Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNoWriMo Edition!): AMA Thread Highlights #2!

Hey everyone! I know I promised a post, but we're in the process of moving to a new house and everything's going to hell. So since last week's AMA highlights post was so popular (and since I'm basically writing giant blog posts for this thing anyway), we're doing it again!!

Here are a few more of my favorite questions from the year so far. And if you have a question about writing, publishing, or books in general that you want to me to answer, head on over to the NaNoWriMo Fantasy forum and check out my thread! Just think of me as your own private pro author :) (unless you already have your own private pro-author, in which case I'm happy to be your second string). I'll be answering questions whenever I can until the end of the month, so drop by say hello!

Onward!

Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNoWriMo Edition!): AMA Thread Highlights #2!

Rare image of the writer at work loafing on the internet.

First up, DavidJGreen has a follow up to the question I answered last week about how to find a freelance editor and how does this self publishing thing work, anyway?

"Sorry if you've already answered this one. I've noticed you've answered one similar (but that was more regarding the marketing) but I don't know whether you'd categorise it as the same 'question'. How do you go about contacting an editor/publisher? Or, if you tend to self-publish: What are your first steps in self-publishing?"

My reply:

Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNoWriMo Edition!): AMA Thread Highlights

First up, I'm DELIGHTED to announce that One Good Dragon Deserves Another was an Romantic Times Magazine Top Pick for November!! HOORAY!

Yep, that is a print page from a legit paper magazine! You can read the review online here if you don't feel like squinting, or you can pick up your own copy of RT Magazine and read it in glorious, glossy color! Whichever floats your boat. 

On to the post!

So, as you've probably already noticed if you're anywhere near my social media, I'm doing my yearly NaNoWriMo AMA thread on the NaNo Fantasy forum.

This thread is one of my favorite things I do all year. I always get a ton of amazing questions, and I love talking to NaNo peeps. They're just so excited about writing, and that makes ME excited about writing my own stuff. It's a lovely, happy feedback cycle, and I really can't recommend it enough.

That said, the thread does take a huge amount of time out of my schedule, which is already packed since we're also closing on a house this week! (FINALLY! My own sequestered writing office! SQUEEEEEE!!). So, since I'm already making giant posts about writing answering questions, I thought for today's Writing Wednesday I'd share some of my favorites so far.

If you're already following the thread, I'm sorry for the cop out! I promise to be back next week with an actual new article. If you're not on the NaNo forums, I hope you'll find this highlights reel interesting.

Enjoy!

Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNoWriMo Edition!): AMA Thread Highlights

HIGHLY RELEVANT

First up, we have a great question from BLynchBooks about building characters.

"I know you'd mentioned the "Knife Test" on your blog in terms of testing motivations (which has been a huge help for the book I'm writing now, thank you!); do you have any similar methods for figuring strengths and flaws out?"

My reply:

Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNo Edition!): How to (Successfully) Write Every Day

Well folks, we are only 4 days way from everyone's favorite month of the year, National Novel Writing Month! To celebrate, I'm going to be doing NaNoWriMo themed Writing Wednesday posts for the next few weeks as well as my annual Ask Me Anything thread on the NaNo Fantasy forum. It should be good times.

Last week, I talked about getting your characters prepped. This week, with the starting line looming, I'm going to talk about how to actually, successfully pull off the hardest part of NaNo for most people: writing every day.

Writing Wednesdays (Special NaNo Edition!): How to (Successfully) Write Every Day

The entire concept of NaNoWriMo is based around teaching people who want to write books how to write daily. On the surface, it's very simple: 50,000 words ÷ 30 days = 1666 words per day. Write that every day, and you'll complete a novel in a month. 

Lovely as that sounds, though, if you've ever taken a stab at novel writing before, you know reality is rarely that clean and simple. Life is messy. Even with the best intentions, you might not get to write every day, because stuff happens. Even if you do manage to cordon off your writing time every day, stories don't always go as planned. You might spend an hour writing and walk away with -500 words. (Been there, done that).

All of these setbacks are a natural part of the writing process, and one of the things I love about NaNo is that it teaches us to keep going anyway, to charge past these bumps and just get that novel done! This is a vital life skill for anyone who wants to write professionally. Like all skills, though, it takes some practice to get right. 

To help take the pain out of the process (and to put my own failures/learning experiences to good use), I've put together my best tips for how to successfully and reliably pull off this "write every day" thing without driving yourself insane, having to scramble on catch up days, or otherwise resort to shenanigans.

Writing Wednesdays: Three Ways to Ensure Awesome Characters

It is officially the later half of October, and you know what that means! NaNoWriMo will soon be upon us!

Whether you participate in the organized chaos or not, the huge rush of new people trying writing in November makes this a great time to get together and talk/think about stories, how they're constructed, and what makes them good. To that end, I'm going to spend the next few blogs focusing on basic techniques you can use to make writing your NaNo novel (or plain old regular novel) faster, smoother, and more fun.

Today, we're kicking things off with the my favorite part of writing: creating amazing characters.

Writing Wednesdays: Three Ways to Ensure Awesome Characters

Confession: I am deeply jealous of comics. So much characterization in so few words.
(art via Lackadaisy - SO GOOD! Read it!!)

One of the most common writing questions I see in my email box is "how do you come up with characters?" 

Answering this question is actually really difficult, because honestly, almost all of my characters just kinda...happen. I'll be thinking about an idea I want to turn into the story, and a corresponding character will suddenly pop into my brain like it was always meant to be. Or sometimes I'll have one character already nailed down, and I'll realize I need a love interest/enemy/friend for them, so I'll start thinking about who would this person love/hate/hang out with, and boom, another character is born.

But while all of the above fits into the writing muse mythos I usually try to avoid (I hate the idea of a whimsical muse who doles out inspiration when she sees fit. No one is responsible for my writing and creations but me!), here's the kicker: none of these characters are actually good when I fist come up with them.

Writing Wednesdays - Varying Your Pacing For Dramatic Effect

But before we start, did you know that ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER, the sequel to NICE DRAGONS FINISH LAST, is now available as an audio book?! Well it is! And you should totally get a copy because the performance is amazing!! Go listen to the sample at least, you won't be disappointed!

