Tips for Novelists:FIVE THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN WRITING YOUR NOVEL WITH THE HOPES OF SOMEDAY SEEING IT MADE BY HOLLYWOOD

In our never-ending search for novels that can be made into films, we are constantly disappointed by books that could have been, but aren’t, movie material because the author wasn’t thinking about the needs of the motion picture medium when constructing his or her book. Here are my top five considerations for “writing your novel to be a film”:

1) A CASTABLE PROTAGONIST.

Movies require a character interesting enough to hold our attention for two hours, and the stronger the character the more likely it is that a bankable star will want to play it. Bankable stars are primarily male, and in the age range of 30-60.

2) A CLEAR THREE-ACT STRUCTURE.

That’s what keeps us watching—a powerful beginning that hooks our attention, a second act that never lets it go, and a climactic third act that leaves us with a resounding feeling of finality.

3) AN AMERICAN CENTER.

Stories with foreign settings and concerns are made into movies of course—but not every day, and not regularly by the big studios. “The Bourne Identity” takes place all over the world, but its primary character and concerns are American-centered.

4) ACTION.

Novels that are primarily introspective are difficult, if not impossible, to make into films. Make sure your book drives your characters into meaningful action, in which they change for better or worse.

5) AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT MATTER.

“To write a mighty book,” Melville says in Moby Dick, “you must have a mighty theme.” Moviemakers love larger-than-life stories, ones that will capture the imagination of the global marketplace.

Next time you sit down to plan your novel, confer with me before you make a decision that will preclude it from being a Hollywood film!

Tips for Novelists: How To Target Your Market

Tips for Novelists: Targeting Your Audience

Visit Jeff Rivera's Promote Your Novel website.

A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT- Part Four

A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT
Continued From previous post: How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity
Chapter Thirteen: Perfecting Your Craft

Now that we’ve got a handle on the basic elements of the novelist’s craft, let’s look at some of the techniques you’ll use to create your stories.

First vs. third person narrative

I recommend that writers stick to writing in third person during the early part of their careers. In general, only experienced novelists can write effectively in first person, because with a prodigious amount of writing under their belts, they understand the clear distinction that must be made between a fictional narrator and the author himself.

For example, in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which I consider to be the first modern novel, the narrator is introduced to us from the beginning as someone who has a point of view distinct from the author’s. He debates the spelling of Quixote’s name, but remarks that it is ultimately unimportant to his story, “…providing that in the telling of it we do not depart one iota from the truth.”

First person storytelling only works if the storyteller is himself clearly fictional. The storyteller must be a character in the book, explicitly or implicitly, with his own clearly defined point of view. It must be obvious to the reader that this is not the author doing the talking. This is trickier than it may sound. New writers often struggle with the nuances of “voice” in their novels. This is one technique that’s better left for a later phase of your career.

Write what you know—or what you can imagine

Everyone tells you to write about what you know best, which for most people is themselves and their personal experience. What they don’t tell you is that fictionalizing your life is an entirely different matter, one that’s fraught with perils. Just because your life has been filled with hazards and drama doesn’t mean it translates well to the novel. Usually it’s for a simple reason: your life is in chronological order, a novel must be written in dramatic order. That’s what Sophocles, the great Greek tragedian, said, “Count no man happy until he is dead. The ending is all.”

Your own experience is a goldmine for dramatic inspiration, though, if not for dramatic structure. It’s all right to turn your relatives and acquaintances into characters, but proceed with caution. You don’t want to get hit with a libel suit. Besides, they do have a right to their privacy.

Every writer taps into the reservoir of his own personal acquaintances in order to garner material for his characters—how else could he create them? But the trick to doing this effectively, legally, and ethically is not to borrow too much from any given real person. Your characters should be an amalgam of the people you know.

It’s common for a character to be a combination of three or four real people from the author’s memory. He’s just taken the most memorable attributes of each and rolled them into one. Look for the characteristics that make the most dramatic combination, and above all, that serve your story’s action.

