In this episode we cover: 

• Challenges and considerations when writing true crime
• Legal implications of the true crime genre
• Researching and fact-checking
• Story structure of true crime
• Building suspense and tension

This week’s question is: what’s your favorite social media platform and why?

Recommendation of the week is: How To Write Short Romance: The quick and easy guide to writing Instalove by Nell Alexander

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

***this show uses affiliate links

Links I mentioned:

Preorder A Game of Romance and Ruin

ALLi Blog Manager Role

Find out more about Pepper Anne:

Author Website

The Notorious Texas Swindler

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

TikTok

Rebel of the Week is: Holger

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com

No new patrons this week, but a big thank you to my existing patrons. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack 

The post 192 The Dangers of Writing True Crime with Pepper Anne appeared first on Sacha Black.

In this episode we cover: 

• What memoir is
• What memoir story structure is
• Where the line between your truth, factual truth and story truth sits
• How to use fairytales to help you write your memoir
• How to include moments we’re not proud of authentically

This week’s question is: what would you call your memoir if you ever wrote one?

Recommendation of the week is: Effortless: Make it Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown

Apple

Kobo

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

***This podcast uses affiliate links

Links and events I mentioned are:

The Rebel Author Diaries Anthology Submissions are now open.

Find out more here.

Interview with Kristina: What’s the Difference Between Copyediting and Structural Editing?

Find out more about Janelle on:

Instagram

Facebook

Janelle’s Website

The Personal Mythmaking Podcast

The Art of Personal Mythmaking Course

Rebel of the Week is: Aime Sund

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or instagram me @sachablackauthor

No new patrons this week but a big thank you to returning patron Cindy. A big thank you to all my existing patrons. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 088 How to Write Memoir with Janelle Hardy appeared first on Sacha Black.

This week’s question is:

What’s your favorite podcast? Hit me with your faves, drop links, give them some love.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Don’t forget I’m joining Jenna Moreci and Meg LaTorre on the iWriterly YouTube channel TONIGHT (March 4^th2020 at 3:00 pm EST) (8pm GMT) for a live stream all about how to plan a book launch. Mark your calendars you don’t want to miss this. ⁠

DIY MFA 101 COURSE IS CLOSING IN TWO DAYS

To find out more about the course, use my affiliate link here.

Book recommendation this week is J’s new book Three Story Method

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/three-story-method

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2Ttm87w

Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/2VA2sBM

Listener Rebel of the Week is Katie Forrest

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

No new Patrons today. Thank you so much for joining me and thank you to all my current patrons, who help to ensure that this podcast continues.

If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can support the show by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY

13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft a Superbad Villain

More about the book

Your hero is not the most important character in your book. Your villain is.

Are you fed up of drowning in two-dimensional villains? Frustrated with creating clichés? And failing to get your reader to root for your villain?

In 13 Steps to Evil, you’ll discover: 

• How to develop a villain’s mindset
• A step-by-step guide to creating your villain from the ground up
• Why getting to the core of a villain’s personality is essential to make them credible
• What pitfalls and clichés to avoid as well as the tropes your story needs

Finally, there is a comprehensive writing guide to help you create superbad villains. Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned writer, this book will help power up your bad guy and give them that extra edge.

These lessons will help you master and control your villainous minions, navigate and gain the perfect balance of good and evil, as well as strengthening your villain to give your story the tension and punch it needs.

If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.

I want to read 13 Steps to Evil

How to Structure a Novel

Find out more about J on his website theauthorlife.com

Listen to:

The Career Author Podcast

The Writers Well Podcast 

Writers Ink Podcast

Author Life Podcast

Sacha Black
Hello and welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast. Today I am joined by Jay Thorne. Jay has published 2 million words and has sold more than 185,000 books worldwide. He is an official member of the science fiction and fantasy Writers of America, the horror Writers Association and the Great Lakes association of horror writers forum and a BA in American history from the University of Pittsburgh and an MA from Duquesne University. He is a full time writer, part time professor at John Carroll University, co owner of Multan universe media podcaster FM radio DJ musician and I satified story grid nut. Welcome.

J Thorn
Thank you, Sacha.

Sacha Black
Thank you so much for coming on. I am trying to maintain an air of cool But I just wanted to say, for anybody listening, J has like a gazillion podcasts. And they are all exceptionally brilliant. I think I listened to at least three or four of them. And so before we start, let’s just share all of your amazing podcasts and you want to tell everybody what they are?

J Thorn
Alright the one, the one I do myself, it’s more monthly. It’s called The Author Life. And that’s sort of a long form essay style podcast episode. And then I have three that I do with other people. So I have the author podcast that I do with Zach Zach Bohannon and he was on your show. Yeah. And I do the writer as well with my good friend Rachael Herron. And I just started one well just started I guess a few months ago with JD Barker called writers Inc. That’s the newest one and that is an interview format podcast.

Sacha Black
Yes. And I think we we we probably have to mention your your slam dunk home run of a guest last week go on tell everyone.

J Thorn
I think you’re talking about Mr. James Patterson.

Sacha Black
Oh, yes. I might be. Yeah. Oh, gee, when I heard you had James Patterson on your podcast, I was like, Whoa, like amazing and I have listened. And yeah, everybody needs to not stop what they’re today. But after you finish listening, go listen to all of the podcasts because I am a huge fan of them all.

J Thorn
And I have to give credit to JD he is a he’s fearless. He’s the guy who asks people to come on the writers Inc. and he is absolutely fearless. He will ask anyone and anyone he wants to be on he will ask and so many of them say yes.

Sacha Black
It’s like on a scale of like one to shitting yourself. Where were you on this?

J Thorn
I there was… I don’t know like, I don’t know if you could hear in the interview. There are a few moments. I just started tripping on my myself and I had to just say, like, just shut up and let him talk. Just, Just shut up and let them talk because I was starting to get the panic. And the guy’s been through a handful of interviews. And he and he totally took charge. And I was just like, I took my hands off the wheel. I’m like, Alright, Patterson, you drive. I can’t, you know, it was it was intimidating. And he’s a great guy. And and it was a fantastic interview, and I’m really grateful that he took the time to do it. But for me as an interviewer and a podcaster. I finished that I told JD I’m like, I kind of feel like I don’t need anybody else after that.

Sacha Black
Yeah. There is literally nothing. I don’t think there’s anyone Well, maybe JK Rowling just just from my perspective, because it was such a huge, the books were out. I was almost the same age as Harry Potter as the effects were coming out. So for me, they’re kind of you know, but yeah, oh my god. Like Sarah say James Patterson. Let’s talk about what we’re here to talk about. So first of all, for anybody who doesn’t know who you are, and who the hell are these people? Can you please tell everybody a little bit more about you, your journey and you know, your books were and how you got to where you are now?