I had a big NaNo post in the works, but it's not quite November yet (okay, it's barely the middle of October), and so, being the dug-in enemy of holiday creep that I am, I've decided to put the NaNo post off until next week and write about one of the most important and difficult to pull off aspects of writing: pacing. Specifically, I want to talk about how to vary your pacing to make your readers feel different things, sort of like pulling a lever on their emotions!

(Pause for evil author cackling).

Ahem. Moving on.

Writing Wednesdays - Varying Your Pacing For Dramatic Effect

Writing Wednesdays - Is it Ever Okay to Give Up on a Book?

(Believe it or not, this is going to be a happy blog post!)

One of my all time favorite sayings is: “There’s a name for writers who never quit: published.”

I love the fairness that this quote implies: the idea that if you just keep working hard and getting better, you will eventually be rewarded with your dreams. I believe it, too. I believe that if you love stories enough to keep writing them even in the face of rejection, you will eventually find your voice and your audience. But as huge a fan as I am of the “never give up, never quit on your dreams” mentality that is necessary to the survive and thrive in the writing life, this absolutist mindset can lead to a lot of unhappiness and wasted time when applied to novels.

I talk a lot about how to save floundering books on this blog. I’ve talked about how to fix your problems, how to avoid them all together, and how to fall back in love with a book you’ve started to hate. But what happens when you’ve tried all of that, and the book still doesn’t work? What do you do when you’ve done everything, and it’s still not enough? What happens then?

The normal writing advice I see for this situation is “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” There’s a lot of merit to this approach. If I gave up on every book I’d been sure was broken beyond repair, half my current titles wouldn’t be published. That said, I do feel there is a practical limit to failing better. That sometimes, the effort needed to make a book work simply isn’t worth the finished product.

I know that sounds a little like blasphemy, but hear me out! Writing is a creative endeavor. It thrives on big, new ideas, but big, new ideas don’t always work. Sometimes, the only way to make an ambitious plan actual function is to compromise it until doesn’t look anything like what you originally intended. Even then, sometimes that big hairy idea just won't come together even after months of trying, and you’re just plain sick and tired of beating your head against the wall.

In an ideal world, this is the spot where you would double down on your principles and find a way to make it work, but this isn’t an ideal world. This is reality, and real life doesn’t always have neat endings. There’s only so much time in a life to write, which means you don’t always have the luxury of laboring on a struggling project until you have the stroke of genius that will actually make it all come together. Sometimes, you have to look at the reality of your life and future writing plans and decide if this project is worth all the time and suffering required to make it work, and sometimes, that answer is no.

I will never tell any writer to quit on a book. That’s not my place, because the only person who can say when it’s time to give up on your book is you, and it’s okay to feel really bummed out about that. Giving up on a book is a failure, but failure is not a dirty word. It's a natural part of the creative cycle, and every writer faces it multiple times because the very act of being a writer means doing audacious and ambitious things, and those don't always work out.

But just because failure is natural doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept. I think this is why so many writers cling so hard to projects long after we know the end is at hand. This isn't even an artist hang up, but a human one. We loved these books enough to start writing them, and we don’t want them to die.

I know that feeling much better than I’d like to admit. I’ve quit more projects than I care to count, and every time, it was a bitter decision, but it was also the right one. I know it doesn’t feel that way at the time, especially if we’re talking about a book you’ve already sunk months or even years of your life into. In the face of all that investment, quitting and thus losing all of that time and work can seem unforgivable.

This kind of thinking is what economists call the Sunk Cost Fallacy. We’ve sunk so much time and effort in already, the thinking goes, we need to finish this project, otherwise our investment will be wasted. But while this kind of thinking feels like staying strong in the face of adversity (which is a good thing!) it can also lead you to keep throwing good writing after bad. After all, if you can’t save that project, then sinking more time and writing into it will only mean even more will get thrown away when you do eventually quit.

Normally, this is the point in the blog post where I’d introduce my clever strategy to solve this problem, but not this time. I don’t have any steps or clever Rachel metric to figure out where a novel’s point of no return lies, because the only person who can say “enough” on your books is you. My entire blog is dedicated to clever writing hacks and ways to stay on target, but if you’ve tried everything and your book still isn’t working, if your daily writing feels like pulling teeth, if every page you struggle through makes you want to never write again, stop.

Giving up on a book is a failure, there's no way around that, but you are more than one book. You have entire worlds inside you, enormous stories waiting to be told. You are still a writer, and no single project--no matter how brilliant--is worth giving that up. So if you desperately want to quit a book you hate, do it. It's okay. Walk away. You're still a rock star.

My favorite book break-up song. If you hear this blasting from my laptop, a project is getting burned.

Embrace your new freedom! Go work on the new project that’s been capturing your imagination. Go have fun with your writing again and make something beautiful. Something you can love. And if someone calls you a quitter, just tell them that you had more books to write, and you were sick of this one taking up all your time. So long as you never give up on writing, you’ll never be a quitter in any case. You’re just an artist whose project didn’t work out, and that happens all the time.

But while you're doing all this letting go, don't hit delete. Just because you're giving up on a book doesn't mean it can never be rescued. If you can't stand to even look at it, just stash it in a folder somewhere. That way, when you're washing the dishes a year from now and you suddenly figure out exactly how to fix your broken project, your old book will be right there waiting for you. But even if that moment never comes and the book is truly lost, it's okay. You're still a writer, and you will write many books. Letting guilt over one failure drag you down just hurts your career and takes time and energy away from all the future awesome novels you have yet to write, so don’t waste your time. Go out there and write something amazing.

If nothing else, I promise you’ll feel a lot better.

Thank you for reading another installment of Writing Wednesday! If you enjoyed the post, please consider following me on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+). You can also subscribe to the blog directly via Feedburner. I do new writing posts every Wednesday and tons of publishing business/fun stuff in between. It's fun! Let's hangout!

I'll be back with another writing post next week and hopefully we'll be doing some kind of analysis on our recent BookBub, but we need to gather some more numbers. In the meanwhile, please check out any of my titles on the sidebar for some good reads! I'm kind of biased, but I think they're pretty good.

Thank you again for taking the time to read, and as always, keep writing!
Yours,
Rachel Aaron/Bach

Writing Wednesdays: The Four Things You Need to Sell a Book

First up: Nice Dragons Finish Last is on sale for $0.99! Hooray!! If you've been waiting for a chance to try the series (or if you want to get someone else hooked!) this is a great chance to do it on the cheap ;).

This is where the books live! Get you one!