Your writing time

The secret to making time your ally instead of your enemy is to respect your own personal rhythms. Follow your energy. If the task of plotting everything out meticulously on index cards stops your creative process in its tracks, the odds are against your ever getting past the first blush of any idea.
If this is the case, skip this step and come back to it later. As I mentioned earlier, you will need to get all your elements working in concert before you enter that first keystroke. But you don’t need to have every scene plotted out before you begin. If it works best for you, you can write the first third of your book with the heat of inspiration, then stop and outline the rest of it. Leave the end to suggest itself along the way.

Beating the middle

The middle portion of a novel seems to be the toughest part for writers to get through. Many novels fizzle out in midstream because their writers have lost their perspective. Writers get exhausted, and sometimes mistake this normal, natural exhaustion for depression. They begin to second-guess their decision to undertake the project. And their exhaustion colors their judgment with negativity. Pretty soon, they’ve convinced themselves that the novel isn’t worth finishing, and they abandon it. But this drop in enthusiasm is just a symptom. It’s a normal part of the process, one that you should anticipate and prepare yourself to deal with before it cripples your efforts.

The best way to handle this inevitable burnout is to take vacations. Lots of them. Plan to take them at regular intervals, and any time you feel the writers’ doldrums starting to creep in.
Does the prospect of walking away from the project for a week or two fill you with anxiety? Good. That’s the whole idea. By stepping back from the process whenever it starts to bog down, you’re putting a healthy pressure on yourself. You’ll feel that much more compelled to use your time productively when you do get back to it.

Creating a story of 250 pages or more is a daunting task. You can make it feel like less of a monster by dividing it up into smaller chunks. Keep plugging away at this series of manageable-sized tasks until the rush of adrenaline that comes along toward the end of a project scoops you up and carries you to the finish line.

Read this entire post from the beginning.

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A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT- Part Three

A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT
Continued From previous post: How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity
Chapter Thirteen: Perfecting Your Craft

Action line

Action isn’t the same thing as plot. Your action line is the direction in which your story moves. If you’re writing a tragedy, your story has to move from happiness to unhappiness. If your novel has a happy ending, you have to put your character in a hole and make him dig his way out—you have to start him out unhappy and let him make the journey to happiness. Whatever the case, there has to be a change. Your story has to move from one state to another. If it doesn’t, it will meander, sputter, and lose its drama.
Here are some of the fundamental attributes of your action line:

1.) Conflict: As we discussed, action occurs when your protagonist meets obstacles to his goal. Whether he succeeds or fails with a given obstacle depends on who he is, and on the mythic pattern that is the underpinning of your story.

2.) Turning Points: During the natural course of the story, your protagonist will encounter turning points, so called because they literally spin the story off in a different direction. Your protagonist will come to the first turning point early in the story. It’s the event that launches him off on his mission. The second turning point comes toward the end of the story. It sets the stage for the ultimate confrontation that will culminate in your story’s climax. Both turning points are intimately connected to your protagonist’s motivation.

3.) Plot Twists: Twists, also called reverses, are exactly what they sound like: an unexpected turn of events, or a revelation, that accelerates the action. Your action line doesn’t have to contain twists, but they help. Often your second turning point will be a twist, though they can happen at virtually any time. The twist in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game comes at the very end, and gives the previous climax scene an entirely different meaning.

The trick to writing an effective twist is to make it so that your readers don’t see it coming, but when they look back on it, they couldn’t imagine it happening any other way. There can be no clearer example in recent memory than the stunning revelation in The Sixth Sense, which had film audiences all across the country exclaiming, “How could I have missed that?”

4.) Climax: Your obstacles have been getting tougher throughout the story, but the crisis your protagonist faces at the climax blows all the others away. This queen mother of all obstacles brings your story to its darkest hour, the point which Joseph Campbell in A Hero’s Journey named “the Inmost Cave.” If your protagonist can rise to the occasion and face this challenge, he opens the door for the resolution of his problems.