J Thorn
Yeah, I don’t quite know. So I’ll do my best is a lot of it’s a mystery to me as well. But I give you the the bullet point version is I started, I published my first book, The KDP in 2009. So it was just just prior to what became known as the Kindle Gold Rush. And so I just had a sort of a 10 year anniversary as far as publishing goes, I left my full time teaching job in 2017. So it took me about eight years or so, to get to the point to I was ready to do that, although technically wasn’t ready. I don’t know why my wife didn’t divorce me, but I was making about $200 a month in royalties. I had two teenagers, two kids in private school, a mortgage and a wife and I quit my salary job, and which is not good advice and not the thing you should do. But that’s what I did. And, and I think part of that now is I consider myself sort of an author and a teacher for at least a year. So after I left, I wanted nothing to do with teaching. And now I’ve come back around and I’m sort of applying my skill set as an author to help other authors and it’s a whole different kind of teaching, and just totally loving it now.

Sacha Black
It’s so funny how so many of the things that we hate about our prior lives end up coming back to us like I used to do project management. And as much as I really desperately hard to rebel against, though, that you know, those skills or those systems or structures that I had in place that I can’t seem to quite let go fully and, you know, those structures of skills keep coming back in and it infuriates me. So you are about to launch a book called three story method. Is that is that the full title? What’s the full title?

J Thorn
It’s not the full title. But I don’t think we’ve nailed down the full title yet. So that something about fundamentals of fiction, I should probably know what that is. Yeah, three story method we can go that’s that safe. I know that for sure.

Sacha Black
Okay. Super. Can you tell everyone a little bit about the concept behind the book and what inspired you to write it?

J Thorn
Yeah. The process of creating fiction is something that I’ve been working on for a decade and when Zach and I got together, Zach came into the industry about around 2014 I think he was about five years after me. The one sack and I started co writing, we had to systematize. As a former project manager, you can appreciate the fact that if you’re working with other people, you need a system of something like if you’re by yourself, that’s one thing, but anytime you involve a second person or third person, you need a system. And so we kind of informally and organically started to systematize, all of our processes. And at one point, we said to each other, you know, this would be really helpful for other people, for other authors, and we started testing now we do authors on a train, we do world building retreats. And so we started teaching this process, and the response was overwhelming. People were saying, like, wow, that really makes sense. Like, I can use that I understand it. And I kind of had this revelation, this sort of awakening where I was, like, you know, as authors, we try to overcomplicate everything and story just isn’t that complicated. It’s pretty simple. And and yet, we try and make things way more complicated than they have to be. So the The inspiration was okay, let’s simplify this process. And then let’s teach people in a way that they understand it. Because the other thing that I found out and it’s Zach and I saw firsthand was the most prolific, and the best, most talented authors aren’t necessarily the best teachers. Those are two different skill sets. So whether it’s as an author or a welder, or a mechanic, sometimes the people who are really good at what they do, don’t know how they do it. And if you ask them, they’ll go I don’t know I just do it. Like they can’t teach other people how to do it. And there was there is and there was a lot of methodology books and systems out there. And some of them were by brilliant people who really have no… didn’t have the skills to teach other people how to use it. So it really was this idea of Okay, let’s streamline the process. Let’s make it simple. And let’s teach people how to do it and give them the tools that they need.

Sacha Black
Amazing and let’s go ahead Little bit deeper. But obviously without giving you know the entire book away, can you give listeners a bit of an overview of what the three story method is?

J Thorn
Yes, it’s sort of a two pronged approach because what you have is your approaching story at the same level. And scenes are really important. Like if you can’t write a good scene, it doesn’t matter what kind of wonderful world that you build, or any kind of plot that you have a reader picks up and at the end of chapter one, they don’t want to turn the page, nothing else matters. So part of three story method is dealing with three elements at the scene level. And then we come up a level and we look at it from a higher altitude. And we have three general things that we look at from the higher level. So for the global story arc, we’re looking at plot and structure is kind of one level. Then we have genre and theme as another level, or story and then character and world. So you have those sort of three elements. Those are the high level at the scene level. All you have the three elements of conflict, choice and consequence. And really, if if you don’t even want to buy the book, and if you remember nothing else from from this podcast, if you can nail conflict choice and consequence 95% of what you write will be stellar.

Sacha Black
Yeah. And that was actually my favorite section in the book was around conflict choice and consequence. And you have them in a very nice triangle. And but I wonder if we could go a bit deeper specifically on the choice, conflict and consequence and, and, you know, look at how those interplay and what those mean for a writer writing a scene and I guess structuring, like that book as well?

J Thorn
Yes, well, I’ve been working with clients for a number of years now. And it not only in my own work in my co writers work and in clients where the biggest struggle I see from other authors at the scene level is not having a strong enough choice. So if we back up a second, conflict, choice and consequence are built on Aristotle’s idea that stories must have a beginning, a middle and an end, which again, sound everyone’s like, duh, right? But when you sit down to write, you’d be surprised how many scenes get cranked out that are missing one of those three elements, or they don’t have a strong enough one. So if you think about story being all about conflict, like you have to have something happening or you don’t have a story, and again, that sounds super simple, but the choice is the middle element. So the conflict is, in any scene, what pushes the protagonist or the main character out of their normal routine or out of their habit that is your conflict your initial conflict, that should then build to a choice what decision must the character make and your characters must make a decision in every single scene, and then the consequences naturally what follows from that. So the key on the choice is it has to be a question that you plant in the readers mind. And the question has to be, what would I do in this situation? That is what’s going to push a reader to say, well, I want to see what happens. And the way that you do that is you have, you have to, there’s two parts to that, you make that decision extremely difficult. Now, it doesn’t mean the stakes have to be really high every time but the options that they’re facing should be equally good or equally bad. And if you do your choice, right, you can get people arguing, you could get readers arguing over what that character should do. And it could even be dependent on the context. So maybe, maybe a reader would do one thing one time but do the opposite. If the situation was different, and that’s it, that’s the key. You want to make your choice as difficult as possible and your protagonist, because that will be the most interesting to the reader.

Sacha Black
And then obviously, there must always be a consequence for whatever That decision is right. So can you give me an example? I think you use Star Wars quite a lot in the book. Can you give me a worked example of how this conflict choice and consequence plays out? And obviously most people well, I’m assuming most people have seen Star Wars so they’ll they’ll be able to, you know, follow.

J Thorn
I know, we have to give a 1977. If you haven’t seen Star Wars A New Hope yet, you might want hit pause on this. Yeah. I’m gonna spoil it and tell you that Obi Wan Kenobi is killed by Darth Vader. That’s the spoiler. That’s a really pivotal scene not only in in the movie, but in the hero’s journey archetype. And for Luke Skywalker is the protagonist. And I think it’s like it’s a great example of a difficult choice. Now, it has high stakes, not every scene will. But this what happens is, if you all remember from the movie, a Darth Vader and Obi Wan are having their lightsaber duel on in the middle of the Death Star, and Luke along with I think Han Solo might be with them and chewy. They they arrive. And it’s not verbalized. But Luke has a choice, right? He either interferes with what’s happening and gets involved in the conflict. Or he waits and waits it out to see what happens. And if you think about that, it’s an incredibly difficult choice because Obi Wan is his mentor. He’s been training him. But now he’s facing like the most evil villain in the universe. So if Luke, Luke could bring harm to himself or to others, if he interferes, so that that’s one level of consequence. But clearly, Darth Vader is more powerful, stronger. Obi Wan’s an old man, so if Luke does nothing, his mentor’s probably going to die. And if Luke gets involved, he’s also risking Princess Leia and his job is to get laid off the Death Star. Because she’s the hope for the rebellion. So that’s a perfect example of an incredibly difficult choice where you as, as the viewer, you’re like, oh, gosh, what does he do? And it’s kind of cringe worthy. And that’s a perfect example of a difficult choice.