Also, I was on Aldus Baker's podcast this week talking fiction! He asked a lot of really great questions about my Heartstriker books, so if you're interested in a behind the scenes look at Julius, Marci, Bob, Chelsie, and everyone else came to be, give it a listen!

Now, on to the post!

Writing Wednesday: The Four Things You Need to Sell a Book

You clearly need more books! Have you tried mine?

Warning: this is a post about selling books. 

I know it might not sound like an issue of craft on the surface, but the stuff I'm going to be talking about today relates very strongly to good writing. Now, obviously, if you're still writing your book, you don't have to worry about any of this yet, but if you have a title out there, or you're planning to someday, this post contains what self-publishing has taught me about how people buy books and how I can use the skills I learned as a writer to improve my sales.

Pretty much any article you read about modern authorship--self-pub or trad--talks about the recent change of the author's role from sheltered artist to promotional machine. Personally, I think this argument is a little disingenuous. So long as books have been sold for profit, authors have always been expected to help promote their own work to increase sales, often at their own expense. But while the author as salesman/woman is hardly a modern invention, the truth of the matter is that--no matter how good you get at selling yourself and your books--the vast majority of the people who buy and read your books over your career will never know (or even care) who you are.

*record scratch*

I know, I know! How can this be? We've all heard how an author's name brand sells books, just look at any big bestseller like Stephen King or Nora Roberts. But while it's true that the really big best sellers can move titles on name alone, the opposite is actually true for smaller and midlist authors. Those of us who can't yet sell a book on name alone have to rely on other factors. Marketing can definitely help with this by getting your book in front of more people, which is why authors spend money on it, but even the best campaigns will only ever reach a fraction of your total audience.

Self pub or trad, this is the reality of publishing for the vast majority of authors. Until you become a household name, most of your readership will never have heard of your book until they see it randomly on a shelf at a bookstore or in an Amazon list. One glance, that's all we get, and it is in that moment--that second when your unknown, often busy and distracted customer's eyeballs land on your book for the first time--that makes the difference between a successful book and a flop.

If that sounds overly harsh, welcome to sales! You can write the best book in the world, but if you can't catch the attention of a busy, tired, grumpy reader and convince them to take a moment and discover your genius, it's all for nothing. But do not despair! This is a problem for everyone who tries to sell things, and while no one's figured out the absolute key, for books at least, there is a very good pattern to catching and keeping reader eyeballs, and it goes like this:

Cover, title, blurb, first pages, in that order.

Now, I am most definitely not the first author to realize this. Plenty of very successful authors before me have already pointed out that this pattern is pretty much the universal blueprint to selling books. This isn't to say that these four things are the most important parts of a book, but they are the four things that readers notice first, and this makes them the four most important things when it comes to selling your book, which is what we're talking about today.

To see why this pattern works, think about the last time you bought a novel by an author you didn't know. Chances are, you saw the book on a shelf or online somewhere, and you were drawn in by something on the cover. Next, you looked at the title, which was probably also interesting or hooky in some way. The combination of these two led you to pick up/click on the book and read the back/blurb, which, if you didn't put it back down, was probably also pretty cool, or at least intriguing. At this point, you're almost sold, but you want to make sure the writing is up to snuff, so you flip the book open/click on the sample and read the first few pages. If these are good as well, that book is sold!

This pattern is the natural progression of a sale, and it's why the Cover-Title-Blurb-First Pages pattern is the way it is. Even if the rest of your novel is horrible, if you knock these four things out of the park for your target reader, you will probably sell a lot of books. Of course, if your book actually is horrible, you won't sell any more books, but you get my point. By perfecting each part of the reader's natural book browsing pattern, you vastly improve your chances of catching their attention, even when you've only got a second to make an impression.

At this point, you're probably thinking "Wow, Rachel, that's super obvious." You're right. It is super obvious when you think about it, and that's exactly the problem, because so many authors don't. 

I have seen authors who will spend a year perfecting their manuscript and ten minutes on their cover. I have seen big publishers who will give a book a fabulous cover only to turn around and write a shitty, sloppy blurb. I have clicked on novels in Amazon sidebar ads because the cover, title, and blurb all looked amazing only to lose all interest because there was a typo in the first paragraph, or because the opening of the story was just boring. 

Each of these screw-ups leads to lost sales, because each step of the process--the initial interest created by a good cover and fueled by a clever title, the excitement generated by a good blurb, and the final punch of a fantastic opening page--is a decision.

Readers are busy. They don't know us, and therefore have no reason to cut us slack or take a chance on our work. It's our job as commercial authors--people writing books specifically for sale--to show readers that our stories are worth taking a chance on at every step of the book buying decision. It's up to us to catch and hold the reader's attention until our stories have a chance to drag them in, which is why I'm continually amazed by how many otherwise extremely smart authors and publishers screw up or just plain ignore these four fundamentals elements of bookselling.

We get it, Rachel. This stuff is important. So how do we do it right?

This is where things get tricky. Then answer to "What makes a good cover/title/blurb/first pages?" varies according to your book's tone, genre, and what kind of reader you're aiming for. Cozy mysteries will have different selling points than gritty Thrillers, and so forth. Part of being a successful author is knowing what makes your story interesting to your audience and then figuring out how to convey that through your title, cover, blurb, and so forth.

But while there is no universal answer, there are a few basic rules to the cover/title/blurb/first pages game that apply across the board regardless of genre, or even if you're writing fiction vs non-fiction.

