Ariele University: On Writing by Stephen King

If you’ve been following along for any period of time, you’re familiar with my Fake Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and Indie Publishing from Ariele University.

Well, good news! I think I’m going to graduate this year! As such, you’ll probably see a surge of posts about writing as I complete my remaining assignments. You’ll also hear about my thesis project, which is rapidly nearing completion.

Today, I bring you a few, very short thoughts on the book On Writing, by Stephen King.

A Few Thoughts About ON WRITING by Stephen King

For as long as I’ve been involved in the writing community, people have been recommending the book On Writing by Stephen King. It is held up as the ultimate book on writing, due in no small part to the fact that its title is literally On Writing, it is LITERALLY a book on writing. To this end, I resisted reading it for a long time. I was worried that since everyone loved it so much, I would be disappointed.

Eventually, after I started doing a lot of workshops and presentations, I decided I should suck it up and read the stupid book. After the hundredth time someone told me, “You really should read it! It changed my life!” After the thousandth workshop attendee questioned whether I had anything valuable to say because I hadn’t read On Writing by Stephen King. Besides, Stephen King is a legendary writer. It couldn’t be that bad, right?

So I read the book.

I was less disappointed than I thought I would be. The truth be told, I thought the first half of the book was by and large uninteresting, unless you wanted to read a biography (or an auto-biography) of Stephen King’s life. Which, of course, may be quite interesting to some people. But I was looking for useful, practical stuff, and ultimately, King’s rise to fame can likely never be repeated.

(To be fair, he does use the word “memoir” in the title, so that mis-alignment of expectations is on me.)

The second half of the book, however, proved to be a lot more interesting. I liked the switch from the first half, with the break where he talks about how he got hit by a car in the middle of writing the book and it made him reconsider where he had been going with the book to begin with. From that point forward, I found the book educational. I found myself agreeing with him on most issues, though I tend to take a slightly softer stance. For example, when he says that adverbs pave to the road to hell, well, that’s a bit over the top, really. It does explain why everyone in the writing world is so anti-adverbs though.

The thing I disliked the most was the prescriptive attitude, that “THIS is the way to write a book.” I think this is a problem in the writing industry as a whole, however, and I don’t really think that his version of it is worse than anyone else’s. But one day, I’d like to see someone famous write a book called, “You can write however you want: the only rule is that there are no rules.”

Ultimately, I would say that if you are looking for a book that goes in depth into King’s life, and has some helpful writing tidbits in the second half, then this book is for you. If you just want the writing tidbits, skip the first half; if you just want to know more about King, skip the second half.

And if you’re tired of people telling you what to do, skip it entirely.

Ariele University: How To Publish A Book

As most of you know, I’m a pretty big fan of indie publishing. Traditional publishing has certainly enabled plenty of people to publish as well, but many problems plague the trad industry, from gatekeepers refusing to publish books by people of color, to rampant sexism and racism in the books that are published, to CEOs making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while their authors only make cents per hour of labor. That said, the traditional industry is not all bad, but the rise of indie publishing has enabled many authors to not only evade the traditional gatekeepers, but make actual cash from their hard-spent hours.

Much of the critique of indie publishing, on the other hand, is opposite that of traditional publishing. For example, without gatekeepers, anything can get published, including things of poor quality—or things that are filled with rampant racism or sexism or ableism. Or perhaps you’ve heard the oft-cited statistic that the majority of indie authors make less than 10k a year.

However, I am a believer in free speech, and as such, I think that the rise of indie publishing is one of the best things that’s ever happened to benefit the first amendment.

I’ve been giving workshops on how to publish a book for the last six years, and I am just now writing it all down in a cohesive, coherent manner. The truth is, the process is relatively simple. The complexity comes because nearly every step of the process is optional, and which parts you choose will depend entirely on your situation and goals.

Ultimately, all you need to publish a book is three things:

• A finished, polished manuscript

• A representative image (like a cover)

• A format

There are people that publish their work serially, a chapter per week on platforms like Wattpad. There are people that compose entire manuscripts entirely out of tweets. There are people that read their work aloud on Youtube. There are people that write a monthly blog instead of printing a book. There are people that only print paperbacks, or people that physically craft their own books by hand.

But I’m going to give a run-down of the most standard steps that people go through. Just keep in mind that many of these steps are optional, or can be approached from a non-traditional perspective. You can adapt and shift this process to what works for you.

The Self-Publishing Process

I like to organize the overall process of publishing a book into three main categories: Manuscript, Design, and Distribution. Below is a high-level list of the steps, to make it easy for you to follow along, and then I will go into the sub-steps and various options you have for each.

If you are still in the early stages and have yet to finish a manuscript, but you want to do something to prepare for the release of your first book, then there is one, very specific thing you can do that will help you more than pretty much anything else: save money.

Publishing a book costs money. Period. Costs range from printing costs to cover design costs to purchasing ISBNs to purchasing the rights to use images to copyediting and proofreading. And then, even if you manage to do that entire process without spending a cent, then comes the marketing.

I’d like to pause here for a moment and say that all of this really depends on your end goals. If you want a career or you want to make money from your work, you will need to spend money.

If you’re doing a smaller project, say for a historical society bookshop or something like that, you can definitely reduce costs to very little—but you will still likely end up spending money.

However, as I go through these steps, I am going to do so with the assumption that you either want a career as an author or want at least to make some money.

The other thing to note is that I have organized these steps in an order. However, you do not have to do them in this order. In fact, as you go through the process, you will likely find yourself doing multiple steps at the same time (for example, at this very moment I am both having a cover designed and completing final proofing edits on a manuscript, and finalizing the interior paperback design). Some steps even depend on each other for completion.

Here is my personal process checklist. You can click here to download the .docx version and customize it to your preferences.

Manuscript

1. Have a finished manuscript.

2. Revise manuscript.

3. Implement feedback from beta readers.

4. Hire a copy editor or proofreader or both.

Design

1. Acquire an ISBN.

2. Design book cover.

3. Design paperback interior.

4. Design e-book.

Distribution

1. Select primary paperback distributor.

2. Select e-book distributors.

3. Upload files.

4. Hit publish.

Manuscript

Have a finished manuscript.

I always feel a little dumb saying this at my workshops, but it’s true: in order to publish a book, you have to have a book to publish. I have met many writers that are dreaming about publishing, but who aren’t even close to finishing a manuscript. Dreaming is fine, but don’t feel pressured or worry too much about the ins and outs of publishing before you’re done with the manuscript.

Get to the end of the book—then you can worry about what comes next.

Revise manuscript.

I know I said that all of the steps are optional, but one of the biggest critiques of indie publishing is that there is a slew of books on the market that are crap. This is because publishing a book is pretty easy, and so there are people that just throw up book after book on Amazon without revising, editing, or making sure their book makes sense.

Please, please, please, do not throw a rough draft up on Amazon. It will be bad for your career, but it’s also bad for the rest of the indie publishing world, because it furthers the stigma that if you can’t get a traditional publisher, it means your work doesn’t have value.

Revision is a critical part of the process and I know it can take a while, but once you’ve made it through all of your self-editing and revisions…

Implement feedback from beta readers.

This is definitely optional, but I think extremely wise. For my first five books, I used between three and eight beta readers. I found it very helpful and it made me feel more confident about my work, that I was putting out a better manuscript than I could have alone. I also learned a ton about writing, story structure, characterization, and all that. However, in more recent years, I’ve cut back and now only have two betas and two editors read my work, and each one gives me a very specific type of feedback.

I think that as we evolve and change as writers, our needs also evolve. If you’re working on your first or second manuscript, I highly recommend getting someone else to read it.

Getting beta readers shouldn’t cost any money. You can join a local writers’ group and offer to read someone else’s work in exchange for them reading yours. You can take a class at a local writing center or community college. There are websites like Scribophile and Wattpad where strangers may offer to read for you. You could ask friends, family, or college or high school teachers for help. Consider posting on Facebook or Twitter and seeing who in your network might be interested.

A few things to consider when searching for beta readers:

• It’s helpful to have a blurb or a concise description of your work so that your potential readers know what they’re getting into. Be sure to include any trigger warnings.

• The best beta readers are the ones that are familiar with your genre. It’s all well and good to get a college friend to read your sci-fi novel, but if they only ever read memoir, their feedback is not likely to be super helpful.

• Try to avoid people that you know are only going to stroke your ego. Getting feedback isn’t about being told that your book is wonderful and perfect. You need someone that is willing to point out the flaws. Most people recommend avoiding asking your mom or spouse to beta, but I would just say to make sure they are going to give you helpful feedback—and that you are going to be able to handle it when they do.

• While it is great to get feedback from other writers, getting feedback from readers is just as helpful. So if you ask another writer to read your work, make sure they are also frequent readers. It might seem obvious, but I’ve met many writers that say they never have time to read. Choose betas who read.

Overall, it’s good to get enough eyes on your work to find most of the major structural flaws, but it’s also important to remember that you can have too many cooks in the kitchen. How many is too many is definitely up to you, but I personally found eight to be a bit much, but three or four easy to handle. Make sure to be clear about what your expectations are, ask for deadlines, and send them the manuscript and any comments in a timely manner. And don’t forget to say thank you.

One alternative to beta readers is to hire a developmental editor. This is not cheap, but a developmental edit is a good way to get the same (and often better) feedback as betas would give, focused around plot structure, characterization, dialogue, and other high-level things, without having to rely on random people you found on the internet.

One other note I want to make here is that no matter the approach or tone of the beta or dev editor’s comments, all of these notes are suggestions. Don’t feel like you have to change something if it doesn’t feel right. And if someone’s notes feel all off or wrong, disregard.

My favorite advice on this topic is from Neil Gaiman:

“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

This process may take a while, but it’s worth it.

Hire a copy editor or proofreader.

The number one critique of indie books is typos. Some books out there are riddled with errors. That’s not to say that traditionally published books are perfect—there are plenty of errors in those as well. But there have been some indie books that, well, take the cake.

A copy editor will help you avoid this. They will also help make your story better, much like a developmental editor or your betas. Their focus will be on errors, however. So, they will not only find errors, but also help you improve your dialogue and description, note any timeline errors, make sure your characters’ names are spelled right, and other helpful things.

Copy editors on average charge between $0.01 and $0.05 per word for a full-length manuscript. For children’s or shorter books, they may charge by the hour. Some editors charge per page. Generally speaking, you can expect to pay between $800 - $4000 for a copy edit on an 80k word manuscript.

A few things to note on copy editing. More expensive should mean better, but it doesn’t always. Make sure you have some sort of official, written arrangement with the editor. The arrangement should include a deadline, an ‘error’ policy, and a deposit. Pay the deposit through PayPal or a similar service, and do not pay more than six months in advance as PayPal will not refund you more than six months after the payment is made.

Most editors have a 95% error free policy. This means that if you have 100 errors in your manuscript, they guarantee they will catch 95 of them. Editors are people too and they do miss things. I’ve met authors who get irate over one missed comma, or a single misspelled word in a 100k word manuscript. Be a nice author, not a cranky one.

When you indie publish, the quality of your manuscript is up to you. I’ve seen authors publish books filled with errors, and then turn around and blame the editor to their fans and readers. Here’s a tip: your readers don’t care who your editor is. They don’t care if it’s ‘not your fault.’ All they care about is that they bought a book that was poor quality, and it’s unlikely that they will give you another chance after that.

If your editor doesn’t do a good job, it’s your responsibility to hire another one—not to publish a book riddled with errors. You don’t have to be an expert grammatician, but it’s important to at least put some safeguards into place. A few things you can do:

• Hire an experienced editor with good ratings who comes recommended by other authors in your genre. Be willing to pay them for their time.

• Use a software like Grammarly or Autocrit. Robots are not perfect when it comes to grammar, but they can help. I know a lot of writers who aren’t great at grammar use software first, and then hire an editor.

• Read books on grammar. Study language. Practice copy editing on other things. Again, you don’t have to be perfect, but you should at least be able to recognize whether an editor did a good job or not. It’s okay if a few things sneak through—it’s not okay if your manuscript looks like trash.

• Have one or two beta readers read the book after it’s been edited. This has a couple benefits. First of all, it can help you make sure that the edits you made from your previous betas and the edits you made from your copy editor make sense. Second, they can also help you determine the cleanliness of the manuscript.

• Hire a proofreader after your copy editor is done. Proofreading is generally much cheaper than copy editing. A proofreader doesn’t dig into dialogue or description or anything like that. They focus purely on typos. They make sure you haven’t spelled anything wrong or left out any words and that you put your commas in the right place. Even if you don’t end up hiring a copy editor, I highly, highly recommend using a proofreader.

This part of the process is also where I suggest hiring a sensitivity reader. If you are writing characters that have different experiences than you, a sensitivity reader can help you ensure that you didn’t write anything insensitive, rude, or wrong by accident. For example, if you are white and wrote about black experience, you might want to hire a black person to read your work before you publish it. If you wrote a character with a disability, you might want to hire someone with a similar disability to read your work.

As a writer with any form of privilege (I say this from a position of privilege myself), you may want to represent a wide diversity of characters in your work. However, it can be difficult to truly understand the depth of experience of someone different than you, and I know that the last thing I would want is to be disrespectful or harmful to anyone or any group because of what I write.

Sensitivity readers are the perfect solution to this challenge. Most charge a flat fee to read your manuscript and tell you what they think. Some may also agree to read a single scene if that’s all that is necessary. Sensitivity reading requires a significant emotional investment on the part of the reader, as they might have to read about things that are extremely difficult or that trigger bad memories of terrible experiences. Not to mention, if something in the manuscript is harmful or disrespectful, they will have to tell you that and explain why, which can also be difficult. So please be willing to pay your sensitivity readers. Do not ask them to do this for free. Also, it’s best to send them the cleanest copy you can, so they don’t have to suffer through myriad typos, in addition to having to face potentially difficult subject matter.

How To Find An Editor, Proofreader, Or Sensitivity Reader

Before I move onto design, I wanted to put a few thoughts on how to find a professional editor, proofreader, or sensitivity reader to review your work.

Because I’m a step-by-step kind of person, I made you step-by-step process. I also apparently like to do things in 3s, so it has three steps:

1. Compile a list.

2. Vet them.

3. Reach out.

I tend to way overuse this process (as you will soon see), but that’s because it works.

Step 1: Make a list.

This is the easy part. Go on Facebook and ask for recommendations in writers’ groups, or read past posts of someone else asking for recommendations. Reach out to your writing colleagues. Use Google—there are tons of blog posts with lists upon lists of editors. I have used Mountains Wanted Publishing and Revision Division in the past.

As you’re making a list, keep track of the details. I use a spreadsheet for this. I write out the names of each, and then I look to see whether or not they offer a contract. What their prices are. Whether they have a website. How much of a sample edit they will provide. What genres they work in. Etc.

Step 2: Vet them. Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. You want to come out of this process with only four or five left on your list AT MOST. Eliminate anyone you can’t afford. Eliminate anyone that doesn’t work with your genre. Eliminate anyone who’s tone on their website bugs you. You can eliminate editors for whatever reason you want. The key here is to find someone that you can work with, whose style you like, and who is going to be around for a while.

Step 3: Reach out. Ask them what their schedule looks like. Some editors or sensitivity readers are booked for months out. Others can fit you in next week. Ask for a sample edit or another sample of their work. Some provide a couple pages, others a full chapter—but whatever you do, always take them up on this so you can see their style of edits. Ask to take a look at their contract—do they offer 95% error free? What is their policy if they miss more than that? Will they redo it? Basically, initiate a conversation with a couple of the editors on your list and see if working with them is going to work for you. If not, move on to the next one on the list.

There are lots of horror stories out there about editors who did nothing and ran off with their clients’ money, editors who did a terrible job and refused to redo it, editors who did half a book and called it done, editors that just suddenly vanished without a trace.

But there are just as many stories out there of wonderful editors who provide great feedback, always meet deadlines, and give solid, clean edits. I’ve heard of writers who have worked with the same editors for years and years.

It might take a little time to find the perfect editor for you, but it’s worth the effort.

Design

This is the part of the process where writers tend to get a little scared. I think it’s because we’re all rather free-spirited and creative, and the design and distribution steps can feel so technical and overwhelming. But once you know what’s going on, you’ll see that the process isn’t all that difficult.

Acquire ISBN.

You don’t actually have to do this first. I just put it first because it can play a role in your design (placement and copyright page). There are two ways to get an ISBN in the US. If you are in another country, you may have to look up the guidelines for that based on where you live.

You can either buy the ISBN from Bowker, or you can have a free ISBN assigned to you by your distributor (for example, Amazon or Ingram Spark).

If you use the free one, the publisher listed when the barcode is scanned will be “self-published” or “Amazon.” If you purchase your own ISBN, then you can list yourself or your imprint as the publisher. More info here: https://selfpublishing.com/isbn-number-self-published-book/

Design the book cover.

Book cover design is a frequently discussed topic in author circles. The book cover can make or break a book. I’ve seen books that are terribly written with amazing covers that sell excellently; I’ve seen excellent books with terrible covers that sell like crap.

We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but we all do it.

There are three ways to get a cover for your book:

1. Design it yourself.

2. Buy a premade cover.

3. Have a custom cover designed for you.

Regardless of which option you go with, the first step is actually to do research. Go to the library or a bookstore (in person or online) and browse their selection of books in your genre. Pay attention to things like whether or not there is a person on the cover, the styles of fonts they use, the color schemes, and other design elements.

If you want to, make a Pinterest board filled with book covers that you like, images that represent your book and your work, and other design elements that speak to you.

Think about colors, illustration styles, and graphics.

For example, a paranormal romance novel might have swirls and pinks and purples with swirling fonts, where as a book on business might be simply bold orange and white blocks with big block lettering.

The quality of the book design will impact not only whether a person will buy the book, but it will also impact how much they enjoy the book, because like it or not, a reader’s perception of the quality of the book as a whole will impact their perception of the story as well.

Designing Your Own Book Cover

I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t think this option is the best option, even for those who know how to use Photoshop. Book design is about more than just putting text and images together in a way that more or less represents the story inside.

When readers look at a book cover, they have expectations, and in order to create a good cover that will sell your book to the right readers, you have to understand all the trends and preferences of readers in that genre.

If you think you can do that, then by all means create your own cover. As with any other part of the process, I’ve seen stunning covers designed by the author of the book—but I’ve also seen terrible ones, not to mention a slew of mediocre ones.

I even grappled with designing my own covers when I first started out, but I’m going to be honest with you—switching to professional designers was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

How To Buy A Premade Cover

Some cover designers create what are called “premade” covers. These are book cover concepts that they envision and design with a fake title and author name, and then post on their website or on Facebook for authors to purchase. There are a couple general industry rules related to premades, which cannot be guaranteed, but if you buy from a trusted designer, you shouldn’t have any issues.

First of all, the premade cover should only be sold to one person. So if you buy a premade, you shouldn’t have to worry about seeing the same cover with a different title pop up on a book by a different author. Secondly, you should be able to make basic changes to the design—at very least the text, but some designers will also allow you to make minor design changes as well, for example, changing the eye color of the character. They may charge extra for this. Finally, most cover designers offer a wrap option, so if you need both an e-book and a paperback cover, they will add on the spine and back for an additional fee.

Premades are a great, affordable option. There are tons of covers available for purchase this way, ranging from $20 to $200. These are especially good for books that need a design with more common imagery and themes. There are tons of romance premades, for example, that could work on a wide range of books, even for sub-genres paranormal romance. Business, literary fiction, mystery, thriller, suspense—it certainly worth taking a look at what might be out there in your genre.

How To Get A Custom Book Cover Design

This is my checklist for hiring a new designer. You can click here to download a PDF of the checklist and a list of resources for the entire process of publishing a book.

The process for doing this is very similar to hiring an editor or proofreader. It’s the same three-step process: make a list, vet them, reach out. I did an entire post on this topic which you can click here to read.

Custom cover designs are a fantastic option if you can’t find exactly what you need. They range from $100 - $2000, depending on what you’re looking for. Some designers even throw in marketing images for you to use when setting up ads or commerce pages.

I think the most important thing to remember when you’re working with a designer is that this is their job. This is what they’re good at. Don’t cling too tightly to your idea of what you think the “right” cover should be. Let them do what they’re good at. Certainly, communicate with them all relevant details, thoughts, and preferences, but for the best results, make sure you’re giving them the space to really be creative. They are artists, just like we are.

Design the paperback interior.

There are two ways to get the interior of your book designed:

• Do it yourself.

• Hire someone else.

This is another place where I like to recommend visiting a library or a bookstore and taking a look at the designs of other books in your genre. Pay attention to page numbers, fonts, title pages, chapter headers, acknowledgements and dedication pages, charts, graphs, images, line spacing, etc. All of these will impact how your reader experiences the book.

I made the mistake with my first book of just formatting the pages to the right size, and then messing around with the chapter headers. When it ultimately came out in paperback, the lines were too close together, the font was a little too small, and it was annoying to read.

If you choose to do the design yourself, the most common software to use is InDesign. This gives you complete control over the flow of the text, moving around design elements, and all that jazz. You can also use MS Word (though it can be buggy and annoying), Microsoft Publisher, Quark, or other design software. Just Google “alternatives to inDesign,” and there are several options.

If you choose to hire someone to design your book, the process is again, similar to hiring a cover designer or editor: make a list, vet them, and reach out. I think the same concepts hold true here: choose someone familiar with your genre, who is reliable and recommended, and whose contract makes sense to you.

Choosing An Illustrator

I want to take a moment to talk about illustrators here. Illustrators are very important if you are doing a kids books, some middle grade books, or if you want custom drawings (this happens in fantasy or non-fiction sometimes).

Choosing an illustrator is a little more complicated than choosing a cover designer or an interior designer, simply because in an illustrated book, the illustrations tell the story just as much as the words. It can be hard to find someone whose illustrations you like, represent the story you want to tell, who has room in their schedule, and who you click with.

Many authors I’ve worked with have decided to use someone that they know to illustrate their books. This is definitely an option. My general process also works here: make a list, vet them, reach out. In this case, you would eliminate anyone whose style of art you don’t like right off the bat, before going through the other items on your vetting list.

Another thing to consider when hiring one is whether the artist is capable of creating the interior file of the book for you, or only doing the illustrations. Some have the capacity to place the art with the text (using InDesign or their preferred software) and can send you a final PDF file. Others do not have that skill set and will only send you the illustrations. This is important, because if you don’t have the design skills yourself, you’ll have to hire an additional person to actually put the book together.

There are a couple of ways to work with an illustrator: either pay them up front, or royalty share. Some may consider a combination of both: lower up-front rate plus royalty share. (Fun fact, this is the same as working with audio book narrators).

My recommendation is to pay them up front whenever possible. First of all, doing the illustrations for an entire book is a lot of work and very time consuming, and the artist certainly deserves to get paid for that. Secondly, in order to do royalty share, you will have to work up a complex contract that includes rights and payment clauses which will likely involve lawyers, not to mention you’ll have to be completely transparent about your sales and accounting for the indefinite future. Thirdly, if you purchase the illustrations, you’ll own them and be able to use them for things like marketing.

Regardless, many illustrators have their own policy, so it’s best to ask them how they like to work and what their contract looks like before entering into an arrangement.

Design the ebook.

I’m going to be honest here—I hate ebook design. It’s not difficult, at least for books that are primarily text, but I just find it plain old irritating.

There are dozens of ways you can make an ebook. Amazon and other distributors now offer an option to convert the PDF of your interior design into an ebook. Platforms like Draft2Digital make it super easy to take a Word doc or PDF and turn it into an e-book. You can also make your own e-book using software like Calibre, Vellum, or Sigil.

Typically, it’s a simple process. You take your manuscript, upload it to the software, and hit convert. Sometimes you might have to mess around with images. You may also have the occasional bug. But it’s an easy enough thing to do.

I have begun hiring someone to do my e-books. She does a fantastic job, it’s very affordable, and it’s one thing I don’t have to worry about any more. If you want to hire someone to do your e-books, the process is the same (I swear I’m trying not to beat the same process over the head with a stick lol): make a list, vet them, reach out.

Something to keep in mind with e-book design: certain e-book distributors charge you a fee per download of your book. The amount of the fee depends on the size of the file. My books tend to be between $0.04 and $0.07 per download (which is taken out of my profits), but I’ve seen authors whose fees are upwards of $0.25 per download. This will significantly affect your royalties, and if you can’t make the file size smaller, you should definitely raise your prices to reflect the download cost.

The Files You Need To Publish

At the end of the total design process, you should end up with five files:

• A jpg of the book cover for the ebook. This should be a rectangle of only the front.

• A PDF of the full wrap book cover, including the front, the spine, and the back. How wide the spine is will depend on the page length of the book and whether you choose cream or white pages for the book.

• A PDF of interior of the book which includes every single page.

• A .mobi ebook file (this is for Amazon).

• A .epub ebook file (this is for everyone else, and if you email a copy of the book to someone).

Distribution

A lot of authors think that distribution is the scariest part of the process. It’s because distribution is a big, fancy, business word and nobody really wants to think about it. When I think of the word “distribution,” I think of big eighteen-wheeler trucks and warehouses with cement floors and fluorescent lights, and a bunch of people in a bad mood because they’re tired of carrying boxes. Also, forklifts. And lunch boxes. And hardhats.

Anyway, book distribution has nothing to do with any of that.

Distribution is simply the process of getting your book to the reader. That’s it.

You will need to decide who your primary paperback distributor is (they will probably also be printing your books) and you will have to select your e-book distributor/s as well.

Select primary paperback distributor.

Paperback distribution has completely changed in the last twenty years. It used be that if you didn’t have a publisher, you would either have to print your own books and bind them by hand or order them in giant quantities from a printer and end up with 5000 copies of your book sitting in your garage.

While these two options are still viable today (and I know different people who have chosen both of these paths), print on demand is the newest option which is used by the majority of independent authors.

Print on demand means that the printer only prints one book at a time. That means, if I go onto Amazon and order a copy of my book, it gets printed that day and shipped off to the customer. Hot off the presses—literally. If you order a copy, you can get it at-cost, meaning you can buy copies of your book at a lower cost than you list them for online. I sell my books for between $12 - $15 on Amazon, but when I buy them directly, it costs roughly $3 - $6 plus shipping.

This is insanely convenient, because it means we only have to order the number of copies that we think we can sell, and no more. The upfront investment is also significantly less—I spend $3 per book, instead of $3000 for an entire palette of books. You may spend more per book this way, but the risk is significantly lower, and you won’t end up with thousands of copies of a book that won’t sell. In addition, if your book takes off, you can always switch distribution methods.

I also don’t have to ship every single hard copy that I sell. A reader can go online, order a book, and somebody at a printer somewhere prints it and ships it. Just like magic.

That said, I can also order books for myself, so that if I want to, I can have signed copies at events or sell signed copies through my website.

Choosing your book printer.

There are two primary print-on-demand companies: Kindle Direct Publishing (used to be Createspace) and IngramSpark.

Some people like IngramSpark better, some people like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). In terms of quality, some people swear that IngramSpark is better, other people swear by KDP. And some people use both.

The main difference is that Ingram Spark offers hardback printing and has an upfront cost.

KDP has no upfront costs and only does paperback printing.

Their royalties are also different. Click here to read a great explanation of the differences.

There are other distributors, of course, such as Lulu and LightningSource. Draft2Digital just announced the beta of their paperback printing option as well.

Which hard copy distributor you choose will depend entirely upon your goals and what’s important to you in your publishing journey.

Select your e-book distributors.

E-book distribution is even simpler.

The main e-book distributors are:

• Amazon

• Apple

• Barnes&Noble

• Kobo

• GooglePlay

There are also innumerable smaller distributors, but I recommend starting with these five. Reedsy has an excellent guide on this, which I will link to here.

Essentially, you have two choices: you can go exclusive with Amazon, or you can go wide. This is on a book-by-book basis, meaning you can have one book exclusive with Amazon but another book wide. I currently have 5 books wide and the rest exclusive with Amazon. Different authors choose differently for various reasons.

Most authors make the majority of their royalty income through Amazon. If you go exclusive through Amazon, your book will be eligible to join Kindle Select, which means it will be available for reading through Kindle Unlimited, and you will be able to do five free promotion days or five days of a Kindle Countdown deal.

Going wide means that you can make your book available on all distributors at once. This gives you access to a much wider audience, and you have a range of other marketing tactics you can try with different platforms.

Another option you have is to use an aggregator such as Draft2Digital. With Draft2Digital, you can upload your book to their platform, and they distribute it to all of the other platforms on your behalf. They take a cut of profits, but it saves you a lot of time and effort.

Upload files.

Once you’ve selected your distributors, the next step is setting up accounts. Depending on what options you’ve chosen for distribution, you may have to do this with only one platform, or you may have to do it with many.

This is also an incredibly simple process. You will need to:

• Set up a username and password.

• Input your tax information.

• Input your direct deposit information (so they can pay you when you make sales).

• Input your payment information (so they can charge you for buying author copies or fees or whatever).

• Set up a new book. For print books, this will include choices like:

  • The size of the book (6x9 vs 5x8, etc.)

  • The color of the ink (black&white vs color printing)

  • The color of the pages (white vs cream)

  • The type of cover (hardback, paperback, glossy, matte)

• Input metadata (title, author name, series name & #, BISAC categories, keywords, etc.).

• Upload files (the pdfs, jpgs, epub, mobi mentioned in the design section).

• Wait for human review (a person basically checks to make sure you’ve followed the most basic requirements for production). This usually takes about a day.

• Use digital reviewer. This enables you to look at a digital version of your book, complete with flipping pages and everything, before ordering anything.

• Order a proof copy.

• Approve proof.

• Set up pricing.

This is ultimately a very simple, step-by-step process that the platforms walk you through. The platforms also have customer support. As with any customer support, I’ve heard good and bad stories, but at very least, someone will be there to help you when you need it.

All platforms allow you to order as many proof copies of the book as you need. I highly recommend doing this so you can make sure there are no weird formatting issues once the book is actually printed. It takes roughly 1 – 2 weeks for the proof copy to arrive, and you can order it at cost plus shipping. I usually budget between $6 - $8 for a proof copy.

Hit publish.

Once you’re happy with your final product, there’s a button that says, “Publish.”

Click it and voila! Within 24 – 72 hours your book will be live for purchase on whichever platforms you selected.

And now you officially have a book published! Bake a cake. Throw a party. Have a glass of your favorite beverage (I like orange juice, personally), and congratulate yourself for a job well done.

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Ariele University: Developing a Core Purpose and Mission For Authors

Happy Wednesday and welcome to another edition of “things Ariele is doing for her fake master’s degree.”

My fake master’s degree reading list included a book titled, Built to Last; Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C Collins and Jerry I Porras. I started reading this book about 5 years ago and got about 2 chapters in. The reason? It was hard. Also, I wasn’t ready for it yet.

That sounds ridiculous: “I wasn’t ready yet,” but it would be the same problem if I picked up a book on fourth-year calculus, when my math skills are probably at a high school algebra level. I have a basic understanding of trigonometry, but I’ve forgotten pretty much everything past that.

I wasn’t ready to read this book until after I read The E-Myth Revisited and really started thinking about my author business as a business. I started to envision myself hiring other people. I started to think about the wide variety of tasks I do as being essential vs. non-essential (basically, in order for my business to operate, what do I HAVE to be doing, and what could I hand off to someone else or eliminate altogether). I started to strip down my business into checklists and task maps, and try to look at it from a high-level perspective.

I’m not just an author. I’m not just a creator. I’m not just a consultant.

I’m a business owner.

(Aside: the post I wrote about the Franchise Model of Publishing was part of reading E-Myth Revisited and trying to imagine my own tiny author business as a behemoth).

Built to Last is a book on business. It explores the practices of really big, really famous, enduring companies (like 50 years old +) and compared them to companies in the same industry that did not succeed. It delved into their habits, their practices, and their strategies, ultimately trying to figure out what made those companies successful. Think 3M, Coca Cola, IBM, Proctor&Gamble, Johnson&Johnson, Merck, and lots more. They did research, case studies, and analysis—and it was ultimately fascinating.

As part of the process, the authors came up with 12 Myths—basically, things that people believe about successful companies that aren’t actually true.

The myths are as follows (p 7 - 11):

1. It takes a great idea to start a company.

2. Visionary companies require great an charismatic visionary leaders.

3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits.

4. Visionary companies share a common subset of “correct” core values.

5. The only constant is change.

6. Blue-chip companies play it safe.

7. Visionary companies are great places to work for everyone.

8. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning.

9. Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change.

10. The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition.

11. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

12. Companies become visionary primarily through “vision statements.”

The book then delves into each of these myths and talks about why they aren’t true, and provides examples from the top-tier, longstanding companies. It even goes into examples of when the companies almost collapsed but managed to get back on their feet again.

If you decide to pick up this book and decide it’s too dense for you, I recommend at very least reading Chapters 1 and 11. Game changer. I thought about Chapter 1 for weeks before I started into Chapter 2 (the second time around). And I’ve read Chapter 11 four times already. Not to mention, I haven’t stopped talking about it—I bring it up in any conversation we have about business (which is a lot because Josh is getting his MBA). Pretty sure he’s is sick of hearing about this book by now.

But the trick, as it always is with these types of books, is trying to think about it from the viewpoint of an author. Authors are notoriously one-person businesses. They have their products (books) which take years to produce, but also have no shelf-life (well, most of them don’t, unless you wrote a book about the internet in 2005). Authors tend to be solitary, outsource production (either to a publishing company, or a print-on-demand company), and they tend not to have a lot of capital.

So how can we use the concepts in this book to make our businesses better, smarter, more efficient, and more effective?

I think there is an overwhelming focus on marketing in the author community. Everyone is trying to figure out how to sell their books. And marketing is important, yes, but it’s really only one piece of a much bigger puzzle—at least if you’re publishing books as a career or trying to achieve some kind of financial success. Even if your goals are more focused on spreading ideas or making a difference in the world (as opposed to money or fame) having a fully-functioning, operational business is going to make those things so much easier—and you’ll last longer and be able to do more.

So, as always, I begin by practicing on myself.

One of the main conclusions I drew from the book is related to Myth #5: The only constant is change. In fact, there are three constants: you core values, your core purpose, and the fact that everything else changes.

In Chapter 11, they say:

“…the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the most enduring and successful corporations is that they preserve a cherished core ideology while simultaneously stimulating progress and change in everything that is not part of their core ideology… In truly great companies, change is a constant, but not the only constant.” (p. 220)

So let’s talk about creating a core ideology.

Developing an Author’s Core Ideology

I would like to reiterate that you should buy this book and read Chapter 11. Go through all of their exercises with your own feelings and values in mind as applied to your writing.

They define core ideology as:

“…self-identity that remains consistent through time and transcends product/market life cycles, technological breakthroughs, management fads, and individual leaders… Core ideology provides the bonding glue that holds an organization together as it grows, decentralizes, diversifies, expands globally, and attains diversity within.” (p 221)

If everything changes, in order to create a set of core values, then the key is to ask ourselves: what about our business (about our writing, our books, and the way we operate) will never change?

It’s about those key pieces within us that we will never turn our backs on. That will follow us through the course of our lives. And will likely show up over and over and over as themes and motifs and concepts in our books and various mediums for storytelling.

Porras and Collins split the concept of core ideology into two sub-components: Core Values and Core Purpose—which is great because it makes it much easier to develop a core ideology.

An Author’s Core Values

This took me forever to figure out. Like six months. It’s possible you will know these right off the top of your head, but I highly recommend taking some time to really consider it. Do some thought experiments—”Will I still believe this IF… [fill in some crazy thing happening here]?”

For example, “Will I still think this if civilization goes backwards? If XYZ important person in my life dies? If I switch religions? If I become homeless? If I get cancer? If I win the lottery and never have to work another day in my life? If I achieve all of my craziest author dreams and get to do whatever I want all the time?” Alternatively, they suggest thinking about if you were to get punished for having this value, would you still hold onto it? If you got put in jail for it? If you were executed for it? Would you still hold that value no matter what?

The book defines core values as:

“…the organization’s essential and enduring tenets—a small set of timeless guiding principles that require no external justification; they have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization.” (p 222)

When I asked myself: “What about me and my work will never change?” I came up with three things:

• Respect for other people.

• Skill development and personal growth.

• Exploration of ideas.

And I sort of summed them all up as: I will prioritize moving forward as an objective—as society, as an individual, or as an idea: how can we collectively move forward? How can this idea evolve and grow? How can I personally evolve, grow, move forward?

I honestly think your key values can be anything. They could be about telling the best stories. About creating an escape. They could be about your faith or your politics or your fundamental beliefs about right and wrong. But they have to be constant—something about you that will never change.

I will add here, that while I’m only a few decades into life (3), I have already learned that sometimes the core values I thought I had, turned out to not be so core after all. So this concept definitely deserves some real time, effort, and consideration.

A few points they made in the book:

• If you come up with more than five or six things, that’s probably too many.

• You can’t “choose” core values—they have to already, intrinsically, be there. They say this, of course, from an organizational perspective. I do believe as individuals we can choose our values, but we have to work on them and really believe them in the core of who we are.

• The values should “stand the test of time” (p 222).

• You should not change your values as the market or world changes—instead, you should change the markets or the world.

• Core values are something that you should hold onto even when they prove to be a disadvantage to you.

Once you’ve figured out what your core values are, you’ll be able to apply them to everything—your marketing plan, your business strategy, your publishing plan—they can even help you figure out what books to write or focus on (if you’re having trouble deciding).

An Author’s Core Purpose

Porras’ and Collins’ definition of core purpose is quite simple: “the organization’s fundamental reason for being” (p 224). They say that they think that core purpose is ultimately more important than core values because “It captures the soul of the organization” (p 224).

A core purpose can never be fulfilled—it is something that you are always working towards, but never actually achieving. It can be unique, or it can be the same as someone else’s. Like the core values—it can be anything at all.

This was a bit more challenging for me, but in the the book, they offered an exercise where you draft a rough purpose, and then ask the question, “Why is this important?” five times to help narrow down what your beliefs really are. Again, you should read the book (or the chapter) because they give some really great examples and they are helpful to read.

I did the exercise with a couple of different statements (“I write books with diverse characters” and “I tell stories that explore lots of ideas”), and ultimately came up with the following for my core purpose:

“My core purpose is to tell stories that reflect the wide range of human experience.”

• It’s something that can never be achieved, check. (Because human experience will only ever keep widening, so there will always be more experiences, ideas, and perspectives to explore).

• It can help me guide my business strategy, check. (Because it will help me decide what books to write, how to market, etc.)

• It can help guide the behavior of people within my organization, check. (Because it focuses around respect for other people, which also ties back to my core values).

• It can be a source of inspiration, check.

• It can be the basis for the culture of my organization, check. (Respect, diversity, representation, ya’ll.)

• It can guide my company in the long-term, check. (No matter what the world thinks, we prioritize the inherent value of human beings above all else—money, fame, etc.)

• It can act as the glue—a common vision that holds together the various people that work in my organization, check.

• It can be the source of my organization’s identity, check.

• It can motivate action and help us get things done, check.

At any rate, I’d say I have a good start. Next up in this book is figuring out your envisioned future, but I’m going to save that for another post.

In the meantime, read the book! And I will leave you with this metaphorical picture of me:

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Ariele University: How To Plot A Book

Have you ever met someone that could tell you about an argument they had at work and make it sound like an episode of a soap opera? Or someone that could tell you about a squirrel they saw in the backyard and make you wonder what happens next?

Just a few days ago, I was talking to my dad on the phone and he was telling me about how my grandmother’s cat had been such an angel since moving into my parents’ barn. The cat was affectionate and sweet. And then my dad called my grandmother to chat, and the cat happened to wander up while he was on the phone. So, he turned on speakerphone and leaned down to let my grandmother speak to her cat.

I was on the edge of my seat, let me tell you.

Then, the cat bit him!

I almost died laughing. I thought it was going to be a sweet story about how the cat meowed back, or how my grandmother started singing to it or something.

Nope. The perfectly behaved cat, who hadn’t bitten anyone since moving into my dad’s barn, bit my dad as soon as it heard my grandmother’s voice.

It’s a simple plot. Cat moves away from owner. Cat thrives in new environment. Cat hears previous owner’s voice. Cat bites new owner.

What a twist!

It turns out there are plots everywhere. There are plots whenever you tell a story about your day. Whenever you try to explain a dream you had. Whenever you see someone wandering down the street and wonder what they’re doing. Plots when you read the news. There are plots when you look out your window and see two birds fighting, or when your dog does something weird, or when you order your pizza and it doesn’t come on time, plus they put anchovies on it and you didn’t even order anchovies.

Plots exist all around us, and the goal of a storyteller is to make them not only make sense, but also concise and filled with excitement and tension.

As part of my faux master’s degree, I have been studying plot to the point where everything around me looks like a story waiting to be told. I have read through:

• Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

• Save the Cat Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody

• Take Off Your Pants by Libby Hawker (hint: this was my favorite one)

• The Anatomy of Story by John Truby

• The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

• Story Genius by Lisa Cron

Not to mention, a lot of the more general books I’ve read have sections on plotting as well:

• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas

• Steering the Craft by Ursula K LeGuin

• On Writing by Stephen King

• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

• Magic by Gail Carson Levine

• Indie Author Survival Guide by SK Quinn

• Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt, Johnny B Truant, and David Wright

And the articles! Oh, the articles! Articles on the Snowball Method. Articles summarizing John Campbell’s book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Articles on story structure. On outlining. On discovery writing. On conflict and tension and character.

I even taught a workshop on plot.

The thing is, there are hundreds, thousands more books I could read. It’s an endless list, really. And the articles on plot will never stop coming—I’m writing one right now, in fact.

Part of that is because everyone thinks that when they finally understand plot, their way of explaining it is revolutionary. No one’s ever thought of it this way before!

Part of that is because stories change. What we look for and want in a story changes from culture to culture, year to year, era to era.

Part of it is because everyone’s brains work differently, so trying to define exactly how to structure a plot, down to the meter and tone, down to the percentage of the manuscript each element takes up—is never going to be a 100% surefire win.

Here are a few things that I learned from studying plot:

1. I hate outlining. I’m a discovery writer through and through. Outlining makes me want to scream and die. The most outlining I can handle is a beginning note, an end note, and maybe one or two key things that have to happen in the middle of the story. More than that and I hate the project and want nothing to do with it ever again.

2. The reason everyone thinks plot is impossible is because they haven’t figured out the best system to fit their own brain around. When I read Libby Hawker’s book on plot, it was probably the fourth or fifth one I’d gotten to. And the only reason I’d made it that far was because it was part of my fake master’s degree and I was forcing myself to keep going. All the others were a slog (and this is coming from someone who loves books about writing). I would read a chapter of one and either almost fall asleep, wonder why I was torturing myself, or think about quitting my fake master’s degree. But then I read her book (really just the first couple chapters was all I needed) and I was like, “YES. This is exactly how I want to think about plot. Thank you.”

3. There is no one “best” book on or article about or system for plotting. Yes, I liked Take Off Your Pants the best. That does not mean it’s the best book on plot. It is simply the one book that I happened to read, that fit my brain better than the others.

If you want to read a book on plot, I recommend trying several. If you get super bored or hate the world as you’re trying to force yourself through one book, put it down and try a different one. The way that we engage with and understand stories is a very personal thing, so which method works best for you is also going to be very personal.

Okay, but for real though, what is plot and how do you do it?

Now I’m going to prove that I have at least a vague understanding of how plots work by attempting to explain the way I think about it to you.

At its core, plot is nothing more than a sequence of interrelated events. But to tell a good story, we want to include things like characterization, conflict, and tension in a way that is believable (at least within the context of the story), engaging, and interesting.

The triangle is sort of like a road in perspective (see I even put lines in it), and that stick figure at the bottom is supposed to be me lol.

One of the things I noticed as I was working my way through books on plot was that I really liked pictures. I really liked the diagrams and visual structures for understanding plot. So I made my own!

My “method” of plot has three pieces. That’s it. Three.

1. A Character

2. An End Purpose or Theme

3. Objectives

I’ll be honest with you. I use this exact same system for marketing, business development, figuring out how to plan my day, and lots of other things.

I told you—plots are everywhere.

Character

Who your character is will define much of the plot.

Your character will have needs. Desires. Internal flaws. And these needs, desires, and flaws are going to drive their decision-making, which will then drive the plot. To construct the most interesting plots, the character should face challenges that they’re not entirely equipped to deal with, challenges that test them, that poke and prod at their weaknesses.

They should fail.

This is a sketch my friend James did of the main character of my Land of Szornyek series. Her name is Askari.

There are tons of articles and books on character development, but I recommend starting with one key piece: their main flaw. The best flaws (in my opinion) are ones that can also be strengths. Take stubbornness for example. Technically it’s a flaw—someone that refuses to change their mind or do anything other than what they want.

However, from a different perspective, stubbornness can look like determination, standing your ground, not letting the opinions of other people or the storms of daily life get to you. It can look like focus, perseverance, and strength.

If the character is wrong about something, stubbornness is a flaw.

But if the character is right about something, stubbornness is a strength.

Either way, stubbornness is an excellent way to create conflict—even though we have no idea what the rest of the plot looks like. Any person that comes into opposition with our main character is going to have to fight her—whether the character is right or wrong about what she believes.

But stubbornness is just one example. Here are a few more possibilities:

• Confident/Arrogant

• Humble/Pushover

• Driven/Workaholic

• Capable/Always Does Everything

• Visionary/Impractical

• Logical/Emotionless

• Intelligent/Thinks Everyone Else Is Stupid

There are LOTS of possible character traits that are both good and bad. My favorite resources for the are the Positive Trait Thesaurus and the Negative Trait Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

End Purpose or Theme

One discussion I’ve heard people having is whether a story should be plot-driven or character-driven, or both. Plot-driven basically means that the story is about the things happening to the character; character-driven means that the story focuses on how the character changes based on what happened to them.

The Maze Runner – plot driven. The Fault In Our Stars – character driven.

Die Hard –plot driven. Citizen Kane – character driven.

(Quick confession: I have seen none of these movies nor read any of these books—I just pulled them off Google lol.)

Of course, it’s possible to have both, and in fact, I think the best stories have at least a little bit of both. Bones is my favorite example of this. It’s very plot driven, in that it’s a murder mystery in every episode. It’s about solving the crime, the Whodunnit. But it’s also very character driven. It’s about Bones and how she grows and develops not only as a scientist, but also as a person—and of course, how all of her friends and associates grow as people. I personally tend to lean towards plot-driven stories.

The truth is, you don’t have to decide whether your book is plot- or character-driven before you start writing.

My recommendation would be instead, to focus on the point. The goal. The endgame.

What is your book about?

Take my book, Tentacles and Teeth. As I was writing the first draft, my overarching purpose was simply to explore a post-apocalyptic world filled with monsters. And when I started writing it, that’s exactly what I did. A new monster every chapter. Action scenes upon action scenes. Details and descriptions about what the world looked like and what it would be like to live in it.

When I did my second draft, I shifted my focus slightly. Yes, I still wanted a world filled with monsters. Yes, I wanted to explore it and develop what that type of apocalypse would look like.

But I also wanted to explore the way we consume information in a sort of insular way, and how that impacts our decisions and identities.

So I fleshed out the characterization of the community my main character grew up in for the first book, and then in the second book, I tossed her out into the real world and forced her to come into contact with other people, which then made her step back and take a closer look at her own belief systems and start questioning what she was raised to think.

This theme continues in the third and fourth book, with the main character realizing that we get to choose the communities we want to participate in, and just because we are told something, doesn’t make it true.

So how do you decide the point of your book?

Excellent question, thank you for asking.

There are three ways to approach it (well, probably more than three, but three that I came up with).

The first is to ask yourself: What do I get out of my book?

For example, perhaps you want to write in a new genre. I started a whole series like this. I wanted to explore the idea of writing sci-fi fairy tales, so I did. Perhaps you want to learn something about yourself or parse out a question you have about life or the universe or everything. Memoir or biography are great ways to explore your own life; or perhaps you are curious about exploring the idea of truth, so you write about a character that only tells lies.

The second method is to ask yourself: What does my character get out of it?

This is especially excellent if you’re interested in writing character-driven stories. If you want your character to grow or change in a particular way, then the question becomes—how are they going to change throughout the course of this story?

For example, in Book 3 of my Land of Szornyek series, my first draft was focused much the same as Book 1 had been: it was really about exploring the widening universe filled with monsters, and looking at the different ways that people were surviving. But something felt off to me, so I went back to review the plot—only to discover that my main character had yet to change. So I shifted the focus and the purpose of my plot. Instead of it being entirely about monsters and survival, it became about her dealing with the consequences of the trauma she experienced in Book 2. Throughout the second draft, I realized that I needed a new endgame: it was no longer about the monsters, it was about Askari. I needed her to come to a particular realization, which is a spoiler and so I won’t say any more. 😊

The third method is to ask yourself: What does the reader get out of it?

It is of course helpful for you to have at least a vague idea of who your ideal reader is if you choose this approach, but even if you don’t, you can still use it as a springboard.

I think romance is an excellent example of this, particularly HEA Romances (Happily Ever After). When writing an HEA, the entire point is to leave the reader with a warm, fuzzy satisfaction at the end of the story. It’s to create a story in which the reader feels connected to the characters, roots for them to succeed in their romantic endeavors, and then feels satisfied when it all works out in the end.

Perhaps your goal is to provide your reader with an escape. Or to take you reader on a wild ride of insanity. To make your reader scared or hopeful or excited. To make them think. You can absolutely start here when choosing your endgame.

Ultimately, the endgame or the purpose of your book can be absolutely anything you want it to be. You can have multiple purposes if you want. You can change your mind about it at any point during the writing and revision process. There really aren’t any rules here, so whatever works for you can also work for your story!

Objectives

I put this one last because unlike the other two which can be decided simultaneously or whenever, objectives are most helpful AFTER you’ve decided the beginning and the end. Once you’ve figured out who your character is and where they need to go, then you can determine what needs to happen in order for them to get from point A to B.

Objectives can be viewed in several different ways. Some people outline every single detail, parse out every action, and decide every conversation before even starting in on drafting it, even down to calculating the percentages each section of the book should be. If you’re a plotter, then this is probably your preference.

But if you’re a discovery writer aka pantser (like me), we prefer to go light on the details and to figure it out as we go. I think of objectives more as lampposts. I can sort of see the next one in the distance, but the path between two is dark. I know what’s in the middle only after I’ve written the words.

An example of my own lampposts might look something like this (based off of Book 1 of Land of Szornyek, Tentacles and Teeth:

• Askari fights a monster alone.

• She fights another monster, but with other people.

• She disobeys an order.

• Punishment involves getting temporarily kicked out.

• Alone for a while, fights more monsters.

• Friends show up.

• Completes terms of punishment with help.

• Returns to find her community in trouble.

• Fights to save community.

Plot isn’t that scary.

I must admit that I found plot to be one of the most overwhelming concepts in writing before I really started to dive in. And once I get up to my neck in it, I still found it overwhelming. The one thing I wish someone had said to me before I started was: “There is no one right way to plot a story.”

It kind of seems like a no brainer, looking back. Like, duh Ariele. There’s no one right way to do anything in writing, not even punctuation. So why would there be for plot?

Maybe, if they wanted to be even more helpful, this imaginary person might have added, “It’s okay if one method doesn’t work for you. Try a different one.”

But now that I’ve thrown myself into the deep end in order to learn to swim, I feel a lot more confident about it. Not all of my plots will work or make sense. Not all of them will be equally good. Sometimes I will feel like I know where I’m going and sometimes I won’t.

Ultimately, I think my plotting goals are to take a deep breath, be a little less critical of my work, and trust myself.

After all, someone actually wrote Sharknado. And it got turned into a film. Six of them, to be precise. And has a video game and a comic book series, and a seventh spin-off film.

We got this.

Writing Exercise

Pick a fairy tale, any fairy tale—one that you already know pretty well. Write out a description of the character and their major flaw, the purpose, theme, or endgame of the story, and a few objectives.

If a fairy tale is too easy, try Moby Dick. A Shakespeare play. The book you’re reading right now.

If you want an advanced challenge, do it for your own book—one that you haven’t written yet.

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Ariele University: David and Goliath

The next installment in my fake master’s degree comes to you by way of the book David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell. Excellent book, one which I highly recommend you read. For my assignment, I wrote a 1500 word essay on how the concepts that he discusses relate to being an author. I’m not going to lie—it was supposed to be a 500 word essay, but I had a lot to say about it lol.

Authors Overcoming the Odds

Underdog stories are everywhere. Look at Harry Potter. Luke & Leia Skywalker. Matilda. Frodo Baggins. Katniss. Alanna of Trebond. It’s not just characters, either.[1] Look at J.K. Rowling. Everyone’s favorite story about her is how she was a poor, single mother living off of welfare.[2] They like to quote how many rejection letters she received for her books before she was accepted by a publisher.[3] Or, think of the oft-quoted fun fact about Stephen King—how he lived in a trailer before his book Carrie took off.[4] We like to tell stories of great changes in fate, of the strength and power it takes to defeat overwhelming odds. We like to tell tales of Hercules, athletes with disabilities, mountain climbers. And we all want to have that story ourselves—we just want to skip over the hard part, of course.

In Malcom Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, he takes a closer look not only at why humans find this plot archetype so appealing, but also at real life examples of underdogs achieving success and conquering the day.[5] From battles to doctors to history to athletes to everyday people, Gladwell continually comes back to the point that the underdogs who have won are the ones who broke the rules. I think this concept applies to writing and marketing as well—the writers and authors that have been the most successful are the ones that broke the rules, either with their writing or with their marketing. They’re the ones that did it their own way. Ultimately, I believe there is no one way to succeed at writing and publishing; your best bet is to determine your own strengths and weaknesses, and to forge your own path.[6]

So, what does this look like in practice? Take J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series rose in popularity quickly, and has sold 500 million books worldwide,[7] in addition to birthing the movies, Pottermore, and endless merchandise. The reasons why the series was so popular range from luck to excellent writing to timing,[8] but the one thing that you can see across the theories is that J.K. Rowling’s series broke all the rules. It was fantasy, when fantasy was considered “old-fashioned,”[9] she wrote children’s books that appealed to adults, she wrote in her voice, her own story, her own way.

Another easy example is Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. Fifty Shades of Grey began as an erotic fan fiction (both erotic and fan fiction  were looked down upon at the time) of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight.[10] James published it first on a fan-fiction site, then took it down and republished it on her own website. She then re-published it as paperbacks. Fifty Shades of Grey is frequently dismissed by the writing community as being drivel; British Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie said of it, “I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made Twilight look like War and Peace.”[11] There also was a lot of controversy over the erotic practices in it, many stating that the book portrays abuse, not BDSM.[12] But, Fifty Shades of Grey still sold 60 million copies and became the best-selling book of all time.[13] Why? Because E.L. James ignored the rules. She wrote what she wanted, how she wanted, published it where she wanted and the way she wanted—and with a little bit of luck, she took the world by storm.

Gladwell starts David and Goliath with the biblical story of David and Goliath. But his very first point is that the story of David and Goliath is not entirely what it seems. He cites history and the known culture of the time, and points out a few key facts. First, that the fight they were having was a custom known as single combat, in which one warrior would represent each side of the conflict (p 6). Typically, these battles were fought hand-to-hand, so Goliath prepared himself accordingly, with a javelin and heavy armor (p 7). David, on the other hand, wore no heavy armor, and took only his sling with him—intending to fight as a projectile warrior (p 10-11) . Secondly, Gladwell points out that Goliath likely had a medical condition called acromegaly, which causes overproduction of the human growth hormone and would likely explain Goliath’s enormous size. Another symptom of this disease is vision problems, which would explain Goliath’s slow movement (p 14). In short, the battle of David and Goliath was not entirely as it seemed.

I think Gladwell’s main point is that David and Goliath were fighting two different battles. Goliath was preparing to fight a heavily armored, hand-to-hand battle where strength and size would go a long way towards achieving victory. David went in planning to fight a fast, dirty battle, where all he had to do was avoid Goliath’s weapons (easily done with a sling) and aim for the head.

A lot of the stories Gladwell shares come down to this same dichotomy: one side is fighting a battle for dominance, the other for survival; one is fighting for ethics, the other saving lives; one is fighting for money, the other is fighting to win. I don’t think any of us can look at an author like J.K. Rowling or E.L. James and know exactly battle they were fighting, but I do think it is valuable to think about our own battles. What are we trying to achieve? Where are we going? And what is the best way to get there?

In indie publishing, the initial battle was stigma. Once e-books took off in popularity, the attitude of non-traditionally published authors was that they couldn’t get published by a traditionally publishing house because their books weren’t good enough, that authors were self-publishing just for their own ego.[14] So everyone started hiring editors, cover designers, people to help them make their books as quality as possible. And now, as indie publishing becomes more and more popular, the stigma is dying away.[15], [16] But many smaller battles have arisen—battles with Amazon over seemingly endless issues, battles over reviews, battles in which smaller or more diverse voices are trying to have more sway. The newest frustration voiced by many authors is visibility: Bowker announced in 2018 that over 1 million books were self-published in 2017.[17] And according to Worldometer, at the time I’m writing this, over 1.6 million books have already been published in 2019.[18]

In conclusion to his retelling of David and Goliath, Gladwell says, “in reality, the very thing that gave [Goliath] his size was also the source of his greatest weakness. There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not what they seem.” (p 15) As authors, we are all in some kind of race or battle or uphill climb—whatever metaphor you prefer. But the question still remains: what are you fighting for?

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” – Malcom Gladwell (p 149)

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 Endnotes

[1] https://www.thomsonwoods.com/articles/five-famous-authors-who-went-from-rags-to-riches/

[2] https://www.insider.com/jk-rowling-harry-potter-author-biography-2017-7

[3] https://youth-time.eu/from-rejection-to-best-sellers-five-writings-that-were-initially-turned-down/

[4] http://mentalfloss.com/article/53235/how-stephen-kings-wife-saved-carrie-and-launched-his-career

[5] Early in David and Goliath, Gladwell suggests taking an in depth look at wars over the course of the last two centuries, specifically ones where a large country was pitted against a small one—wars where from the outside, it was obvious who was going to win, odds ten to one in favor of the larger country. Most would assume that close to 100% of the larger countries won those wars. But, “When the political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft did the calculation… what he came up with was 71.5 percent. Just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins” (p 21). And when Arreguin-Toft looked at the same question from a different way, and narrowed the sample size to those underdogs that refused to fight the wars by the rules, using unconventional or guerilla tactics, “the weaker party’s winning percentage climbs from 28.5 to 63.6 percent” (p 22). 

[6] I do think that doing your own thing can go horribly wrong, or at very least, just plain old fail. I met a writer last year, in his mid-fifties, who spent a good ten minutes talking to me about J.K. Rowling. “I wrote a story about an academy for wizards ten years before she did!” he complained. “It had unicorns and everything!” Clearly, he did not read Harry Potter (unicorns are not a main plot point), but I think his concerns bring up an important point. Writing in your own voice will not necessarily get you noticed. He also self-published book—simply self-publishing will not necessarily get you noticed. But I also did a survey of his work—poor prose, poorly edited, and even if you look at his work after the Harry Potter phenomenon, despite him having run his career his own way, there wasn’t really anything unique enough about it nothing to make it rise to the top of the pot.

[7] https://www.pottermore.com/news/500-million-harry-potter-books-have-now-been-sold-worldwide

[8] https://thetalkingllama.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/what-made-the-harry-potter-books-so-successful/

[9] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-26/harry-potter-effect-how-seven-books-changed-childrens-publishing/8630254

[10] https://www.businessinsider.com/fifty-shades-of-grey-started-out-as-twilight-fan-fiction-2015-2

[11] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9596577/Sir-Salman-Rushdie-Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-makes-Twilight-look-like-War-and-Peace.html

[12] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fifty-shades-grey-a-dominatrixs-773577

[13] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/336759/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-becomes-the-bestselling-book-of-all-time

[14] https://www.npr.org/2012/12/19/167448748/self-publishing-no-longer-just-a-vanity-project

[15] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/14/is-the-self-publishing-stigma-fading

[16] I’m honestly not convinced about this. I still get disapproving looks when I tell people I’m indie published, and always hesitate when people ask what publishing house I’m with. Can’t be legit if a corporation didn’t say it was, I guess. Snobs. Also narrow minded and stupid. (I have strong feelings about this lol).

[17] http://www.bowker.com/news/2018/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html

[18] https://www.worldometers.info/books/