The triadic shape of all good fiction

All good fiction has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Borrowing from screenwriting, these are in essence your First Act, Second Act and Third Act. Each has its own shape, nature and function. Your First Act brings you from the protagonist’s initial introduction and the setup of the situation to the first turning point that launches your protagonist into his mission. Your middle, or Second Act, the most challenging portion for many writers, shows that your protagonist is developing as he tackles an ever-escalating series of challenges. Your Third Act, your resolution, is the place where your protagonist overcomes his difficulty and achieves his mission.

You’ll need to have these portions of your story clear before you begin to write. But don’t become a slave to your structure. Plot your way through your first draft, then when you revise, throw your outline away and just tell the story.

But how will you know where to begin the action? Some writers think it’s necessary to go all the way back to the birth of their protagonist. But not all occurrences are drama. Drama only begins as soon as something compelling is happening. William Goldman counsels writers to start their scenes as far into the action as they can. I’ve often taught my students to look at their first drafts the way they’d look at a fish they’ve just caught and are about to clean. Just as they’d lop off the fish’s head, they should remove and discard any beginning parts of the story where the drama hasn’t yet begun. You wouldn’t serve inedible parts of the fish to your dinner guests; don’t serve un-riveting parts the story to your readers.

The first and continuous question you must ask yourself as you write is, “how will my readers respond if I tell the story in this order?” The second is just as important: “Do I want them to respond that way?”

Dramatic Setting

How do you decide where to set your story? You pick the location that will enhance the dramatic tension the most. When in doubt, look to your protagonist for answers. What kind of location would showcase his motivation best?

Many writers specialize in a location they know intimately: John Irving’s New Hampshire, Pat Conroy’s North Carolina, Anne Rice’s New Orleans. You may choose to explore your own geographic roots this way. But you’re not limited to your own origins. Whatever you can A.) research and B.) imagine, you can write about. But do meticulous, extensive research on the settings you choose, even if you think you know them.

Scenes as units of drama

All drama unfolds one scene at a time. A scene is the basic unit of drama: Ideally, each scene ratchets the story along one step. A scene has a beginning, middle, and end, just like your entire novel does. They generally look like this:

Beginning: somebody is somewhere.
Middle: something is going on.
End: something happens that does or doesn’t solve the problem.

Your scene should also foreshadow a fourth part: what could happen next? This is how you dovetail your scenes to one another, bypassing the need for a transition.

Tone

A single factor determines your novel’s tone: your relationship to your audience. How do you view your narrative position—are you “preaching” it or “offering” it? Are you setting yourself up as an authority to your readers, or are you letting them in on a personal revelation, as you would a friend or confidant? Do you want them to trust what you have to say, or is it more interesting if you deliberately set them up to doubt you? If you’re not sure whether a particular tone is the right one for a given story, try it for a few pages and see if it feels natural. If it doesn’t, let it go and try something different.

These, then, are the essential building blocks of any story: character, action, setting and tone. But how do you make these elements work together to form a great story?

Aristotle addressed this question twenty-four centuries ago, and came up with a single, simple, and completely satisfying answer that is as valid today as it was in his time: unity. In any work of drama, from novel to screenplay to stage play, all the elements must come together to serve one action. In the Iliad, for example, every element serves the same purpose: to deal with the anger of Achilles. Aristotle firmly believed that in the best stories, all the components supported a single plot line.

That’s what makes good fiction so satisfying. It feels like a package. It asks a question, “what would happen if…?” then proceeds to answer it. It has a single clear mission and a definite conclusion.

This why it’s so important for you to get all the elements worked out in your mind before you start to write. Beginning writers suffering from a lack of focus tend to put in too much, because they haven’t yet identified the one line of action that everything else must serve. The best writers put in only what moves the action along in the right direction. They leave room for the readers to fill in the rest with their own imaginations.

To be continued. Check back soon!
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A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT- Part Two

Continued From previous post: How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity
Chapter Thirteen: Perfecting Your Craft

All five of these elements must be present in your protagonist. And as you’ve no doubt noticed, all of these attributes link directly to your novel’s action. Because in a good story, the action happens as it does because of who your protagonist is. Conversely, your protagonist develops as he does because of the way the action unfolds. Action and character drive each other.

