I re-wrote Keepers three times… from scratch. I won’t be doing that again. It breached all acceptable tolerance levels of inefficiency. So much so, I developed a permanent twitch, and I’m pretty sure I herniated the moment I realized I had to start again… for the third time.

Part of the problem was the world building. See, writing in most genres, you use the real world as the world your story is set in. But as a fantasy/sci-fi writer, your world could be populated by angry hooman eating marshmallows. The sky could be on the ground and the ground in the sky. Suffice to say we get to push our sleeves up and play book-god. But playing book-god is hard. There’s a lot of shit to create.

You can’t just pluck a sword made of magical fish fins, that’s about to reign down a plague and cause world ending genocide, out of thin air. There’s got to be a reason, context, and history. Why? Because it has to mean something to the reader. I mean psssht, magical fish fins indeed. How do they even work?

The problem is, unless your George R.R or Tolkien, you only have three hundred or so pages to convey your entire world and all its constructs. Not an easy task.

So how in the glistering fudgemuggins do you do it?

Well, dear reader, I’m glad you asked. Here are my 4 top tips for building a fantasy world.

ONE – More Is Always More – Unless… Less Is More. Then Do Less

You might think you need reams and reams of detail to give the reader a full and painted picture of your world. And if you’re writing epic fantasy then maybe you need more than the average fantasy book. But readers are clever. They fill in the blanks. You don’t need eight hundred pages detailing every farming and food production mechanism or governmental law. 

You need enough to give the flavor. Like wine tasting; you only need a sip to know what the rest of the bottle will taste like.

I can’t tell you exactly what you should and shouldn’t include because it’s story dependent and you might well need a lot of detail about one particular part of your society that another writer might not.

The point is to be aware, err away from flowery prose and minutia. Especially if your word count is busting over the edge of its spine. If your reader can detail a 1000 year genealogy of every character, you’re probably overdoing the detail.

TWO – You Only Need The Detail If It Means Something

That’s great, Sacha. But how in the shizzle do I know what detail to include and when? 

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the wonder of fantasy is that there are no rules. But you also don’t want your reader falling asleep between your pages and leaving drool in your book spine because you spent three pages intensively detailing the anatomical leg hair of your protagonist’s step-granny. 

What Not To Do:

Detail aunt Ethel’s minute by minute routine including reading the ‘space news’

Tell the reader in excruciating detail about the nuts and bolts and electrical wiring of your spacecraft TZ578.

What To Do:

However, if your spacecraft is going to have an accident and get stranded on a barren planet because a particular bolt that your protagonist thought looked suspicious as she boarded just happens to cause a crash a few minutes later – then include the detail.

Think about whether or not the detail is relevant. Like Checkovs gun. Don’t tell the reader about a random gun unless it’s relevant later in the story.

In Trutinor (the world Keepers is set in) the ocean surrounding the realm is called the Blood Ocean and every so often shimmers blood red… For a reason – red is the symbol of Imbalance (aka evil) and it’s a warning not to cross it unless you want to die… A detail that might not seem relevant now, but sure as shit will be in book 4! I included it because it means something.

THREE – Symbols, Meaning, and Foreshadowing

Whether it’s a flag or religion, even in our ‘real’ society we have symbols. Symbols give meaning to our lives and to your stories. That is a nifty tool that can help you foreshadow significant events later in your series or book. Look at Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets – the diary that was so relevant to book 2, later becomes a Horcrux.

The Hunger Games is another example. The Mockingjay was created because of a mistake the Capitol made, which is why it became a symbol of rebellion from the Capitol. 

But symbols don’t have to be logos, they could be anything from color, to a device or object or an event.

In Trutinor, there are five States – each one has a different ability and a different symbol representing that ability, and each one will be on the cover of one of the books in the series.

FOUR – The ‘What’ Of What To Include

Law or justice system – again, you don’t need stacks of detail – it’s enough to know there’s some kind of punishments – but that also means you need to be clear WHAT’S punishable.

Government system – As above – include what’s relevant to your story. But what or who are the leaders in your world and is there a hierarchy? How do you get power?

