Some people will tell you to avoid breaking into publishing with an unusual project like mine. Listen carefully when they speak. Not that I’d have done things any differently. You see, this story breathed into my soul years ago and wouldn’t let me go, even when I quit writing. Ah, but that’s another tale. Unless you can cite a similar one, you’re better off writing something more conventional.

I confess: at first I wrote DawnSinger for its story without giving much thought to its readers. This showed in my inability to articulate who they might be. In my biased opinion, my novel’s target audience incorporated everyone. I soon discovered editors’ opinions of such a grandiose claim, especially from an emerging author. It’s not really true anyway. No book in existence appeals to all readers. I asked myself some hard questions and, in the editing process, adapted DawnSinger for a readership I identified. Most of my life I’ve done things backwards, and developing my story for its audience was no exception.

My experience begs a question. Should you write for others or yourself? Is it better to plan with an audience in mind or oppose this mindset? If you write “from the heart” won’t readers find you anyway? In other words, should you pursue readers or draw them?

Neither. And both. I’ll explain.

If you only focus on ensnaring an audience without regard for your calling as a literary artist you risk writing soulless drivel. Readers know instinctively whether you have a deep feeling for your subject or not. Don’t even try to pretend with them. For this reason, It’s best not to write to trends for which you have no passion. When you consider the opportunity cost, it’s not worth it. What is an opportunity cost? The price you pay in lost time because you’re not writing something that suits you better. If you’re anything like me, you can come up with more ideas than you’ll ever write in a lifetime. When deciding whether to chase a trend, bear that in mind.

That’s not to say you should let your inner artist run amok with total disregard for marketability (assuming you want a readership). Don’t let the proverbial pendulum swing too far the other direction. Why not? Because writing to publish isn’t just about art. It’s also about business. You want to identify your target audience for the same reason an acquisition editor searches for certain types of manuscripts. Each publishing house caters to the tastes of a specific readership, and so should you.

To avoid frustration as a communicator, you should have both a.) something to say and b.) someone willing to hear it. Identifying A will help you find B. Name the fire that burns within you and you’ll identify those whose lives will ignite from a spark you light. Reach deep to tap your passions. That’s where you’ll find your readers.