Sacha Black
And the thing that I really gave me a bit of an epiphany is that the consequence needs to change things forever. So you can’t you can’t take a step back.

J Thorn
You can’t undo it.

Sacha Black
Yeah, exactly. You can’t undo it. And so the choice that sorry, the con, I gotta get this in the right order. The conflict, choice, consequence, should be used throughout every scene. Is that right?

J Thorn
That’s correct. Yes.

Sacha Black
So how can writers use this in conjunction with their plotting, let’s say they’re plotting, and how can they you know, what tips are there for making sure that they have enough information and they’re plotting, you know, before they come to the page?

J Thorn
Yeah. In the most simplest form, I would have an outline or a set of story beats. And for every scene, I would write one bullet point for conflict, one for choice, one for consequence. Now I know that you know people who are more Panthers or discovery writers, they, they might want to come to a blank page. But I feel like if you’re writing a 2000 word scene, and you’re putting 10 words down on the page, you’re going to pants 1990 of them. So there’s even if you have just those three things mapped out, there’s still so much room for you in the scene. But at least you know what you’re going for, you know, how the scene is going to start, you know, the decision the characters going to face and then you know the outcome, which will set you up for the next scene. So I would say the very bare minimum, that’s really all you need. And if you do that much, and just and you’re still pantser, I think that’s going to give you just enough structure to get through without, like, locking up or having writer’s block.

Sacha Black
Yeah, and I suppose if there are some true rebels out there who really don’t even want to do that, I suppose they could use it as a check mechanism, when they go back to review each scene to make sure that they have, you know, a conflict beat, a choice beat and a consequence beat.

J Thorn
Yes, you absolutely could do that.

Sacha Black
Um, so what mistakes Do you think authors make when it comes to structure and plotting?

J Thorn
Well, I think if you’re talking specifically about plotting, I think this is a place where you need to be in the Goldilocks zone, I think you need to be moderate. I think you need to be somewhere in the middle I, I find authors who struggle are on the ends of the spectrum, they’re either writing out a 30,000 word outline, and at that point is basically a draft or they they have so little that they don’t know where they’re going. And so I think if you can kind of stay towards the middle and like I said, give yourself give yourself enough that you you know, where the scene is going to begin You know, what the decision is going to be and then how is going to end that’s kind of that’s kind of what you want. So that’s the biggest mistake I see. It’s just being on the on the ends of the spectrum.

Sacha Black
Let’s bring all of this together what tips and tricks do you have for you know structure and or anything else you want to add basically about the three story method and how it can help writers in structuring their stories better.

J Thorn
I think the the simplest thing you can do and it’s completely free if you check out The Career Author podcast, Zach and I, I don’t know if it’ll be wrapped up by the time completely wrapped up by the time this airs, but it’ll be pretty close. I think. We did what we’re calling an influencer series. So we looked at the story methodologies that really influenced us and influence three story method and and that if you listen to those episodes, you’re going to get a nice overview of what those methods are and how they work. And I think that’s a great place to start. So for example, the first influencer episode we did was Aristotle’s poetics. We looked at The Hero’s Journey both Campbell and Vogler’s interpretations, the Virgin’s promise with Kim Hudson and we looked at story by Robert McKee. And those sort of are the basis for three story methods. I would say to people, go listen to those podcast episodes. And that’ll start to kind of whet your appetite for what a story structure can be and how you can use it.

Sacha Black
Yeah, and I’ve listened to the Aristotle one and it made me buy the Aristotle poetics. So cheers for spending my money. Yeah, no, it was excellent. They say, and it was also interesting to see all of the stuff behind it. There is a bit of that in the book as well, but it was interesting to see where all the stuff behind it. Yes, um, okay, well, this is The Rebel the Podcast, so tell me about a time you unleash your inner rebel.

J Thorn
Well, I have to ask if I can tell you about a time I released my outer rebel Would that be okay? Yeah. Okay, you’re gonna love this. My wife makes fun of me all the time. And I’m not saying this works 100% of the time, but it works enough that I keep doing it. Alright, so here’s how you can be a rebel. Anytime you want something, let’s say you want a lower rate for your cell phone, or you want to decrease your cable cost or you want to, you want to get an extra package for your insurance. What you do is you call customer service, and you don’t ask them, you tell them what they’re going to do. thinking it’s no way this is gonna work, and I’m telling you it does. It doesn’t work every time. I perfect example, I was paying like $95 a month for my cable bill and I have like cable and internet. So I called the company and like customer service answers and like yeah, how can we help you? I’m like, let me tell you what you’re gonna do. And this is exactly how I said it. I was like, really upbeat and positive. I’m like, I’m paying so much from for my cable right now. So you’re going to drop it to 65 bucks a month. And she’s like, um, I can ask him like, No, you don’t have to ask just you just gonna go ahead and do it right now. And she’s like, um, hold on a second, and she comes back and she’s like, I found a voucher that will give you you know, whatever it was $35 off. So I’ll apply that to your account. Would that be okay? I’m like, splendid.

Sacha Black
No way, yeah, I am truly speechless.

J Thorn
you have to try it. Now. It’s, um, if you want to work up to it, like you could do it in person. So like, if you go into a coffee shop, and you’re like, let me tell you what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna I’m gonna pay for the small you’re gonna put you’re gonna put it in a large cup. That’s hard to do. And but if you start on the phone, it’s easier to do that pick an account that you’re paying too much money and just call customer service and tell them what they’re going to do and that’s unleashing your outer and your inner rebel.

Sacha Black
My God, there must be like some psychology around the you know the sort of affirmative statements or something where you give somebody no good. I have literally in awe of your rebellious nature.

J Thorn
to you have to be forceful but polite, and you have to be upbeat and positive. So you can’t like scream at them, but you just you were like, let me tell you what you’re gonna do. You get them all pumped up, and they’re like, and they just do it. And I’m telling you it’s happened enough that it’s not a fluke. And not every time but enough that I’m like that works.

Sacha Black
That is like a recipe for wealth domination. I am so impressed like I am taking notes right now. Oh my god, I think this is maybe my favorite rebel story ever. Sorry everyone else.

J Thorn
Well, I you could probably do you know me well enough to know that I don’t like following the rules. I’m kind of a rebel at heart. And so that’s one way you can kind of break me just yeah, call them and tell them. Don’t ask for Permission just tell them what they’re gonna do.

Sacha Black
I love I love it. Yeah, absolutely love it. I am I am literally gonna drop you an email when I’ve done this and be like, yes. Yeah.

J Thorn
Yeah, here’s, here’s where it worked or like, here’s where it didn’t work, but try it.

Sacha Black
Yes. And if any listener would like to also participate in our new game and then please do tweet. Okay, tell listeners where they can find out more about you your books and your podcasts.

J Thorn
Yeah, everything about me is that theauthorlife.com. That’s where I have all my podcasts and information and things like that. And if they’re interested in three story method, we have a landing page up at three story method calm. Amazing.

Sacha Black
And just one more time the names of your podcast Justin and because I will also link to them.