Readers be like

1. Be interesting - no matter what genre you're writing, boring is the kiss of death. Anything you put in or on your book should always be of interest/appealing to your target audience, or why is it there at all?
2. Your cover/title/blurb/opening pages are for the READER, not for you - This is probably the hardest one for authors, especially when it comes to titles. But tempting as it is to give your book a title that is deeply meaningful to the story, that's not the point. The title isn't there to be meaningful AFTER someone has read your story, it's there to make people want to read your story in the first place. The same goes for covers and blurbs and so on. These are sales elements. To properly do their job, each one must be interesting and hooky in its own right without the help of the larger story. Obviously, this doesn't mean your title/cover/etc should be unrelated to the book. You still want it to make sense! But I can't tell you how many authors I see shooting themselves in the foot by giving their book a long title that's super meaningful in context, but dull or even nonsensical on its own, thus defeating the entire point of a good title. The only exception to this rule is for later books in a series where you can use previous reader knowledge to make the title cool, such as naming the book after an already beloved character. In general, though, anything you use to hook a reader needs to be able to be cool all on its own.
3. Invest in Your Success - You spent a long time writing this book. Don't hamstring your success by getting sloppy once that it's done. I'm not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars on a custom cover, but it makes no sense to spend a year or more getting your book perfect if you're just going to thoughtlessly slap some stock art and stock fonts on the front and call it a day. Your cover/title/blurb/first pages are the face your book presents to the world. They should be even more carefully considered than the rest of your novel. Don't rush to market. You only get one chance to launch a book for the first time, so don't be afraid to slow down and invest the time and (if you're self publishing) money needed to do the job right.
4. Know Your Reader -  As I said at the beginning, what makes a great cover/title/blurb/opening pages depends on your book, your genre, and your audience, but it's up to you to know what that audience wants. Whatever genre you write in will have certain conventions that readers expect, and whether you're bucking them or aiming to give readers exactly what they want, your selling points still need to be placed within that context, because that's the framework your reader is operating inside. In other words, if you're writing Romance, it has to look and sound like, or at least reference, what Romance readers expect. If you don't do this, you run the risk of losing readers simply because they didn't have the cues to realize that your book was the kind they were looking for. You can't get readers if they don't know to look at your book, so make sure your book looks like what it is. It's always good to stand out and do something different, but if the cost is having your book look so different people think someone stuck it on the wrong shelf, that's just as bad. Readers come in looking for a certain kind of book experience. If you can show in your cover/blurb/title/first pages that your book is exactly what they're looking for, but also new and awesome in its own way, that's the best of both worlds.

Now, obviously these are all elements that you'll have a lot more control over if you're self-publishing. (You also have enough rope to hang yourself, but that's the price of doing it on your own!) But even if you're going the traditional route and your publisher is the one making the final decisions on your cover/title/blurb and so forth, it's still your job to speak up if you think they're making the wrong choice.

I'm not going to lie: this can be terrifying, especially if you're a newly signed author, but that doesn't change the fact that this is your book. No one wants to be "that author" who makes a fuss, but at the same time, no one will ever care about your book's success more than you do. This is your career, and you'll be the one on the ropes if this book doesn't meet sales expectations. So if you feel your publisher is making a bad call on any of these vital four sales points, bring it up. 

You don't have to be confrontational (in fact, it's better if you're not), but that doesn't mean being silent. Don't be afraid to ask why your publisher made the decisions they made. They probably have very good reasons--they want to make money on this title, too!--but you'll never know if you don't ask. Worse, if the book does end up flopping because it had a terrible cover, you'll carry that for the rest of your career, and that's far too great a risk to take on just to avoid feeling uncomfortably now.

Remember: you're the writer here. This whole enterprise depends on you. You might not be as experienced at book selling, but you know your story and your audience. That is valuable insight, don't let anyone discount it. Even if they shut you down, it's better than knowing that something was wrong, and you said nothing.

Thank you for reading another installment of Writing Wednesday! If you enjoyed this blog, please consider following me on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+). You can also subscribe to the blog directly via Feedburner. I do new writing posts every Wednesday and tons of publishing business/fun stuff in between, so come talk shop with me! The more the merrier. :)

Thank you again for reading, and as always, keep writing!

Yours,
Rachel

Writing Wednesday: How to Fix a Broken Plot

First up, if you didn't see it on Monday, we did a huge post on our numbers for the One Good Dragon Deserves Another launch. If you're interested in self-pub and/or you like graphs, definitely go check it out!

Two weeks ago, I did a Writing Wednesday on common plot mishaps and how to avoid/fix them. But while it is true that there are some universal roadblocks to good plotting, things aren't always that simple. There are times in writing when you can do everything right and still end up staring down the barrel of a fundamentally broken plot.

For my money, this is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to an author. Here you have this book that you're super excited about, filled with characters you love, and it just. Won't. Work. Even when you do everything right, even best planned plots can break down unexpectedly, leaving you stranded in the middle of your book with no idea how to get moving again.

Whether it's your first book or your fiftieth, this is very discouraging. As someone who just came off one of the most challenging books of my life, believe me when I say I've been there. But before you think about throwing in the towel, remember: we writers are gods in our own stories. We have the power to do anything so long as it works within the rules we create. This freedom is often the same reason we got into these plot messes in the first place, but it also means there's no corner we can paint ourselves into that we can't get right back out of again.

So, with that in mind, I give you...

Writing Wednesday: How to Fix a Broken Plot

Confession: I have plot breakdowns on pretty much every book I write. Some are relatively minor, and some are catastrophic. I'm not sure if this is because I love complicated plots, or if plot failures are a natural part of my writing cycle, but whatever the reason, I get stuck on just about every novel. The upside of this is that all this floundering has given me a pretty well tested method for getting myself back on track again.

Writing Wednesdays: The Bare Bones Guide to Becoming a Better Writer

Today's topic is one I've been meaning to cover for a long time now, but first, exciting news!! My fast writing book, 2k to 10k, is now available as an audio book!! 

We worked with fantastic narrator (and fellow author!) Arial Burns, and I just think the whole thing sounds amazing! She really captured the humor and enthusiasm of 2k to 10k, and the transitions are so much smoother with music :)

So if you're the sort of person who prefers to listen to your non-fic in the car or while you're doing other things, I hope you'll give it a try! Even if you've already read 2k to 10k, this new version is just so nice. I hope you'll give it a sample listen at least, because it really is a different experience. (I'm in love with this thing, can you tell?)

Anyway, enough with the news. On to the blog!

 Allons-y!

Writing Wednesday: The Bare Bones Guide to How to Become a Better Writer

One of phrases that gets tossed around endlessly in the writing world is "honing your craft." This is a fancy way of saying "get better at writing," to which I say, "duh." If being a writer is your dream, then getting better at writing is the obvious best way to make all your dreams come true. No wonder so many writing advice lists start with "hone your craft." Do you suck at writing? Just get better! Problem solved!

-____-

As you've probably picked up, I really hate this phrase. It's not the idea I disagree with. I absolutely believe that if you want to do something professionally, you should do everything you can to improve your skills. But too often, the way "honing your craft" is presented--as if it was a single entity, just a box to be checked off before you can move on to other things--bugs me to no end, because improving your craft is not an item on a list or a finish line you pass to collect your winnings. It's a process that continues for the whole of a writer's career. It's the subject of thousands of writing books, articles, essays, and this Writing Wednesday series. It's not something you can just go knock out real quick before you do a final edit and settle in to write your query letter.

