In Which I Make Some Mistakes, Learn From Them, and Eat Some Ice Cream

Sometimes it feels like my venture into self publishing has been a long series of blunders. In truth, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm stumbling around in the dark crashing into walls, hoping at some point I'll find a light switch (if there is one).

I've learned a few lessons, though. First, I've created a budget. Budgets have turned out to be highly helpful things. Budgets ensure I'm spending money smartly where it needs to be spent instead of flailing wildly, bleeding money everywhere. I created my budget thusly (I'm in a fancy word mood):


1. I added up all my actual expenses from the past couple of months and subtracted from my actual income.

2. I found things that could realistically be cut back to save money. (Can I go to the library a little more often instead of buying ten books a week? Can I maybe never order in pizza again just because I'm bored and don't want to eat another sandwich?)

3. I decided how much money a month I can afford to spend on my self publishing.

4. I subtracted fixed expenses, like my website and RWA membership.

5. I calculated how much it'll cost to publish a book with cover and editing expenses.

6. I determined how often I can reasonably afford to publish a book.

7. I did some cutting of my overly optimistic book release plan.

Note I am basing all this on the actual income I am getting from my day job, not from hypothetical income I might get from self publishing. The goal is to gradually be able to pay for all my self publishing costs with my self publishing income, but I can't rely on it until I start making sales.

I feel like because I said 'first' there should be a second lesson. Here it is: don't eat an entire box of candy at once. You'll get a stomach ache.

What's in a Scene?

Explaning things is tough. After I wrote my blog post yesterday I realized I talked about every scene being a notecard, but failed to say what actually goes on each notecard. So here you are, an addendum!

First, I write a description of the scene at the top of the notecard. This can be detailed and exact, or something only I can interpret. For example, in my Junk Squad outline one of my scene descriptions is just "treadmill scene." As long as you know what you're talking about, you're fine. 

Occasionally I don't know the details so I write vague skimmy things like this line from my Color Me Lovely outline: "They go out somewhere where A executes plot to take down M." Other times I really don't know what's going to happen, and I end up with lines like this one from my Tidal Wave outline: "Everything goes the fuck wrong." 

Next I make a note of character motivations in the scene, what the conflict is, and what the scene advances. This helps when I actually start writing. Knowing the WHY of the scenes helps me change things about without breaking the outline to pieces. The outline will inevitably be a messy, shattered thing on the floor by the time I'm done, but it's nice to try and keep it coherent for as long as possible.

Point of view should be indicated in some way, and scenes can also be color coded for which subplot they relate to.

Finally, I make sure to write down what the disaster of the scene is. In order to keep the reader reading, every scene needs to end with something going wrong. If a scene ends on a 'happy enough for now,' then there isn't much motivation to keep going. Remeber to change up the scale of the disaster to reduce monotony. If everything is OH NOES THE END OF THE WORLD then the end of the world is going to get really boring. Give your reader a breather. It'll make the bigger disasters have more impact.

I sound like I know what I'm talking about or something. Now I'm going to destroy is all by yelling ORANGES and running away.

In Which I Outline a Plan for World Domination- I mean, a book! In Which I Outline a Book!

Okay, so I'm actually trying to outline seven books today. I mean, seven novellas. In celebration of outlining day (It's totally a holiday. Don't doubt me.) I'm going to teach you my outline method! Yay! I know you're just super excited about it.

FIRST: I decide what my goal length is. For my paranormal regency romance novellas about a family of assassins (I swear I'm going to write a normal book someday) I've decided I want to aim for 40k (refresher! k=thousand) each.

SECOND: I pick a scene length. Now, this part is a bit arbitrary. Obviously, all of my scenes aren't going to be the same length, that would make for a really monotonous read. But generally I can hit upon an average scene length that's sort of what would happen if I added the short and long scenes together than divided it out. For these novellas, I'm aiming for 2k, which means I'll need twenty scenes.

THIRD: Get note cards. Since each novella has 20 scenes, I'll need 20 notecards per novella with each notecard acting as one scene. I then find a large enough surface to lay the notecards out. I have two points of view in each book, so I'll be using different colored notecards for the different view points to create an easy visual reference to keep track of who is getting more book time.

FOURTH: I plan my plot points. Plot points are those scenes in the novel where Stuff! Happens! and Everything! Changes! So they're kinda important. Plot points should fall at 25%, 50%, and 75%.

I should also have an inciting incident around 10% and a black moment somewhere near the end. The inciting incident is the crazy thing that happens that kicks off the story. The black moment is when everything goes wrong and all hope is lost. Except not really, because then the hero finally finds the solution to the problem! Yay! Unless it's a tragedy. Then it's all hope lost for realsies.

For some reason I like to start with my midpoint, which will be scene 10 in this case, and then work my way out from there. I might toss in a couple of pinch points at scenes 7 and 12. Pinch points are the bits where the villains do something villainous, revealing how villain-y they are!

I could go a lot more into structure, but that would take up several more blog posts. Onward!

FIFTH: Once all the turning points and what not are in place, I plan out the rest of the scenes to build up to those points.

SIXTH: Find somewhere to put my notecards for easy reference while writing.

SEVENTH: Actually write the book.

The Worst Laid Plans

I am something of an expert on embarrassing myself. This should come as no surprise to anyone. My general strategy, on realizing an Embarrassment Situation has occurred is to check if anyone seems to have noticed it. If they haven't, pretend like it never happened.

Sent out a bunch of submissions and forgot to put a salutation on the emails? No idea what you're talking about. That clearly wasn't me. Nope.

If they have noticed, act like it was done on purpose. This can be achieved by either laughing hysterically or pretending the whole thing was high art.

I MEANT to leave off the dear editor part! It's a statement on writing today! HAHAHA, just kidding. But I totally did mean to leave it off. As a joke. Or something.