J Thorn
Yes, The Author Life, The Writers Well, The Career Author podcast and Writers Ink.

Sacha Black
Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really appreciate it.

J Thorn
Pleasure. I had a blast.

Sacha Black
Yeah, I’m still. Okay. Right. Thank you to all of the patrons supporting the show. If you would like to get early access to all of the episodes, then you can do so by visiting www.patreon.com/SachaBlack and that is Sacha with a C. Thank you very much to everybody listening. I’m Sacha Black. You are listening to J Thorn and this was The Rebel Author Podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like these from the Rebel Author Podcast archive:

011 Authors and Money: How to Quit Your Job and Write Full-Time with Zach Bohannon

010 How to Be an Author on Youtube with Jenna Moreci

The post 018 How to Structure a Novel with J Thorn appeared first on Sacha Black.

In the intro, I talk about the two blog posts I’ve been pulling together on audio resources. The first one is a huge list of resources I’ve been bingeing my way through and I recommend for anyone trying to either grow their knowledge of audio creation or trying to produce DIY audiobooks.

Huge Audiobook Creation Resource List

The second one will take you step by step through the creation of my audio booth in my very very tiny office! That post will be published on 28th October 2019, if you’re reading this post after that date, you can use this link.

I also talk about Lindsay Buroker’s return to the world of podcasting. I used to love listening to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast, but it stopped about six months ago. I’m delighted to tell you she’s back with Jo Lallo and Andrea Pearson, in their new podcast is called Six Figure Authors. Their tagline:

Six Figure Authors is the podcast that helps you take your writing career to the next level.

Listener Rebel of the Week was Matthew Goodall, you can find out more about Matthew on his Facebook and website.

If you’d like to get exclusive content and all the episodes early you can by joining me on Patreon.

***

How To Self-Edit With Kristina Stanley

You can find out more about Kristina Stanley on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

If you want to find out more about her Story editing software, visit Fictionary here.

Find Kristina’s books here.

One of Kristina’s recommendations was The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, grab a copy from Amazon USA or Amazon UK.

Kristina discusses the top ten editing mistakes writers make and references a blog post she wrote which goes into much more detail. If you’d like to read the post, you can right here.

***

Episode Transcript

Learn How to Self-Edit Like a Pro with @StanleyKMS #indieauthor #selfpublishing #IARTG #ASMRG #writingcommunity
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Sacha Black
Hello and welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast. Today I’m with Kristina Stanley. Kristina is a best selling author, story editor and the CEO of Fictionary. Fictionary helps writers tell powerful stories with breakthrough online software. That simplifies story editing. She’s the author of the Stone Mountain mystery series, Look the Other Way, and The Authors Guide to Selling Books to Non-Bookstores.

Kristina Stanley
Welcome. Hi, Sacha. It’s really great to be here. I thank you for having me. And you and I have talked a lot about editing and how to help writers edit books and stuff. So it’s kind of fun now to actually put it into a podcast.

Sacha Black
I know so. So for context for everybody listening, Kristina and I got hooked up by a mutual friend of ours and we have a great shared interest in editing, we’re both editors. And we’ve been working on secret things in the background. And we’ve never had a chance. Although we spoken kind of always about business and always about editing. This is really a chance for us to geek out over the nitty gritty of editing. And you can hear it you can hear the excitement in my voice. Yeah, so welcome. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I know how busy you are. But I would love it if you could tell everybody listening a little about your journey and your writing career and how you have ended up here.

Kristina Stanley
Sure, I would love to who doesn’t like talking about writing stories.

Sacha Black
Tell me your whole life story. Start with you were born…!

Kristina Stanley
I’m going to start with the interesting bit. I worked in a ski resort, which was really great. And I was the Director of Human Resources and of the security team. So I thought every single thing that happened In the ski resort, whether it was staff or a guest, and every crazy thing came across my desk. So I did this for six years. And then at the end of the six years, my husband and I quit, and we went sailing. And I had all the stories from living in the ski resort of things people actually do, and they’re all running around in my head. And I also loved that job, best job in my life. And so it kind of stuck with me. And while we were away, I needed something to really engage my brain and I so I thought, naively, I’m going to write a book. How hard can that be?

Sacha Black
Yeah, we all start there.

Kristina Stanley
Anyway, so I did and on that boat and I wrote three of my books, and I wrote in the murder mysteries genre because I love to read murder mysteries. That’sthe book when I go to I just want something to read that I can totally escape from and sit down and do just for myself. It’s that kind of work. So I thought, well, I should be writing that kind of book. And so it really just came from a desire to do something that challenged my brain and that was creative and that I was interested in but no real specific opening moment of why I wanted to become a writer.

Sacha Black
Two questions the first one, how long did you live on the boat? And the second one, I think is actually more of a point. So we get told to write what we know. And I think that’s such a mistake of advice. I think we should be writing what we love. So I love young adult fantasy or young adult fiction generally. And I’m that’s all I read so why would I not read that? I’m not a young adult. So therefore, how can I know young adults things now… But you know… I am in my head! That’s what I love. So yeah, I can totally see why you ended up writing that. Although I did kind of chuckle to myself because I don’t see mystery as escapism, I kind of see it as a puzzle. So, you know, my wife reads, psychological thrillers and crime books. And it’s just the whole time I can see her eyes glinting, she’s trying to work out the puzzle. I mean, that is obviously a form of escapism, but I love them for the for the for the puzzle. And but yes, tell me about the boat.

Kristina Stanley
Okay, just before that I want to comment on about writing what you know, and you’re the first person I talked to, that I have a true belief in what you said, right? what you love, you have to spend so many hours with your story again and again and again. And so it better be something you love and are passionate about. Because otherwise why would you spend those hours and the human brain can learn anything? Anybody can you just need to put in the time and effort and do your research and interview people or go experience something or whatever it is, but you can learn it you don’t have to know it but if you love it, writings a joy if you don’t, I’m not sure writings a joy as opposed to the desire to write something and create something, but not the actual joy of writing about it.

Sacha Black
Yeah, I just cannot agree with you more. Write what you know, is one of those bullshit pieces of advice that a myth just builds up around it. Like also you must write every day or you are a heathen. Like, what? No, no, you do not. You have to have a habit. But that doesn’t mean you have to write every day everybody. Yeah, don’t have to write every day.

Kristina Stanley
And if you have a job, you don’t go to your job every day.

Sacha Black
Exactly.

Kristina Stanley
And there’s laws around that because you can’t be productive and healthy. If you do that. It’s not possible. And in Canada, the Employment Standards laws are quite strong. And that’s a big thing about it is people need to get away and the same goes for writing so I’m a believer in that too. Yes, you have to be diligent and persistent and work hard. But in a way that’s healthy for you as a person and for your mind to make it creative.

Sacha Black
Absolutely. And they’re changing. I read an article the other day that said that changing the working time directive or something I think that’s what it’s cooled in Sweden say that they only work four days a week. I just think it’s fantastic. I mean, yes, don’t be self-employed because then you work seven days a week.

Kristina Stanley

Really good.

Sacha Black 

The boat, the boat, the boat.