Magical system  – Both what it can do and more importantly, what it can’t do. You need to know the limitations of the powers in your society because it allows you to put your hero in sticky situations which helps to create tension and conflict.

Food – We don’t need to know every detail about where it comes from unless that’s relevant. But don’t forget (like I did in draft 2) that your characters need sustenance!

Transport & communications– How do your characters get from one place to another? Are there limits or restrictions to movement? And, how do they communicate over distances? Or perhaps the point is, they can’t?

Boundaries – By this I mean in order to put your character into difficult situations to make him grow and develop over the story arc, there needs to be some kind of restriction on them. Perhaps it’s a societal testing system, maybe they lack food, or transport, or maybe they only control a particular power. Whatever it is, you need a boundary or restriction on your protagonist.

Fashionista – Thanks to Esther my editor for this one – remember your reader needs to know what your characters look like and are wearing. Do they walk around in hotpants and bikinis? Or is it arctic and they have to wear animal furs?

Sense of Place – Give some level of detail about the weather, how time works and what the land and buildings look like

Of course, this is not a complete list, it’s just a flavor… see what I did there! :p

Want to check out my world building skills? You can read Keepers here.

Get your monthly Trutinor CogMail here.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

The post 4 Top Tips To Build A Fantasy World #MondayBlogs #Amwriting appeared first on Sacha Black.

There’s nothing better than an epiphany. It’s all gooey and warm on the inside, and on the outside it smothers my brain in a glass clear sensation of clarity.  

What follows is usually a brief flappy hand dance, a wide stare into the distance as my brain discombobulates and then has an epiphany.

That’s what the Emotion Thesaurus did to me the first time I read it. If you’re a writer and you don’t own a copy, then shame on you… You bloody ought to. To my absolute delight, I was given a copy of the latest installment in the emotion thesaurus series to review: The Emotional Wound Thesaurus.

Once again, I had one of those delightfully sticky and positively crystal clear moments. Each time Ackerman and Puglisi release a new book, it’s like my writing jumps another notch on the development scale.

I own every single book they’ve written and used them all extensively, so I feel safe when I say that this book is so good, it might even rival their original Emotion Thesaurus. In fact, does anyone have a Nobel prize for teaching writing? They need it.

People are bloody hard to understand, that’s why writing good books is so hard. Writers have to be psychologists. But the latest wound book takes all the pain out of it for you. Which brings me onto the epiphany I had…

What part of the book gave me an epiphany this time? Well, one quote about character need and resulting behavior literally blew my mind!

“…unmet needs have the power to direct behavior above all else, meaning, if the urgency is strong enough, needs can push characters to act even if their deepest, most debilitating fears are telling them not to.” P.21 The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, Ackerman and Puglisi.

Wait, whaaaaaaaat?

Can you hear the tiny pieces of my brain fragmenting and splitting as their atoms implode?

That is a hard truth of humanity, a fundamental causation of our behavior and if we, as writers, can understand that, we can understand how to push our protagonists into action in the second half of our books.

That little nugget of psychology should be driving our protagonists into our book’s climax. Whatever your hero wants, it’s still an unmet need. It should be so fundamental to their being they have no choice but to overcome their *fear/barrier the villain put in their way/insert some other fictional obstacle* don’t you seeeeee??????

That right there is a firework of character depth you just threw into your novel and when it explodes, it’s going to smear its juicy depth all over your pages!

That is just one of the golden delights in their book.

This book, in particular, goes deeper than any of their others. With a significant focus on teaching and the psychology of characters, you can find in-depth content on:

• Character Arcs
• Lies characters believe and why
• Needs
• Psychology of villains
• How a character redeems themselves
• How to create a wound
• How a character can redeem themselves
• How to create a wound effectively (as well as a look at what that means for their past)
• Factors that will affect a wound and what that will do to your character’s behavior.
• Big reveals
• Top tips on what classic mistakes to avoid
• A bazillion different types of character wound – and in each one they provide: examples, needs that are compromised, what the characters might fear, possible responses and results, personality traits, triggers, and opportunities to overcome their wound.

So yeah. GO BUY THE DAMN BOOK or karma save your writing soul!