All the elements in your novel must support this single line of protagonist in action. This holds true as well for all the other characters who populate your novel. Whether major, minor or functional, characters only belong in your story to the extent that they serve the action line.

Minor or supporting characters have a “tag”: a single attribute that defines them and makes them memorable. Any supporting character who isn’t memorable should be instantly thrown out.

A minor character’s “tag” can be just about any attribute: greed, lechery, or like Sally’s friend in When Harry Met Sally, an all-consuming desire to get married. Don’t spell it out, though. If a character is absent-minded, show it in action, thought and dialogue, don’t use the phrase “absent-minded” or you rob audience of the chance to figure it out for themselves.

A minor character can have a motivation but not a mission—that’s your protagonist’s job. They, too can evolve, but not along the same lines as your protagonist. Your minor characters are there to make his life more interesting. Establish them quickly, then move on.

Function characters play an even less important role than supporting characters. They perform a single function without being involved in the main character’s motivation. They ride in at sunset to deliver the fateful telegram, then ride away again. They serve the drinks, drive the cabs, do their duties, then go upon their way. Unlike your protagonist and minor characters, they’re supposed to be forgettable.

Keep function characters simple. If you spend too much energy on them your readers will start to think they’re more significant than you mean them to be. Then when the character disappears, it will feel to your readers like you left something dangling, or worse, like you misled them.

Keep in mind that your characters are not real people but devices that you invented for the sole purpose of capturing and holding your reader’s attention. As such, it’s your primary responsibility to keep them interesting. The best way to do that is to give them, at all times, something significant to do.

Your audience wants action. The best writers don’t get wrapped up in the complex psychological machinations of their characters. They write to satisfy their readers’ expectations. Your audience wants more than anything to see how your protagonist gets out of the corners you paint him into. All you have to do to create a compelling novel is: don’t disappoint your readers!
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A NOVELIST’S TOOL KIT - Part One

From How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity

Chapter Thirteen:

Perfecting Your Craft

Nothing takes the place of practice. A famous athlete once said, “If you’re not practicing, someone out there is practicing. And when he meets you he will beat you.” Writing isn’t just a talent, it’s a craft that requires the honing of skill and technique. In this chapter I’ll give you several concrete suggestions about how you can improve yourself as a commercial novelist.

A novelist’s toolkit

A novelist’s medium is story, his form the contemporary novel. His most basic tools are character, action, setting and narrative voice. From the alchemy created by mixing these, a story emerges. Let’s examine each of these elements in turn.

Major, minor, and supporting characters

Character is by far the most important element of a novel. To the extent that your readers are “on board” with your protagonist, they will stay committed to your story. An unforgettable protagonist, even if he appears complex and multifaceted to the reader, is made up of just a handful of key components:

1.) Motivation: What makes your protagonist tick? What does he want? Your character must be struggling with one of the major human drives, including love, hate, fear, anxiety, vengeance, rage, jealousy, ambition, and greed. Your readers know these drives intimately; odds are, they’ve grappled with them in their own lives. They’ll respond to them.

Identify one drove for each of your characters and develop it. The best stories take a single, profound emotion and plumb its depths through all the characters like variations on a theme in music; the worst stories skim the surface of many different human drives, leaving their readers lost, confused, and unsatisfied. A well-constructed protagonist may possess two drives that are in conflict with each other, but rarely more than this. He is driven by greed and fear, for example, so that each step toward his goal of riches increases his psychological pain. In real life, people run a gamut of emotions, explore many drives, but not in well-made fiction. The beauty of the “what if” pattern (“What if a man driven by greed was as strongly driven by fear?”) is that it allows us to isolate and explore the ramifications of action issuing from such a character.

2.) Mission: Your protagonist needs a job to do, a goal for his drive. If it’s greed you’ve chosen, you may want to be the man who aims at being the top player on Wall Street, the woman who corners the oil exploration business, the couple who want to have more than anyone else at their country club. It doesn’t matter whether the character chooses to undertake the mission himself, or it’s thrust upon him. The mission should relate directly, in one way or another, to the character’s motivation.