All ranting aside, though, all those "How to Become a Writer" lists aren't actually wrong. If your dream is to become a published author, then becoming a writer good enough to pull that dream off has to be your first step. But (and this is my problem with almost all "hone your craft advice") telling writers they need to "get better" is about as useful as telling someone struggling with poverty to "just go make money." If it was actually that simple, everyone would do it, because if there are two things everyone seems to want to do, it's make money and be a writer.

So, clearly, honing our craft is a long and complicated process, but this does not mean it's undo-able. Quite the opposite, every successful writer, regardless of genre, has gone through this process at one point or another. Many of us are still on it, because one of the most beautiful things about writing is that it can always be better. We can always work to become more skillful, more refined in our process. But no matter where we are on the writing journey or what kind of stories we prefer to tell, the basic process of honing our craft is the same, and it goes (more or less) like this.

Writing Wednesdays: The Bare Bones Guide to Becoming a Better Writer

Writing Wednesdays: Common Plot Fails (and How We Can Fix Them)

I've talked a lot on this blog about what makes good stories. I've talked about character driven narrative and how it makes books amazing, I've talked about taking smart risks with your fiction, I've talked about tension, I've talked about plotting. Heck, all you have to do is click on the Writing label and you'll find enough Walls'o'Text about good writing to keep the Huns out of China! But while talking about how to do things well and why can be very useful, sometimes the best teachers are the failures.

A few weeks ago, I posted the following on Twitter:

When people say "Why do bad books keep selling?!" What they mean is "Why do books I don't like keep selling?!" Actual BAD books don't sell.

— Rachel Aaron/Bach (@Rachel_Aaron) August 27, 2015

In response to this, people very rightly pointed out that there are many demonstrably bad books out there that sold like hotcakes (with 50 Shades taking the top spot), and to them I can only say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Yes, those books are bad, but they clearly did something right to make readers love them so much and buy them in such numbers. That's the thing about art: it doesn't have to be technically perfect to be enjoyable. Sometimes you can slap together a terrible plot but end up with characters so wonderful that no one cares about the silliness of their actual actions.

BUT.

These situations are exceptions to the rule. While it is true that extremely well done elements in fiction can overcome weaker ones, no author in their right mind willingly says "You know what? I think I'll half-ass this part of my book and just do this other thing so well that no one notices. That's a great plan!"

Obviously, if you want to write a book people are going to want to read, then you're going to try to write it to the best of your ability. You might not succeed (no one's perfect at everything), but you're going to try, and for that, it can be helpful (and hilarious) to examine some common ways authors screw things up and how we can fix them (or avoid them all together).

Writing Wednesdays: Common Plot Fails (and How We Can Fix Them)

Writing Wednesdays: Strong Prose

So I got a really awesome question through Facebook (follow me! It's cool!) about prose, and since this is a subject I don't believe I've ever touched on here at Pretentious Title, I thought it would make a great Writing Wednesday!

Here's the question in question:

Tom Shreeve asks,

"Hi Rachel, I've been enjoying your blog for a while. What are your tips on writing strong prose? As much as I plan the content of what I'm writing on a scene by scene basis (plot, exposition, character, flavour etc) when it comes to the actual writing - at a paragraph level - I wing it, hoping everything I want to happen in the scene just happens intuitively.

At a granular, nuts and bolts level, do your paragraphs follow a particular structure? Do you break down scenes into smaller pieces? How reductive do you go? 

And how often do you find yourself rereading what you just wrote to make sure the next bit follows naturally? I do that way too often!"

I love getting questions like this because, quite frankly, I'd never really thought about this aspect of writing in quite this way before I read your question. But I've thought about it a good bit since, and I think I have an answer. Or, at least, my version of an answer.

(And Tom, I hope you don't mind that I'm answering you on the blog!)

Onward!

Writing Wednesdays: Strong Prose

I've never considered myself to be a lyrical writer. This isn't to say I think my prose is weak, but I freely admit there are authors and poets who can evoke more emotion in four sentences than I manage over an entire novel. I mean, just read this:

That is beautiful. That is writing that makes me want to write books. It's also a sort of writing that, to my eternal despair, I've never managed to create myself.

I've long since made peace with the fact that I will never join Margaret Atwood or Ursula LeGuin or any of the other great writers who elevate words to eternal artforms. But while it makes me sad to know there's something I love but can't do (I feel the same way about drawing, which I love but utterly suck at), I don't consider my inability to write deathless prose a failing.

Being able to turn a good phrase is an inescapable element of writing, but there are more paths to being a good author than just creating beautiful prose. Every writer brings their own strengths to their stories. Some are great plotters, others write amazing tension, some create characters we'd gladly read doing anything, some are just flat out hilarious, and some write beautifully, but no writer is fantastic at every single element of storytelling. We all have our "areas of growth," and part of being a mature, professional artist is understanding where our weaknesses lie and coming up with our own ways to address them.

Writing Wednesdays: The Turtle Method for Faster, Better, More Fun Writing

I talk a lot about writing efficiency on this blog. Writing fast is kinda my thing. I'm always looking for ways to speed up, write more, and write better because more books = more awesome.

But while I'm always tweaking my fast writing method to be better, more efficient, and more suited to my needs as I progress as an author, there's another aspect to my writing efficiency boosts that I haven't actually talked about on the blog yet. This oversight wasn't intentional. I just never really thought about it until my husband joked about how I liked to "turtle" in my chair while I wrote, snapping at anyone who came near.

Once I got over the fact that he was telling me this while I was writing (grrrrrrrrr), I thought it was pretty funny. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that what I'd been instinctively doing for years (hunkering down in my chair and disappearing into my writing) actually played a huge role in how much I wrote in a day.

It was like I'd stumbled across an entirely new variable in the fast writing problem! So, like any good min-maxer, I decided to push the idea to its limits, and the results were even better than I'd hoped.

Writing Wednesdays: The Turtle Method for Faster, Better, More Fun Writing

Writing Wednesdays: What to Do When You Hate Your Book

Today's Writing Wednesday isn't technically a craft post, but it is something I think every writer struggles with at some point in their career. Before we dive into the heavy stuff, though, I'd like to show you this interview I did with Mihir of Fantasy Book Critic!