AmazonCOM

AmazonUK

***

My Review:

What sets this apart from other writing craft books is the way it gets to the core of humanity’s psychology. If you want to understand a character, like truly, deeply and fundamentally know what pushes your protagonists to save the world time and time again, this is the book for you. But the magic of it is that it won’t just teach you about characters, it will teach you about people too.

This book is so many things: writing mentor and tutor, an encyclopedia of human psychology, inspiration bucket, reference tool, character development guide and so much more.

It gave me a number of personal epiphanies. Every time I read one of the Ackerman-Puglisi thesauri my writing jumps up a hundred developmental notches.

These thesauri are writing craft cult classics, that’s a fact. It’s also a fact that their latest Wound Thesauri MUST be in every writer’s reference collection.

10 stars out of 5.

The post How To Get Character Depth, or, The Best Freaking Writing Craft Book EVER! @angelaackerman appeared first on Sacha Black.

I’ve been Indulging in a binge festival of guilty pleasure reading.

When I finished my novel and handed it over to beta readers. I knew there was still a lot a fucking legion of stuff I needed to work on. Including the need to develop some skills that much to my annoyance STILL weren’t honed properly. Like my powers of description. Give me non-fiction or blog posts and I can whip out my bad word baps, and filth-filled metaphors with the best of them. But put a fuckitbucket in a YA book and you’re going to regret it. So I started bingeing on popular YA books hoping I’d absorb some of their skills.

Right now, I’m reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Her description is borderline excessive (in my humblest crumbliest opinion), but I quickly dropped into the rhythm of her sentences and now I kinda think it’s beautiful. So I thought I’d spend this post deconstructing her sentences to see what I could learn about description.

Here’s 7 tactics for creating the perfect story descriptions.

All quotes  are from Delirium by Lauren Oliver, chapters and page numbers noted after quotes.

ONE – Buildings

“…like all the government offices, are lumped together along the wharves: a string of bright white buildings, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.” Ch3P1.2

Direct comparison is like the oldest of old school writing tactics. It’s like the bearded wizard. It’s Dumbledore in a sentence. Want to describe something without stating the obvious, then compare it to something else.

TWO – First Moment Seeing The Love Interest

“As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second as thought I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.” Ch4. P.34

But frankly I think the camera lens is a fucking genius metaphor. It drills straight into our subconscious. Lena is in the middle of chaos, and yet has a moment of pause where she focuses on this boy. The metaphor description of that pause is not only describing the moment but it’s also an instruction to the reader… YOU THERE, READERLY PERSON…FOCUS ON THIS BOY CHARACTER, HE’S IMPORTANT, #thatisall. She tells us to ‘zoom in’ her words, G.E.N.I.U.S.

Excuse me while I have a moment myself and bow at Oliver’s feet worshipping her in an outrageous display of teenage fangirlage.

THREE – Physical

“‘I’ve never heard that name before.’ I hesitate. Shaking hands makes me feel awkward, like I’m playing dress-up in an adult’s too-big clothing. Besides, I’ve never actually touched skin-to-skin with a stranger. But he’s just standing there with his hand out, so after a second I reach out and shake. The moment we touch, a tiny electrical shock buzzes through me, and I pull away quickly.” Ch.5 P.55

Here for me, it’s less about the electric shock – everyone gets those, it’s like your standard fish and chip Friday for a Brit. Standard description for touching someone you fancy. No, for me, it’s about the description of her emotive state – awkward. I love that comparison of a kid in parents clothes. The vulnerability of it, the desire to be more grown up than you are. Those feelings are what lead her to shaking and electric shocks – so she sets up the physical with a clever little metaphor.

FOUR – Scenery

“As we come up to the top of the hill – all three of us panting a little from the climb – the bay unfolds to our right like a gigantic map, a sparkling, shimmering world of blues and greens. Hana gasps a little. It really is a beautiful view unobstructed and perfect. The sky is full of pouty white clouds that make me think of feather pillows, and seagulls turn lazy arcs over the water, patters of birds forming and dissolving in the sky.” Ch5. P.61

In this little paragraph she nails a scenic description, capturing sight, sound and in a sense touch too. Adding more than one sense into description, is like pouring reader-fuel onto your descriptions. It explodes them into a firework of readerly delights and means you show instead of tell and everyone knows that’s the holy grail of writing.