The mission must be involved enough and challenging enough to sustain the story for the duration of the novel. It must lend itself to challenges, both in the form of obstacles, and in the form of an antagonist.

An antagonist, by definition, is a force that works against your hero’s mission—your protagonist’s nemesis. Your antagonist will not necessarily be a bad guy—he might not even be a person at all. In Sebastian Junger’s novel The Perfect Storm, nature is the antagonist. It’s the storm itself that foils Captain Billy Tyne’s mission to come home with a boatload of swordfish. In Steve Alten’s Domain, the antagonist is the other-worldly dragon creature who rises from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico after lying dormant for millions of years.

3.) Obstacles: Action happens when your hero struggles against obstacles to his mission. The obstacles you choose to confront your protagonist must be appropriate for him—don’t pit Bambi against the Galactic Empire. Arrange your series of obstacles in ascending order, so that the tension rises throughout your story. Your obstacles, ideally, should relate to one another in some fashion. And like all the other elements of your story, they must have a beginning, middle, and end.

4.) Relatability: If your audience can’t identify with your protagonist, they’re not going to be able to involve themselves in your story. Beginning writers often get the impression that a protagonist has to be likable. But if that were the case, we couldn’t enjoy Bill Murray’s performance as the irascible Frank Cross in Scrooged. Readers don’t have to like your protagonist. They just have to relate to him. They have to see the direction you’re pointing him in, and root for him to go there. If he’s a jerk, the audience must hunger for his redemption. You can’t help rooting for Hero’s Bernie LaPlante, even if you do want to kick him.

5.) Change: Over the course of the story, your protagonist must face his shortcoming, or his fear, or whatever it is that’s really keeping him from achieving his mission. He must grow into his ability to meet the goal you’ve set for him. In real life, human change is nebulous, messy, imprecise. In fiction, it can’t be. Your character’s change must progress in a logical, clear series of steps. See Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing for a thorough discussion of the steps that lead a character from state A to state B.

To be continued. Check back soon!

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How To Publicize Your Book

Now that you have finished your book, and it is ready to be shopped around to publishers (or has already been bought by a publisher!) it’s time to think about what you can do to help promote your book.

1) A little promotion, focused on NY media, can help us bring your book to the attention of major publishers. Brainstorm with us about this!

2) All other PR should be saved for the month of your books’ launch and following.

3) That means you have to start six months before that date to make magazine and television deadlines!


4) Read the chapter on publicizing your book in KJA’s How to Publish Your Novel (Square One Books).

5) Read John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book.

Come up with a marketing Plan!

•Books don’t publicize themselves and, today, publishers rarely put maximum effort into a book’s release until the book starts selling. This Catch-22 means that YOU are your book’s best hope. The sooner you take that approach, the better your chances will be. Even well-known writers have found that putting little effort into marketing will produce virtually zero results—one or two thousand sold.

•Let us review it before you start implementing it and spending money.

•Start a website! Create a website solely dedicated to your book. AEI’s webmaster provides that service for our clients at rock-bottom prices. And get your link sponsored on other websites too!

•Write emails! Send an email to friends, family and co-workers about your book, and ask them to pass it along to everyone they know. You’ll be amazed how fast word of mouth spreads!

Endorsements

It’s invaluable to get endorsements for your book–authorities and/or well-known people who will say great things about your book to display on the jacket. There are numerous ways to request endorsements (aka “blurbs”):

•Ask your colleagues! If you are a professional in any given field, it’s always a good idea to ask your colleagues for their own endorsements, or to recommend you to well-known others, especially those who are writers too.

•Does your topic deal with a timely issue? Can you think of anyone in entertainment who may relate to your topic? Try and seek out celebrities (actors, best-selling authors, athletes) to endorse your book (it never hurts to have a famous name on the cover!)

•Brainstorm with your editor. Check out your publishers catalog, and suggest writers who might appreciate your book.