Mihir is one of my favorite people to do interviews with because he always asks the BEST questions, and this time was no different. He got some super big Heartstriker secrets out of me! So if you're a fan of Nice Dragons, you'll definitely want to check it out.

Now, on with the show!

Writing Wednesdays: What to Do When You Hate Your Book

Writer Circle of Woe from the amazing Ilona Andrews!! She is awesomesauce! Read everything she writes!

Ever since I published my fast writing book 2k to 10k back in 2012, I've gotten a steady stream of mail through my contact page from authors asking for help with their books. 

I really love getting these kind of emails. First, it just feels good to help my fellow writers (author power!), and second, it gives me a great insight into the kind of problems writers who aren't me are struggling with. 

Over three years and thousands of emails, though, certain patterns have begin to emerge. Every writer approaches writing differently, but get enough of us together and you start to see certain commonalities. The same questions show up in my inbox over and over, showing that, for writers who email me at least, certain elements of fiction appear to be inherently more troublesome than others.

Answering these common questions was a big part of why I started doing this Writing Wednesday feature. I figured that for every writer who was emailing me to ask this stuff, there were thousands more out there struggling with the same problems alone, and that makes me sad. Writing is a solitary art, but that doesn't mean we all have reinvent the wheel independently. 

If I've solved a problem which I later find out is something many writers struggle with, then I'm going to share my solution. Not because I think everyone should do things my way--again, everyone writes differently, and what works great for me might make no sense at all to you--but because I already did the work. The solution is already there, and if my knowledge can save someone else even a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears that comes from an unhappy stint in the wordmines, then it's my duty as a writer and a member of the writing community to share what I know. 

Even if it wasn't, even if I felt no obligation at all, I'd still share anything I discovered, because I think writing a book is one of the best experiences a human can have. I want everyone to feel the joy of being a god in their own story, and I'd prefer if they could do so without getting dragged down by problems I've already gone through the trouble of working through. Share the knowledge, share the love!

But as glorious and joyful as I know writing can be, it isn't always so nice. Answering craft questions is easy and fun, but the number one email I get in my box isn't about plot or characters or story structure. It's a simple cry for help from authors at the end of their rope.

"I hate my book. What do I do?"  

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 3)

First up, thank you all for your patience with my impromptu vacation last week (it's not my fault! My husband kidnapped me and dragged me to the mountains!).

Also, thank you everyone for making the launch of One Good Dragon Deserves Another such a huge success!! It's already got 67 reviews on Amazon with a 4.7 star rating and 329 ratings on Goodreads with a 4.46 in twelve days. That is insane, and I owe it all to you wonderful people!! Thank you all so so soooooo much for reading and reviewing!! (And if you haven't read my dragon books, why not? Go try them now!)

On to business. Today we're finishing up our craft series on How to Plot a Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (see Part 1 about actual plotting steps here and Part 2 on how to craft a great and effective meta plot here) with probably the most important part of any sequential writing: internal consistency!

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 3) - Harnessing Internal Consistency to Create Flexible, Tightly-Woven Stories

When authors talk about "internal consistency," they're usually talking about details--keeping the characters' eye color and height consistent across multiple books, or not saying a plant is poisonous in book one only to have the characters eat a salad made out of it in book five. This kind of internal consistency is very important, but it's not actually what I'm talking about here. When I talk about using internal consistency in plotting, I'm talking about creating an internally consistent and persistent world.

The Knife Test (or, What ONE PIECE Taught Me About Writing)

Years and years ago (five to be exact), I did a two part blog series on the sadly defunct author group blog The Magic District called "The Author Toolbox." These two posts contain some of my most fundamental writing beliefs, and while one, The Three Hooks got its own repost on this blog and a mention in 2k to 10k, the Knife Test got sadly left behind.

This must be remedied. For 12 novels now, the Knife Test has been a fundamental part of every character I've written. It's the first and last test for every character arc I create, and it's also a ton of fun to do. So, without further ado, I give you the (freshly updated!) Knife Test, my ultimate trial for any character who wants a place in my books.

The Knife Test

The Knife Test is something I put to all my characters. Nerd that I am, the idea comes from an anime called One Piece, which is just about the greatest show ever. If you can get past its cartoony nature and corny humor, there is an amazing story there. (And if you read my Eli Monpress books, you'll probably recognize a lot of themes. What can I say? Steal from the best!!)

In the show, there’s a character named Zoro whose dream is to be the greatest swordsman in the world. Around the end of season one, he comes across the actual greatest swordsman in the world, a man named Mihawk. Now, Zoro KNOWS he is too short for this ride, but he also knows that he might never get this chance again, so he challenges Mihawk to a duel. (Because, of course, the only way to be the greatest swordsman in the world is to beat the guy who’s already at the top.)

Mihawk refuses. He knows Zoro is way below him in skill. Dueling him would be a waste of everyone's time and most likely Zoro's life. When he sees how determined Zoro is, though, he agrees to fight him, but only with a small dagger.

Zoro is insulted. He has three swords, how you fight that with just a tiny dagger? Mihawk counters that the dagger is all he needs. Seeing that he's not going to get his duel any other way, Zoro reluctantly agrees and the fight begins. Zoro (who has been undefeated in the series up to this point) goes all out, but is still defeated in one stroke. The fight ends with Mihawk holding his tiny dagger lodged in Zoro’s chest. 

But even with a dagger in his chest, Zoro doesn't retreat. He just stands there, staring at his opponent. Confused, Mihawk says, “This dagger is an inch from your heart. Why don’t you step back? Do you want to die?”

Zoro looks him straight in the eye and says, “If I were to take even one step back, I’d never be able to stand before you again.”

“Yes," Mihawk says. "It’s called losing.”

And Zoro answers, “That’s why I can’t step back.”

Still probably my favorite fight of all time.

And that, that right there, is the knife test. When the knife is scraping your heart, what do you do? Do you play it safe, step back, and live? Or do you refuse to give up on your goals? Do you keep moving forward, even knowing you'll probably die? 

This is the ultimate test of conviction. All of my main characters have to pass it, and I have to understand (and more importantly, make the reader understand) why. I put my characters through this test in the initial world building stages, and then again over and over throughout the novel. It's the epitome of show versus tell. It’s not enough for Miranda to say she is dutiful. She has to prove over and over again in a dozen different ways that she will put herself on the line for her duty. She has to face that dagger every time, over and over, and never turn away.