Kristina Stanley
I’ll just do that very quickly. I have a little story later. I want to relate to relate it writing but I’ve spent nine years living on a sailboat went out once for four and another five. So it’s obviously sailing is a passion of mine. And and we’ve gone twice because after being on a boat for a few years, you feel a great desire to be on land and connected and part of you know of the world. So you kind of we’ve gone in and out when you go, it’s terribly exciting. And after a few years goes by, okay, I’m not I’m kind of tired of making water every day. So yeah.

Sacha Black
I just think it’s so cool though. I like you know, that must just feed your mind though was such inspiration, and also no distractions that I’m surrounded by distractions. So I wanted to ask you about Fictionary because you are the CEO, founder, creator, mega mastermind of Fictionary. So for those listeners who haven’t heard of Fictionary, please do tell us a little bit about Fictionary where it came from, and what it can do for for writers.

Kristina Stanley
Okay, so it really is. You know, it’s something that we built for writers based on on my writing career. So when I had written the three books in the Stone Mountain series I had an editor and she not an editor, sorry, I had an agent. And my agent suggested that I take the third book and make it the first book. She was right. But imagine the amount of work it takes to do that. So I great, I built this spreadsheet that literally had my, you know, hundred books of writing advice that I’d read in it along with 86 columns of every piece of key story element I wanted to analyze against every scene and make sure I was consistent and was doing the right things. And I did that for every single scene and all three books. And I had this huge, massive network of spreadsheets and stuff. My husband one day looked over my shoulder was like, What are you doing? Oh, I’m writing like, spreadsheet like, oh, because blah, blah, blah. So he went, Oh, there’s an app for that. I’ll find you one. And he came back and went, guess what? There’s not there’s nothing that focuses on editing a story from the big picture. The way character plot and setting. It’s all about grammar and punctuation. There’s nothing and so his idea was, well, let’s build it, let’s take what you did, because you built it, and let’s put it into a piece of software that other writers can use. And so that was this start of it. You know, and then of course, we went away and and kind of spent two years just really designing it to figure out what would work and we interviewed hundreds of writers of how do you write how do you edit? What are your problem? What would you like? And on and on and on, it went until we came out with the prototype in January of 2018. And then we let it sit for six months and just talk to writers who were using it and got a ton of feedback on on what they liked and didn’t like and what they really, really need. And then we spent another long time adding those features into where we are today. And then from there. The other thing that happened us we had a whole bunch of editors. Editors, like you, who said to us, you know, it’s great for writers, can’t you build something for editors? So we thought, okay, sure we could. So then the whole process started over again with well, let’s interview editors. Can you figure out what they’re doing in their day to day editing life to help writers? And how could we put that into a piece of software? So we’ve ended up with Storyteller, which is for writers and Storycoach, which is for editors. And the goal of Storyteller is to help a writer do a big picture, story, edit, and we call it a story edit instead of structural, developmental, substantive, one because nobody knows what those terms mean. And they all mean something different depending on who you talk to. And we think story edit is really clear. you’re editing your story, not the words. And so, we went with that term to make it friendly, so it’s accessible to writers and they can understand what they’re trying to accomplish. In doing a story edit. And on the Storycoach side, what the goal is, is to help editors be the best in the world editors, so they don’t miss things. They don’t have their own areas that they tend to focus on that you get, you know, everybody gets in patterns. And that’s what they see. And they don’t see everything else. And so the goal was Storycoach is to help editor really do a comprehensive at it, but not take more time to do it. Because obviously, they have to run a business, they have to live off that business. And it’s hard. So the goal is to give the editors a tool to be better at their job in a really consistent, comprehensive way. And so we kind of, you know, we branched a little bit but we really discovered that writers and editors work together and they need to help each other. So that then they end up with that powerful story that we all talk about want.

Sacha Black
Amazing and so, let’s focus on the writer side for now,

Kristina Stanley
Yep, that’s great.

Sacha Black
When is the best time for a writer to use this software?

Kristina Stanley
So that ends up being a big question because we thought it was after they finished the first draft or almost a first draft so that they import their manuscript and Fictionary scans it and it draws the story arc and it draws out their word count per scene so they can look at pacing and it’s links all their characters to each scene so they can see who is where and when… You want to say something?

Sacha Black
I do, because one of the things that I really love about Fictionary is that it’s all very, very visual. So the you know, what, when, you know, when Kristina was saying, it shows you, it really shows you, you know, in pictures, it’s so cool.

Kristina Stanley
Yeah, it’s very visual, and it’s, and once you’ve written a draft, it’s really really hard and the advice that drives me crazy is put it in a drawer for two weeks or a month or whatever and then come back and reread it and edit it. That never worked for me. But what happens when writers import their manuscript, they see it in a completely different way. So it triggers their imagination. And then they get ideas and they can actually finish their story. It gives them a way to really look at different aspects between character plot and setting and go, Oh, I haven’t even thought about that. I need to go back to every scene and look at how do I enter a scene? And how do I get out of the scene? And by being structured, the writer can do it. And that comment we often get back was Holy cow, I was stuck on this. I couldn’t look at it anymore. And now I have all these ideas, and I’m going to finish it and I’m really excited and Yay. And so of course, I love hearing that because that’s the goal. So it takes away that thing of how do you actually see your own work because Fictionary shows it to you.

Sacha Black
And yeah, and I just think that’s magical, because that is the problem that, you know, we get so close to our manuscripts we live and breathe and sweat and pour into them and you know, there’s no possible way you can see the wood for the trees when you’ve been on a manuscript for so long, you know, and it’s kind of like a best critique partner, buddy, beta reader or you know, rolled into a piece of technological awesomeness. But like, okay, let’s talk about editing for for a minute.

Kristina Stanley
Sure.

Sacha Black
What are the most common mistakes that you see either through your own editing with the clients or through the things that have gone through Fictionary, through your testing, and through your software?

Kristina Stanley
So it’s funny that you asked that question because I’ve collected data on that for two years. On just to answer that, and and I have 10 things, and I’ll send you a link to a blog. I wrote about it if anyone’s interested in really hearing the detail behind it. I’ll go down in the order that they tend to happen. One is the word count doesn’t follow genre requirements. It’s surprising, but many authors don’t think about that when they start writing their story. And so they read a Young Adult book, that’s 153,000 words. So that’s three books, and you have a series and you don’t even know it. Right? Like, how glorious is that to find out when you go ha! Look at that. So yeah.

Sacha Black
Kerchinggggg

Kristina Stanley
Right. So quite often, a writer doesn’t understand the commercial aspect, not that you should write your book too commercial. But if you’re writing genre fiction, and you want to sell it to Young Adults, or a mystery novel you want to sell it should be around 80,000 words long. These are things you should know as a writer. And the other thing about word count is they don’t get pacing and how to apply word count per scene to control pacing of their story.

Sacha Black
So let me just come back on the couple of points there for anyone panicking and going Oh shit, you know, how do I work? You know what the genre accounts are? A) google it be if that doesn’t come up with an answer, because I’m sure people aren’t posting their book length, go into a bookstore, and have a look in your genre area. And look at how many pages on average your book has each page on a book has roughly 250 words, so you can work it out. Just Just go to a bookstore. And pacing. Tell me about pacing. Sorry.