•One suggestion. Busy people have good hearts but not enough time. Write the endorsement yourself, focusing on what might sound in character for them; fax or mail it to them, along with sample chapters of your book, asking, “Would you mind endorsing my book along the lines suggested here?” You’ll be surprised that often they just say yes, and let you use what you wrote as their endorsement or change it slightly.

Click here to buy How to Publish Your Novel by Ken Atchity, Andrea McKeown, Julie Mooney, & Margaret O'Connor on Amazon

What makes a good novel?

Exactly what conditions must be met in order for a fictional work of written prose to be considered a novel has long been the subject of intense and, depending on one's point of view, either fascinating or soporific debate.

There is no real consensus on exactly what the "first" novel was, but whether you're a staunch Dashakumaracharita advocate, or a proud member of Team Genji or Team Gilgamesh or even Team Gargantua, there's one area of undisputed common ground: A novel is first and foremost, a good story.

Because the term covers such a wide range of works, created by such a wide range of individual talents, we probably can't make an unqualified assertion that no good novel has ever been written about a bad story, nor is a good story alone a guarantee, but it's a safe bet that a good story has a much better chance than a bad one of becoming a best-seller.

That's what your Writer's Lifeline editor will look at first: the basic components of your story.

The story is the cornerstone, the foundation of your novel. It's the soil from which the tree will grow and flower.

Like the shape of a tree, a story can take on a life of its own during the writing process, and this can be a good thing, but most writers will be able to save themselves a great deal of revision time--and editorial costs--by putting the drawing board work on the front end: The sooner you show it to us, the more time and frustration you’ll save yourself.-

A story may evolve and change, but if it's a good one to begin with, it's only going to get better as it grows.

Modern bestsellers tend to be "character-driven." It's through the characters that the story unfolds. Strong, well-drawn characters will become as real to your readers as they become to you while you're writing about them, or more accurately, writing them.

Our character development specialists can help avoid pitfalls and sail over common hurdles that almost all writers face at some point.

They'll help you find that magical balance between characters that are nuanced and fleshed-out without overtaking both the story itself and your reader's imagination. The reader's mind is a key element of any good story! Leave plenty of room for it in your draft, or the reader will stop reading.

While natural talent cannot be taught or learned, the craft of writing not only can, but must, be learned if the writer aspires to a finished product that has a fighting chance in today's competitive marketplace.

There are a great many more solid, well-constructed novels based on good stories on bookstore shelves than there are works of timeless literary genius.

Let us help you get your story straight!

Tips For Novelists

What makes for good novel writing--lush narrative, detailed description, inner monologues--often makes for poor screenwriting, which is brief and evocative

Tips For The Novelist

In a good novel, characters tell the story.

TIPS FOR NOVELISTS

Dramatic fiction, by suspending our disbelief, gives the impression of reality--what Aristotle, in his Poetics, described as an "imitation" of action that may not be "strictly true" but is "more philosophical than history" because it is true in a poetic, or universal, sense.

TIPS FOR NOVELISTS

Follow The Chicago Manual of Style, fourteenth edition and Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition.

TIPS FOR NOVELISTS

Know how to format a manuscript, if you don’t know how, find out.

Excerpt from Michael Maxen's article, "How to Manufacture a Best Seller"

The hero is an expert. The villain is an expert. You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of the villain.

The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him.

Two or more on the team must fall in love.

Two or more on the team must die.

The villain must turn his attentions from his initial goal to the team.

The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.

All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people were killed. Start with "Jamie and Suzy were walking in the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up."

If you get bogged down, just kill somebody.


Published in the New York Times Magazine on March 1, 1998.

TIP THE NOVELIST

Fiction, as we know, isn't the same as reality.

TIP FOR THE NOVELIST

Dramatic fiction, by suspending our disbelief, gives the impression of reality--what Aristotle, in his Poetics, described as an "imitation" of action that may not be "strictly true" but is "more philosophical than history" because it is true in a poetic, or universal, sense.

TIP FOR NOVELISTS

Never sit down to write without knowing what you’re going to write before you sit down.