Oliver gives a direct comparison of the bay to a map and then draws in colours to enhance the image in our minds.

She captures sound description by using words like ‘gasp’ and ‘patters’, words that make sounds!

FIVE – Graduation – Or events 

“I watch the girls circulating in their orange gowns like flames. Everything seems to zoom back, recede away at once. All the voices intermingle and become indistinguishable from one another – like the constant white noise of the ocean running underneath the rhythm of the Portland streets, so constant you hardly notice it. Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink – parent’s smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glistening, dark glossy hair and deep-blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light – everything so clear an perfect I’m sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.” Ch.7 P.87

This paragraph in itself felt a smidge much for me, but it was basically the only description of the graduation so in that sense for such a momentous occasion it didn’t go overboard at all.

This description mimics the technique she used in number two. She uses the overarching concept of a camera snapshot (something that takes a moment in life and stores it) to pause the scene and give the protagonist, Lena, a chance to reflect and soak up the event.

She also uses a formula for her descriptions, (see the blue sentence in the quote above) triple adjectives followed by a metaphor or simile, I’m not suggesting we all do this. In fact, it bucks the trend for a lot of YA authors who err on the side of clean fiction. Whereas this is more like an ice cream Sunday on steroids, just saying!

SIX – Describing Other Characters

“All of a sudden it hits me: she reminds me of the animals we saw once on a class trip to the slaughterhouse. All the cows were lined up, packed in their stalls, staring at us mutely as we walked by, with that same look in their eyes, fear and resignation and something else. Desperation. I’m really scared, then, truly terrified for her.” Ch.8 P.97

Oliver uses a memory comparison here to describe another character. Neat. But what I like most about this is why she does it. It’s not because she’s describing the physical appearance of the character to a cow. No. She’s describing the emotional state, and that’s sooooooo much more powerful. Especially given the comparison – fear, resignation and desperation, a dangerous cocktail.

The point isn’t really about using memories as comparative descriptors – although that is a handy little trick for your writer bag. It’s that describing the emotional state of another character, and the subsequent impact has more of an impact than describing their clothes. (although you do need to do that at some point too!)

SEVEN – Atmosphere

“But were not safe yet – far from it. The darkness is mobile, twisting, alive with paths of light. Flashlights cut through the woods to our right and left, and in their glare I see fleeing figures, lit up like ghosts, frozen for a moment in the beams. The screams continue, some only  few feet away, some sodistana and forlorn you could mistake them for something else, for owls, maybe, boosting peacefully in their trees.” Ch.14 P.197

I love this because it uses the comparison (ghosts this time) to create the atmosphere. Up to this point you know they’re running through woods. But the image of fleeing, screaming ghostlike teens gives the atmosphere  a sharper sense of fear. The technique she’s using is to draw on a concept we (society) already think of as scary, ghosts, and then attach it to a scary scene.

Amazon Blurb for Delirium

“They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them. Until now.

There was a time when love was the most important thing in the world. People would go to the end of the earth to find it. They would tell lies for it. Even kill for it.

But now love has been declared a dangerous disease.

Everyone who turns eighteen must be immunised with a procedure called the Cure. Lena Haloway is looking forward to being able to live the safe, predictable life the government claims the cure will bring. But meeting Alex, an enigmatic boy from the Wilds, might just make her question everything she’s been raised to believe.”

Like this post? Sign up to get more just like it as well as the latest industry publishing news. Sign up here

The post 7 Description Tactics – The Art of Writing – Deconstructing Lauren Oliver appeared first on Sacha Black.

In order to make sure the book is as helpful as possible, I want it to capture everything that would be useful to a writer, so I’ve created a survey, if you have a few minutes I’d be super snog your face off grateful if you filled it in and if you have another moment, shared the survey with a fellow pen-rat to fill in.