Kristina Stanley

So pacing is an interesting one. Because

“If you’re trying to speed up to something, and your scenes are really, really long, that’s tiresome for the reader, and no matter what you put in there, they’re going to think it slowed down. And so an easy technique is to break your scenes up. So you you start with your bigger scene, you go smaller and smaller, and the book just seems to get faster and faster.”

If you’re trying to slow it down because you’re having an emotional reaction to some event for the character. You can write a longer scene. But you need to do that all in the context of the story arc. Because if you’re inciting incident, your plot points, your climax are too short, your reader is going to feel ripped off that you can’t have a super short climax scene that doesn’t feel satisfying. And if you have a super long scene, that’s not a main point of the story, the balances off and you can see that when you see your word count per scene graph and fixed there you go all look, most of my scenes around 1000 to 2000 words, and I have this one big one at 5000 it’s not a key scene. So what’s in that scene? And should I just cut it? Should I pieces of it? Should I break it into a scene but gives your mind a trigger? Go look at that. And then you can you can rewrite in your own way to make the story better.

Sacha Black
Yeah, and I think one of the magical things about pacing is that you have the power as the author to decide where… You you know, just because story structure, you know commands that you have certain scenes of certain lengths in certain places doesn’t mean that you have to do that.

“You can choose, like you were saying, if you want to have an emotional scene because you’re inserting a subplot or you’re adding an emotional reaction to something, you can do that. That’s okay. But you can play with structure and pacing and andthe longer something is, the more you draw your reader’s attention to that particular scene. And that effect also can go down into the paragraph and into the sentence level and into the metaphors and juxtaposition.”

The more you – excuse me – create detail and length, the more your reader’s attention is focused on that. I’m sorry, geek out about craft now, sorry!

Kristina Stanley
It’s so good. But, you know, and the thing is, that’s the whole thing about Fictionary is there’s a form around telling a powerful story. But it’s not a formula, right? It’s to trigger the writers mind to think about things, and then understand why they’re making a decision. And there’s lots of examples of books that don’t follow the story arc and and have been hugely successful and people love them. But that writer knew how to do that.

Sacha Black
Yeah.

Kristina Stanley
And they made a decision of why to do that. And the Harry Potter series is an excellent example. Because the first book, The climax happens earlier in the book that is normally recommended for a book. But when you look at the story arc across the structure of her series, it happens at exactly the right time to give enough time at the end of the book, to lead into the next story. So she clearly knew what she was doing there. We all know how successful she was. And it’s a great example of someone who did not follow the exact story argument in a book but it just works.

Sacha Black
So we have genre length and pace.

Kristina Stanley

Right? So that’s all word count. That’s one thing. The there are ten! But I will give you a link because the blog explains all of this in detail. And yes to more detail if there’s a particular subject somebody wants to read up on the information is there. So the next one is the point of view is confusing, or inconsistent, or unbalanced. And those are three areas of point of view. When a writer chooses a point of view there, they are making a promise to reader, that’s whose eyes they’re going to see the story from. And if the writer can’t or the reader can’t figure that out, it’s confusing. And then what happens is the reader doesn’t connect to the character. And so then they’re not motivated to read about the character and then down goes the book, right? Inconsistency I’ll trying to say this really short. Inconsistency is if you don’t change point of view regularly. So say in one person’s point of view, and then all of a sudden you jar into another for no particular reason. That’s inconsistent. If you write in multiple points of view, if there’s an unbalanced there in that, if it’s too long between your protagonist point of view, or a different character’s point of view, and their next point of view the readers forgotten who they are, and why do they have a point of view and again, it throws the reader off and they lose interest. So that’s number two. Number three is the point of view goal is not clear. And the reason this is super, super important. If your character doesn’t have a goal, and the reader doesn’t get what it is, what’s the character doing? It’s boring, and it’s harsh. I know that’s harsh to say it that way. But it’s boring. readers want to root for a character and they might want them to fail or they might want them to succeed. You don’t know but they want to root for them, and if they can’t figure out what they’re rooting for boring, boring, boring, boring, so it’s really important every scene, there’s a goal. And it could even be a desperate need for sleep but can’t get it because some emergency thing is happening. It doesn’t have to be an earth shattering goal. It has to be something that character really wants for some for whatever reason in the book, that’s number three. And then following right behind that, which is usually a lead in if there’s no clear goal is what’s the purpose of the scene? So why is it even in the book and we all get carried away as writers you get writing you’re right there’s an awesome scene that you loved and and then you read it later and like you have no idea what it has to do with plot so what why why did I put that in there? But it’s hard to see yourself but if you ask yourself a question for every single scene, what is the purpose of this scene? And if you can’t figure it out, go back and look at is the goal clear because quite often, the goal is not clear. The purpose isn’t clear in the two kind of roll around each other. And if the scene doesn’t have a purpose, put one in, cut it, or take the bits out of it that you need for your story and throw on a different scene that does have a purpose. Okay, sounds like we’re moving to do four.

“Lack of scene anchoring. So this one is an interesting thing. When a reader starts to scene, they need to know who’s got the point of view. They need to know where they are. And they need to know what the timing is. And if one of those isn’t clear. It’s a big risk because if the reader is thinking, well wait, when did this happen? Was this two hours or yesterday or, you know, in the future, or they don’t know when. Then they start thinking about that, and they’re out of your story. So very quickly, you want to anchor your readers in those three things.”

Sacha Black
Yeah, that’s one of the things that actually I see quite a lot with newer writers, because I think I think the reason it happens is because the story is so embedded in a writer’s mind that they you know accidentally for whatever reason take take for granted that the reader also knows exactly where the characters are in the in the writers head. Just on the last one, and whilst you absolutely must cut those scenes from your novel, don’t delete them because they make you a fantastic giveaways or freebies or extra insights in for your mailing list or for the back of the book or for giveaways or whatever. Yeah, so just a little tip though.

Kristina Stanley
And also if you write a series or a prequel or something you might use that scene.

Sacha Black
Yeah.

Kristina Stanley
Or completely different book you might be able to take that scene so absolutely, I forgot to say that is don’t ever delete it, name it something so you remember what it is? Yeah, but

Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kristina Stanley
So the next one is entry and exit hooks for a scene. So we’ve all heard the advice, your first line has to hook the reader, you’ve got to get them right there. Yes, you do. And the first line of every scene has to hook the reader because you think of a person sitting in bed at night and they’re tired. And they flipped to the next scene to see do I want to read this or not. And the opening asked me to go off. Now I have to read them, really to go to bed really early, early, but I’m going to read this scene, because it’s got something right at the beginning, they put the book down and a week goes by them I never come back to so not that everybody’s going to read your book in one sitting, but you want them even if they put it down, you want them to go, Okay, I gotta come back to that book because the beginning of that scene… I need to know. And the same when you leave, or end the scene, you want the reader leaving with like, ‘oooh’ I just got to see what’s in the next scene and pull them through. And so you need to be careful that you don’t use the same like don’t use a cliffhanger every scene because it’s boring. You can’t do that. But you can, you know, give partial secrets away or some big revelation or there’s somebody question that comes up, there’s many ways to do it. But you need to leave the reader at the beginning and white just have to check.