I admire conviction in all people (who doesn't?), but I think it's especially important for characters, both the ones I write and the ones I look for in my pleasure reading. The Knife Test gives me a vehicle to show off that conviction. I don’t just say “Character X cares about Y more than his life”,  I make her prove it again and again. (Though, of course, I try not to actually kill the character, because then the story would be over!) 

Really, though, the mortality aspect of the test is immaterial. We all know the hero most likely isn’t going to actually die, but we love seeing how close he or she cuts it, and, even better, how on earth they’re ever going to get out of this mess. The Knife Test is just a tool for creating circumstances that test a character's mettle, a mental construct to help me wrap my brain around the tension and conflict needed for great character development. It's my way of asking "What does this character really stand for? What would they die for?" Because once you know what circumstance or person your character would walk into a knife for without regret, then you know that person inside and out. Once I've got that, all I have to do is put that character into my story and get out of their way.

Every writer has their own tricks, and this is one of my favorites. I hope you find it useful, or at least interesting. Thank you as always for reading, and I'll be back tomorrow with a brand new Writing Wednesday!

Writing Wednesday: VACATION!

First up: OMG WHAT A GREAT LAUNCH!

awww yeaaaaaaaah

The launch of One Good Dragon Deserves Another is officially the best I've ever had! I actually got all the way to #112 in the Kindle Store, but I don't have a screen shot of that one :(. Still, this is higher than I've ever gotten on a launch day, and I owe it all to YOU! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who bought the book!! You guys make all of this possible, and I really can't thank you enough!

And speaking of launch, the run up to this one has been crazy! Now, though, everything is finished and my kiddo is with his grandparents this week, so the powers that be here at Casa de Aaron/Bach have decreed that I need to take some time off. (AKA: Husband prying my fingers off my laptop and carting me away for fresh air and sunshine in the mountains).

Alas, this means there will be no new Writing Wednesday post this week, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to read! I've been doing this writing thing for a long time now, and I have years of content saved up just for your reading pleasure. I also sometimes write posts for other people that might have slipped under the radar.

So, to help tide you over until next week, here's a list of Rachel writing/authorship/ruminations on the genre posts that you won't find my blog:

5 Rachel Guest Posts You Won't Find on Pretentious Title

Guest Post for Magical Words - Loving Your Novel: a post about falling in love with your book again, even when you're mad at it.

IndieReCon Post - Words are Cheap: My original follow-up post from 2k to 10k about how writing faster completely changed my outlook on the creative process.

Guest Post for The Book Smugglers' SFF in Conversation Series - Upsetting the Default: I don my Rachel Bach SF hat and talk about writing a badass lady in a genre where "badass" is usually male.

Orbit Books Post - Elizabeth Moon interviews Rachel Aaron: Probably the coolest thing I have ever done! My publisher, Orbit Books, arranged for me to do an interview swap with my hero and SFF legend, Elizabeth Moon! (My half where I interview her is here. I am still squeeing!)

Guest Post for Kalayna Price - The New Golden Age: My awesome friend (and awesome writer) Kalayna Price invited me to talk on her blog. I respond with a post about how we're living in a golden age of genre!

Hopefully there's something you haven't read in that list! Thank you all again for stopping by, and I'll be back next week rested and refreshed and ready to talk the final parts of plotting a series!

Until then, keep writing (and reading!)

Yours,

Rachel

7 Posts to Help You Use Hooks Better

Hi everyone, this is Travis. I realized that we have a lot of new readers lately. If you want to be a better writer, there's years of materials here on Pretentious Title to dig through!

But no one likes digging through years of old posts. So, to help you all out, I've put together a quick link round up of some of Rachel's most popular How To writing posts. Today's topic is: the Hook. What it is, how to use it, and some great examples of the hook in action.

I hope you find these links handy! If you'd like more of these roundups, let us know what topics you'd like to see covered in the comments below. And remember, One Good Dragon Deserves Another comes out tomorrow!

(Rachel takeover: REVIEWS! In addition to the absolutely wonderful FBC review I mentioned Weds, OGDDA has already racked up great reviews from The Midnight Garden and Notes from a Readerholic as well! SO HAPPY YOU GUYS! Thank you!!!)

And now, the links!

Rachel's Top Posts About Hooks

Anatomy of a Hook - Using 6 Word Stories to examine the hook in its purest form.

The Art of Story Velcro - Using every aspect of your story to hook readers so hard, they never let go.

How to Write a Great Blurb - Who says writing great blurbs has to be torture?

Where to Start Your Story - It's not always where you think.

Tension - Why hooks work in the first place. The alpha and omega of successful writing.

How to Write a Prologue People Won't Skip - For all my fellow prologue junkies out there!

How I Manage Large Casts of Characters - Using character hooks to keep readers invested.

Thank you again for reading, and happy Almost OGDDA Release Day!

- R & T

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 2)

Eeeeee!!! We're at T minus 3 days from the launch of One Good Dragon Deserves Another! I can not wait for you guys to read this book! The ever-awesome Mihir already reviewed it for Fantasy Book Critic and he loved it, so I'm now 100% confident you guys will, too! SO EXCITED!!

Also, Audible has started recording for the audio edition, and it should be out in October. They got the same narrator as book 1, too. Things are coming up all aces around here!

*deep calming breath*

Okay, now that I'm temporarily done flailing my arms in happiness, let's talk plotting a series!

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 2) - Handling Your Metaplot

In part one, I talked about the 5 basic steps I use to plot the course a series. If you're familiar with my blog, you probably noticed these steps looked very similar to the ones in my How I Plot a Novel in 5 Steps post. That's not coincidence. 

The overarching story of a series and the self-contained story of a book share the same structure. Ideally, both have a beginning, middle, and an end, both have development and growth, and both have a dramatic narrative that builds to a climax. The only real differences between the two story types are scale, speed, and focus.

Because it is largely self-contained, the plot of a single book can be as big and move as fast as you need it to. Your narrative can focus on whatever part of the narrative is most vital to the story you want to tell. A book, in short, doesn't have to answer to anyone else. It can be whatever it needs to be--fast, slow, epic, intimate, first person, third person, giant cast, epistolary--to best tell the story. 