Ta muchly, SB xx

[contact-form to=’sachablack87@gmail.com’ subject=’Villainous Survey Response’][contact-field label=’What aspect (or aspects) do you find most difficult when writing villains?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’What aspect (or aspects) do you find easiest when writing villains?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’What parts of writing craft books do you find most useful i.e. sheets, summaries, bolded text for important sections, or something else?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’ What do you find a least helpful in writing craft books? (i.e. worksheets, summaries etc)’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’In your opinion who is the best (or your favourite) villain of all time AND WHY? (It can be from a film or book)’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’What would you find most helpful in a writing craft book about creating better villains?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’Can you tell me a little about your self? What do you write? Fiction, Non-fiction or Both? And what genres?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’How long have you been writing? Would you consider yourself an amateur or expert writer? Have you published any books/shorts/articles?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’I may have some follow up questions, would you be willing to be contacted about your answers at a later date? If so, please leave your email address below.’ type=’email’/][/contact-form] What aspect (or aspects) do you find most difficult when writing villains?

If you want to read this mysterious and most villainous book, then subscribe for updates and the latest in self-publishing industry news. Subscribe here.

The post Calling All Writers – A Villainous Survey – I Need Your Help appeared first on Sacha Black.

If you have a shit book cover we won’t pick up your novel. Sloppy blurb and we chuck the book on the NBR (Never Be Read) pile. If we get past all that and find forgettable characters buried in your pages, well… fuck you author, here’s a one star review.

A couple of weeks ago, I was lording it up in Paris with the girls for a cocktail fuelled weekend… I still have a hangover!

The thing is, I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t take advantage of any and every opportunity to spew some more of my hyperbolae into the world, and Paris has provided me the perfect opportunity to do just that.

I have a terrible memory. Like ,really bad. But my substandard brain cells got me thinking about books and specifically, about characters.

Without memorable characters, your book is worthless. Why?

Because books are written about characters. If your characters are boring, your books boring. But how do you make them memorable without turning them into the equivalent of a glitter covered literary drag queen?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with drag queens, I quite like them in nightclubs and on stages, but not so much in my YA fantasy novel.

The art of creating memorable characters isn’t about competing in the strangest quirks and weirdos world champs. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The best character quirks are those that are subtle and nuanced. Let me give you an example.

I did a lot in Paris, and a lot of big things too like: the Moulin Rouge, the Lourve, the Royal Opera House, the Eiffel Tower and drank and ate my body weight in cocktails and croissants.

But of all those big exciting things, the most salient I have, was in a macaroon shop. I was, minding my own business, trying to buy enough macaroons to feed the 5000, when I attempted to order a vanilla macaroon. This is how the conversation went:

Me – “Can I have a vanilla one please?”

Shopkeeper – “Non.”

Me – “huh?”

*looks at the full rack of vanilla macaroons*

“Sorry, umm, I meant one of those ones”

*points at vanilla macaroons*

Shopkeeper – Non.

Me – “Um. Okay? Why?”

Shopkeeper – “They no good.”

I tried again for the vanilla after requesting a caramel and strawberry one. But still, she refused to serve me a vanilla macaroon, despite having an entire rack of them on show.

I won’t ever forget her. She found a permanent home in my memory as the shopkeeper who refused to sell her goods.

But why did this work and how do you apply it to a story?

It works, because it’s unexpected. As kids we build heuristics and categories in our brains. They help us ‘know’ things. Things that are fundamental, like the red man means stop when we cross the road, girls have bits boys don’t and sweets are the food of gods.

Shop keepers are meant to sell us their products. It’s their job. To sell their goods to make money, no matter what. So when the macaroon lady didn’t, and all because she didn’t deem them good enough, it rocked my teeny tiny world, and THAT is how you create a memorable character.

The art is not to give them rainbow coloured hair, or exaggerate them into a cliche, but to focus on one small detail. The something unusual that stands out. What is it about someone that you just can’t forget?

Can’t think of the perfect quirk?

Ask yourself this:

• What you love about that boy you’ve never plucked up the courage to speak to – was the curve of his lips when he laughed? Or the way he always bought every homeless person he met a meal.
• Or perhaps there’s a girl in the shop you buy your morning latte from that catches your eye because she always puts your change in a tower on top of your take out cup. Or slips you a free cookie when her boss ain’t looking.
• Is there a till clerk you remember? Why?
• What about an annoying habit? The way someone eats – is it surprising? Does your first date like to eat the shells of the snails instead of the innards?