Other serial self embarrassers should find these strategies highly helpful and effective. So when you get bubbly off drinking too much mountain dew and botch a bunch of poetry submissions, remember: ignore, defend, laugh off. IDLO. I need a better acronym.

Wheeee!

Have you seen the 5th sort-of-annual stupendously ultimate first paragraph challenge just started?! Have you???? I'm a little bit excited about it. I may have picked out my paragraph over the weekend after it was mentioned that it might start on Monday and then stalked the blog, hiccuped with excitement when the post went up, and somehow gotten the first comment. I ADMIT TO NOTHING.

Ahem.

Okay, maybe I should tone down the crazy a little. I just get excited sometimes. This contest is brilliant fun. I've always learned so much about first paragraphs from it. Mostly that they tend to somehow be all alike as everyone accidentally taps into the hive mind and thinks up the same not-as-original-as-we-thought* idea. I should know, I've done it on more than one occasion.

Do I actually have a hope of winning? Eh, no. But I enter for the same reason I submit poems to places I don't have a prayer of getting into. It's EXCITING. And this contest is especially exciting because it's like I get to read the slush pile and cheer on my favorites! YAY!

I'm doing it again, aren't I?

I should stop typing now before it gets worse.

*Aren't my hyphens pretty? I just read an extensive post on them today and was all, oh, I need to fix that phrase by adding hyphens so it's grammatically correct! Yay, learning!

On Word Counts

This is something I remember struggling with when I first started writing, so you will now be inflicted with a long, boring explanation of everything I know about word counts.

The page: one page is generally considered to be 250 words. This has a vague sort of resemblance to the reality of how many words actually end up on a page, though of course it varies with the actual size of the book, the amount of dialogue, and the current climate of Pluto. Mostly it’s just a convenient rule of thumb.

The page count calculation: to calculate how many pages your manuscript is, divide the word count by 250.

Therefore, a 25k (k being shorthand for thousand, as in 25,000 because I am not writing out all those zeroes every time) novella is about a hundred pages, a 50k harlequin romance is about 200 pages, and an 80k novel is about 320 pages. Got it? Okay.

The meaning of the word count:  generally if you’re in the 500-1,000 word range, it’s considered flash fiction. If you’ve never heard of flash fiction, it’s a lovely thing invented by internet induced short attention spans. If you’re practicing your condescending sneer right now, just think how much skill it takes to pack an entire story into 750 words. Yeah. This stuff is pretty much incredible.

Past that you’re in short story range until you hit about 10k. Then follows the no man’s land of dead manuscripts before novellas begin at 20k. Okay, I kid. I’ve seen places that accept 10-15k as legit short stories, but if your story is 17k you’re screwed.

YA (young adult) novels begin at about 45k. You might get away with 40k if you’re brilliant enough, but mostly you want to get above that 45k, preferably into 50k.

You might note that I am skipping Middle Grade and Picture Books (which I think I am capitalizing for no good reason) but that would be because I know nothing of those subjects and will therefore be ignoring them. I feel like the tone of this post has gotten really formal. Wassuupp, dude? You gots some wooords? Word. 

50-60k is category romance range, which pretty much means ‘things published by harlequin’ (which I seem to be not capitalizing for no particular reason).

Then comes another deserted wasteland, then I think you might get away with a short thriller at 70k, I don’t know, then what I like to refer to as ‘general novel range’ which is around 80k. 80k is pretty much the default length of most books written for adults. There’s variations, of course, but if you just want to know how long your manuscript should be, I’d advise shooting for 80k. That’s pretty much within the spectrum of everything.

Books that include a lot of world building like fantasy, sci-fi, and historical are always going to be slightly longer than others. This is not to say that there isn’t world building (spell check distracted me with thoughts of world boiling, where was I again?) in contemporary, because there is.

You’re bringing the reader into your own version of the current world and introducing them to this particular set of Texan politics in this particular town in Texas, but it’s not on the level of say, a sci-fi, because you can generally trust that your readers know what a ‘rug’ is and that humans need to consume food to survive. Sci-fi writers, on the other hand, have to not only explain Kreut!zn politics, but also what the hell a Ytv&n is and why it needs to grnn*ft every Rept?n.

Once you’re a rich and famous author you can make your books whatever the hell length you want, and most examples you’ll point to that do not fall within these rough parameters can be attributed to the author achieving enough success to hit the do-whatever-the-hell-they-want zone, otherwise known as the J. K. Rowling diagonal.

A note on self publishing: I would highly recommend that you stick to the normal traditional publishing word counts even if you're self publishing. Readers have grown accustomed to certain genres of books being certain lengths, and if you disappoint their expectations they will come after you with pitchforks and torches in the reviews. Not even your mother is going to read the entirety of your 600,000 word contemporary romance, and if you publish your 25k book without specifying it's a novella the good people who paid for it will burn you at the stake on principal. Stick to the normal word counts, at least until you have enough adoring fans that you also cross the aforementioned diagonal.

Let’s see, have I covered everything? Yup, I think that’s everything I know about word count contained in 682 words (now 772 words, because I did some post publication editing).

Finally, a disclaimer: I am not an expert nor do I play one on television. This is simply a collection of things I’ve picked up and stored in my head. Some of it is probably made up and the rest could all be wrong. Honestly, I wouldn't advise listening to anything I write, because it's physically impossible, unless you read it out loud, I think I've gotten off topic. (this is a long, grammatically incorrect and overly punctuated disclaimer) I’m sure I’ve left out all sorts of things I know nothing about, like cozy mysteries and, er, everything that isn’t young adult or romance, basically. Huh. For someone who claims to genre hop, I really don’t seem to vary much in what I actually write. *ponders implications of this epiphany on my life*