Sacha Black
One of the things that I have seen on occasion is that writers think they’re creating a cliffhanger, but they’re actually telling the reader what happens next. So, you know, but never knew such and such was coming. No, actually, you need to end the chapter, the very sentence before. So you absolutely must not tell the reader what is coming. The point is, is to leave the question in their mind that they that they must have answered because that’s what what keeps them up until three o’clock in the morning. You know, they love to hate that feeling of having to read on.

Kristina Stanley
That is so true. The next one is not enough tension in every scene. And that links back to the purpose of the scene – if there isn’t tension. And it doesn’t have to be huge drama attention, it doesn’t have to be conflict and a flight or fight but there needs to be something that the reader’s a little bit on edge about and thinking about and worried about. If your scene lacks tension, you need to add it in, take some bits out or cut it all together with the same caveat of don’t throw it away.

Sacha Black
Yeah, absolutely.

Kristina Stanley
And and then backstory having too much backstory too early. So, you know, there I like to link that to, so you go to a party, and you meet somebody new, and they go, “Hey, I was born in and then I and then I…” and they tell you or they tell your whole story of their day about picking up dry cleaning or something and you’re thinking what? I know I don’t want to know that. But if you meet them at a party And then go, “Oh, man, I totaled my car today.” They’re starting in media res. You go, oh, really what happened? Interesting, or, you know, I sold my first book today, or something that’s really relevant and exciting that you want to talk to them about. And a book is the same way that the reader does not need to know everything about a character. And they certainly don’t need to know all of the important bits early on. It’s better if there’s a bit of mystery in there that you know, somebody is an orphan. And then there’s a little hint about the way the parents died, but not how they died or when they died or anything, just a hint. So then you worry about the character of she’s 12 years old and doesn’t have parents and but you have no idea what happened. No backstory there, just enough to entice the reader to be curious.

Sacha Black
Yeah, and I think the thing here for me personally, is that I love to know a lot of backstory about my characters that my readers don’t need to know. And that’s okay. Because that’s, that’s me building the characters in the background. The thing that I take from backstory is that it gives me their reason why they behave the way they behave. And right. That’s the important bit to put into my stories.

Kristina Stanley
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the trick. Right? Right. Exactly what you said there when you’re looking at every piece of backstory in the book you want to look at is it helping the story move forward? Is it providing motivation? Does it explain at some weird behavior they had? And if it doesn’t do anything for the story, they don’t need to know the you know, a boy grew up with a cat.

Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah,

Kristina Stanley
They really don’t. It’s got if it’s nothing, even though it’s a nice little tidbit about someone who made it makes them feel like I’m a nice person and things, backstory is one of those things that I’m pretty harsh at cutting when I’m editing. I don’t need to know it. I don’t need to know it. If you if you cross all this out loving the story.

Sacha Black
Yeah. Brutal. But fair!

Kristina Stanley
You know, if we as editors don’t share our thoughts with the writer, what’s the point of having an editor?

Sacha Black
Yeah. Totally.

Kristina Stanley
You also have to show what’s great about the book, and what’s working for the writer where their strengths are, of course, so they know what what they are good at, because that’s hard to see too as a writer, but you can’t shy away from giving, you know, direct and honest feedback. So and then the last thing I see which is the hardest one is the story arc, and writers not understanding what the key points are, and to have the key points, not even the placement of the key points but but to have an inciting incident something that shakes up the protagonist’s world and changes things. You know, a reader needs that every story has one you know, once you start looking at stories and analyzing them, there is something that starts the story and drives it forward. So that’s the last one. And it’s hard because it takes a long time. And that’s why we do that in Fictionary that we we draw, here’s what’s recommended. And here’s what you’re actually doing. And so then the reader can think about, well, where’s my inciting incident? Do I have one and I have it here, but it’s way too late. Or, you know, it’s too short or it’s not quite working, whatever, but it gives them a chance to actually analyze it and how to look.

Sacha Black
Yeah, I think lots of authors get intimidated by the the story arc or the concept of the story arc. And actually, most writers innately feel their way through a story arc an where there are mistakes, it is literally about structuring the story. All of the points generally are there. And obviously some people not but, you know, generally speaking because we have been told stories since we were children, one of the first things children understand when it comes to stories is they have a beginning a middle and an end. My five year old knows that he knows story arc because he knows the stories have a beginning a middle and end. And obviously it gets more and more complicated as we as we create these stories. But a story arc is a map. That’s all. It shows you the beginning the end and how you get to the end of the story.

Kristina Stanley
That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, so there’s my top 10

Sacha Black
Amazing I literally, you know, I’m gonna have to go back and listen to this and write loads of notes because there was so many good points in here. And what’s your pet hate? Go on spill the goss. Every editor I know has a thing that they that they hate the most mind. Hands up minds repetition. I really hate repetition in a novel. But what’s yours?

Kristina Stanley
Well, here’s the thing. When I’m editing, I don’t have a pet hate. What I see that I look at are the writers pet issues. It’s different, right? It’s a different thing. One writer might just have a head hopping problem. But everything else is great, right? So I tend to focus that on when I’m editing. But as a reader, my pet hates is when I can clearly see that the writer has not put the work in to properly edit their book, and that you think there’s actually a good story in here, but nobody took the time to really figure out the tightness of that story and do it properly. And so that drives me crazy as a reader and I don’t really want to invest my time. And sometimes it’s such a good story. I feel like writing the author saying, Okay, if you did the following things, this would be a great story, but you know, I would never do that. I don’t like reading a book that I don’t feel the author has put enough hard work into it.

Sacha Black
That is a great segue into my next question. What? So talk to… Actually talk to new and seasoned writers. What do you think are the one or two things that they can do during their self-edit to really improve their manuscript? And obviously, each writer is different, but but pluck two from the air for me.

Kristina Stanley
Okay. So one is you need to have a structure of doing it. And whether it’s on a whiteboard, whether it’s using my lovely product Fictionary, whether it’s in spreadsheets, like I did with my first books, you need an organized way to review your manuscript because just keep just rereading, and it’s going to waste so much time. Right. And, and so I think every writer needs whatever works for them some comprehensive and structured, objective way of reviewing their own work. Which leads into the other important thing of I like to tell writers, when you’re working with an editor, you need to remember you’re the artist there, the editor is there to help you. But it’s your voice. It’s your story. And you get to decide, unless, of course, you’re working for a publisher, and they dictate it. But to in today’s world, most authors get to decide what they’re putting in. And so two things on that, you need to know your stuff when you’re working with an editor. So you need to basically understand what a story edit is, copy editing, proofreading, depending on the level you’re working with, because if you have a bad editor, and you don’t know that you don’t know what advice to take from them, and it’s hard to know, if you have a good or bad editor, you’d think the person’s an expert, but, you know, maybe maybe their dog died that week, and they weren’t paying attention to your book or you just don’t know. And so, as a writer, I think as the writers responsibility to truly understand the craft behind writing and editing. Then when you use an editor, you get the most out of them because what you deliver to them as a better story, if you understand that, and then they’re working on high level issues and you’re not paying them to work on things you could have learnt yourselves, but it really ensures that when your book goes out, it’s going to be a better book.

Sacha Black
No, and you are on fire because that segues into my next question.

Kristina Stanley
Okay.