Another example from Paris was the girl in a black string vest who sat in a shop doorway sanding down the frame. Not unusual in itself, but instead of wearing the white builders mask you’d expect, she was wearing a vintage war gas mask. That caught my eye too, because it was surprising.

So tell me, how do you strike the perfect balance with your character quirks? What quirks do your characters have? And how do you make them memorable? Let me know in the comments below.

The post The Secret to Making Your Characters Memorable appeared first on Sacha Black.

I was deluded. Not because of my dream, but because I was unconsciously incompetent!

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Which frankly, at that point, was less than fuck all. So I set about rampaging my way through everything that had even the faintest whiff of ‘writing tips’ attached to it.

The problem was, I got overwhelmed, saturated with conflicting advice and utterly bewildered as to which direction to go in. I didn’t know what to learn or how to learn it.

I realised there was no avoiding the fact it really does just take time to develop your writing muscle. However… along the way, I also picked up some pretty nifty tricks that helped me speed up the process. Tricks I wish I’d known earlier.

So I swallowed down my bitter pride pill, accepted I didn’t know shit and set about sharpening my proverbial pencil.

These are the lessons I wish someone had told me before I started:

Lesson One: Focus

Writing is a black hole. It’s fucking endless. Even when you’re old and wrinkled on your death bed there will still be an ocean of shit you could have learnt. But knowing that isn’t helpful to anyones writing crusade.

The only way of sailing across that ocean is to focus.

If you try and learn everything in one go, you end up not learn a thing.

Instead, focus on one aspect at a time.

I wrote a list of everything I wanted to learn, like: characterisation, arcs, dialogue, plot, pace, outlining etc and that’s where my Monday posts come from. Each one is a lesson I’ve learnt.

Lesson Two: Specificity

Focus is great but it’s not enough, being specific is equally important. Don’t just say you want to learn about dialogue. Hone it down. For example, maybe you want to learn how to differentiate between characters or perhaps, understand the pace at which a young adult speaks.

Being specific means when you read books, you know what to look for. Your not wildly scanning pages hoping for word osmosis to give you shit hot authorly skills.

Being specific means you can easily identify the detail of whatever skill you want to develop. You can then deconstruct it and analyse/learn the technique the author uses.

Lesson Three: Objective feedback is a gift

I remember the first time I got real feedback. It hurt like a bitch and crushed me into a sobbing hysterical wreck. I nearly quit writing for good. But then I realised my terrible mistake. I’d given them a first draft to look at and everyone knows (although I didn’t back then) all first drafts are shit.

I mean, it didn’t really matter, because I was ignorant and assumed I’d be the one that could write something that wasn’t dog turd on a first draft. I was wrong. I didn’t just write dog turd, I wrote fly infested rat shit. I also NEVER showed anyone a first draft again!

After I finished crying like a wuss and licking my wounds I took the feedback out again. I read it. Read it again and read it some more after that. Then I listened. I edited, I changed and I tweaked. I got better.

I’m not saying all feedback is right, but if it comes from the right source, it is more than worth it. And that’s why I said ‘objective’. Friends, family and general ‘readers’ don’t know writing like writers do. It’s not that their feedback is any less valuable, but writers critique in ways non-writers just don’t.

That’s why I use two critiquing services:

I’ve mentioned  Esther, my Writers Bureau tutor many a time. Her short story and flash fiction competition is ending on the 31st of this month, check it out here.

But I just recently used Joan Dempsey’s service too. She has an awesome newsletter which I recommend signing up to here: Joan’s newsletter. It’s filled with helpful resources and revising techniques as well as providing updates as to when her service is open to new clients.

I can honestly say both their feedback has been off the freaking chart invaluable. If you want to get better, that’s a sure fire way to do it.

Lesson Four: Benchmark

I hate that I’ve sullied my blog by using the phrase ‘bench marking,’ because it’s the kind of mind numbing buzz word I dish out at work as often as I send emails.

Much to my horror, it fits. So stick with me.

Everyone tells you to ‘read’ your genre. But no one actually tells you what the bumblefuck that really means.

I’ve consumed a ridiculous amount of YA books. But I didn’t learn a thing. Not till I realised I should be benchmarking.

And by benchmark, I don’t mean compare yourself. No. No. That’s worse for your writing career than a pint of arsenic and a double hand amputation. At work, when we bench mark, what we actually do is look at specific ‘things’ other organisations do. We take a project, process or service they run and deconstruct to see why they are so good at it.

The same logic applies to books in your genre. Before you read, decide what you want to learn from them. I’ll use YA as an example. YA’s think differently than adults. They have less experience and more hormones, so one of the things I look for is how YA writers portray protagonists emotions and decision making processes.

Every time I spot an emotive section in a novel or a section where a YA character has either formed a conclusion or made a decision, I’ll highlight it, and then come back to it at the end to analyse what they have done. 

More often than not, I will then compare how a couple of authors have done it. The commonalities between them are the things I know I need to include. The differences are stylistic and therefore unique to that author.

Lesson Five: Benchmark Everything Else

Covers, prices, back of the book blurbs, book length, chapter length, popular themes in books blah, blah, blah. I make hoarders look tidy with the amount of shit I collect.

Collect it so you know your market. 80% of a writers job is marketing these days. What’s out there. What’s been over done? Where are the gaps in the market? and what’s popular?

Cover collection is one of my faves. There are key ‘styles’ in genre book covers, it’s how a fantasy reader can spot a new fantasy book on a bookshelf from half a library away.

If you collect them and examine their basic construct, you can decide whether you want to step in line or buck the trend and stick your finger up to conformity.

Lesson Six: Make Writing Friends

No matter how supportive your friends and family are, there are just some things they don’t get. Like why a spike in stats or sign ups is awesome. Or what the pain of the 18th edit is like.

If you want to stay sane, you need writing friends. Besides, who else is going to read you 6th draft of the same paragraph with only one preposition change?

Lesson Seven: Time

Unless you’re privileged enough to write full time, no matter how many pissing charts and to do lists you write, everything takes much, MUCH, MUCH longer than you think.  End of story.

Want even more FREE exclusive writing tips straight to your mailbox? Sign up for my newsletter right here. (I may or may not provide bribes for staying on my list)

The post 7 Lessons I Wish Someone Had Taught Me Before I Started Writing appeared first on Sacha Black.

I don’t think I am alone in obsessing over reading blogs about writing, but all it does it confuse me. I mean, how much attention do we really pay to understanding our own writing process?

Until recently, when I had an epiphany, I’d spent a long time thinking there was a right way… a right writing process I should be following. There isn’t. I decided to sit down and really give my process some thought, because if I can understand my own process, then I can shape it and tweak it to maximize my effectiveness. I hope this post helps you do the same.

Everyone’s process will of course be different, but if you are in any doubt about your own method, if you’re blocked or just feel something isn’t right, then I strongly recommend you do your own version of this to understand your process. Because I love visual things, I have depicted it in a pyramid:

 ***

Usually I prepare and organise till I’m blue in the face, lists run in my blood. But it wasn’t working for my writing, so I let go of doing most ‘preparation’ to write this novel. One thing I couldn’t let go of was an outline. I need it, for my sanity! For me, it doesn’t have to be massive, but because getting the timeline/action down is the most important thing in my first draft, I need a paragraph outlining each chapter. I never follow the outline to the letter, things get moved, cut completely and then changed again, but it’s a guide.

Step 1: Decide what you need before you start – an outline, a synopsis, masses of research or just an idea.

***

PLOT

This is where you figure out what is most important to you to get down on the page first. This will also be dependent on how you work out and develop your characters.

Step 2: Decide what’s most important to you in draft one.

Here are my questions to help you work out your own process for draft 1:

• What do you like doing first?
• How do you develop your characters? Do you know them before you start writing or do you see how they develop on the page?
• How well do you know your setting before you start?
• Do you need to do lots of research?