But when you sit down to plan out the overarching plot of your series, also known as the metaplot, your freedoms and tools are much more limited. Because a series is made up of individual books, each of which have to be good in their own right, you don't always have the freedom to tell your larger metaplot exactly as you want to. 

The needs of the individual books always have to come first, because those are what your readers are reading. No one sits down and reads a meta plot by itself. It always exists in abstract, the bigger picture you see when you step back and look at the series as a whole. 

This degree of separation puts a lot of pressure on metaplot structure. Your reader catches the big-picture meta plot only in glimpses through your other books, sometimes years apart if your series is still coming out. These are huge handicaps writers must overcome if we want our readers to keep our larger story clear in their heads. 

The easiest way to compensate for this is to just keep the metaplot simple, but not every writer wants to do that. I personally love a complex metaplot both as a reader and a writer. So how do you tell a complex, series-level story? How can you structure your metaplot to make sure readers can keep up without sacrificing the intricacy and depth that made you want to write that metaplot in the first place?

Like any problem in writing, there are a million good answers to this one. My personal favorite, though, is to always make sure that my metaplot isn't so much the story of my world as it is the story of my characters.

The Character Driven Metaplot

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 1)

Today, I'm going to be taking the first in a three-part stab at answering one of the most frequently asked questions from my inbox: how do I plot a series? But first, I've got some big news! My writing book, 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love is now available on ebook vendors other than Amazon!

This is my little book that could. When I first put it up three years ago, I was hoping to get a few hundred sales and a handful of reviews. Now, with over 30,000 copies sold, 500+ reviews on Amazon at a 4.6 star rating, you could say my expectations have been surpassed, which means it's time to try something new.

So, for the first time ever, I'm taking 2k to 10k out of KDP Select and putting it up everywhere! You can buy it at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Oyster, Inktera, and Scribd. And as always, it's still just $0.99!

There's also going to be an audio edition coming out soon, so watch out for that. For now, though, let's get this multi-part party started!

Writing Wednesdays: How To Plot A Series Without Driving Yourself Insane (Part 1)

No matter the genre, books in a series are universally popular. Readers love them because they give us more of what we already love. Writers love them because writing books sequels means you can write new books without inventing everything from whole-cloth every time. Publishers love them because they sell well. Everyone loves a series! Heck, if you're a writer of any stripe, chances are you've already thought of or even started a series of your own.

But while a good series can make your career as a writer, a bad series can sink it just as fast. Say you're writing a trilogy, and you screw up book 2, losing half your readers in the process. If these were standalone books, you could just start over and write something new, but for a series, you have to finish that final book. It doesn't matter if it's going to sell terribly, it doesn't even matter if you hate it. So long as your series still has a few fans (or you're under contract), that book must be written.

It goes without saying that this is not a fun position to be in. But while it might seem safer to only write stand alones, single novels never sell as well as a good series, especially in genre. Also, so many stories simply won't fit into one book. They need the room a series provides to be told properly.

So how do we avoid these pitfalls? How do we set off on a series with reasonable certainty that we're not going to screw up book 2 and doom our careers forever?

The secret (which is actually the secret to pretty much all successful projects) is planning.

If you want to avoid the dreaded Second Book Slump, if you want to be sure every book in your series is going to be better than the last, then the very first thing you need to do is stop and plot out exactly where your series is going to go. I don't mean you have to plot out every book, and you're free to change your mind later as the series progresses (in fact, I guarantee you will). But if you want to make sure your books really feel like a cohesive, well planned out series, you're going to have to actually come up with a plan.

Thankfully, plotting a series is actually a lot easier than plotting the individual novels. It's much more big picture storytelling and much less nitty-gritty detail. Me being me, of course, I've organized my series plotting system into steps, which I've listed below.

I'm not saying you have to follow this method exactly to successfully execute a series. This is just how I do things. That said, this system has saved my bacon on at least one series so far. It's also how I make my books flow together so well. They feel like they're all steps in one big story precisely because that's how I planned them to be, and this is the refined version of the method I used to do it.

Even if you're a pantser who hates planning, which is a perfectly fine way to write if it works for you, I still highly suggest going through the steps below. If nothing else, it's a fun storytelling exercise!

So now that I've hyped it up, let's get down to brass tacks.

How I Plot a Series in 5 Steps

Writing Wednesdays: Taking Smart Risks

First up, just wanted to remind people that the giveaway for a signed copy of Rhonda Mason's excellent SF debut, THE EMPRESS GAME, is still going! You have until Friday to go check it out and comment for a chance to win a book, so go do that. :)

Second, my swag shop is now open!!! That means....POSTERS!

Banana for scale.

These things are gorgeous! We went with the slightly pricier matte-finish art prints, but the difference between these and the cheap ones is night and day. The colors are rich, the paper feels sleek, heavy, and expensive, they're just all around win!

We have posters of just the cover art without the text as well, so go check out the shop and pick up a smiling Julius for your wall! Posters of Marci and her cat army will be coming soon as well the moment we finish the proof process. Hooray for cool stuff!

Now that's all done, let's talk about one of first and most fundamental cornerstones to being a good writer: knowing how and when to take risks.

Writing Wednesdays: Taking Smart Risks

As I've mentioned here before, I'm a giant fan of Project Runway. I love it the artistic challenge, I love the catty judges and cheesy drama, I love it all! But even though I watch the show for pure entertainment value, sometimes I glean real bits of wisdom from the judges' commentary. The latest of these was from fashion designer Zac Posen toward the middle of Season 12, who said "Success in Fashion is all about taking smart risks."

This statement rang true for me on a lot of levels. The one line that gets repeated over and over on the show is that you can't just design based off what's popular now, because by the time your clothes walk down the runway, now has become then, and you're already out of style. To be successful as a designer, you always have to be doing something new and innovative that will catch and hold people's attention. You need to really think about who your customer is and what they will be buying tomorrow, not today.

If all of that sounds familiar, that's no mistake. Fashion design and writing might seem like the most unrelated of disciplines, but as creators struggling to produce consumable products that have both artistic merit and widespread commercial appeal, we actually have a great deal of overlap. It might seem silly to take writing advice from a fashion designer, but as Uncle Iroh said, "It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale."

So, with that in mind, let's steal a page from the Zac Posen Playbook and talk about what it means to take smart risks in writing.