Sacha Black
Um, quick any quick tips or tricks for a writer to lower their editing costs?

Kristina Stanley
Yes. Okay, one. Don’t ever pay for a copy editor if you haven’t done a structural edit first. So if you haven’t done your story edit either yourself or paid an editor to do it. You’re wasting your money. Because if you come back later, and do a story edit your whole story changes you could cut scenes, write whole new scene, reorder scenes, and then your copy at it has been a complete waste of money. So don’t don’t don’t do a copyedit too soon. And it’s interesting because I have lots of writers asked me this, I just want to copy at it and I think, no you don’t. You really don’t you know, or can you? Can you story at it and copy at it at the same time? No. Any editor says doing your disservice because you’re going to go away and rewrite a whole bunch of sec sections. And so you’ve just wasted all that time and money on something you’re going to redo. So that’s my biggest Please don’t do.

Sacha Black
Yeah, yeah. And I think that for anyone who hasn’t yet paid for an edit, please understand that a developmental edit is far more expensive than your line edits or your proofread. And the reason for that is because the quantity of feedback that you will get for a story structural developmental edit, is enormous. And yes, that is daunting and scary. But do you want the best story or not? Whereas somebody who’s doing kind of line edits, they are proofing fact checking and making sure your commas and your apostrophes are in the right place. It is very different. Make sure you check which one you are really after. Okay, book recommendations?

Kristina Stanley
Okay, so I’ll just I’m going to give you the one of my favorites that I’m reading right now, which is called The Artful Edit – On the Practice of Editing Yourself. It’s written by Susan Bell, it came out in around 2007, maybe, but it’s an excellent, excellent book on how to self-edit, and really pick up some knowledge behind the craft of self-editing so that you can put the best creative work from that so I just reading it right now, and it’s a fabulous book on, really, in an interesting and fun way explaining what it means to be a self-editor.

Sacha Black
Amazing, and I will make sure that links to that book are in the show notes.

Kristina Stanley
Excellent.

Sacha Black
Now, this podcast is called The Rebel Author Podcast. So tell me about a time you unleashed your inner rebel.

Kristina Stanley
Okay, that’s a hard question. I’m going to link that back to sailing. So my husband and I were invited to go on a two week sailing trip to Thailand with some friends who charted some sailing boats. But okay, sure, whatever. That sounds nice. So we went and when we were there, we spotted a boat from California. We’re in Thailand, right? You think What the heck? What are those people doing here? And my husband says well they’re cruisers. And I was like oh, what’s a cruiser? Well, it’s people who live on a sailboat and sail around the world. I wanna do that. How come we’re not doing that? We should do that. So we were working as expats in Germany in very lucrative jobs and we quit. And our friends thought we were nuts. Like, what the heck are you doing? And we just decided, you know what, we’re going to go and do this. So we figured it out. We saved every penny we had and flew back to Canada and bought a boat and left and you know, the thing for me part of the reason we did it, I have this fear of missing out. And that comes from I don’t want to live my life and at the end, look back and go, huh, that was boring. That frightens me more than anything else. I mean, obviously not if you’re looking at life and death situation, but you know, in general life thought that, you know, we were considered so crazy that a year after we came back for a visit someone forwarded me an email from some friends. And email was, well I saw the Stanley’s and they’re both alive and well. What is it that? Of course we’re alive and well. And the gossip amongst our friends was: well if they quit those jobs to go sailing one of them must be dying because why else would you do that? Woah, wait a minute, there’s nothing wrong with us. Just that maybe that little inner rebel is coming out that we wanted to do something really different and exciting and yeah it was kind of freaky and scary and you know especially the first year where you know nothing about anything sailing even though you think you do but really you don’t. Just like writing a book in that he knew he knew now would you go back and write a book? If we knew what we knew at the end, at the end of that first year would we have started mmm I’m not sure.

Sacha Black
Like a definitely like having kids as well. No one tells you the real truth. I love it. I love that your friends thought that as well. I think that’s absolutely fucking hilarious.

Kristina Stanley
But no one asked us are you okay?

Sacha Black
Yeah, all too terrified of the answer. So where did you did you literally circumnavigate the globe? Or?

Kristina Stanley
No, we bought a boat in Toronto, Canada. And we sailed it down the east coast of Florida all the way to Aruba and back. And that took us four years because we’re really slow. And what we found was that you go, you find places and you think, oh, we’ll just stay for six months. Yeah, you know, and Aruba, we stayed for a year we left our anchor. It was really funny and it was so great, that we just stayed and then after year we were like well our visas are up, I guess we should go!

Sacha Black
Just out of sheer curiosity, did you work on the boat as well? like did you have to keep jobs whilst you were…

Kristina Stanley
No. You know, from the moment that we were in Thailand to the day we bought our boat was about three years. And during that three years, we didn’t spend money. We saved every penny. So no new furniture, very few new clothes, no toys no like… Our motto was, if it’s not going on the boat, we’re not buying it. And so we went on this super serious focus of we want that thing over there and to get it. And then you know, four years goes by and hey, okay, so we got to go back and go to work. And that’s what I went toward the ski resort.

Sacha Black
Yeah. But it is amazing what you can achieve, like financially, you know, and actually, there’s going to be a podcast. Yeah, exactly. And that in a couple of weeks that will actually I don’t know the scheduling. But there is a podcast booked in talking about money matters for writers who actually want to quit their jobs and do this because it is more than achievable. But that is podcast for another day. So Tell listeners where they can find out more about you your books and Fictionary.

Kristina Stanley
Sure. Okay, so, um, my books are a little interesting. So I’ll get that into a second. So Fictionary is just Fictionary.co and our whole website is there. And I do want to say within the next month, we’re going to have a brand new website and app look. So we’re just about to launch in a whole modern, beautiful look so.

Sacha Black
I think when this goes live, that will also be live. So

Kristina Stanley
Oh good. That’s exciting. That’s perfect. So yeah, so it’s Fictionary dot CO. And under journal, you can find many, many blogs on how to edit your own books and you can read your heart’s content. For my books. It’s Kristinastanley.com. And, and I was very lucky, I had a Canadian publisher. And after we built the Fictionary, I wanted to take my books down and run them through Fictionary. And so I got my rights back and not for… I have a German publisher and so that Staying in German because, you know, it’s in German, so off it goes. My Canadian publisher was very gracious and allowed that and so I’ve rewritten Descent based on what I know today and republished it in July. Blaze should come out in another couple of months, and then I’ll follow it with Avalanche and Look the Other Way. And I, you know, I really wanted to, you know, as they say, put my money where my mouth is, and go, okay, what can I do with this story, knowing what I know now, and with my own tools, rewrite it and do it myself. And so that’s what I’ve done. And I have seen pretty pleased with Descent and how it turned out. And Blaze, this is next up,

Sacha Black
And I will also make sure that there are links to those in the show notes as well.

Kristina Stanley
Excellent.

Sacha Black
So thank you very much, Kristina. And thank you to everybody listening. If you would like to support the show, and get early access to the episodes you can support us on www.patreon.com/SachaBlack. That’s Sacha with a C SACHA. I’m Sacha Black. You were listening to Kristina Stanley and this was The Rebel Author Podcast.

What tips and tricks do you guys use in your self-edit?

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