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Writing Advice

Advice on editors and publishing (especially for teenagers!)

This is a collection of advice I've been given over many years. Please note that nothing listed here is law; some things are suggestions that work for specific scenarios, or strategies that work for some people and not for others. My intention is to make industry guidance accessible to those without easy contact with the professional writing world.

Sources: literary agents, a writing conference, writing summer camps, published authors.

Writing In General

  • Using unexpected phrases/words/metaphors makes your writing much more interesting.
  • Headers are good for the transition between POVs, and help break up the book into digestible chunks.
  • Use action and movement to break up dialogue.
  • Don't spend too much time on transitions. LOTR is the only book that gets away with pages worth of walking from A to B.
  • Give characters their own voices. They shouldn't all think, speak, act, and narrate the same.
"Not everyone can be Tolkien. Watching characters walking around is only useful if something happens."

Writing Fiction

  • Make sure to submit your work to the agent who works in your field. No YA going to a bedtime story agent!
  • YA writing has its own conferences, which are great to go to.
  • You have to write for both kids and adults; adults are the gatekeepers (agents, publishers, etc.) and kids are your readers.
  • Multiple POV's:
    • Limit POVs to 2 people. Yes, there have been successful books with more, but they're difficult to do right. Unless you're Sarah J. Maas, don't expect it to fly easily.
    • Tone must be distinct per character. Have two identically speaking narrators/POVs gets confusing.
  • Plot advice:
    • Limit subplots to one or two per book unless you're REALLY sure what you're doing.
    • Your inciting incident should happen no more than 7% into the book. Any longer feels boring and pointless.
    • A good plotting resource is "The Writer's Journey" (Christopher Volger). For screenplays, try "Save the Cat" (Blake Snyder) and "Story-Maps" (Daniel Calvissi).
    • Joss Wheden is (apparently??) a plot genius, so examining his work may be helpful.
  • Revising/Editing:
    • Don't be afraid of revising. Cut extra scenes, write new ones, do what you need to do.
    • For every scene, do at least two of the following: establish the world/setting, futher the plot, or develop character(s). If a scene does less than 2 of those things, absorb it into another scene, shorten/ summarize it, or cut it out.
    • First pages are the most revised pages. That's normal.
    • Once you finish a first draft, go back and outline (if you haven't already). Do it. Chart the Hero's Journey and everything.
"For every scene, do at least two of the following: establish the world/setting, futher the plot, or develop character(s). If a scene does less than 2 of those things, absorb it into another scene, shorten/summarize it, or cut it out."

Writing Openings

  • Don't open a book with something redundant, like "The story begins".
  • The opening should not drag on. The inciting incident should occur no more than 7% in. Background is important to establish but it shouldn't take 60 pages.
  • Diving immediately into a scene works well; however, there are some additional guidelines.
    • Be careful not to make it too confusing
    • The scene has to have a purpose other than starting the story
    • Characters must react both logically and in character
    • Remember that we so far have no emotional connection to the characters, so if someone dies we don't care yet!
  • Describe things that matter, and limit time on things that don't. (We don't need three paragraphs about how the doctor's office looks.)
"Don't seriously open a book with something like 'the story begins', because we already know the story begins. We're reading the first page."

Breaking Rules

The word rule is used loosely. These are guidelines, not laws.

  • Breaking rules means you'll have issues with one or more of the following things: finding publishers, having fewer readers, and having reading be more difficult for readers. You'll have to accept those tradeoffs, and if you don't, don't break the rule.
  • If you're going to break the rules, do it for a reason. (Luckily for me, style counts as a reason).
  • Commit. If you break a rule, go all the way. Don't have fourth wall breaks in the first chapter but none later. You have to carry through. Be consistant in your inconsistance.
  • Some rules are more often broken in certain genres. If you're writing speculative fiction and are breaking a rule more often broken in romance, go look at romance books that do what you want to do. (Look at films/TV as well. Don't limit what mediums you use as inspiration!)
  • The word "said" gets skipped over by our eyes, but this can be used to your advantage. Use adverbs and synonyms with intention; bad use of them can get your reader caught up in the writing and not the story.
  • Don't use "suddenly" to set up a scare/etc. It's overdone and won't work. That is not to say you can't use "suddenly" at all— there are plenty of good uses for it— just be aware of its application.
  • Feel free to mess with format! Write things in powerpoint slides, lists, recipes, whatever. Some guy wrote a book with a title that sounded like a clickbait and had absolutely nothing to do with the story.
  • Prologues are generally frowned upon. Just make them chapter 1.
  • Be careful with parenthetical asides. (Unless you're breaking that rule.)
"Rules are made for the reader's benefit, so they can read easily and not get tired. They're not because publishers want to make life difficult!"

The World of Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is defined as anything not based in reality, includes genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

  • Different markets have different ethics and politics; keep that in mind and know what/who you're submitting to.
  • Follow. Submission. Guidelines. Seriously. For example, most publishers don't allow simultaneous submissions. These are the rules you do not want to break.
  • There are fewer publishers for SFF (sci-fi and fantasy), but all the big 5 publishers have SFF imprints.
  • Smaller publishers often have more opportunities for hard-to-categorize books.

Some changes in the SFF world:

  • More "geek culture" and gatekeeping (people saying "you're not a REAL fan unless...") Please don't let this deter you!
  • Potential for adaptions to film/television
  • More fairytale offerings for adults
  • More acceptance of feminist, queer, and POC characters
  • Lots of sub/hybrid genres have popped up

Ways to connect with the SFF community:

  • Twitter, Facebook
  • Local and national conferences
  • Workshops such as Clarion West, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, and Taos Toolbox
"Speculative fiction is, increasingly, for everyone."

On Literary Agents

  • Use word count as your unit of measurement, not pages. Page counts can depend on font, font size, and other factors, so your word count gives agents a much better picture of length.
    • For a YA novel, the word count sweet spot is 85-95k.
  • Do your own research! What tips do published authors have? What have agent said about getting them? Research individual agents you're interested in, not just everyone.
  • Study the querying process.
    • A query letter is your sales pitch to an agent and needs to be thought of as marketing a product.
    • Don't go to agents until you have a finished manuscript.
  • Lots of agents are on Twitter! Apparently there's even a tag you use to pitch a book in one tweet, and a lot of agents check it.
  • Writer's Digest has some good resources. I don't know the specifics on this, though.

Networking/Visibility:

  • Go to agent panels! Talk to agents! Interact! You'll gain tips, tricks, and connections.
  • Network, network, network. Meet people in the agent/writer/reader community and become their friend.
  • "Have a professional online presence". You should be findable. The more people who know who you are, the better.
  • For the above tip: have a blog, a bookstagram/instagram, use graphics— anything to get yourself out there
"Remember, agents and publishers need you as much as you need them!"

On Publishing

  • Don't say you have a series/make being a series a finalized decison. Go to people saying you have one book with the potential for more. A series is a serious committment.
  • It's better to make a publisher wait (although you really shouldn't) than deliver them bad work.
  • If you get something short published in a magazine or such, it can easily snowball and get you to better places.
The big 5 (American) publishers: Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan.