Rut-Busting Book for Authors - Nancy Christie

Rut-Busting Book for Authors (eBook)

Second Edition

Nancy Christie (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-1100-8 (ISBN)

Rut-Busting Book for Authors, an American Book Fest's 2019 Best Book Awards Finalist, Independent Author Network 2020 Book of the Year Finalist, and 2019 Readers' Favorite 5-Star award-winner, addresses the ruts that would-be and current authors can fall into when writing, publishing and promoting their books. The book includes tips, techniques, and strategies from authors as well as editors, literary agents, literary attorneys, publishers, book marketing experts, and other experts to help guide you on the path from concept to finished product. It provides information on the three stages involved in writing, publishing, and marketing a book: the creative process, the publishing options, and the promotional strategies. If you want to write, publish, and market a book, Rut-Busting Book for Authors will get you from concept to completion!

Nancy Christie is the author of six books, including two award-winning books for writers: Rut-Busting Book for Writers and Rut-Busting Book for Authors. Her other books include the novel, Reinventing Rita, the first in her Midlife Moxie Novel Series, two award-winning short story collections: Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories and Peripheral Visions and Other Stories, and the inspirational book, The Gifts of Change. Her next short story collection, Mistletoe Magic and Other Holiday Tales, will be released December 2023. The creator and host of the Living the Writing Life podcast and founder of the annual 'Celebrate Short Fiction' Day, Nancy is a popular presenter of writing workshops. She's a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Women's Fiction Writers Association, and the Florida Writers Association. To interview Nancy or book her for a speaking engagement, signing, or other event, contact her via email at nancy@nancychristie.com or at 330-793-3675. For more about Nancy and links to her social media profiles, visit her website at www.nancychristie.com.

PLOTTING OR

“PANTSING“ IT

When it comes to writing short stories, I am a dedicated “pantser.” Forget detailed outlines or timelines. Instead, I usually start my fiction with a line of dialogue and then am off and running. And while I may stumble along the way or even have to take a break from the race to catch my breath, I ultimately finish the piece.

This process has stood me in good stead as evidenced by my two short-fiction collections (one already published and one scheduled for release) and stories that have appeared in literary and mainstream magazines.

But when I wrote my first—and second and third—novel, my “pantser” method failed me. Oh, it got me through a big chunk of the process and, with the first two, allowed me to write “The End” with some feeling of accomplishment.

But I knew there was something wrong with the manuscripts, and the rejections I received from agents and publishers confirmed that “pantsing” just wasn’t cutting it.

Not that you can’t write a book using the “seat of the pants” (aka SOP—another name for “pantsing”) method. Successful authors such as J. A. Jance, Elizabeth Berg, Stephen King and Margaret Atwood have done it. But other authors—John Grisham, R. L. Stine and Elizabeth George, for example—prefer to plot out the story before actually beginning the writing process.

Which is better: “pantsing” or plotting? Using a “let’s see what happens next” approach or creating detailed outlines? The answer is both, says author Jess Lourey. Although she herself is a plotter, she notes in her book, Rewrite Your Life: Discover Your Truth Through the Healing Power of Fiction, that there is no “right way or the wrong way; there is only the way that works best for you.”

Let’s take a look at the difference between the two.

“Pantsing” Versus Plotting

In simplest terms, the plotting method is all about defining: defining the path the story (fiction or nonfiction) will take, and for some authors, defining each individual scene within the story. It relies on some form of an outline to take the action from start to finish.

This can be either in broad strokes—Chapter 1: bad guy steals a car belonging to an unfairly fired detective to Chapter 20: unemployed detective finds the car, the bad guy and gets his job back—or with detailed, scene-by-scene instruction: who does what when, where, why and how.

In an online interview with The Verge, R. L. Stine (he of Goosebumps fame) explains his process: “I do a chapter-by-chapter outline of every book I write and I really can’t work any other way now. Everyone hates to outline but I need it.”

His theory is that by having an outline you can avoid writer’s block—encouraging words to the rest of us out there!

In Jennifer D. Foster’s article, “The Ins and Outs of Outlines: Plotters Versus Pantsers” that appeared in the 2016 edition of Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Elizabeth Sims, author of the Lillian Byrd crime series, says she uses the story-map strategy—a term she prefers over the word “outline” that to her “seems to connote rules and distasteful work.”

Sims, a contributing editor for Writer’s Digest, lists basic ideas for a plot, focusing on what she calls “heart-clutching moments,” with a brief paragraph detailing what is happening in the next few chapters. After that, she just starts writing.

In contrast, the “pantsing” method is organic and free-flowing, using a “what if ” approach to writing. While you may know the basics of how the story begins and ends, the journey itself is more amorphous and open to revision.

Your book-writing process can start anywhere and with anything: a line of dialogue (my go-to choice for short stories), a concept or theme, or an image, for example. You may not know who, why or what, but the more you write, the more the story unfolds.

The Pros and Cons of “Pantsing” and Plotting

When deciding whether to use the plotting or “pantsing” approach, keep in mind that both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. (C’mon, you didn’t expect this to be a simple “Pick A and you’ll succeed, but go with B and you’ll fail” answer, did you?)

The advantage to plotting first is that by planning your “writing journey” in advance, you may avoid those periods when your story hits a crossroad and you don’t know which way to turn.

Author Cliff Protzman says that the type of writing he’s doing dictates whether he’s plotting or “pantsing” it. “Nonfiction almost demands an outline. The writer is organizing facts to support a theory or describe a historical event. An outline allows the author to follow a deductive path to support the theory or visualize the event.”

He continues, “But an outline restricts me when I’m writing fiction. If I allow the characters to make the next move, the storyline follows. Their successes and failures create the story. When I fail to listen to my characters, I develop a block. The delete button lets me step back and let the characters tell the story.”

While Lourey follows the plotting process when writing her novels, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make some changes to her chosen strategy when needed. As she explains in her book, her first eight novels were created with “a very structured writing map, consisting of a table where the left-hand column contained dates and the right-hand column was scene summaries.”

This worked well until she started work on The Toadhouse Trilogy. Then, that table method gave way to a new outlining method: a circle in the center—the “inciting incident” as she refers to it—with a series of circles around it representing the resulting conflicts.

While driven by inspiration, “pantsing” can at times drive you right into plot problems you hadn’t anticipated. For example, children’s author Amanda Wills, an “SOP” writer, fell headlong into a creative rut when writing her first mainstream middle-grade fiction, Flick Henderson and the Deadly Game. She knew how the story would begin and end, but that was about the extent of it.

So, with the misguided optimism and devil-may-care attitude of the seasoned “pantser,” she launched right in and began writing.

“I had given my heroine Flick Henderson two mysteries to solve: who was behind the theft of the town’s population of pedigree pets and the subplot: the disappearance of Flick’s sister, Kate,” she says.

It was only after she had finished the first draft of the 50,000-word novel that Wills realized she had a major problem. Discovering how Kate died was the beating heart of the story. It had to be the main plotline. So it was back to the drawing board.

With a skewed timeline, issues with continuity, and scenes that needed switching, Wills took a low-tech approach to fixing the book. She summarized each scene on individual pieces of paper and then rearranged them until Kate’s disappearance became the main plot and the disappearing pets became the subplot. Then she went back to her Word document to make the changes.

Wills notes that writing “SOP” style has both pluses and minuses. “The main advantage of ‘pantsing,’ in my opinion, is freedom. Without the constraints of a plan, the blank screen is a ticket to a world of endless opportunity. I have a free hand to let my characters take control and dictate their own destinies, which can be both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time,” she says. “The main disadvantage to ‘pantsing’ is that without a plan it is easy to become lost. People who take the time to plot their novels are less likely to suffer from writer’s block, because they already know what’s going to happen next. They also tend to write faster and more efficiently.”

While Wills says she “will never be one of those analytical writers who plans every scene and writes detailed biographies of their characters before they type the first sentence,” she adds that “I have now been writing fiction for six years and I am trying to mend my ‘pantsing’ ways because I know from experience that the novels I have planned in advance are so much easier and quicker to write. I do think there is a need to plan, if only to nail the main skeleton of the book. And then you can let your characters run riot—as long as they promise to stay inside your novel’s beautifully-planned framework!”

Author and playwright Kelly Boyer Sagert, herself a “pantser,” says she found once she gets started on a project, using the “SOP” strategy makes it easier to keep going. She explains, “I need to simply dive in to make all real.”

And while it can be somewhat less efficient and lead her down some rabbit holes, Sagert says, “I’ve found amazing pieces of info and had great insights while down in those rabbit holes, which probably makes my finished...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	26.7.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Technik
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-1100-8 / 9798350911008

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