I tried to use character sheets and interview each one before I started, but it didn’t work for me and trying only made me tie myself in knots worrying I was a shit writer because I couldn’t answer the questions.

So I sacked the preparation off and let the characters develop on the page. For me draft one is all about timeline and action. I need to get the basic plot down on the page. There’s only a little bit of creativity and imagery woven in to the story at this stage. I can’t get everything perfect in the first draft, so I don’t even try. I don’t worry about the chapter, three chapters ago, that Ive decided needs a rewrite, I just keep going. But how do I combat this incessant need to edit?

Step 3: Create an editing map.

I create one place, with a designated section for each chapter. Dump decisions or notes about chapters or characters or whatever you like under the appropriate chapter section. That way you keep your thoughts and decisions ready and organised for when you want to edit.

The benefit of an editing map is it will allow you to pattern spot your thinking. If you find you constantly put notes about characters then you know that’s what needs to go in the next draft. If you comment about setting then work on that next and so on.

***

CHARACTERS

Have a break before starting draft two, the longer the text the longer the break should be, but its up to you to decide how long is right for you. I imagine I will put my manuscript down for a month or two – or as long as I physically can.

Here’s where I hack the manuscript or story to pieces, I focus on finalising the timeline. Moving chapters or scenes till they are right, but I get it right here. Once this draft is over I don’t want to have to move the timeline much more. Whilst I do this, I study the characters. Picking up on their salient traits, emphasising or minimising them, checking consistencies and making very rough notes about each one, so that I get consistency across the whole story – bit like an editing map but for the characters – let’s call it a character map.

Step 4: Check your editing map for patterns of your thinking before you start editing- whatever is most salient is what you should work on next.

Step 5: Create a character map – it can look like whatever you want, and be as big or small as you want but should have relevant or key bits of information about your character to ensure consistency when editing.

Step 6: Once the timeline is finalised plot a loose map of chapters / scenes so you can easily find bits you need when editing.    

The character map ensures I check their back story and history and start weaving in detail.

Finally I start thinking about the world and environment. I know a lot of detail about my stories world before I start writing, so I don’t need to do much work to create it, more weave the detail in, in draft 3.

***

WORLD-BUILDING

Have another break before starting draft 3.

This is world-building time. I know for some people this will be the first draft stuff. But not for me, world-building comes in as a finishing touch – madness given the genre I write (fantasy/dystopian), but my world building is really done before I outline. The world in my current novel is what came to me first, so even though I only start to weave the detail in now, I already know what needs doing. My other focus in this draft is to finalise characters, detail, backstory and ensuring all the foreshadowing is in the right place.

Step 7: Check your editing map again

Ask yourself:

• What’s left to perfect?
• Have you checked details?
• Is your world complete?
• Are your characters perfected?
• Do you need to foreshadow?
• Does your timeline work?

***

PERFECTING THE MANUSCRIPT

I’m rubbish at proof reading. But I have to at least attempt it before giving it to beta readers and editors. So I proof read, check everything, over and over till I feel like I have done as much as I can do. I check:

• Characters
• Timelines
• Consistencies of: characters, world, locations, storyline, descriptions etc
• Grammar/spelling/word order/sentence structure etc
• General errors
• Story arcs / character growth

***

BETA FEEDBACK

This is the bit where you crap your pants a little – your hand shakes as you tentatively give your manuscript over to be critiqued by beta readers.

Once you stop crying! You edit in your feedback and hey presto you’re ready to pay a developmental or copy editor or seek an agent or whatever you feel your next steps should be.

 ***

RESEARCH

Step8: Research along the way, don’t get stuck making all the decisions before you start

There’s one section I haven’t mentioned. Research, and that’s because I research constantly. From before I pick up the pen, right through to the end of draft 3. I don’t worry about having all the tiny details before I start, or I would never start, plus I change my mind too often to decide everything before I begin; so I research details along the way.

***

This post is not meant to be a guide to the only writing process– the complete opposite in fact. This post is just my personal method of writing, my process. It will only be right for me. But what I hope it does do, is help you get some insight into discovering your own process. 

What does your pyramid look like?

The post 8 Steps to Discover Your Perfect Writing Process appeared first on Sacha Black.